Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects and Gospels (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae)

 chapter five

paleographical dating of the Greek fragments (between  and
ce)^114 and the date of Clement’s quotation (/ce) cohere,
showing that the similarities already existed in the beginning of the third
century.
Logion  and a quotation from theGospel of the Ebionitesshare
three variant readings and two of them can also be found inClement
(:). Notably, the author ofClementhas received the variants as
part of a tradition that had harmonized canonical Matthew and Luke.
Assuming thatClem. was written between –ce, it is evident that,
at least in this case, the common denominator of theGospel of Thomas
and theGospel of the Ebionitesis independent of theDiatessaron.No
Diatessaronic witnesses for the variants have been found.
Logion  and the manuscript  (in Matt :) indicate that both
TheGospel of Thomasand a Jewish-Christian gospel had a parallel to Matt
:. Their wording is different but the beginning ofThomas’logion
harmonizes canonical Matthew and Luke/Q. Logion  also agrees with
some expressions inPs-Clem. Rec. ..– that are not attested in the
synoptic gospels or in the Diatessaronic tradition. It is highly likely these
were derived from theGospel of the Ebionitesor its source. In addition,
there are some connections to Diatessaronic traditions.
Logion  (with ) shares two stylistic features with the Rich Man’s
Question in Origen’sCommentary on Matthew. This stylistic similarity is
easiest to explain by assuming that both depend on the same harmonistic
tradition which is somehow related to theDiatessaron.Theclusterof
three stories about rich men already existed in the pre-Diatessaronic
tradition.
Some more general conclusions can be drawn. First, the three cases
for which there is synoptic parallel material available show a close con-
nection of bothThomasand Jewish-Christian fragments to a harmoniz-
ing gospel tradition. Second, althoughThomasand the Jewish-Christian
fragments are generally known for their connections to Diatessaronic
readings, the harmonizing features that they share in the analyzed pas-
sages have only indirect connections to theDiatessaron. Their connec-
tions toClementand Justin also indicate that the common readings
are probably pre-Diatessaronic. Therefore, Drijvers’ suggestion, that the
Gospel of Thomasand theGospel of the Ebionitesare dependent on the
Diatessaron,isproblematic.^115 It is also clear that Quispel’s hypothesis

(^114) Attridge , –.
(^115) The same applies to N. Perrin’s theses. According to Perrin, the catchword connec-