Apocryphicity

A Blog Devoted to the Study of Christian Apocrypha

Month: May 2007

Expository Times Christian Apocrypha Volume

by Tony
Earlier this month April DeConick mentioned on her blog, the Forbidden Gospels, a series of articles from the Expository Times on apocryphal gospels. You can see her original post HERE. I mention this post now because, thanks to April, I have been asked to contribute a piece on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. These articles run about 6000 words, thus representing a decent introduction to the text and to current scholarship. If you do not have access to the journal, there will be a collection available next year similar to the volume by Paul Foster on the Apostolic Fathers (The Writings of the Apostolic Fathers).
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Manuscript Collating for Dummies

by Tony
I have added to my homepage Collating for Dummies, a tongue-in-cheek guide to manuscript research that I created back in 2000 for a presentation on my graduate work (which involved preparing a critial edition of the Greek manuscripts of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas). It is aimed specifically at acquiring and editing manuscripts of Christian Apocrypha, though it can be useful to novices in any area of text criticism. The guide is a little out-of-date now (I no longer even have the software I used to create it) but I'm in no hurry to revise it. I have dragged it out a few times in the intervening years to pass on to students the lessons I learned preparing the critical edition. Enjoy.
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New Developments in the Study of the Syriac Infancy Gospel of Thomas

by Tony

As part of my efforts to unravel the complexities of the transmission history of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, I have begun the process of collecting and collating the various Syriac manuscripts of the text. The Syriac tradition of IGT is very important—it is among the earliest evidence we have for the text (two manuscripts are from the 5/6th century) and it is the best witness for the “short” version of the text, a version that is likely to be closer to the original than the longer versions we have in the Greek manuscripts.

The evidence for Syriac IGT comes in three forms:

1. Two manuscripts featuring a compilation of the Protevangelium of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the Assumption of the Virgin. One of these (London, British Library, Add. 14484 of the sixth century; =SyrW) was published in 1865. The second (Göttingen, Universitätsbibliothek, Syr. 10 of the fifth or sixth century; =SyrG) was collated against the first in 1993/1994. I have obtained copies of both manuscripts and confirmed their contents. Both contain apparent omissions (that is, when compared with what is known about the short version from other witnesses): SyrW is missing sections of chs. 6, 7 and 15; SyrG is missing sections of chs. 4, 5, 7, 19 and all of chs. 14 and 15.

2. The Nestorian Life of Mary: this compilation includes the Protevangelium of James, material incorporated also in the Arabic Infancy Gospel, IGT, episodes from the
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More Anti-Apocrypha Apologetic: Ben Witherington’s “What Have They Done With Jesus?”

by Tony

WitheringtonOne of my on-going research projects involves tracing how the CA are received by scholars and the general public. I have posted here before on some anti-CA apologetic books (including Craig Evans’ Fabricating Jesus, discussed HERE). I have just completed reading Ben Witherington III’s What Have They Done With Jesus: Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History—Why We Can Trust the Bible (San Francisco: Harper, 2006) and thought I’d post some initial observations about it here.

First, the book’s title is somewhat misleading. It has less to do with explicitly countering other scholars’ claims as it is about a summary of Witherington’s past work on the Historical Jesus. Though several recent books by liberal scholars (Pagels, Ehrman, et al) are discussed early in the book and James Tabor’s The Jesus Dynasty is singled out for criticism in the epilogue, on-the-whole the book interacts little with the “strange theories and bad history” mentioned in its title.

The book is structured similarly (and perhaps not accidentally) to Bart Ehrman’s recent Peter, Paul and Mary Magdalene, offering chapters on various figures in Jesus’ life. Witherington believes this the best method to learn about Jesus—by examining the “impact crater” he left behind. Of course this method necessitates determining whether certain sources were or were not written by their putative authors. And, as can be expected, Witherington believes virtually the entire corpus of the NT is not pseudonymous. As a result, these texts are most reliable for recovering the historical Jesus and early …

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