Class Notes: Q [1980]

[Notes, 22 April 1980]

I

 had a class in Q; we looked at isolated sayings of Jesus—the Agrapha, dialogues with the resurrected savior, papyrus discoveries. Dr. Robinson spent some time telling us all about these finds which have been discovered around the turn of the century and which no one has even examined yet because of various peculiarities in the law (see, in this one case the discoverer has the first right to publish the material, but he died twenty or thirty years ago, and so now apparently the material will have to wait until the resurrection…).

He also told us (indirectly) why it was that [a museum director] had a volume of essays published in his honor which gave a complete listing of his publications when the man is not a scholar. (I had wondered about that, by the way.) Dr. Robinson didn’t give the names, but I instantly recognized what he was talking about, and it seems that the only scholars who were able to get access to [certain] documents for some time were those who did favors for the director of the __ museum—and this was one of the favors.

He had a great comment about R. McL. Wilson to the effect that not many other scholars who had had so few original ideas have spent their time so usefully.