New views of New Testament formation(?)

[Clive]

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!

"God is the womb"

Sounds quite Celtic! Foolish Galatians, who has bewitched you? Women are to keep silent.

[Leucius Charinus]

Thanks again MrMacson. Some interesting tweets ...

NHC

tweets by Westar ...

Students, when allowed access to Nag Hammadi & other texts, are moved by them. They are not second-rate. #NewNT

Compared with a number of these NHC texts the canonical texts are second rate IMO.

Students and faculty alike realized they had to learn Coptic, no matter how old they were, to truly engage with the texts. #NewNT

So true. The Daimon is in the details.

People began to ask, "Why aren't these texts in my Bible?" That motivated the publication of A New New Testament.

It's ONLINE already: http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhlcodex.html

Thunder: The Perfect Mind is an early Christian text picked up in the public by the arts, like the #poet Toni Morrison

Since when is Pefect Mind a Christian text?

• "I, I am godless, and I am the one whose God is great."
  
  
  The Thunder - Perfect Intellect, takes the form of an extended, riddling monologue, in which an immanent saviour speaks a series of paradoxical statements concerning the divine feminine nature. These paradoxical utterances echo Greek identity riddles, a common poetic form in the Mediterranean [WIKI]

"Why was Thunder: The Perfect Mind in the Nag Hammadi jar? Why did the community want it? Applying it to Jesus?"

That's a good question ...

• For what is inside of you is what is outside of you,
  and the one who fashions you on the outside
  is the one who shaped the inside of you.
  And what you see outside of you,
  you see inside of you;
  it is visible and it is your garment.

Sounds like the four "inside" and "outside" references in the Gospel of Thomas.

But it's not dated anywhere near as early as Thomas.

• As to dating, Anne McGuire writes: "Thunder, Perfect Mind exists only in the Coptic version found at Nag Hammadi (NHC VI,2:13,1-21,32). The author, date, and place of composition are unknown, but a cultural milieu like that of second- or third-century Alexandria is plausible. In any case, it is clear that the text was originally composed in Greek well before 350 C.E., the approximate date of the Coptic manuscript.

When did 'Christians' first start collecting documents? We don't know, but Q & Thomas represent the simplest possible form. #NewNT

No one in the 3rd century talks about collections at all. Was this really a steady march toward authority?

The NHC contain a very unusual collection of stories.
http://www.gnosis.org/naghamm/nhlcodex.html


LC

[Blood]

Oh great, more Bible scholar tweets from SBL.

This is embarrassing, it really is.

[MrMacSon]

Oh great, more Bible scholar tweets from SBL.

This is embarrassing, it really is.

aww, c'mon

Comments like these are interesting -

The majority of all early Christian texts found recently have been in North Africa #NewNT #history

Researchers have processed only 10% of what has been discovered. Of that we already have 2 new fragmentary gospels.

Because so many texts still need to be processed, there may be more to discover in American museums than on archaeological digs.

Taussig: When new texts were received by the guild, the assumption was that they were second-rate or heretical


What if canonization was about ensuring diversity of the field? We tend to assume it was a narrowing task.


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.

[Bertie]

The guild ought to be crowdsourcing work on the papyri a lot more than they do. Given what is said to be a huge backlog in processing them, priority ought to be given to quality scans of them online with whatever other information about each artifact that can be written quickly and let people work.

[Leucius Charinus]

The backlog probably refers to the Oxyrhynchus papyri. Grenfell and Hunt employed local Egyptians at a few pence per day to gather up the fragments from over seventeen ancient rubbish dumps around Oxyrhynchus. The fragments were then securely packed in biscuit tins and placed into a series of over 900 brief cases sized boxes and sent back to Oxford in the early twentieth century. Perhaps detailed academic analysis has made its way through at least 128 boxes (I got that figure quite some years ago. I don't know where they're up to in 2014)


LC

[Bertie]

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.

[Sheshbazzar]

What if canonization was about ensuring diversity of the field? We tend to assume it was a narrowing task.

'Canon' was simply a listing of what books were most read, quoted and believed to be authentic accounts by most early Christian church authorities.
Early on there was no 'closed' canon and texts proliferated into the hundreds bringing in all kinds of fantastic stories adapting ideas and motifs from many sources and philosophies, leading to some very unorthodox beliefs and practices.
The mainstream (orthodox) stuck with the basic NT texts that were well known, established in church tradition, readily available and accepted for preaching and teaching by the majority of Christian preachers, teachers, and their congregations.
While at first these apocryphal or fringe texts were tolerated but mostly ignored and marginalized ...but when schisms and competing cults began to proliferate. The orthodox mainstream branded them 'heretical' and those who used them to be 'heretics'.
This is when prominent church clerics (and their majority membership congregations ('catholic')) began to lay down the law as to exactly which 'NT books 'could be publicly read or quoted during their Sunday services.
Not really so much a 'narrowing' but a set of limiting, restricting rules. Which in the course of time became extreme in their penalties, finally to the point where even private possession of certain unauthorized religious texts would earn one an immediate Church sanctioned execution.

We are back to where you can freely read anything, and preach any form of 'gospel you damn well please, ...but still not In any 'catholic' 'orthodox' church.

[Leucius Charinus]

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.

This is an entirely subjective judgement. What connotations are involved in "being honest" about it?
Why for example is Mark brilliant and Thomas dull? Are we not comparing "conditioned & developed tastes"?



LC

[outhouse]

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.

There is no reason it would not be talked about or brought up. Could be where he talked about content of his 50 bibles ordered not long after.

Canonization, no. But it was in the works.