From: "Stevan Davies" To: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com Date: Mon, 5 May 1997 15:48:46 +0000 Subject: re: P and GoT > >7 Jesus said, "Lucky is the lion that the human will eat, so that > >the lion becomes human. And foul is the human that the lion will eat, > >and the lion still will become human." James Covey wrote: > ok, straw poll, jesus seminar style: which pair of texts contains > allusions to the demiurge? no, don't start mailing coloured beads > to my p.o. box. (wait, hey, that could work. red = definite > gnostic reference, pink = sure sounds gnostic, grey = unlikely that > this could be gnostic, black = gnostic, my butt. hey stevan, > can't we convince you to move up to grey? maybe even pink?) Sure. Convince me! Do like the Jesus Seminar... first they have a paper read arguing one side and then a response that should bring up points in favor of the other side. They don't just sit down and drop beads in a bucket. [This practice of reading papers at the outset of discussions causes absolute methodological disaster IMO, but that's another story.] So far on crosstalk we have "Gee, it's a lion, it must be a demiurge." But that's a nothing. What's needed are references to gnostic texts where demiurges are lions that eat people and/or get eaten by people. Or at least something like that. Maybe there are such things, for all I know. Although, from all I know, there aren't. If there aren't then I suppose the only argument would be "If I were a gnostic I would have a demiurge lion that ate people." But then that conflicts with what actual gnostics thought about the demiurge, which is that he has got the wisdom of God trapped in people and this entrappment sustains him. So where would eating people enter into this? Where, on the other hand, is there any concept of people eating demiurges? I don't know of any. If the human eats the lion the lion becomes human. If the lion eats the human the lion becomes human. Now, I think this is simply nonsense unless you posit a scribal error so you'd have originally "If the lion eats the human the human becomes lion." This isn't nonsense.... although I don't know what the point of it would be. You defined allusion for me, but I'm not sure why. You can't say this is an allusion without some further comment as to what it is an allusion to. So what is it an allusion to in terms of gnostic thinking? See, this is the point. If people just vote on whether lions eating people +v.v. is gnostic without giving any REASON to think that this is gnostic all that happens is the creation of a scholarly myth that hasn't got anything demostrable to do with actual gnostic myth. And that's what's happened. People on crosstalk think that Thomas 7 sounds gnostic and presumably find their mutual agreement to be evidence (and they can cite authorities too, like Grant, Gaertner, etc. who themselves haven't given cogent reasons) but that's scholarly myth and still nothing. So you ask "can't we convince you" and the answer is sure, arguments based on evidence convince me. Make one. Or... if you can't and Arnal can't and others can't, that in and of itself should convince you that you are wrong. So far I haven't been convinced by Stephen Carlson, but he does present arguments based on evidence. Then I might say the evidence doesn't support the argument or the argument is flawed, but at least there are arguments, not nothings. Steve