Gospel of Thomas by Melissa Harl Sellew
Oxford Handbook of the Synoptic Gospels, 2023
This article moves away from questions of dependence or autonomy to show that comparison of the t... more This article moves away from questions of dependence or autonomy to show that comparison of the texts' style and content is fruitful for understanding both Thomas and the Synoptic Gospels. When we read the Synoptics against Thomas, some of the central characteristics of Mark, Matthew, and Luke stand out in higher relief. Differences in theology, narrative structures, genre, and approaches to community formation combine to confirm that early gospel writers had a variety of choices about their modes of representation of the meaning(s) of Jesus. As part of its pattern of distance from Judaism, Thomas shows that it was possible to present Jesus as somehow removed from the thought world of Scripture, even as a source of revelatory or prophetic information.
Journal of Interdisciplinary Biblical Studies, 2020
This article adopts a trans-centered approach to reading the Gospel of Thomas, in particular key ... more This article adopts a trans-centered approach to reading the Gospel of Thomas, in particular key statements found in Gos. Thom. 22 and 114. Treatments of gender in the gospel are discussed from the author's position as a queer woman of transgender experience, informed by postcolonial, feminist, and gender-critical theory and practice. Literary and historical comparisons with Philo of Alexandria and the apostle Paul are explored to uncover Thomas's worldview, which is seen to be darkly critical of the material world, while being hopeful for spiritual transformation. Though the Gospel of Thomas participates in the prevalent masculinist ideology of most literature of the day, many of its sayings may garner a new or nuanced meaning when read through a transgender lens, including especially the demand for replacement of the outer person with the inner person (Gos. Thom. 22), and potential salvation through erasure of conventional gender difference in the making of an ungendered Living Spirit resembling Jesus (Gos. Thom. 114).
The Nag Hammadi Codices and Late Antique Egypt, ed. Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jennot. SAC 110. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018
The Gospel of Thomas calls its readers on a path of discovery of the authentic self. This journey... more The Gospel of Thomas calls its readers on a path of discovery of the authentic self. This journey involves stripping away one’s exterior elements, symbolized as ‘this flesh,’ working to reach an inner core called variously this spirit, the one, or even, most simply, you or oneself. Thus begins an arduous, long process of becoming a single or solitary one (ⲟⲩⲁ ⲟⲩⲱⲧ or ⲙⲟⲛⲁⲭⲟⲥ).
Interior inspection, scrutiny of the self, and attention to what is effective in making spiritual advance, and what is not, are discussed in Thomas using the vocabulary of ascetic performance: fasting, prayer, almsgiving, renunciation of the world. A similar life of interiority is also pursued by ascetic practitioners as they are portrayed on nearly every page of the collected wisdom of the desert Christians.
Given these and other similarities, therefore, I suggest that when we search for a plausible context of meaning of the Gospel of Thomas as understood in late antique Egypt, we might find much enlightening material for comparison, and for contrast, in the traditions of the desert pioneers found in the Apophthegmata Patrum.
Delightful Acts: New Essays on Canonical and Non-canonical Acts. Edited by Harold W. Attridge, Dennis R. MacDonald, and Clare K. Rothschild, 2017
Since the first publication of the Gospel of Thomas six decades ago, scholars have labored to map... more Since the first publication of the Gospel of Thomas six decades ago, scholars have labored to map the curious and extravagant praise offered to James the Righteous in logion 12 onto the known or imagined grid of early Christianities. Most interpreters have connected the praise of James with some previous historical stage of a postulated “Thomas community” in which James is thought to have been a figure of honor and importance. The praise of James in Thomas 12 is also viewed by some as evidence for suggestions of one or more Jewish-Christian sources for earlier stages of the gospel, since the James pictured in many other texts served as the byword for a Jerusalem-centered, Torah-observant style of Christianity.
In this essay I aim to redirect this line of interpretation. In my reading of Thomas, the praise offered James functions not as a remnant of a supposed earlier stage of a community that held the apostle of righteousness in special reverence as their leader, but instead as an ironic dismissal by Jesus of followers intent on what this gospel would consider an inadequate and misguided approach to piety focused on our material existence. The standard reading of Thomas 12 as straightforwardly literal, and
thus of social-historical significance, results in part from a persistent tendency to interpret particular statements in Thomas largely in isolation from the writing
as a whole.
Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity: The Social and Cultural World of the Gospel of Thomas, ed. Jon Ma. Asgeirsson, April D. DeConick, and Risto Uro, 2006
In this essay I discuss the briefest and perhaps most enigmatic saying of Jesus in Thomas, logion... more In this essay I discuss the briefest and perhaps most enigmatic saying of Jesus in Thomas, logion 42: "Become passers-by." Various suggestions are made about how this brief command might best be understood. I propose that readers of Thomas in the ancient Mediterranean world would have heard a distinct echo of a very common feature of Greek and Roman epigraphy: a direct address inscribed on the funerary stele to the person "passing by" to linger and commune with the deceased. Drawing on this widespread phenomenon, and in keeping with the ideology of Thomas in terms of its views of true life, and true death, Jesus urges his followers not to linger in this world, not to be entangled with the "living dead" inhabiting this fallen, material world, but seek life elsewhere.
The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years, ed. John D. Turner & Anne McGuire, 1997
What should our primary goal be as readers and interpreters of the Gospel of Thomas? Which form o... more What should our primary goal be as readers and interpreters of the Gospel of Thomas? Which form of the gospel text should we privilege, if any? I suggest that we should seek literary questions and literary answers about Thomas. The text obviously must have meant something to the many readers that we might imagine using the surviving Egyptian manuscripts. Perhaps the arrangement or sequence of statements and groups of statements does indeed convey meaning, though not necessarily the sort of meaning that we see even in other sayings gospels or in wisdom books. To explore this possibility requires adopting a more literary sensibility, a focusing of attention on reading the text in its own terms, searching out its hermeneutical soteriology. The task is difficult, and the meanings provided by stark juxtapositions are not always obvious. Perhaps that obscurity is already part of the point.
Early Christian Literature by Melissa Harl Sellew
Pp. 92–98 in The Cambridge Edition of Early Christian Writings, Volume 3, edited by Mark DelCogliano, 2022
Introduction and annotated translation of the second-century "Epistle to Rheginus" (Nag Hammadi C... more Introduction and annotated translation of the second-century "Epistle to Rheginus" (Nag Hammadi Codex I,4), a work related to Valentinian Christianity.
Pp. 644–662 in The Queer Bible Commentary, 2nd edition. London: SCM Press, 2022., 2022
Essay on the Epistle to the Galatians adopting a critical stance informed by trans, queer, and wo... more Essay on the Epistle to the Galatians adopting a critical stance informed by trans, queer, and womanist approaches. Co-author: Joshua M. Reno.
Harvard Theological Review, 1989
In his Commentary on Ecclesiastes, edited from the Tura papyri by Gerhard Binder, the fourth-cent... more In his Commentary on Ecclesiastes, edited from the Tura papyri by Gerhard Binder, the fourth-century Alexandrian theologian Didymus the Blind quotes a fragment from Porphyry's great work Against the Christians that disparages the Christian use of allegorical interpretation to picture the cosmic battle between Christ and the Devil. The disciple of Plotinus considers the Scriptures to be an inappropriate set of writings from which to extract deep meanings of the sort he himself had presented in the Philosophy from Oracles. In place of Christian allegory, Porphyry suggests an alternate and more suitable Hellenic pairing to symbolize conflict between opposing forces: Achilles and Hector, as portrayed in the Iliad. Though Binder understood Porphyry's proposal to be satirical and dismissive, deeper consideration of allegorical interpretation in the late Roman world leads one instead to the conclusion that the Neoplatonist philosopher made his alternative suggestion in earnest.
Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentlliche Wissenschaft, 1990
In an anonymous homily of early Latin Christianity known as the ‘De centesima, sexagesima, trices... more In an anonymous homily of early Latin Christianity known as the ‘De centesima, sexagesima, tricesima,’ the unusual claim is made that God created the world in five days. This statement has never been explained.
This statement results from the homilist’s deliberate misreading of the sequence of the days of creation as described in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. The sermon is structured around the conclusion of the parable of the Sower: the seed that falls onto the good earth will bear fruit in abundance — one hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold.
