Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 11:09:02 -0400 (EDT) From: William Arnal To: Stevan Davies cc: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Subject: Re: Arnal's Gnosticism I hope that someone or another will take up Davies' challenge to find a coherent perspective in the material I've designated as later accretions to Thomas. To clarify this a little, I want to quote from the paragraph in which I try to identify this material: In contradistinction to the sapiential stratum, another body of sayings in the Gospel of Thomas is characterized by a gnostic orientation, manifested most trenchantly in their invocation of gnostic mythological motifs [there's a footnote here attempting to justofy this outrageous statement]. One of the overriding formal characteristics of this stratum is its deliberate obscurity and corollary use of extratextual points of reference. Other shared formal features include the presence of named disciples, a tendency toward the dialogue form, the deliberate obfuscation of a saying's meaning by repeating the same or similar word but with different meanings, and the pairing, rather than clustering of similar sayings. Common thematic dimensions include the notion of becoming "one" (oua), "single" (ouot), or "alone" (monachos), an apparent reference to primordial unity and especially to androgyny; the belief that the "end" is in fact a return to the beginning; the expression of salvation in terms of the avoidance of death, and with the nomenclature of "living," and of "repose"; the use of the metaphor of consumption to describe one's mortal destruction by the material world; and references to "light," and to drinking from Jesus' mouth. That these specific features all derive from a single redaction is confirmed by their aggregation within single sayings. Bill _____________________________________ William E. Arnal Centre for the Study of Religion University of Toronto 123 St. George Street warnal@chass.utoronto.ca Toronto, Ontario M5S 2E8 (416) 761-9151