Date of Award
4-2001
Document Type
Dissertation - Restricted
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Theology
First Advisor
Sharon Pace
Second Advisor
John Schmitt
Abstract
My interest in the Gospel of Thomas began around the time that I stumbled across a monograph by Gilles Quispe! entitled Tatian and the Gospel of Thomas. Here (as well as in his earlier articles) Quispe! draws text-critical comparisons between the famous Coptic gospel and the Syriac Diatessaron. It occurred to me that Quispel's observations regarding these two texts were very significant but, for one reason or another, had not received due response from the scholarly community. Although I have come to disagree with the details of Quispel's "Aramaic background" theory, I am indebted to him as well as to those (notably Antoine Guillaumont and Tjitze Baarda) who took part in the conversation he initiated forty years ago. The title of this study, "Thomas and Tatian: The Relationship Between the Gospel of Thomas and the Diatessaron," is intended to echo not only Quispel's title but also his insistence on a relationship between the two documents. Whether I have rightly formulated the nature of this relationship must ultimately be left to the judgment of future scholarship.
Comments
A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School, Marquette University, in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Milwaukee, Wisconsin