Henry Imler July 24th, 2007

Resistance within and by the Edessan Christian community 150-250 CE

Introduction

The apothegm, “Dead men don’t tell tales,” is especially relevant in the study of vanished peoples. The purpose of this paper is to construct a method to uncover the lived religion in the everyday lives of a people-group located in the past, specifically, the people-group behind both the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas. One only knows this group from the text that was left behind. However, this in and of itself is a lucky break. The text at least alerts us about this group. Otherwise, their voices would be completely lost. A surface-level, or prime facie analysis of the text only reveals the beliefs and ideas utilized by the groups, or more specifically, about the leader or teacher’s beliefs and ideas. One cannot imagine that the texts were built with the consensus of the community as a whole. They are what James C. Scott called “official transcripts” of the community.

I am approaching this people-group and texts from a great distance, spatially, temporally, and culturally. Without further inquiry and qualification, the risk of importing my culture and beliefs onto the texts and as an extension, the people-group, is insurmountable. In the absence of intimate or first-hand knowledge of their culture, one must take great pains to reconstruct it from the ground up before analyzing the texts. It is also paramount to note that every people-group is located in a specific space at a specific time, even if the people-group persists through the before mentioned spaces and times. At every moment, their culture is being negotiated and transformed. Each text represents one such attempt at negotiation of the group’s values, beliefs practices, morale, and so forth. Thus, while a text can tell us about an instance of the negotiation process and as an extension, the phases before and after the text, one cannot assume that the text merely represents a static reconstruction of the community. It is also a record of an instance of the creative process of culture formation. It is with this attitude that texts will be approached.

Both the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas originated from the same community, Edessa, located in ancient Syria. (Klijn, p. 70) (Bernard, p. 161) The Gospel of Thomas date from the second half of the second century and the Acts of Thomas originate around 60-100 years later. Because of their proximity in both space and time, the two texts provide an excellent opportunity to look at snapshots of the same community in two periods of time. However, the question still remains of how to go about analyzing these texts. I will draw heavily on the theory of James C. Scott and the method of Burton Mack with the hope of obtaining an accurate comparative look at each community in their specific time period.

The paper will begin with an opening discussion of the theory of James C. Scott, moving on to an evaluation of Burton Mack’s attempt to reconstruct a lost community. Then a brief background on the historical record of the Christian Church at Edessa during the first two hundred and fifty years will be given. Both the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas will be analyzed in search of their hidden and public transcripts. The two sets of transcripts will then be compared to see the choices each community faced and the path they ended up taking. I will show how the Edessan Christian community not only created a space for itself in opposition to the surrounding culture, but also institutionalized rapidly. This created room for a hidden transcript within their hidden transcript that were protests against the institutionalization.

Hidden Texts: James C. Scott

James C. Scott is the Sterling Professor of Political Science at Yale University. His work centers on the study of dominated peoples. His principle work, Domination and the Arts of Resistance, discusses the idea of the public and hidden transcript. The public transcript is the official story of a culture. It encompasses the processes of the elite to their own ends.

“public mastery and subordination (for example, rituals of hierarchy, deference, speech, punishment, and humiliation)… [it gives] ideological justification for inequalities (for example, the public religious and political world view of the dominate elite)… [the strength of this approach is its] privileges the social experience of indignities, control, submission, humiliation, forced defense, and punishment.” (Scott, p. 111)

Thus, the public transcript serves as a justification and explanation of domination of one group over another. This domination is not People often imagine resistance to the public transcript and oppression in bold and visible statements, such as revolt and demonstration and revolution. Indeed, these are signs of resistance; however, they are dangerous ones. Rebellion is countered by more forceful forms of oppression, such as execution. This forceful reaction is a ritualized response that arises out of the public transcript and reinforces its ideals.

