[Robert Pirani]

At 06:42 PM 12/29/99 -0700, you wrote:
>A little research turns up quite a few informed opinions about the Gospel
>of Thomas. Here's one:
>
><snip>
>... I shall first argue that in no meaningful historical sense is Thomas
>"gnostic."
While I'm sure Davies has some interpretation that can support this
argument, its pretty clear that his opinion is not shared by all experts in
this area since The Gospel of Thomas is quite often included in discussions
and translations of Gnostic writings as in Bentley Layton's "The Gnostic
Scriptures". 

> Then I shall show that
>although Thomas is by no means a systematic document, it does have a
>comprehensible set of ideas, which are, for the most part, drawn from the
>Jewish Wisdom and apocalyptic traditions. 

This seems spot on. It is pretty clear that all the Gospels both canonical
and heretical are compilations of sayings, stories and ideas from a wide
variety of sources and traditions. So it should be expected that there is
much in all of Gospels that are considered part of "Gnosticism" that are
originally from non-Gnostic and even non-Judeo/Christian sources.

I'm not sure why I've  always found the Gnostics so interesting, but I
thank you for pointing out another source to explore.

Regards,
Robert