What is remarkable about this book is that the author has reasoned out when material was added to this gospel and what the original "kernel" must have been. Her thesis is that the first Christian preachers were itinerants sent thither and yon to spread the good news. At some point, early on, the literate among them carried what might be called "cheat sheets" with the basic teachings of Jesus written in them. (Alternatively, these might have been mental "cheat sheets" memorized by the preachers and only later written down.) In any case, each preacher might have had a slightly different cheat sheet compared to other preachers who went to other towns. Over time, these little lists of Jesus's sayings became part not only of the oral but the written tradition of each community, and, especially as material was added to them, they became different from each other, though the author points out that there are many agreements between, for example, the two best-known of these sayings gospels, the gospel of Thomas and the Q Gospel that became part of both the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of Matthew.

De Connick argues that issues that arose within each community led to the editing of the sayings. She tries both to identify where the Gospel of Thomas was edited and when each layer was added to the Gospel. I had long thought that this is what had happened to this gospel; from the two versions available--the partial Greek Oxyrhyncus version and the full Coptic Nag Hammadi version--we can see that different versions of this gospel existed, and we can tell it was changed probably without much respect for the integrity of the original. I never thought it might be possible to go through it and figure out exactly what changes had been made and what the earliest version looked like. De Connick makes a persuasive case that this can be done, and that she has done it. ( )

link: http://eska-rina.livejournal.com/421217.html ( )