At first, it would seem that the only two options for the oppressed is to accept life under domination and be a “happy slave,” or to openly rebel and face extreme physical punishment. Scott sees a third path; he postulates that “discontent and resistance are far more prevalent, widespread, and complex in their motives and methods that these simple alternatives allow.” (Horsley, p. 7) In this third category, there is the passive resistance. Whenever the oppressed are not under surveillance, when they are out of the master’s eye, they act in their own interests to recapture a sense of dignity and justice. Scott says that “The practices of domination and exploitation typically foster a hidden transcript of indignation.” (Scott, p. 7) This hidden transcript serves as the negation of the public transcript and is the ideological basis for rebellion and revolts. However, it goes much deeper than this. The subaltern, contrary to Spivak, does speak, but the speech is hidden from public view. This offstage speech takes a variety of forms; it is not merely speech, per say, but also a wide range of practices, such as “poaching, pilfering, clandestine tax evasion, and… shabby work…” (Scott, p. 14) Thus the hidden transcript is comprised of all actions that subvert, frustrate or ritually negate the oppressor’s hold on the populace.

There are two requirements for the creation of the hidden transcript. The first one is a space that is free from control or surveillance; the second is a shared experience by those gathered in such a space. (Scott, p. 120) The hidden transcript and the anger behind it must also be articulated and the resistance must be social in nature. This anger is “well cooked” by the time it makes its way into written discourse. Thus, in Paul’s letters one sees both the acknowledgement of the anger (there is neither slave, nor free) and at the same time, social restraint (let all who are under a yoke as slaves regard their own masters as worthy of all honor). This well-cooked anger enters into a social struggle on the borders of the two transcripts. It is here that cultural innovation takes place. Scott outlines four basic forms of cultural interchange. (Scott, pp. 18-19) The first is also the safest, flattery of social elites. The hidden transcript is the second and serves to provide an ideological basis for the more dangerous forms. Third is the interchange between public flattery and the hidden transcript and is often couched in double meaning and is done by anonymous actors. Lastly, there is speaking truth to power. This is an open act of defiance and is a desperate gamble for change. This last category can be anything from public ministries to open revolts. This progressive delineation of resistance demonstrates the range of reactions of the oppressed.

The work of James C. Scott has been recently applied to the field of New Testament studies. This approach applies his theory and looks for clues of well-cooked anger and hidden transcripts in New Testament texts. This has recently been done to the texts of the Canonical Gospels and Paul’s letters. I will utilize this approach in analyzing the Thomas texts from Edessa, looking for signs of resistance within the Christian community there. However, the question remains as to how one should approach a community known only through its texts.

Mack on Method

In 1993, Burton Mack authored a book on what he called the “Q community.” In this work, The Lost Gospel: The Book of Q and Christian Origins, Mack attempts to reconstruct the community behind the book of Q. While the gospel of Q has never been found, there is good reason to believe such a book existed at one time. The canonical gospels of Luke and Matthew contain strikingly similar accounts that are not found in the gospel of Mark. Usually, when there are similar accounts in different works from a similar period the first considered source is oral tradition. The telltale attributes of oral tradition are having parallel pericopes appearing in different contexts and pericopes with similar themes but different wording. A prime example of this is a comparison of saying 48 in the gospel of Thomas and Matthew 17:20; in each pericope is describes the ability of adherents to move mountains. However, the contexts are completely different. Matthew is speaking of moving mountains because of one’s faith; Thomas, on the other hand, confers this ability because of peace amongst believers. This similarity in topic and dissimilarity in context and wording marks the passages as having a common oral, but not written tradition.

Run the above reasoning in the opposite direction one has the criteria for determining if two pericopes have a common written source. There is a whole series of sayings that occur in Matthew and Luke that do not occur in Mark or John. These pericopes agree in wording in a way that suggests there was a written source behind the parallel passages in Matthew and Luke. This is the basis for hypothesizing the existence of the gospel of Q. Despite the literary evidence for Q, not a shred of physical evidence has been found to support its existence. Interestingly enough, the discovery of the gospel of Thomas bolstered this hypothesis, because it was the first time a physical sayings gospel had been discovered. Before its discovery, there was always the question as to why someone would only record the sayings of Jesus and leave out all of the narrative accounts.