These numbers are interpreted symbolically, as referring to the heavenly rewards that would be allotted respectively to martyrs, ascetics, and celibate married Christians. The homilist’s interpretive key in considering the three rewards is to search the Scriptures for instances of tens, sixes, and threes, that is, numbers that can serve as multiplication factors of the Ten Commandments to produce hundreds, sixties, and thirties.
Via his misreading of the text, the homilist can understand the sixth as the day of God's completion of creation, while keeping the seventh as the day of sanctification. The sixth day can then serve as an instance of the mysterious number six to be multiplied by the Ten Words, providing a rather eccentric scriptural hint of the sixtyfold reward.
Eusebius, Christianity, and Judaism, ed. Harold W. Attridge and Gohei Hata, 1992
In this essay I focus on what Eusebius informs us in the Ecclesiastical History about gospel text... more In this essay I focus on what Eusebius informs us in the Ecclesiastical History about gospel texts, both those ultimately deemed Scripture and others rejected as heretical. Here I describe and evaluate what Eusebius has to say about the gospels, as informed by the broader framework of the bishop's scholarly career, as well as by the interpretive context of this work as seen in its overall design, techniques, and intent. The result is in large part to minimize the worth of Eusebius' information for modern historical concerns.
Eusebius' intention in presenting what he knows about earlier Christian authors' acceptance of particular writings as scriptures is by no means antiquarian or dispassionately historical, in which case a broader set of information would likely have been included at many points, but instead is informed by a particular view of the nature of the church. Though presented within a more or less chronographic or annalistic framework, the aim of the History is to recount the rise and success of "the one true church" in the face of challenges both external and internal. Eusebius does not perceive the story of the three centuries that he covers as one of the development or the evolution of doctrine and practice, but rather as the miraculous spread, strengthening, and eventual consolidation of a triumphant church by an inevitable process. In his view the truth and wondrous success of the church's teaching have remained unchanged from its origins in the time of Jesus and the apostles down to his own day.
Eusebius believes that the gospel documents whose scriptural authority he recognizes were composed by Christ's own apostles or by their designated assistants. Eusebius' criterion for valuing these as authentic witnesses, however, is not any independent historical information about the genesis of the literature in question, but rather its acceptance and use by authors he considers to be theologically reliable. His chief authorities in this regard are Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and the Alexandrians Clement, Origen, and Dionysius. The appeal of these authors is due as much to their ideological congeniality as to any other inherent advantages.
In this study we conclude that what Eusebius is able to say about the origins and use of the gospels is limited rather severely. One limit is set by a scarcity of available concrete or trustworthy information, another by the writer's own ecclesial-political perspective. Scholars who mine the History for historical data on these questions must therefore assay its ore with prudence, and in expectation of small return. Eusebius' historical achievement as it relates to the gospels is found to lie in his
collection and preservation of story, practice, and opinion, even if this is
sporadic, and not in his discovery and presentation of reliable facts about the
writings‘ origins or early history.
Harvard Theological Review, 1994
In this article, I draw attention to new evidence external to the text itself that should help se... more In this article, I draw attention to new evidence external to the text itself that should help settle the question of the "integrity" or else composite nature of canonical Philippians. The Pauline pseudepigraph Laodiceans, written at an unknown time and place, draws on several letters that would eventually make up the Corpus Paulinum. J. B. Lightfoot and later Harnack demonstrated long ago that Laodiceans is structured most closely on Philippians. Laodiceans follows Philippians' structure in set sequence, that is to say, it draws from Philippians by what we now call chapter and verse.
What previous scholars have not observed is that the copy of Philippians known to the author or compiler of Laodiceans was apparently not the canonical version of the letter that is preserved in the New Testament manuscript tradition, but instead contained only those sections that many modern analysts have argued on internal grounds would have made up the separate letter or fragment they label Letter B. This state of affairs confirms the composite nature of the surviving correspondence of Paul with the Philippians.
The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas, ed. Jan N. Bremmer, 2001
Scholarship often suggests that standing behind the literature composed by the ancient church in ... more Scholarship often suggests that standing behind the literature composed by the ancient church in connection with Judas Thomas was a particular sort of Christianity or even an identifiable school of thought. This supposed community is given the label 'Thomas Christianity,' a term that suggests an identifiable and distinct social group, presumably with some level of organizational structure as well as a corporate history and a characteristic ideology. This essay casts doubt on that presumption.
