Subj : Bible
To   : John Wilson
From : Curtis Johnson
Date : Sun Nov 05 2000 11:27 pm

 CJ> here is the discovery by Morton Smith of a letter by Clement in
 CJ> which he quotes texts that Clement claimed were part of the
 CJ> original Gospel of Mark and which were to be read only among a
 CJ> secret inner circle.

 JW> A very interesting book. "New Testament Abstracts" carried a lot
 JW> of commentary/reviews of his book, mostly putting it down and
 JW> sometimes impling that Dr. Smith was pulling a leg...

	Clement's letter itself seems to be accepted as genuine
by heavy-duty scholars.  I don't think Smith was trying to pull a
leg--he'd spent two decades trying to tease out the implications of
his find.  Even soft-core true believers would likely to be unsettled
by the straightforward implications of the letter.
	Head of Columbia U's New Testament Studies dept. and on the
board of _Biblical Archeology Review_, Smith had impeccable 
credentials.  
 
 JW> "The Gnostic Gospels" Yes!

 JW> There is a new edition of the translation of the "Naj Hamaddi
 JW> Library" The first edition was a great book...one I wanted to read
 JW> since I first read the Gospel of Thomas....

	I have the first edition (the Robinson one).  I'm not sure what
you mean by "new edition":  I know that some of the books have been
favorites for scholars to do their own translation.  (There's three
or four different translations of GThomas floating around on the Web,
for example.)
	A fully annotated edition would, of course, be welcome.  

 JW> Interesting how quickly the Church assumed a hierarchical
 JW> authoritarian position...and the Gnostics didn't...is there a
 JW> lesson here? :-)

	Pagels thought organization v. lack of organization a major
factor in the defeat of the Gnostics.




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