Mack suggests that since it is fairly certain that there was a gospel of Q at one time, and its contents can be reconstructed with reasonable accuracy, then one should be able to reconstruct the community behind the gospel, just as is done with other gospels. In the book, Mack begins with isolating the geographic location of Q. Mack locates the Q sayings in Galilee. He notes that they were an independent, academic people, with heavy influences from the Jewish culture to the south and Greek and Roman culture from the west. He argues that Jesus was a cynic sage and derived his message as a response to the times. Mack believes that the original followers of Jesus, dubbed the “Jesus people,” were responsible for the book of Q.
Once he has done this, Mack then attempts to ground himself and the reader in early first century Galilean culture. (Mack, p. 44) This is imperative because without such grounding there is no context in which to situate the text. After a lengthy discourse on Galilean culture, Mack begins his analysis of the text. He begins by noting that there seems to be seven clusters of teachings in the work. These seven clusters can be read independently from the rest of the work, suggesting they composed the earliest form of Q. This original work of Q is called Q1. Another set of passages that seem to fit around the first. These are prophetic announcements and seem to expound upon the persona of Jesus. These are quite naturally named Q2. The rest of Q does not fit any pattern in particular; the only distinguish trait, besides exclusion from Q1 and Q2, is that they bolster the claims of Christ even further. These remnants are dubbed Q3.

After slicing up Q into sections arranged by topic, Mack then hypothesizes that these three sections not only do these represent the development of the gospel of Q, but also represent the development of the community of Q. They instead represent the theological development of the community of Q. Mack says that if one can track the theological development of the community of Q, then one can have a clearer picture of the origins of current Christian thought.

According to Mack, the original community of Q was centered around Jesus’ teachings and expounded on them to created rules for their new community. One can see that the community was concerned with: proper teaching, mantra, insecurity, how to define themselves, and materialism. The lack of any miraculous occurrences indicates that they thought of Jesus as a teacher, not a savior or messiah. As the years progressed, the Jesus movement started to mythologize their sage. Mack says that all religions naturally do this. He notes the introduction of the phrase Son of Man and John the Baptist into Q2. He theorizes that the myth of Jesus was born primarily out of the ‘Wisdom of God’ and ‘Son of Man’ figures in Hebrew mythology. ‘Wisdom of God’ was an incarnation of wisdom, sometimes referred to as the child of wisdom. This person functioned not only as an avatar of the ideal of Sophia, but a man sent by God to reveal more of his wisdom to his creation. The Son of Man was the herald of the end times in ancient Hebrew mythology. His coming would be one of the signs of the apocalypse, which was a prevailing mood of the time. Thus, the Jesus people began their journey away from the original Jesus-philosopher and into the world of the religious. Once it started, it would prove impossible to stop.

With the destruction of the temple ten years after the formulation of Q2, the Jesus people had began to transform into the Christ Cult. In Q3, we find mention of the Son of God to refer to Jesus. There is also the addition of more of Jesus’ miracles and prophesies, most notably those that concerned themselves with the temple. If their wise god-man prophet-king was as they crafted him, he would have surely been able to predict the temple’s destruction and even add meaning to it. Mack spend the rest of his time in the book expounding on the how Christians after the Q Community added to the myth and evolved into what we have as Christianity today. While he does not explicitly employ Scott’s analysis, he is approaching the community in much the same way as Scott has approached the ones he has studied. Mack attempts to get at the lives of the people behind the text and focuses on the Jesus as a creator of Galilean resistance to religious and political rule centered in Jerusalem and Rome. (Mack, pp. 59-63)

While it makes for a bold hypothesis, Mack’s analysis is not without its faults. Notice what he has done. He has arranged the sayings by topic and then assumed that they must make up different eras in the development of the Q community. It can be easily argued that this arrangement was forced, that is to say that Mack arranged the sayings to fit his hypothesis. The assumption is made that simpler theological sayings must pre-date more complex ones. While this may be the case, Mack does not provide sufficient evidence that it is so. However, his greatest problem is that he does not have a definitive text of Q. Scholars cannot be sure if Matthew and Luke contain all of Q; all they can know for sure is a partial listing of Q’s contents. There might be missing material that Luke and Matthew do not include from Q. Without a definite document, his claims are hypothetical at best. Mack also argues his case in certain terms. This combination of lack of physical and textual evidence with his over-assuredness leaves his conclusions in serious doubt.

