The Unknown Sayings of Jesus, and: Hidden Sayings of Jesus: Words Attributed to Jesus Outside the Four Gospels, and: Sayings of Jesus: Canonical and Non-Canonical: Essays in Honour of Tjitze Baarda (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Unknown Sayings of Jesus, and: Hidden Sayings of Jesus: Words Attributed to Jesus Outside the Four Gospels, and: Sayings of Jesus: Canonical and Non-Canonical: Essays in Honour of Tjitze Baarda Sheila E. McGinn Marvin Meyer, The Unknown Sayings of Jesus. San Francisco: HarperCollins, 1998. Pp. xxvi + 182. $18.00. William G. Morrice, Hidden Sayings of Jesus: Words Attributed to Jesus Outside the Four Gospels. London: SPCK; Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1997. Pp. viii + 247. $18.95, paper. William L. Petersen, Johan S. Vos and Henk J. de Jonge, editors, Sayings of Jesus: Canonical and Non-Canonical: Essays in Honour of Tjitze Baarda. Leiden/New York/Köln: Brill, 1997. Pp. xxvi + 344. Nlg 176; US $103.50. These three volumes provide but a sample of the plethora of recent studies and collections of Jesus materials, canonical and non-canonical. Both Meyer and Morrice create collections of sayings from various sources, whereas Petersen et al. provide a collection of essays concerning the sayings material. Morrice includes sayings from the NT gospels, Acts, and the Pauline corpus, as well as sayings from the NT Apocrypha, and even a few Arabic texts. He does not spell out his selection criteria. Of the book’s eighteen chapters, five are devoted to sayings from the Gospel of Thomas. A total of 253 fragments are presented, each of which Morrice “grades” as to its authenticity. To only thirty-six of those not known from the NT does he give an “A” or “B” grade. This fact somewhat undercuts the value of Morrice’s work, since the vast majority of these A-B grade sayings are available in prior collections. The primary value Morrice himself seems to see in his collection is a case for viewing the GThos as not “gnostic”—and therefore as valuable for interpretation of the NT parables. Since the texts are available elsewhere and Morrice provides very little in the way of interpretation of individual sayings, this collection does not seem particularly useful—neither for “historical Jesus” scholarship nor for analysis of wider movements in the early Christian period. Meyer bemoans the “unfortunate canonical shadow” which falls over Morrice’s collection (xiii), and attempts to avoid this limitation in his own collection by excluding those sayings found in the NT, Q, or the Coptic GThos. Instead, Meyer turns to the NT Apocrypha—including the Gospels of Mary, Peter, Phillip, Hebrews, Ebionites, Eve, Egyptians, Nazoreans, and Thomas (Gk); the Acts of Peter, Thomas, and John; the Dialogue of the Savior; Book of Thomas and the First Book of Jeu; Secret James; the Martyrdom of Peter; the Epistles of the Apostles; Papyrus Oxyrhynchus, Papyrus Egerton, the Bruce Codex and Berlin 20915; Pistis Sophia—as well as the Didache, four additions to the canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and a variety of other Christian sources from the Clementine Epistles to Ephrem the Syrian and Augustine of [End Page 615] Hippo. Among his 200 selections, Meyer also includes two sayings from the Babylonian Talmud (no. 181–182), one inscription from a mosque in India, and seventeen sayings from the Arabic writers áAbd al-Jabba\r, al-Ghazzali, and al-Ibshihi. The collection is certainly much more eclectic than that of Morrice, but it does not advance the historical discussion much. One would have liked to have Meyer’s criteria for selection of these diverse sayings. Instead of delineating his own criteria for determining the historicity of a given saying, he outlines three different sets garnered from Duling/Perrin, Crossan, and Funk, but he never evaluates them. Essentially Meyer seems to follow Funk’s method, which is the least sophisticated of the three choices. Subjective and formal criteria are intermixed with each other with no apparent hierarchy for their application. No ground-breaking work this, perhaps the most noticeable feature of the sayings culled from patristic sources is their paucity. The Festschrift for Tjitze Baarda, edited by Petersen, Vos and de Jonge is a collection of essays of which Prof. Baarda can be rightfully proud. The Baarda bibliography alone would have made this volume a solid contribution to the field; the essays make it even more valuable. This is a substantial work, with...