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Update: Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus

June 16th, 2009 by Andrew Bernhard under Gospel of Thomas. 1 Comment.

I received a kind email from John Dart today. Dart covered religion news for the Los Angeles Times for over thirty years until retiring in 1998. Since 2000, he has worked as news editor for the biweekly magazine, Christian Century. He is also the author of the book I mentioned in my previous post, Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus: The Discovery and Text of the Gospel of Thomas.

Dart reminded me that Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus was actually re-released in 2000 in a revised, paperback edition as The Gospel of Thomas: Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus and provided me with some interesting background information about the book (which I reproduce here with his permission):

The origin of that book was Ray Riegert’s idea of rewriting my story of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library as seen in my book, The Laughing Savior (Harper, 1976), but putting the focus on the Gospel of Thomas. My Harper book, I believe, was the first U.S.-published popular account of the Nag Hammadi Library and its significance for research . . .  Harper asked me to update The Laughing Savior to be released in 1988 along with the third, revised edition of  The Nag Hammadi Library, James M. Robinson, general editor. I did an extensive rewrite and even proposed an early stage of Thomas’ sayings in an addendum. The title of my book, as suggested by the publisher, became The Jesus of Heresy and History, the Discovery and Meaning of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Library.  I did not like the word ‘meaning’ in the subtitle, for I don’t pretend to make theological judgments on the contents.”

So, there you have it: a nice of summary of Dart’s writings about the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library, which contained the only complete copy of the Gospel of Thomas that has survived from antiquity. He co-wrote (with Ray Reigert) Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus: The Discovery and Text of the Gospel of Thomas (1998), which was released in a revised form as The Gospel of Thomas: Unearthing the Lost Words of Jesus (2000), and wrote The Laughing Savior: The Discovery and Significance of the Nag Hammadi Gnostic Library (1976), which was released in a revised edition as The Jesus of Heresy and History: The Discovery and Meaning of the Gnostic Nag Hammadi Library (1998).

I greatly appreciate Dart’s feedback on my earlier post and hope that I will be able to engage many more authors in a similar manner as the blog progresses. I want this blog to have as much interaction between authors and readers as possible.

I’ve updated the Gospel of Thomas Resource Center so that it lists the most recent edition of Dart’s book, revising the annotation to indicate that J.D. Crossan’s commentary was moved to the front of the book in the revised edition to serve as its introduction.