Despite these problems, there is something valuable to Mack’s approach. He places an emphasis on each stage of the community. While his purpose is to show the overall trajectory, even into the modern era; there is an emphasis on each stage of the community. He attempts to situate each stage of the trajectory and to understand the choice that lay before them at each junction recorded in the text. In this way, Mack bypasses Certeau’s criticism of the “functionalist administration of space.” (Certeau, p. 34) Mack through to great pains to reconstruct the tactics used by the Jesus people to cope with the situations they found themselves. Because of his appreciation of each stage and the corresponding possibilities that the community faced, Mack’s flawed argument retains value. In my examination of the Edessan Christians, I will attempt to correct for Mack’s flaws while retaining the bulk of his method. Instead of attempting to deconstruct and reassemble a hypothetical text, I will examine two texts created by the same community in relative succession. This will control for Mack’s error. In addition, Mack at times focused on patterns of belief. While this is important for the total study of the people behind the religion, the analysis of the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas will be focused on patterns of organization.

Acquainting Edessa

Before looking specifically at the Gospel of
Thomas and the Acts of Thomas for their hidden transcripts, one must first be acquainted with the culture in which they were situated. L.W. Bernard gives a good summation of the culture of Christian Edessa through the first two centuries of the Common Era in his article, The Church in Edessa During the First two Centuries AD. Both geographically and culturally, Edessa straddled the east and the west. It was along one of the only easily traversed routes from Persia to Rome. To the north were the Armenian mountains and to the south lay the Syrian Desert. While it was the capital of a small principality, it was also a major trading center. Because of its location, Edessa was subject to Persian, Roman, Greek, and Indian influences. It was also a literary center having a long line of varied literary traditions. (Frothingham, p. 204) Due to the multiplicity of influences, determining the city’s culture is an impossible task. (Klijn, p. 75) The Christian movement took root relatively quickly and firmly in Edessa. By 201 CE there were already devoted Church buildings. (Bernard, p. 174) Having dedicated buildings instead of house churches suggests a firm presence. This firm presence suggests that the Church was institutionalized by this timeframe and that any documents produced by it would be “official transcripts” in the words of Scott. Edessan Christianity is viewed by scholars as proto-typical of Syrian Christianity.

Predating the arrival of the first Jewish-Christian missionaries, there was already a strong tradition of twin worship. The tradition of the twins came in the form of a lunar religion that was based off two sets of twin deities. The first pairing was the moon-god Sin and the underworld-god Nergal; the second was the Monimus, goddess of the morning and ‘Azizus, the god of the evening. It is Lloyd Bailey’s judgment, “So accustomed was the population of the area to this concept that, after its acceptance of Christianity, it applied it to the new faith.” (Bailey, p. 343) This application resulted in the likening of the apostle Judas Thomas to the twin of Jesus.

The initial makeup of the Christian community at Edessa was Jewish-Christian in character. There was a significant Jewish colony in the city and it is in this sub-community that Christianity first took root. (Bernard, p. 173) It is thought that Addai, one of the seventy-two disciples, first brought the Christian religion to Edessa. While his recorded deeds are most certainly made of legend, it is thought that he was a historical figure. (Bernard, p. 162) He was a Palestinian-Jewish convert to Christianity. From the onset Edessan Christianity, and as an extension, Syriac Christianity took on a Jewish and acetic character. (Bernard, p. 166) In fact, the relationship between Edessan Christianity and Judaism was so close that the Jews in the city considered themselves friends of the Christians there. (Bernard, p. 163) The community quickly took on an organization structure that embodied these ideals. Asceticism was perhaps the defining feature of Edessan Christianity. This was emphasized to the point that baptism took on a new meaning. Baptism was no longer a sign of joining the general community of Christians, but was reserved for the few that could live up to the standards of the community. Thus, baptism was “not the means for Christian initiation for every Christian but a privilege reserved for… the spiritual aristocracy.” (Bernard, p. 163) Only the celibate ushered into this group. There was a larger community of adherents that could not fulfill this lived ideal. These people, although recognized to be member of the community, were seen as a lower tier; they made up the vast majority of the population. Early on, all members were sees as equals in the eyes of God, and as a corollary, equals in the eyes of the community. This was to change, however.

