Friday, September 10, 2010

Typo in Elliott's Apocryphal New Testament, on Infancy Gospel of Thomas?

There is a cross-reference in J. K. Elliott, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993): 78 that I think may be in error. The passage is Infancy Gospel of Thomas 12.1-2:
Again, in the time of sowing the child went out with his father to sow corn in their field. And as his father sowed, the child Jesus also sowed one grain of corn. 2. And when he had reaped it and threshed it, he brought in a hundred measures, * and he called all the poor of the village to the threshing-floor and gave them the corn, and Joseph took the residue. He was eight years old when he performed this sign.
At the point marked here by the *, there is a footnote referencing Luke 16.7. Luke 16.7 reads, "Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’" That is clearly not right. I think the intended reference must be Luke 8.8, "Some [seed] fell into good soil, and when it grew, it produced a hundredfold.”

Update (Saturday, 13.25): In comments, Andrew Criddle notes that the word κόρος occurs both in Luke 16.7 (ἑκατὸν κόρους σίτου) and in Tischendorf's Greek A recension of the Infancy Gospel. Moreover, κόρος is a hapax in the New Testament. That is clearly the point of the cross-reference in Elliott, so I withdraw my suggestion that it is a typo, even if it is a strange choice of cross-reference given the clearer content parallels with the Synoptics here and elsewhere that are not marked. Incidentally, a look at Tony Burke's Critical Edition of the text shows some interesting variation in the Greek witnesses at this point, κόρους ρ in his Gs, μέδιμνους ρ in his Ga and μόδια ἑκατόν in his Gc (Burke, 192-3).

3 comments:

Andrew Criddle said...

I suspect the reference is to the unusual word korous used in Luke 16:7 for measures/containers. Is this the word used in the Greek text of Thomas ?

Andrew Criddle said...

According to Tischendorf the word used in Thomas is korous

Mark Goodacre said...

Thanks, Andrew. Well spotted! You are right -- κόρος occurs here in Luke 16.7 and in Tischendorf's Greek A text. I'll update the post.