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4. The Gospel of Thomas and the CynicJesus1 John W. Marshall 1. Introduction Recent years have witnessed a resurgence of historical-Jesus research.2 Jesus—variously portrayed as healer, charismatic, magician, prophet, revolutionary or reformer—can now add Cynic to his resume; he is a gadfly, a pesky mutt nipping at the heels of the establishment.3 For the most part, the case for seeing Jesus as a Cynic rests on three pillars: (1) recent research on and interest in Q which posits the apocalyptic and eschatological elements as secondary; (2) re-evaluation of the social and cultural context of first-century Galilee and Palestine; and (3) comparative materials from Graeco-Roman and particularly Cynic authors. These three pillars are not unrelated. The re1 The final shape of this study is indebted to the generous input of Elaine Pagels, Michel Desjardins and Pamela Klassen. It was revised with the support of a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant. Helpful criticisms from Canadian Society of Biblical Studies members Terence Donaldson, William Klassen and Dietmar Neufeld also sharpened the argument. 2 See for example Marcus J. Borg, Conflict, Holiness and Politics in the Teachings of Jesus (New York: Edwin Mellen, 1984), and Jesus, a New Vision: Spirit, Culture, and the Life of Discipleship (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987); John Dominic Crossan, The Historical Jesus: The Life of a Mediterranean Jewish Peasant (San Francisco: Harper SanFrancisco, 1991); Richard A. Horsley, Jesus and the Spiral of Violence (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987); Marinus de Jonge, Jesus, the Servant-Messiah (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991); Burton L. Mack, A Myth of Innocence: Mark and Christian Origins (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1988), and "Q and a Cynic-Like Jesus" (in this volume); John P. Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 2 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991-94); E. P. Sanders, Jesus and Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985); Geza Vermes, Jesus the Jew: A Historian's Reading of the Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1973), Jesus and the World of Judaism (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983), and The Religion of Jesus the Jew (London: SCM, 1993); N. T. Wright, Who was Jesus? (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993). For overviews of historical-Jesus scholarship see Marcus J. Borg, Jesus in Contemporary Scholarship (Valley Forge: Trinity Press International, 1994); N. T. Wright, "Jesus, Quest for the Historical," in David Noel Freedman et al., eds., The Anchor Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), vol. 3, 796-802. 3 This is a most irreverent summary of the Cynic Jesus. Mack's portrait (see The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins [San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1993]; Myth of Innocence; "Q and a Cynic-Like Jesus") comes closest to it, but F. Gerald Downing (see "Cynics and Christians," New Testament Studies 30 [1984]: 584-93; Jesus and the Threat of Freedom [London: SCM, 1987]; "The Social Contexts of Jesus the Teacher," New Testament Studies 33 [1987]: 439-51; Christ and the Cynics [Sheffield: JSOT, 1988]; "Quite Like Q—A Genre for 'Q': The 'Lives' of Cynic Philosophers," Biblica 69 [1988]: 196-224; Cynics and Christian Origins [Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1992]) and Crossan (see especially his Historical Jesus)—each with individual emphases—agree substantially. 35 Whose Historical Jesus? evaluation of first-century Galilee allows Graeco-Roman authors to be brought into the discussion more justifiably and supports a new understanding of Galilean scribal culture, which underlies John Kloppenborg's description of the redactional history of Q.4 This essay brings the Gospel of Thomas into the discussion of this aspect of the historical Jesus. While Thomas has certainly not been absent from discussions of the historical Jesus and the history and character of Q, it has usually received only minimal treatment in discussions of Jesus as a Cynic—partly because it is not as immediately congenial to the case as Q, partly due to ongoing uncritical prejudice against non-canonical materials and partly because of the view of some scholars that Thomas is a mid-to-late secondcentury document.5 At a very basic level, it seems easy to predict the results of this study: Thomas does not portray a Cynic Jesus; it portrays a gnostic Jesus.6 Nevertheless, comparison of materials shared by Thomas and the canonical gospels, together with consideration of the sayings unique to Thomas, suggest that the synoptic tradition increasingly felt the need to set Jesus in relation to the characteristic practices of Cynicism. Comparison of individual sayings within Thomas to their canonical parallels suggests that there are important elements of the preaching of...

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