One of the key questions of method to ponder is whether or how we can use a literary narrative as a transparent 'window' through which to gaze on some other world, or, less optimistically perhaps, as a reflective 'mirror' by which we at least get glimpses, admittedly distorted, of that other world. The assumption of much discussion of the 'communities' lying behind early Christian texts seems often to be that the narratives can indeed function as one of these types of glass.
Once we pose the question of readership rather than of the identity of some generative community, we can begin to open up the dynamics of this literature as a conversation among authors, iconic characters, scribes, translators, and readers.
Bulletin of the American Society of Papyrologists, 2000
A Coptic version of the Dormition of Mary preserved in fragments in the Beinecke Library at Yale ... more A Coptic version of the Dormition of Mary preserved in fragments in the Beinecke Library at Yale provides us with new information about the emergence of this tale in Christian antiquity. The story of the Virgin Mary's departure from mortal into heavenly life, untouched by fleshly corruption, had special power for ancient and medieval believers. This essay re-edits an early fragment of the story and offers a new interpretation based on comparison with other versions of this popular narrative known in Greek, Syriac, and Ethiopic. Unlike her more passive portrait that emerges in medieval Marian literature, here the Theotokos is pictured as mediator and protector of divine secrets, and guardian of a "Book of Mysteries" left in her care by the risen angelomorphic Christ.
Coptic Studies on the Threshold of a New Millennium, ed. Mat Immerzeel & Jacques van der Vliet, 2004
A special prayer of blessing to be recited before reading the complete text of the Apocalypse of ... more A special prayer of blessing to be recited before reading the complete text of the Apocalypse of John in the hours before Easter is preserved in five Bohairic manuscripts of the 13th and 19th centuries. The prayer calls upon numerous Biblical saints, martyrs, and heroes of the Coptic Orthodox church to provide blessings of protection and understanding as the gathered worshippers take turns in reading the powerful words of the text aloud. The Apocalypse closes with the cry 'Come, Lord!' This petition is soon answered with the resurrection of Christ, a prefigurement of entrance into heaven promised the faithful.
Synoptic Gospels by Melissa Harl Sellew
Journal of Biblical Literature, 1992
Six of the parables told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke use a narrative device that is otherwise ... more Six of the parables told by Jesus in the Gospel of Luke use a narrative device that is otherwise rarely employed in the gospel tradition. When faced with a moment of decision, usually in a moral crisis, the central characters in each of these little stories address themselves through of the literary technique of 'interior monologue.'
The Rich Farmer, the Unfaithful Servant, the Prodigal Son, the Crafty Steward, the Unjust Judge, and the Owner of the Vineyard all think out their plans and strategies in private moments that are nonetheless simultaneously displayed for other characters in Luke's story to see and hear.
The motivations and personal points of view of these actors in the parables are laid bare to give the reader direct access to their unspoken thoughts. The use of this device grants insight into the human dilemma in a fashion not ordinarily available.
The Future of Early Christianity: Essays in Honor of Helmut Koester, ed. Birger A. Pearson, 1991
This essay scrutinizes the suggestion by Helmut Koester that the canonical Gospel of Mark results... more This essay scrutinizes the suggestion by Helmut Koester that the canonical Gospel of Mark results from a second-century revision of a slightly earlier stage in the narrative's history, the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark attested by Clement of Alexandria. Here I show that 'Secret' (or better, 'More Spiritual') Mark is in no sense a deviation from the general character and themes of the Markan gospel in any of its stages of development. From the start, the traditions incorporated and elaborated by Mark pictured Jesus as a miracle worker along (naïvely?) magical lines; from the start, there was an interest in portraying the mysterious nature of Jesus' speech, his 'mysteries of the kingdom.' In the later stage of the Markan development represented by Secret Mark, there is less interest in focusing on the mysterious words than on the central act of the baptismal sacrament as now explained by Jesus as hierophant. Initiation into the Christian mystery of salvation is portrayed in the prototypical example of an unnamed youth, developing Mark's characters of Jesus the 'teacher' and his faltering 'learners'. Though Jesus loved him and baptized him, the youth fled at his master’s arrest. These themes of mysterious teaching, frail disciples, and their betrayal are elaborations of motifs central to Mark’s story at every point of its development, not foreign intrusions into the text. Secret Mark is thus an organic development from an earlier version of Mark and fits well within what we know from Clement and others about the mysterious and murky life of second-century Christian Alexandria.
