Because so many texts still need to be processed, there may be more to discover in American museums than on archaeological digs.
An indictment of the process; crowdsourcing needs to be at least
tried more than it is.
Taussig: When new texts were received by the guild, the assumption was that they were second-rate or heretical. #NewNT at #sblaar14
I don't think this is been true for decades; if anything, people overhype this stuff.
Students, when allowed access to Nag Hammadi & other texts, are moved by them. They are not second-rate. #NewNT
Most of the stuff really is second-rate, if you're honest about it. Compared to the brilliance of, say, Mark. (Although I do kinda like the Gospel of Judas in a guilty-pleasure sort of way).
Canonization of the #Bible is often falsely linked to Nicea. Nicea did not at all address the canon. We have very little info. #NewNT
Can't really stop repeating this point enough for the masses.
Thunder: The Perfect Mind is an early Christian text picked up in the public by the arts, like the #poet Toni Morrison
- later tweet "Why was Thunder: The Perfect Mind in the Nag Hammadi jar? Why did the community want it? Applying it to Jesus?"
Women play fascinating, provocative roles in texts like Thunder, Acts of Paul & Thecla, Gospel of Mary. #NewNT
Thecla is a fabulous figure of early #Christianity. After waiting & waiting on Paul, she finally baptizes herself!
Yes! Jazz, Paradise, possibly also Beloved respond to themes in Nag Hammadi's Thunder: The Perfect Mind
Feminists have been wishful thinking the gnostic gospels for decades. Some of the eisegesis they do to explain away that last saying in the Gospel of Thomas is as bad as any Scripture-twisting you'll see from a fundamentalist.
When did 'Christians' first start collecting documents? We don't know, but Q & Thomas represent the simplest possible form. #NewNT
Q doesn't exist and never did and Thomas is late. Our best active NT scholar, Goodacre, has demonstrated these points in overwhelming fashion.
Mark and John are dramatically different stories. Have we jumped the gun by claiming canonization is about NARROWING the field?
What if canonization was about ensuring diversity of the field? We tend to assume it was a narrowing task.
Now, this, actually is a very good point. There are competing explanations, for example it is said (say, by Ehrman) that including a somewhat deviant text along with other texts has the effect of causing the "deviant" text to be interpreted in a fashion along the lines of the other texts. That said, I've heard good cases for an "ecumenical" impulse behind the inclusion of differing texts, and going one step further to deliberate diversity is at least a plausible guess.
No one in the 3rd century talks about collections at all. Was this really a steady march toward authority?
The dearth of 3rd century texts (religious and secular) due to the crisis of that century probably ensures that this will only be a guess.
N. African bishop Athanasius in latter half of 4th century wrote his Easter letter, often declared the "start of the NT"
Can we really say a letter to a diocese consitutes the definitive beginning of the canon? Brakke cautions against overstating it.
Perhaps Athanasius' role was more to shift emphasis onto reading texts AS worship rather than studying/discussing
These theories could be wrong; the question of canonization is still very, very open.
Again, these are reasonable points.
Luther & the Gutenberg press made a big difference when they began handing out Bibles. Even he tried to kick out some books!
As someone who has a tiny bit of a soft-spot for Calvinism, a kinda-sorta wish he has managed to kick out the "Epistle of Straw". OK, that's a joke, people.
What if canonization is really a symptom or problem of the printing press?
Rhetorical overreach.
Language can be dramatically different in Nag Hammadi texts: "God is the womb" for instance!
#Gender-bending happens in Nag Hammadi texts. How would our thinking change if we took that seriously for Christian history?
Maybe we would notice gender-bending in the New Testament, too eg. Paul sees Jesus at times as Sophia herself.
Some Nag Hammadi texts recall themes in Isis, the powerful Egyptian goddess, proclaimed "the great I AM," all good, all powerful
In Thunder: The Perfect Mind the feminine speaker is flexible, contradicts herself, deconstructs caricatures of women
Oppositional caricatures of #women are often used to silence and suppress women. You're either a princess or a whore.
Even though Thunder is primarily interested in un-caricatured women, it's also interested in uncaricatured men.
Why was Thunder: The Perfect Mind in the Nag Hammadi jar? Why did the community want it? Applying it to Jesus?
More feminist wishful thinking. Look, people, Jesus, if he existed, preached more than anything that the Kingdom of God was coming to Judah. Like many eschatological movements, there was a temporary breakdown of social distinctions until people figured out that The End was not going to happen, at which point regular cultural norms get re-established. Sadly, there's no more feminism in all of this than that.