Date: Tue, 13 May 1997 20:58:23 -0400 (EDT)
From: William Arnal <warnal@chass.utoronto.ca>
cc: crosstalk@info.harpercollins.com
Subject: Re: Arnal's Gnosticism
On Wed, 14 May 1997, Ian Hutchesson wrote:

> Steve listed a number of different streams within wisdom thought a few weeks
> back. Ben Sirach uses several of these categories, so I wonder would you
> want to start dividing it up saying that this stuff about Wisdom personified
> is later accretion? I'd think that there is no coherent way to make such a
> separation as you have done with GThom without any contemporary contextual
> materials. I also think Ben Sirach was versed in the various streams of
> wisdom tradition and used them. Is the situation any different with GThom?

Oh no! Now I know how Kloppenborg feels: you say, "I'm dividing up
this text on literary grounds," and then you assign labels to the
divisions you've generated, and then people assume you've generated
the divisions on the basis of the labels. I think that the sayings
Davies (accurately!) listed are secondary accretions NOT because
they are somehow self-evidently Gnostic in a way that earlier
material is not (both are essentially continuous with each other in
terms of "wisdom" possibilities -- as is the case with the purported
strata of Q). Instead, I noticed that, like Q, Thomas shows a
pattern of clumping one set of themes primarily in one set of
sayings, and another clump of themes in different sayings. This
suggests that the interests that motivated the collection of one set
were different than those which motivated the collection of the
other set. The characteristics I describe as typical of the
secondary layer are not arguments for their being gnostic, but are
arguments for their thematic and formal unity as a sub-collection.
Steve's observation about their "if . . . then" structure (which I
wish *I* had noticed! what a great observation) just strengthens the
case. Now, it seemed to me that this body of material that could be
isolated as secondary is most easily categorized as "gnostic": its
themes and interests seem to resemble gnostic interests more than
Thomas' earlier material at any rate. But if you prefer the label
"proto-gnostic" or "esoteric Jewish wisdom" or whatever, that's fine
with me.

> I think Herr Davies has a valid point that those text we know to be gnostic
> go to great lengths to make things as least obscure as possible.

I completely disagree. What about the Gospel of Philip. What about
the Gospel fo Truth? The Gospel of the Egytians? "EEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.
OOOOOOOOOOOOOO. IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII. YYYYYYYYYYYYY." etc.
	In any case, Thomas is only superficially obfuscating, or
pseudo-obscure. It tries to make its points of reference unclear,
but still kinda gives the game away quite easily.

> Bill, I think you are aware of appropriation of ideas from earlier works.
> Christians appropriated a lot from the Jews. The pseudo-Paulines
> appropriated a lot from Paul. I would need to see a lot more argumentation
> of your interesting points here before I would go past this idea of
> appropriation as the connection between GThom and the later works. You may
> in fact be right, but I can't see how you could possibly show you are
> without a lot mroe evidence.

Fair enough. To say that Thomas is gnostic would then be sorta like
saying Deuetro-Isaiah is Christian. At the same time, though, Thomas
does seem to have a coherent point of view theologically, and that
view is better captured by the label "gnostic" in my opinion than by
other labels. That has nothing to do with where the ideas came from.

> Incidentally, is there some open war between you two? If so, I think you
> should kiss and make up. We can make more advancement if you are on the same
> side. Can we get back to "Bill" and "Steve"?

I don't think there's a war going on. On the issue of Thomas'
independence and early date, Davies and I, I think, entirely agree.
But he always jumps on me on this gnostic stuff -- maybe he figures
once I quit saying all this silly stuff about gnosticism I might
have some good thoughts about Thomas. Or maybe I flatter myself.

Bill