New Testament Studies, 1990
In composing his narrative, the author of Mark combined material from both oral and written sourc... more In composing his narrative, the author of Mark combined material from both oral and written sources. This article investigates how Mark formed his 'parables chapter' by incorporating a sequence of three parables of growth, gathered through an oral stage of formation and transmission, with a written source focusing on the Parable of the Sower and its allegorical interpretation.
The motif of silent but inevitable growth in the collection of seed similitudes is just as much use to the author as are the moralizing tendencies of the didactic scene providing the decoding of the Sower. By his combination of these previously separate materials, Mark produces a synthetic theological interpretation of his community's past, present, and future.
Journal of Biblical Literature, 1989
This article focuses on a category of speech material that appears to be characteristic both of M... more This article focuses on a category of speech material that appears to be characteristic both of Mark's source traditions and of the author's own compositional activity. This type of sayings material I call the "didactic scene," which begins with public instruction by Jesus, followed by a change of locale, private questions from his close followers, a sarcastic retort from the teacher, and then finally an explanation. Examples in Mark include 4:3-20 and 7:14-23, both received from pre-Marcan tradition, and also 8:14-21; 9:14-29; and 10:1-12, which I argue were newly composed by Mark on the model of those earlier didactic scenes. The Gospel writer adopts and redeploys this traditional schema as one means of composing his narrative of Jesus and his relationship with his disciples.
Papers by Melissa Harl Sellew
Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity, 2006
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Gospel of Thomas by Melissa Harl Sellew
Interior inspection, scrutiny of the self, and attention to what is effective in making spiritual advance, and what is not, are discussed in Thomas using the vocabulary of ascetic performance: fasting, prayer, almsgiving, renunciation of the world. A similar life of interiority is also pursued by ascetic practitioners as they are portrayed on nearly every page of the collected wisdom of the desert Christians.
Given these and other similarities, therefore, I suggest that when we search for a plausible context of meaning of the Gospel of Thomas as understood in late antique Egypt, we might find much enlightening material for comparison, and for contrast, in the traditions of the desert pioneers found in the Apophthegmata Patrum.
In this essay I aim to redirect this line of interpretation. In my reading of Thomas, the praise offered James functions not as a remnant of a supposed earlier stage of a community that held the apostle of righteousness in special reverence as their leader, but instead as an ironic dismissal by Jesus of followers intent on what this gospel would consider an inadequate and misguided approach to piety focused on our material existence. The standard reading of Thomas 12 as straightforwardly literal, and
thus of social-historical significance, results in part from a persistent tendency to interpret particular statements in Thomas largely in isolation from the writing
as a whole.
Early Christian Literature by Melissa Harl Sellew
This statement results from the homilist’s deliberate misreading of the sequence of the days of creation as described in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. The sermon is structured around the conclusion of the parable of the Sower: the seed that falls onto the good earth will bear fruit in abundance — one hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold.
These numbers are interpreted symbolically, as referring to the heavenly rewards that would be allotted respectively to martyrs, ascetics, and celibate married Christians. The homilist’s interpretive key in considering the three rewards is to search the Scriptures for instances of tens, sixes, and threes, that is, numbers that can serve as multiplication factors of the Ten Commandments to produce hundreds, sixties, and thirties.
Via his misreading of the text, the homilist can understand the sixth as the day of God's completion of creation, while keeping the seventh as the day of sanctification. The sixth day can then serve as an instance of the mysterious number six to be multiplied by the Ten Words, providing a rather eccentric scriptural hint of the sixtyfold reward.