Mirroring the sectarian development of the Jewish Qumran community, the inner circle began to think of themselves as the God’s elect, and accordingly started to segment themselves from society not only in status, but also in deed. (Bernard, p. 164) They became unconcerned with social duties. This inner circle ended up developing into a monastic order. Not only was the Christian community segmented internally, they also viewed themselves as distinct from their surrounding community. However, there was not the animosity that was common to Christian communities located within more Greco-Roman cities. Instead, their dedication to morality was upheld as an attractive component of the movement in the eyes of the surrounding communities. (Bernard, p. 172) Due to the nature of some of the texts traced back to Edessa, some have questioned if the community was Gnostic in nature. This is highly unlikely, even though it can be said that Gnostics adopted the texts created by the Edessans. (Bernard, p. 173)

In summation, the Edessan Christian community was multi-layered and was doubly segmented. Not only did it draw sharp distinctions between itself and the surrounding populace, it also drew sharp distinctions within itself, creating a new hierarchy. Edessan Christianity was relatively unique when compared to Greek Christianity. This was due to its heritage locally, with the cult of the twins, but also from its spiritual heritage, the legacy of Jewish asceticism. While it is impossible to gather a complete and well delineated picture of all the groups within the city during the first few centuries of the Common Era, they did fall into the above categories. This problem is manageable if one realizes that the best characterization and discussion of the community cannot fully or accurately encapsulate it. As Avery Gordon might say, one is “haunted” by pieces of data, whether they are bits of manuscripts or archeological evidence, that do not correspond with what is generally accepted of the community. This messiness is unavoidable and must be factored into a study of a vanished people-group. With the theoretical grounding of Scott, the approach of Mack, and a background of Edessa, one can begin to probe the texts of the Gospel of Thomas and the Acts of Thomas for signs of their hidden transcripts and indication of the role of religion in their everyday lives.

The Hidden Transcript in the Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Thomas opens with Jesus and his twin, Thomas, talking about the secret sayings. This might strike one as being overly Gnostic and certainly came to be used by Gnostic groups, but given the climate of Edessa during its composition in the second half of the second century, it seems to fit the mold of the twin tradition and a segmented ascetic society. For instance, the secret sayings of the Gospel of Thomas are not included in the Gospel itself. However, the rest of the text is comprised of important sayings of Jesus. How does one make sense of this contradiction? Bruce Lincoln suggests that this text is addressed to both the inner and outer circles of the community at the same time. (Lincoln, p. 69) After the opening lines, the first saying seems to indicate the levels of social structure within the community.

“And he said, ‘whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not experience death.” Jesus said, “Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the all.” (Gospel of Thomas s. 1-2)

Here one has four levels of spiritual ascension: first those who seek; second, those who find and are troubled; third, those who are troubled and are astonished; and finally, those that rule over the all. Because spiritual mastery was grounds for social standing within the community, this verse also delineates the social strata of the community. Therefore, there are four levels of hierarchy within the early Thomas community, the proselytites, the initiates, the senior members, and the masters. A good understanding of the community cannot be attained apart from this hierarchy. The Gospel of Thomas addresses each segment of this hierarchy.

To the proselytites, the community promised to be the sole source of knowledge and blessings.

Jesus said, “Blessed is he who came into being before he came into being. If you become my disciples and listen to my words, these stones will minister to you. For there are five trees in paradise which remain undisturbed summer and winter and whose leaves do not fall. Whoever becomes acquainted with them will not experience death.” Gospel of Thomas s. 19)

With these words, the community sets itself up as a place of refuge, a space that is free from the burdens of regular life. City life in Edessa, as it was in many of the major trade cities in the Roman Empire, was an existence filled with conflict. One was most likely to be a slave, and those that were not had still to contend with a variety of people-groups, each with their own set of customs. For the few that were not government officials or other members of the social elite life consisted of a string of moments concerned chiefly with subsistence. (Meeks, pp. 40-47) For such a people, the prospect of a religion that promised real-time blessings was very enticing. Salvation and blessings were thought of in terms of real-time benefits, not merely hitting the metaphysical jackpot in the afterlife. (Jeffers, pp. 100-102) Thus what the community was offering to possible converts was help, a sense of belonging amongst an atmosphere of alienation. In their day to day lives they could expect help from the community. This help did not come at a high price, for entry into the community was easy.

