The Thunder: Perfect Mind -- Early Christian Texts Discussions

Early Christian Texts Discussions – Presented by the Tanho Center

Monday, July 22, 2019 Discussion

Topic: The Thunder: Perfect Mind

Presenter: Hal Taussig

The Thunder: Perfect Mind was found in a jar in the Egyptian desert in 1945 along with 51 other documents in what has come to be called "The Nag Hammadi Library." Much more widely known than all but one of the other 51 documents, “Thunder” is already being celebrated and taken seriously by hundreds of thousands. Nobel Prize winning author, Toni Morrison, quotes it as the epigraph for two of her novels. Multiple Oscar award-winning director Ridley Scott has made a film about it. Julia Dash, the first African American woman director in Hollywood opened her award-winning full-length film, Daughters of the Dust with an eight-minute quote from “Thunder.” A key chapter in Umberto Eco’s famous novel, Foucault’s Pendulum, features this document from the Egyptian sands. Leading early Christianity scholar, Elaine Pagels, probably is most responsible for spreading the news about “Thunder,” quoting it extensively in her popular books. In 2013 “Thunder” was one of ten newly discovered ancient texts added to A New New Testament by an international Council of spiritual leaders and scholars and published broadly by Houghton, Mifflin, Harcourt. University of Pennsylvania professor Andrew Lamas calls this poem “one of the ten most important documents in history.”

This is a recording of the discussion.

There is a complete transcript here:
https://earlychristiantexts.com/the-thunder-perfect-mind-discussion/#transcript

More info on the Monday Textual Discussions can be found on the Early Christian Texts website here:
https://earlychristiantexts.com/early-christian-texts-discussions/

The text being used and a transcript of the discussion can be found here:
https://earlychristiantexts.com/the-thunder-perfect-mind-excerpt/