Eusebius' intention in presenting what he knows about earlier Christian authors' acceptance of particular writings as scriptures is by no means antiquarian or dispassionately historical, in which case a broader set of information would likely have been included at many points, but instead is informed by a particular view of the nature of the church. Though presented within a more or less chronographic or annalistic framework, the aim of the History is to recount the rise and success of "the one true church" in the face of challenges both external and internal. Eusebius does not perceive the story of the three centuries that he covers as one of the development or the evolution of doctrine and practice, but rather as the miraculous spread, strengthening, and eventual consolidation of a triumphant church by an inevitable process. In his view the truth and wondrous success of the church's teaching have remained unchanged from its origins in the time of Jesus and the apostles down to his own day.
Eusebius believes that the gospel documents whose scriptural authority he recognizes were composed by Christ's own apostles or by their designated assistants. Eusebius' criterion for valuing these as authentic witnesses, however, is not any independent historical information about the genesis of the literature in question, but rather its acceptance and use by authors he considers to be theologically reliable. His chief authorities in this regard are Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and the Alexandrians Clement, Origen, and Dionysius. The appeal of these authors is due as much to their ideological congeniality as to any other inherent advantages.
In this study we conclude that what Eusebius is able to say about the origins and use of the gospels is limited rather severely. One limit is set by a scarcity of available concrete or trustworthy information, another by the writer's own ecclesial-political perspective. Scholars who mine the History for historical data on these questions must therefore assay its ore with prudence, and in expectation of small return. Eusebius' historical achievement as it relates to the gospels is found to lie in his
collection and preservation of story, practice, and opinion, even if this is
sporadic, and not in his discovery and presentation of reliable facts about the
writings‘ origins or early history.
What previous scholars have not observed is that the copy of Philippians known to the author or compiler of Laodiceans was apparently not the canonical version of the letter that is preserved in the New Testament manuscript tradition, but instead contained only those sections that many modern analysts have argued on internal grounds would have made up the separate letter or fragment they label Letter B. This state of affairs confirms the composite nature of the surviving correspondence of Paul with the Philippians.
One of the key questions of method to ponder is whether or how we can use a literary narrative as a transparent 'window' through which to gaze on some other world, or, less optimistically perhaps, as a reflective 'mirror' by which we at least get glimpses, admittedly distorted, of that other world. The assumption of much discussion of the 'communities' lying behind early Christian texts seems often to be that the narratives can indeed function as one of these types of glass.
Once we pose the question of readership rather than of the identity of some generative community, we can begin to open up the dynamics of this literature as a conversation among authors, iconic characters, scribes, translators, and readers.
Synoptic Gospels by Melissa Harl Sellew
The Rich Farmer, the Unfaithful Servant, the Prodigal Son, the Crafty Steward, the Unjust Judge, and the Owner of the Vineyard all think out their plans and strategies in private moments that are nonetheless simultaneously displayed for other characters in Luke's story to see and hear.
The motivations and personal points of view of these actors in the parables are laid bare to give the reader direct access to their unspoken thoughts. The use of this device grants insight into the human dilemma in a fashion not ordinarily available.
The motif of silent but inevitable growth in the collection of seed similitudes is just as much use to the author as are the moralizing tendencies of the didactic scene providing the decoding of the Sower. By his combination of these previously separate materials, Mark produces a synthetic theological interpretation of his community's past, present, and future.
Papers by Melissa Harl Sellew
Interior inspection, scrutiny of the self, and attention to what is effective in making spiritual advance, and what is not, are discussed in Thomas using the vocabulary of ascetic performance: fasting, prayer, almsgiving, renunciation of the world. A similar life of interiority is also pursued by ascetic practitioners as they are portrayed on nearly every page of the collected wisdom of the desert Christians.
Given these and other similarities, therefore, I suggest that when we search for a plausible context of meaning of the Gospel of Thomas as understood in late antique Egypt, we might find much enlightening material for comparison, and for contrast, in the traditions of the desert pioneers found in the Apophthegmata Patrum.
In this essay I aim to redirect this line of interpretation. In my reading of Thomas, the praise offered James functions not as a remnant of a supposed earlier stage of a community that held the apostle of righteousness in special reverence as their leader, but instead as an ironic dismissal by Jesus of followers intent on what this gospel would consider an inadequate and misguided approach to piety focused on our material existence. The standard reading of Thomas 12 as straightforwardly literal, and
thus of social-historical significance, results in part from a persistent tendency to interpret particular statements in Thomas largely in isolation from the writing
as a whole.