Jesus said, “Come unto me, for my yoke is easy and my lordship mild, and you will find repose for yourselves. (Gospel of Thomas s. 90)

Once a person had gained entry into the community, their everyday life was expected to change. They are to denounce all ties, including familial. This is evident in saying 55 where the new member is admonish that entry requires that they must “hate” their mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers and follow the community’s practices. While a case can be made that hate in this context only means “loved less,” the fact remains that the priority was on the community at the expense of the family. This attack on the family could prove to be especially dangerous. (Crossan, p. 60) Yet the Thomas community in Edessa maintained that they must resist even the basic family structure in order to find true justice. The family was a source of “patriarchal chauvinism” and therefore a source of injustice. (Crossan, p. 60) The Thomas community recognizes this and actually attempts to move away from the categories of gender. At the end of the gospel, Peter attempts to send Mary away because she is a woman. Jesus responds sharply to this.

Jesus said, “I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit resembling you males. For every woman who will make herself make will enter the kingdom of heaven.” (Gospel of Thomas s. 114)

Thus an attempt to restore the gender hierarchy to the original androgynous state is made. The community also broke ties with the merchant community because of their perceived greed. In saying 64, the community barred association with the merchant class from contact and association with the group.

This disavowal of the public transcript of the Edessan community had its limits. The line was drawn at the political level. This is reflected in saying 100, where the community reiterated the long standing tradition of partial cooperation with Roman authorities, saying, “Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar…” This only went so far, total allegiance was not given, “…but give God what belongs to God, and give me what is mine.” This saying, in light of the other disavowals of society indicates that the community realized that survival meant playing nicely with the political authorities. However, within their own space, the Thomas community exercised a counter-version of society.

The Thomas community was a segmented one. As discussed above, there were at least four levels of adherents in the community. The members that were higher up in the internal hierarchy had access to the secret teachings alluded to in the opening lines. This created animosity between the members of the inner circle and those left on the fringes. While the Gospel of Thomas is a internal public text, there are the remnants of a hidden text within the community that it was responding to. There is a justification of discriminatory teaching practices in saying 62.

Jesus said, “It is to those [who are worthy of my] mysteries that I tell my mysteries. Do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing.”

This saying does not make sense in a standard mode of interpretation. However, once one takes into account the segmented nature of the Edessan community and the levels of initiation in the community, then the saying begins to make sense. Lincoln has argued that the above saying signifies levels of teaching. (Lincoln, p. 73)

The Edessan Gospel of Thomas provided its community with the ideological basis and authority for resisting the culture of the Edessan community at large. As such, it functioned as articulated anger and a remedy for the injustice in the Edessan community. Its existence signifies that there was indeed a space for such a discourse. It its nuanced critique of the culture, rejecting family, gender, and merchants while tolerating the ruling political class; it negotiated its position within Edessa. As such, it functioned as a hidden text. However, it went beyond this. It also crafted rules for a community. It created new hierarchies that were contested from within. It sought to provide an ideological basis for its own system of elites. Thus the Gospel of Thomas was both a hidden and a public transcript, one that attempted segment itself from the rest of society while at the same time sought reinforce its own elite-centered system of resistance.

The Hidden Transcripts in the Acts of Thomas

The Acts of Thomas is an account of the Apostle Judas Thomas, the twin brother of Jesus, traveling to India to preach the good news. It originated in Edessa and its Syriac heritage is evidenced not only by its Syrianisms, but also by its placement of Judas Thomas. In the opening lines, the twelve apostles were sent out into each region of the world. Judas Thomas, the twin of Jesus, not to be confused with Judas Iscariot, was supposed to go to India, but he refuses. The reasons given are a “weakness of the flesh,” and a nervousness about mixing with another culture. Jesus intervenes in this conflict by appearing to Judas in a dream and promises Judas that if he goes, the favor of the Lord will be with him. Judas still refuses, saying, “Whither thou would send me, send me, but elsewhere, for unto the Indians I will not go.” (Acts of Thomas v. 1) The impasse is breached by Jesus appearing in bodily form and actually selling Thomas to a Merchant from India. Explicit is the use of a deed of sale for the transaction.

