From: "Stevan Davies" <miser17@epix.net>
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Date:          Fri, 16 May 1997 16:30:35 +0000
Subject:       Re: More on GosThom apud Hippolytus
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> So, Steve, would you agree with Puech that the Naassenes 
seem to have altered
> GosThom #4-5 in a Gnostic direction, just as they seemed 
to have altered
> #3 to focus on a "blessed nature, at once hidden and 
revealed, of things
> past, present, and to come, WHICH IS the kingdom of the 
heavens sought
> within man"? And thus in the case of CopThom #3-5 
vs Ref, unlike the case
> of CopThom #11 vs Ref, CopThom is less altered and, 
indeed, without the
> overt Gnostic touch of the Ref version?

Umm, ahh, yes. That's right.

If Thomas is riddles to be answered by a novice in the presence of an 
authority, and we do not know what the hemeneutic principles are that
were supposed to be used, then we seem to be stuck. If you ask what 
Thomas' redactional authorial technique was, it seems to be that he
took enigmas (Jesus' sayings) and added riddles (Arnal stuff) to 
them. Then folks (gnostics then, scholars now) try to answer the 
riddles.

Tom wrote:
"For those not initiated into the mysteries of these technicalities, a
number of people have tried to explain "the fourteenth aeon" in the
Naassene version of #4 ("He who seeks me will find me in children of 
seven years upward, for there hidden in the fourteenth aeon am I 
revealed")  using such things as the Gnostic second Book of
Jeu, which speaks of "the great God, who  . . . is called the great and
righteous" to be sought "in the fourteenth aeon" or "the fourteen
great aeons of light" in a Manichaean document called the Kephalaia
(Hennecke/Schneemelcher 1963:280). Puech follows Hippolytus' use of
Hippocrates, arguing that the explanation in Hippolytus fits hand in 
glove into the Naassene Gnostic myth of Christ, the perfect Man, pre-
sented in Ref 5."

Can we, do you think, legimately bounce back and forth between
The Naasseene Gnostic myth of Christ from Ref. 5
The Manichean Kephalaia
The Second Book of Jeu
with quite as much happy abandon as does Puech? 

Greek Thomas has 
"Let the old man who is full of days not
hesitate to ask the child of seven days about the place of life;
then he will live." 

Luke 10:21 has
"I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you
have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed 
them to little children."

I don't know what to make of all this. 

> Hoping for another quotation from GTCW, Tom

No no. Too much of a good thing will spoil you.

Steve