You did disagree on the colostrum, for odd reasons I recall, suddenly coming up with butter and cream whereas milk is so very prominently present in Thomas. Yes the word that Crum pointed to missed an E, but Thomas has a few other words that are not literally arrested for in Crum or Westendorf.Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Wed Jan 06, 2021 10:12 amWe disagreed on the colostrum, as I recall, and probably disagree here, as well.mlinssen wrote: ↑Wed Jan 06, 2021 8:48 amRemember our exchange on the parable of the colostrum?Ben C. Smith wrote: ↑Wed Jan 06, 2021 6:26 am If the alternative is that either Matthew or Thomas made up the word from thin air, like baby talk, then I demure. It obviously came from somewhere.
Thomas loved wordplay and jokes
What is the word play in this case, in your view?
The presence of this same Greek term in the Apocalypse of Moses, in a context which is neither Matthean nor Thomasine in any way, suggests that the word may have existed independently; if it fails to show up in other ancient texts, that may be a result of our having lost more than we have preserved from antiquity rather than a result of Matthew or Thomas having coined the word from nothing. If you disagree with this assessment, that is fine; have at it: you and I do ancient history very differently, after all. My main point was to make sure that you have all the data at your disposal, including a text which you did not mention and which does not fall into any of the categories laid out by Meier. Whatever conclusion you arrive at, whether I agree with it or not (or even have a well formed opinion on it or not), at least it will not be skipping over a possibly relevant datum.
You did however agree that the word in Thomas can't possibly be leaven - so a joke it is nonetheless
Of course we do things differently, and thank you for the find; your are a true treasure of ancient texts and not a week goes by without me visiting your site. But there are 6,500 words in Thomas and most of that I carefully weigh and analyse, and if Gathercole and Meier agree that a word only exists in Thomas and Matthew I'm happy to take that for granted
I will write and publish a book this year of 1,000-1,500 pages and it will be good, likely very good, but not perfect - I can live with that. Everything is action-reaction and if I get pointed at mistakes made, that's fine, I will learn, and so will others. As long as their number remains acceptable