Stevan Davies on Thomas Sayings in Mark, ctd. 1

Stevan Davies' Second article about the Thomas tradition in Mark focuses on 5 sections of Mark, the first one being Mark 2:18-21. I'm quoting it in the NIV:

Mark 2:18-21 (New International Version)

Jesus Questioned About Fasting

 ¹⁸Now John's disciples and the Pharisees were fasting. Some people came and asked Jesus, "How is it that John's disciples and the disciples of the Pharisees are fasting, but yours are not?"  ¹⁹Jesus answered, "How can the guests of the bridegroom fast while he is with them? They cannot, so long as they have him with them. ²⁰But the time will come when the bridegroom will be taken from them, and on that day they will fast.
 ²¹"No one sews a patch of unshrunk cloth on an old garment. If he does, the new piece will pull away from the old, making the tear worse.

Davies finds traces in this passage of Logia 104, 11, 18, 22, 47,  of which the Pursah version excludes 104, and has substantial edits in 22, 11, while her edition suggests hardly any change in 18, and 47. Just by eyeballing this story, and the Thomas Logia next to it, you would immediately appreciate that Mark is just using familiar sayings associated with Jesus to write a story in a way that suggest authenticity.
While you can see here that the story gets put together from various quotes, it does not seem to exhibit the level of distortion and misconstruction that we've seen in other examples of this kind. Meanwhile in terms of the authenticity, line 20 comes from Logion 104, which Pursah rejects, but it is hardly material to the argument here, though it introduces a theme, which indeed does not fit the teachings of Jesus, namely why the bridegroom would be taken from us, that does not fit the themes we know from the Course, which are clearly that it's always us doing the forgetting. The borrowings from 11 are hardly very explicit either, nor are those from 22, and Davies I think confuses here the theme of making the two into one, with the business of the bridegroom, which is rather about what the Course would call the holy relationship, choosing our True Self, or Jesus, and learning to see the face of Christ in all who we meet. The presence of Logion 18 seems not very overt, but might be there, it is really about the decision point, and 47 has the themes of sowing an new patch onto an old fabric. So again, on the whole, in the context of one of the central references of this site, Pursah's Gospel of Thomas, with the one exception of line 20, the way this story is construed seems not particularly at odds with the way Jesus speaks to us in the Thomas gospel, and it is merely curious to see the process at work of how these segments are put together in one place, and made into something new. Arguably, you would expect that the quote should be extended to line 22, so as to include all of Logion 47, which goes on about the new wine in old wineskins.

In the context of the Course what this whole passage seems to reflect, is the notions of "I need do nothing" (cf. ACIM:T-18.VII), and also "I am under no laws but God's" (cf. ACIM:W76). They are the parallel realizations that I cannot even save myself if I wanted to by any observation of man-made rules and regulations, particularly also my own rules which I impose on myself, because all that achieves is a reconfirmation of mental constructs of reality, which again do not bring us any freedom, but keep us confined in the vicious circles of the ego, and the way out is by placing my trust in God's laws, rather than the idiotic rules and regulations my ego keeps coming up with to protect its world order. Implied also is the notion that the choice of thought systems is all or nothing, and that really is an allusion to the opening lines of Logion 47, about the impossibility of mounting two horses or bending two bows. This is a very profound theme in the Thomas Gospel and in the Course, and evidently completely central to the thought system Jesus proposes.
As to Davies' article, I must admit that it confuses me a bit, because he construes the elements often times in a way that seems alien to me, because I'm coming from a Course standpoint, and just tend to read them differently. In other sections of his articles one sees a clearer transition from the pre-Christian (Thomasine) image to the Christian anecdote. This is not the case here, though evidently you'd read the whole thing a bit different coming from a predominantly Christian point of view, as opposed to from ACIM.