This statement results from the homilist’s deliberate misreading of the sequence of the days of creation as described in Genesis chapters 1 and 2. The sermon is structured around the conclusion of the parable of the Sower: the seed that falls onto the good earth will bear fruit in abundance — one hundredfold, sixtyfold, and thirtyfold.
These numbers are interpreted symbolically, as referring to the heavenly rewards that would be allotted respectively to martyrs, ascetics, and celibate married Christians. The homilist’s interpretive key in considering the three rewards is to search the Scriptures for instances of tens, sixes, and threes, that is, numbers that can serve as multiplication factors of the Ten Commandments to produce hundreds, sixties, and thirties.
Via his misreading of the text, the homilist can understand the sixth as the day of God's completion of creation, while keeping the seventh as the day of sanctification. The sixth day can then serve as an instance of the mysterious number six to be multiplied by the Ten Words, providing a rather eccentric scriptural hint of the sixtyfold reward.
Eusebius' intention in presenting what he knows about earlier Christian authors' acceptance of particular writings as scriptures is by no means antiquarian or dispassionately historical, in which case a broader set of information would likely have been included at many points, but instead is informed by a particular view of the nature of the church. Though presented within a more or less chronographic or annalistic framework, the aim of the History is to recount the rise and success of "the one true church" in the face of challenges both external and internal. Eusebius does not perceive the story of the three centuries that he covers as one of the development or the evolution of doctrine and practice, but rather as the miraculous spread, strengthening, and eventual consolidation of a triumphant church by an inevitable process. In his view the truth and wondrous success of the church's teaching have remained unchanged from its origins in the time of Jesus and the apostles down to his own day.
Eusebius believes that the gospel documents whose scriptural authority he recognizes were composed by Christ's own apostles or by their designated assistants. Eusebius' criterion for valuing these as authentic witnesses, however, is not any independent historical information about the genesis of the literature in question, but rather its acceptance and use by authors he considers to be theologically reliable. His chief authorities in this regard are Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and the Alexandrians Clement, Origen, and Dionysius. The appeal of these authors is due as much to their ideological congeniality as to any other inherent advantages.
In this study we conclude that what Eusebius is able to say about the origins and use of the gospels is limited rather severely. One limit is set by a scarcity of available concrete or trustworthy information, another by the writer's own ecclesial-political perspective. Scholars who mine the History for historical data on these questions must therefore assay its ore with prudence, and in expectation of small return. Eusebius' historical achievement as it relates to the gospels is found to lie in his
collection and preservation of story, practice, and opinion, even if this is
sporadic, and not in his discovery and presentation of reliable facts about the
writings‘ origins or early history.
What previous scholars have not observed is that the copy of Philippians known to the author or compiler of Laodiceans was apparently not the canonical version of the letter that is preserved in the New Testament manuscript tradition, but instead contained only those sections that many modern analysts have argued on internal grounds would have made up the separate letter or fragment they label Letter B. This state of affairs confirms the composite nature of the surviving correspondence of Paul with the Philippians.
One of the key questions of method to ponder is whether or how we can use a literary narrative as a transparent 'window' through which to gaze on some other world, or, less optimistically perhaps, as a reflective 'mirror' by which we at least get glimpses, admittedly distorted, of that other world. The assumption of much discussion of the 'communities' lying behind early Christian texts seems often to be that the narratives can indeed function as one of these types of glass.
Once we pose the question of readership rather than of the identity of some generative community, we can begin to open up the dynamics of this literature as a conversation among authors, iconic characters, scribes, translators, and readers.
The Rich Farmer, the Unfaithful Servant, the Prodigal Son, the Crafty Steward, the Unjust Judge, and the Owner of the Vineyard all think out their plans and strategies in private moments that are nonetheless simultaneously displayed for other characters in Luke's story to see and hear.
The motivations and personal points of view of these actors in the parables are laid bare to give the reader direct access to their unspoken thoughts. The use of this device grants insight into the human dilemma in a fashion not ordinarily available.
The motif of silent but inevitable growth in the collection of seed similitudes is just as much use to the author as are the moralizing tendencies of the didactic scene providing the decoding of the Sower. By his combination of these previously separate materials, Mark produces a synthetic theological interpretation of his community's past, present, and future.