Sunday, February 1, 2009

NH Logion 65 & PGoTh Logion 66, Mark 12:1-12

The following material relates to an article of Stevan Davies, Mark's Use of the Gospel of Thomas.

I'm taking Logion 65 (rejected by Pursah) from the Marvin Meyer edition, where it reads as follows:

He said, "A [...] person owned a vineyard and rented it to some farmers, so that they might work it and he might collect its produce from them. He sent his servants so that the farmers might give the servant the produce of the vineyard. They seized, beat, and almost killed his servant, and the servant returned and told his master. His master said, 'Perhaps he did not know them.' He sent another servant, and the farmers beat that one as well. Then the master sent his son and said, 'Perhaps they will show my sons some respect.' Since the farmers knew that he was the heir to the vineyard, they seized him and killed him. Whoever has ears should hear.
and Logion 66 from our trusted Pursah edition:

J said: "Show me the stone that the builders rejected. That is the keystone."
and here is the Markan passage, Mk 12:1-12, from the NIV:

1 He then began to speak to them in parables: "A man planted a vineyard. He put a wall around it, dug a pit for the winepress and built a watchtower. Then he rented the vineyard to some farmers and went away on a journey. 2 At harvest time he sent a servant to the tenants to collect from them some of the fruit of the vineyard. 3 But they seized him, beat him and sent him away empty-handed. 4 Then he sent another servant to them; they struck this man on the head and treated him shamefully. 5 He sent still another, and that one they killed. He sent many others; some of them they beat, others they killed.  6 "He had one left to send, a son, whom he loved. He sent him last of all, saying, 'They will respect my son.'
 7 "But the tenants said to one another, 'This is the heir. Come, let's kill him, and the inheritance will be ours.' 8 So they took him and killed him, and threw him out of the vineyard.
 9 "What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. 10 Haven't you read this scripture:
   " 'The stone the builders rejected
      has become the capstone[a];
 11 the Lord has done this,
      and it is marvelous in our eyes'[b]?"
 12 Then they looked for a way to arrest him because they knew he had spoken the parable against them. But they were afraid of the crowd; so they left him and went away.

I do want to point out that Pursah evidently rejects Logion 65 altogether, and therefore classifies it as a later addition, the authenticity of which she cannot vouch for. As a first instance, it is quite clear how the rendering in Mark, which is the oldest of the canonical Gospels, but still 10-20 years later than the Thomas gospel, immediately weaves these themes into something else than they meant taken in isolation, and then I'm momentarily leaving aside the question of the authenticity of Logion 65 by Pursah. 
Logion 66 by itself as it is stated in PGoth (and it is a quotation of Psalm 118:22), outside of this context, seems to have a very clear meaning, being the equivalent of the notion from the Course that the ego always speaks first, and is always wrong, and more generally that the thought systems of the ego and the Holy Spirit are mutually exclusive. The use of this quoted material in the Markan passage still indicates a reversal, but the overall framing now puts it in the context of Jesus offending the chief priests, teachers of the law, and elders who are now scheming to "get him" except they are temporarily afraid of the law, and it seems to indicate that he will be vindicated. So now the emphasis is shifting to a narrow application within the story of Jesus's rejection, and it seems to be construed as if he's threatening those listeners to the parable. In short, the same quote, which in the abstract would lead us to hear one thing, is now narrowly construed in a very tendentious way.

This is literally the first example from the material Stevan Davies adduces in his research of this topic, and immediately we begin to appreciate what a difference the redaction by the later gospel writers makes, and behind them again is always the influence of Paul, whose theological framing of the meaning of Jesus is the seminal influence on all of them, and laid the groundwork for Christianity as one very particular way of seeing Jesus. Historically it may have become the dominant one, but nevertheless it is not the only way of seeing him and his ministry. The collection of books in the New Testament was effectively chosen to give one particular theological line of thought prominence, and eliminate at least those things which were too blatantly contradictory.

No comments:

Post a Comment