In Cape Town
It is my first trip to Africa. Cape Town is modern and beautiful. We are getting ready for the Lausanne Conference. Training our editors tomorrow all day. The video truck we are working with was used to feed the World Cup games to Japan. The internet pipe we have is what they used for that competition.
It is my first trip to Africa. Cape Town is modern and beautiful. We are getting ready for the Lausanne Conference. Training our editors tomorrow all day. The video truck we are working with was used to feed the World Cup games to Japan. The internet pipe we have is what they used for that competition.
Our role is for 16 people to take up to 200 video and session segments and summarize them for the sites around the globe linked to the conference. Our hope is that 5 hours after a session is done we have that sessions summary up and available. Three teams will work long shifts (almost 24/7 but not quite, more like 20/7).
I speak tonight to the Lausanne Conference on Jewish Evangelism and will take time to treat the theme of the giving of life through Christ as the core of the gospel (more than forgiveness of sins or death for sin). This is the theme of a book of mine out next month called Recovering the Real Lost Gospel: Rediscovering the Gospel as Good News. So we are at the starting line (Sunday night it all begins).
The Africans have been wonderful hosts. I look forward to a significant for God to work in the church.
6 Comments
Shaelene
Welcome to South Africa! May
Welcome to South Africa! May God Bless you in your work there, and may God bless the conference.
ozspen
SA supervisor says you are wrong
Dr Bock,
Since you are in South Africa, I would appreciate a comment about a South African situation that involves a statement that you made. I'm a committed evangelical, writing my PhD dissertation (dissertation only) with a major South African university. In a chapter I recently submitted to my supervisor, I wrote:
Bock (2002b:146-147) states that efforts to make the gospel of Thomas equal in value with the Synoptics and Q or to date it with the latter are "decidedly unhistorical" as most early church historians and New Testament scholars consider [The Gospel of Thomas] "as a heterodox early-second-century source".
My supervisor's response was:
Would you please be able to help me to understand how I can obtain information about most New Testament scholars and their views of the Gospel of Thomas? Please understand that my dissertation is in an area of historical Jesus' studies and there are many scholars who follow the line of the Jesus Seminar.
How would you support a statement that says your quote contains information that is "not trut", i.e. wrong?
I look forward to your response.
In Christ,
ozspen
Reference
Bock, D L 2002b. Studying the historical Jesus: A guide to sources and methods. Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic.
Darrell L. Bock
Gospel of Thomas
I think I am right. Thomas is a mixed or hybrid gospel, having some traditional sources like the four gospels plus other materials that are not so orthodox.
Check the following:
That will get you started. You can see my The Missing Gospels for other details as well. Sorry, I do not have page numbers (the book might) but a check of an index should get it. Sorry also to be slow to reply. I have been locked up in some 12 hour days of work.
ozspen
Most early historians & G of Thomas
Dr Bock,
Thanks so much for your response.
I have access to considerable material on the Gospel of Thomas, but my supervisor in South Africa does not believe your statement that "as most early church historians and New Testament scholars consider [The Gospel of Thomas] "as "a heterodox early-second-century source".
Dr Paul W. Barnett (Jesus & the Logic of History, 1997. Leicester, England: Apollos) states that the use of the non-canonical or spocryphal gospels such as the Gospel of Thomas, "is problematic. Historical method requires that all the sources be considered, with due weight given to early and underived sources. The Gospel of Thomas was written in the second century in Egypt, in a non-Palestinian religious ethos which is overtly gnostic" (p. 26).
Martin Hengel (The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ 2000:31) refers to "the often romance-like apocryphal literature, say the apostolic acts, but also the Gospel of Thomas", "the gnosticizing 'Gospel of Thomas'" (2000:60), "the secondary character of the earlier Greek version of the Gospel of Thomas" (2000:249 n 249).
My supervisor is quesioning your statement that most early church historians and New Testament scholars consider the Gospel of Thomas to be a heterodox early-second-century source.
How would you respond to this assertion against your scholarship? There are ample examples of the Gospel of Thomas being a Gnostic source, and thus heterodox in my understanding.
However, Nicholas Perrin (Thomas, the Other Gospel. London: SPCK 2007) takes a contrary view: "I disagree with those who say that the Gospel of Thomas is Gnostic…. But there is no hint that Thomas's Creator God is the same sadistic deity or pompous idiot that we meet in the Gnostic materials. Lacking these features, Thomas must be judged to be non-Gnostic. If it were Gnostic, that would certainly help those arguing for a second century date to make their point. But the case is otherwise" (pp. 12, 13).
How, then, would you support your statement that most early church historians and NT scholars consider GThom to be "a heterodox early-second-century source".
In Christ,
ozspen
P.S. I'm an Aussie, living in South-East Queensland, on the coast north of Brisbane.
Darrell L. Bock
Early Historians and Gospel of Thomas
Your citations from Barnett and Hengel make the point for me. Note what I said in the last response. Thomas is a hybrid. It has access to both more traditional sources and materials that reflect elements of Gnosticism. It does not have the creation story of Gnostic texts (so Perrin is correct here), but it does have the dualism and has sayings where proper knowledge in finding oneself is the point (such as saying 3). Those two themes are Gnostic or at least Gnostic like. I would say it is not s developed Gnosticism that shows up with Gnostic cosmology, but it is Gnostic in the emphasis it gives to dualism (negative on the material world and on the goal of self knowledge).
Darrell L. Bock
One other point
Remember Perrin is arguing for a late second century date for Thomas. It is important to that argument that the book not be Gnostic, since it was growing from the early second century. I do not agree with his dating, though it might be possible. But Gnosticism is more than cosmology in my view. For Perrin that cosmology is what defines Gnosticism. For me there are other indicators of its presence. The works you cited and that I noted see those features as pointing to contact with Gnostic ideas.