jewish-christian gospels and syriac gospel traditions , , , ).^113 Finally, Origen’s version of the Rich Man’s Question
made clear the infusion of expressions from the surrounding Diatessa-
ronic stories and from the Lawyer’s Question into the second story about
a rich man. Therefore, the appearance of the same phenomenon in the
first story of the same cluster would be natural. In this case, the emer-
gence of the Lukan “he turned to” in logion would reveal the hand of
thesameeditorwho,atsomepoint,implantedthesameexpressioninthe
second story.
We may also consider whether it is possible that all the above similari-
ties are purely coincidental: Is it only a coincidence that both theGospel of
Thomasand the fragment in Origen’s commentary have independently—
in contrast to known synoptic parallels—added the (Lukan) “he turned
to” to a story where one can also find another Lukan expression, the
address “(O) man.” Is it only a coincidence that, in these passages, both
these gospels have Diatessaronic readings? Is it only a coincidence that
these stories happened to follow each other in theDiatessaron?Ofcourse,
all this is possible, but as the list of coincidences grows, the probability
of a more simple explanation also grows: theGospel of Thomasand Ori-
gen’sfragmenthavemadeuseofthesameharmonizinggospeltradition
that is related to theDiatessaron. On the basis of my earlier analysis of
Origen’s passage, it seems probable that the cluster of three stories about
rich men already existed in the pre-Diatessaronic tradition. The Latin
passage in Origen’s commentary is most likely based on an earlier Syriac
version which is clearly later than theDiatessaronbut there are some fea-
tures in Origen’s story which support the assumption that there was an
even earlier Greek version of the story that was connected to Justin’s har-
mony. Thus, the above connections to the Diatessaronic composition do
not mean thatThomasmust depend on theDiatessaronitself, but instead
they suggest a link on the pre-Diatessaronic level (cf. Appendix )
...Jewish-Christian Gospel Fragments and
theGospel of Thomas: A Summary of Literary RelationshipsTheGospel of Thomasand the Jewish-Christian gospel fragments have
one non-canonical saying in common. The wording of the Jewish-
Christian version of this saying is closer toThomas’Greeklogion.The
(^113) ForThomas’ relation to Jewish religious practices, see Marjanen a, –.
Marjanen convincingly argues thatThomas’ negative attitude towards Jewish practices
reflects the position of the author in an ongoing debate about Thomasine Christians’
relation to Judaism (pp. –).