This exchange is interesting because it sheds light on the relations between parties in early third century Edessa. Having the apostle, the patron saint of their community, sold into to slavery to a merchant by Jesus contains a multiplicity of powerful statements of the community and their outlook on life. Here there are dealings with merchants; however, the hero of the story is forced into dealing with the merchant. This suggests that there was begrudging cooperation between the Christian community and the merchant class. There is a will to resist, but necessity demands cooperation. The source of this necessity is justified on religious grounds. This arrangement did not sit well with the members of the community. It can be inferred from the text that their concerns were two fold. They felt like they could not maintain their bodily purity if they were to deal with the merchants. Also, the text betrays a certain uncomfortableness with the culture around them. Their unique geographic location provided the city as a mixing place of cultures. It is important how the merchant is viewed. The text presents him as a good and just man. Despite this, Judas was sold as a slave to the merchant. Judas uses this slavery to complete his mission of bringing his message to the merchant’s culture.

How would have the ordinary members of the community seen Judas’ selling into slavery? The text makes explicit the use of a bill of sale to complete the transaction. The members of the community would have been quite intimate with bills of sale. Not only was the city a center of trade, but anyone that had ever been a salve, known a slave, or owned a slave would know that this relationship was meant to have a one to one correspondence with slavery as they saw it every day. Perhaps this also functioned to give hope and recode the experience of slavery with the story of Judas Thomas. One cannot be sure as to the intended effect and the actual effect of the text on the reader, but such suggestions do not seem far from reality. Deeds of Sale have been recovered from this time period in Edessa. Such a text is called the P. Durra 28; it gives one an excellent opportunity to see exactly how slavery would have been seen in the eyes of the authorities. Jonathan Goldstein, from the University of Iowa has analyzed this document and interpreted the various legal phrases found inside. The transaction was irrevocable, even in the case of slave not performing up to the standards of the new owner. There is a six month revocation window. (Goldstein, pp. 12-13) In addition, the authorities needed to sign off on such a bill included the political authorities. Thus Jesus using the bill of sale signifies that the community would submit to the authorities when it suited their purposes.

Throughout the Acts of Thomas Judas refuses worldly pleasures and the people around him are astonished by his self-control. This reflects the lives of the community at large. There are records that indicate that the whole of the community, not just the inner circle, had gained the city’s respect for the way they lived out their lives. (Bernard, p. 164) The inclusion of this ideal served to reinforce the ideal.

The Acts of Thomas appears to function as a realignment of the lives of the community. It reinforces ideas that were popular in the community, such as a dedication to an ascetic lifestyle. It attempts to modify the attitudes of the adherents for the better relations with the merchant class and perhaps is even pushing for the inclusion of merchants into the community. It also calls for greater cooperation with the rulers as evidenced by Judas Thomas submitting to the king’s will. However, this submission was not to be equated with complicitness with the political powers. The text makes it clear that all of the cooperation was to serve their ends. It was a case of Scott’s third type of resistance, one that appears to the rulers as cooperation, but in reality, it is a way of subverting the authority’s control for self-autonomy. Here again the text serves as both a public and hidden transcript. It attempts to bolster the resistance to culture it finds itself in while at the same time regulating the space in which it occupies.

Conclusion

What can be said of the community in the two time periods? From looking at the general culture of the region and from the texts themselves, not much can be said about specific everyday lives of the community. What can be said, however, is how they viewed their lives and communities at each stage of textual composition. While one cannot truly access the everyday lives of the people behind the texts, one can see how they struggled to define their lives in opposition to the people around them and within their own community. The Edessan Christians were chiefly concerned with self-definition. They employed both strategies and tactics to these ends; tactics in segmenting themselves from the everyday society and creating their own, and strategies in regulating their newfound community. It needs to be noted that one cannot fully explain or encapsulate the whole of their society. All that remains are the texts, and even the analysis of the texts can present hypothetical interpretations. However, these interpretations, if handled correctly can allow the Edessan community to show through the analysis.

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