Date: Sat, 14 Mar 1998 15:42:42 +0000
From: Stevan Davies <miser17@epix.net>
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: GThomas and the church at Corinth

Paul Miller wrote

>  I would like to list some passages
> from 1Cor. that seem to suggest that, even though Paul was writing
> against those teaching "hidden wisdom", instead of "christ crucified",
> Paul also taught hidden wisdom to the "mature".

I think this is unquestionably true. Wish I knew what it was he 
taught.

Josephus' "dicourse to the Greeks on Hades" 
Section 7 has: 

7. "And now, if you Gentiles will be persuaded by these motives, and 
leave your vain imaginations about your pedigrees, and
gaining of riches, and philosophy, and will not spend your time about 
subtleties of words, and thereby lead your minds into
error, and if you will apply your ears to the hearing of the inspired 
prophets, the interpreters both of God and of his word, and
will believe in God, you shall both be partakers of these things, and 
obtain the good things that are to come; you shall see the
ascent unto the immense heaven plainly, and that kingdom which is 
there. For what God hath now concealed in silence [will be
then made manifest,] what neither eye hath seen, nor ear hath heard, 
nor hath it entered into the heart of man, the
things that God hath prepared for them that love him."

This last bit is both in 1 Cor and in GThomas which has always been 
thought to indicate some link between Paul's Wisdom stuff and GTh. 
I've never seen a ref. to Josephus on Hades for it. 

http://198.60.209.124/josephus/hades.htm

It's also behind 1 John 1:1-3. Never saw a ref. to that either. 

Very odd.

Steve