From: "Stevan Davies" 
To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Date:          Sat, 3 May 1997 20:12:54 +0000
Subject:       Re: Patterson and Thomas


> Here is
> what Patterson says in "Q Thomas Reader" (1990):
> 
> "Is then GThomas gnostic? Even though it does presuppose
> all the complex mythological framewirk to be found in the
> writings of some of the later second and third cenury gnostic 
> schools, such as that of Valentinus and the Sethians, in
> view of the kinds of sayings cited above, one must say that
> in the most general sense, it is indeed gnostic.
>But it is also undeniably a work of late Jewish Wisdom.

Patterson here has the advantage of writing in 1990. I wrote about
ten years before. At that time it was almost invariably the case that
scholars argued "Thomas is Gnostic and therefore it is Gnostic
in the sense of other Gnostics such as Valentinus and Sethians
and Manicheans and so on and so forth. Further, they concluded 
that since Thomas was Gnostic in the manner of Valentinus and
Sethians and Manicheans it must of necessity be expressing
ideas contemporary with such Gnostics, i.e. second, third century.

Maybe a sentence like  "in the most general sense, it is indeed 
gnostic. But it is also undeniably a work of late Jewish Wisdom"
is not untrue... in any event I'm not prepared to argue against it,
but where exactly it gets you I don't know. What has bothered me
for donkey's years is the fact that folks are very prone to argue
that Thomas "in the most general sense, it is indeed gnostic"
and then draw unsustainable conclusions from that nearly tautological 
fact (nearly tautological because the definition of "in the most
general sense" is likely to be based on the contents of Thomas
itself).

So, sure, we can agree "Thomas is gnostic!" Now what conclusions
follow from this?

Patterson continues..........
" In fact one
of the most important things Thomas tells us about the
theological trends of the first century is how easily the sort
of countercultural wisdom promulgated in Thomas, and
elsewhere in early Christianity, could modulate into a
purely gnostic way of thinking."

I was going to mount an attack on this nonsense but I cannot
make enough sense of it to find anything to counter. A "most
general sense gnostic" text (which is now "countercultural wisdom")
modulates? huh? modulates? into purely gnostic.... which is what?
Sethianism? If so he's just wrong. If not then I don't know what 
purely gnostic might possibly mean.

And then......
" The counter-cultural bent
of Thomas'wisdom sayings is not far from the anti-cosmic
stance taken by Gnosticism;"

This shows no awareness of the actual contents of Nag Hammadi
Gnostic texts (or the Pistis Sophia, Books of Jeu, etc.). 
You read the one, Thomas, you read the other, say, Apocryphon
of John. Nobody, having done both, could come up with "is not
far from..." Maybe there is some other Gnosticism apart from the
texts themselves known to Patterson that I'm unaware of. If not
he just doesn't know the subject.

continuing, he writes, 
"it is but a small step from
wisdoms'quest for meaning and insight into the human 
condition to the gnostic notion of self-recognition as the
key to salvation. In GThomas, proper understanding of the
world and true self-recognition is made possible through
the hearing of Jesus'words of wisdom". (page 99)

And now we're back to Jewish Wisdom and "most general sense 
gnostic." OK. But that little excursus in the middle is what 
I've always hated. "Not far from...." That is not so. It is quite
far from. It has nothing to do with. It's completely different than. 
But, by gum, if we can say "gnostic" of both by whatever definitions
we use, we suddenly can see that they are nearly the same. 

Sigh. I guess this will just go one forever until the One World
Government requires by law that anyone bandying around the
term "gnostic" must have read Eugnostos, the Paraphrase of Shem,
and the Pistis Sophia three times each.

Steve