Date: Fri, 9 May 1997 11:47:31 +0200
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
From: mc2499@mclink.it (Ian Hutchesson)
Subject: Re: SV: SV: here's your proof.
Sender: owner-crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Precedence: bulk

Antonio might have spared reposting all of Steve's coherent letter, as he
had nothing to say about it. (It is normal that we don't repost what we
don't comment on.)

[Steve:] 
>> I'm probably going to bow out of this discussion pretty soon too.
>> There's just no end to it, and there must be better things to do, 
>> like figure out mayans or, re: crosstalk lately, discuss actual 
>> gnostics. But, for the nonce...

[Antonio:]
>I'm leaving the discussion now - at least with Stevan Davies.
>Steve is obviously the only one who really understands
>gnosticism on this planet. Scholars like Marvin Meyer
>are totally ignorant etc etc etc..
>Again, a waste of time...

Antonio loves recourse to authority. The problem with this authority is that
it seems to be doing the same thing that "authorities" in the dss have done
for just as long: project back from documents centuries after that which one
is dealing with (in the dss it was from Mishna, in the case of GThom it is
Nag Hammadi). Obviously with Nag Hammadi gnosticism there will be some
connection with GThom because they preserved it, but, whereas you can go
forward from GThom to Nag Hammadi, you cannot go back from Nag Hammadi to
GThom. This is logically unjustifiable: you can't say anything about the
significance of a document based on what another document says centuries
later. Projecting gnostic significances onto GThom first requires that you
establish that it is in fact gnostic. The act of projecting back doesn't do
so. You have no forerunners to GThom that have been identified, other than
the form relationship with wisdom texts.

We should be used to "authority" attacking a difficult document that
challenges the status quo. This doesn't say much about the document, just
the "authority".

I have seen no case that is not anachronistic in its approach to the
supposed gnosticism of GThom.

Steve, come back, we want you.

Yours, all,

Ian








>I think this is the end of the road, Steve. I thought I was
>dealing with a serious and intellegent scholar.

This is one sick w**k*r.