Was the Gospel of Thomas Manichaean?

[Secret Alias]

My son says "Daddy you were really good looking when you were young but not now." You can't judge the Gnostic guy by how he looks now. Maybe he was once quite dapper.

[mlinssen]

... we just do not know how closely the Coptic followed the content and order of the Greek. The samples are few, so the confidence level in our hypotheses has to be pretty low.

I wonder if there's a way to quantify your contention. Seems possible. Would want to start with a list of the known divergences in "content and order." And of course an idea of what we mean by this (exact wording or bigger parts, etc.).

I suppose any Bayesians reading this can tell us the probability of the hypothesis given our background knowledge. Might be decent.

There is, Peter. I have gone by all Greek copies in my Commentary, and each of the fragments evidently are sloppy copies. Bad to very bad grammar, extreme inconsistency (the first three logia use three different verbs for each "Jesus said"), swapping the addressed audience from 2nd plural to 3rd singular, and the best mishap is reading the Coptic ME instead of PE and consequently translating it with truth instead of heaven - which the usual suspects ignore or do away with via a simple comment.
Then we have logion 27 which relocates the verbal phrase "in the flesh" from the very end in the Coptic to the beginning in the Greek, swapping it from belonging to "them" and attaching it to Jesus

I have transcribed them all, translated most myself where Grenfell & Hunt or others have picked words that harmonise it with the canonicals, and frequently comment on what others have commented

There is no doubt that the Greek is a sloppy copy of the Coptic. That naturally doesn't agree with the dogma in biblical academic, but if there is one thing that becomes obvious, it is that everyone, to to including Attridge in cooperation with Layton and Lambdin, maximises the emendation and harmonisation and then hands out verbatim translations for both the Greek and the Coptic. But I go into detail regarding the conjugations, the effect of the emendations, and the absence of some emendations in some

Just compare logion 5 and 6 in Coptic and Greek: the Coptic had military precision, flawlessly mimicking parts of 5 in 6. The Greek is an utter mess, completely chaotic and incoherent

[mlinssen]

... we just do not know how closely the Coptic followed the content and order of the Greek. The samples are few, so the confidence level in our hypotheses has to be pretty low.

I wonder if there's a way to quantify your contention. Seems possible. Would want to start with a list of the known divergences in "content and order." And of course an idea of what we mean by this (exact wording or bigger parts, etc.).

I suppose any Bayesians reading this can tell us the probability of the hypothesis given our background knowledge. Might be decent.

Prologue

{οι} τοῖοι οἱ λόγοι οἱ [ἀπόκρυφοι οὓς ἐλά] λησεν ιης ὁ ζῶν κ[αταγράφοντος Ἰούδα τοῦ] καὶ Θωμᾶ.

The these the words the [hidden that ta-] lked IHS the living wr[itten-down-them Judas of-it] and Thomas

Logion 1

καὶ εἶπεν ̤ [ὅς ἂν τὴν ἑρμηνεί] αν τῶν λόγων τούτ[ων εὕρῃ, θανάτου] οὐ μὴ γεύσηται.

And called-he [he who the interpre]- tation of-the words of-[these find, of-death] "really not" will-taste

Yet the extraordinary difference in this logion is that εὕρῃ is the active voice aorist subjunctive 3rd person singular ('he-finds') or the middle voice aorist subjunctive 2nd person singular: 'you-find'; the word gets translated with the simple present 3rd person singular by all, yet the Coptic has 2 unambiguous future tenses. How does Gathercole handle the difference between the Greek and the Coptic? He omits the future tense from the first Coptic verb: 'And he said, ‘Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not taste death.’' - yet he simply doesn't recognise this SubAkhmimic future tense ⲡⲉⲧⲁ that also appears in logion 1, 44, 55, 101, 108 and 111. Layton has a note to it that mentions the Sahidic future tense yet he still translates it in the present, as does everyone else - save for Detlev Koepke, who gets it right. Yet what we have here is a difference in tenses: in the Coptic there two future tenses and in the Greek there is a present followed by a future tense

And he said: he who will fall to the Interpretation of these words will not taste death.

And this is the pattern that we will see throughout the comparison of Greek and Coptic Thomas: first the Greek gets emended, hardly ever with a comment. Then either the Greek gets translated falsely or the Coptic, so that both end up in splendid harmony

Logion 2

[λέγει ιης] μὴ παυσάσθω ὁ ζη[τῶν ... ἕως ἂν] εὕρῃ καὶ ὅταν εὕρ[ῃ θαμβηθήσεται καὶ θαμ] βηθεὶς βασιλεύσει κ[α ̤ ὶ βασιλεύσας αναπα ήσεται.

[IS saith,] Let not him who se[eks...cease until] he finds, and when he finds [he shall be astonished; ast]onished he shall reach the kingdom, an[d having reached the kingdom he sh]all rest.

Grenfell & Hunt for the last translation, and the bold is an addition to the Greek.
Tell me who writes a story this inconsistently, with three different verbs for the same action in three consecutive logia

That's not all, G&H emend βασιλεύση: active voice aorist subjunctive 3rd person singular. It is not a futurum, but gets translated as such nonetheless. At least Attridge has the courtesy to emend but naturally doesn't motivate why he would change a perfectly grammatically correct aorist to a futurum

I can go on like this for a while, but this should be enough to disqualify the first Oxy as an original. And the usual suspects as falsifiers