New Developments in the Syriac Tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas II

March 6, 2008 by Tony

Several months ago I posted an item here on the start of my investigation into the Syriac tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (available HERE). Since then I have made significant progress in obtaining manuscripts and have begun collating them against previously published editions. Inspired by Roger Pearse’s posts on Thoughts on Antiquity (the latest is available HERE) relating to his work on the ~~Onomasticon~~ by Eusebius (edit: the text he is studying is actually Quaestiones ad Stephanum et Marinum or “Gospel problems and solutions”), I thought I would offer this progress report on the project.

I began the project, as many do, with lists of unpublished manuscripts. These were provided long ago by Anton Baumstark (Geschichte der syrischen Literatur mit Ausschluss der christlich-palästinensischen Texte. Bonn: A. Marcus & E. Webers Verlag, 1922, p. 69 n. 12 and 99 n. 4) and more recently by S. C. Mimouni (“Les Vies de la Vierge; État de la question,” Apocrypha 5 [1994]: 239-243). The two lists were subsequently reproduced (and thus came to my attention) by Cornelia Horn in a paper she delivered at the Ottawa Apocrypha Conference in 2006 (“From Model Virgin to Maternal Intercessor: Mary, Children, and Family Problems in Late Antique Infancy Gospel Traditions”). Such lists are provisional; they are based on the bare information provided in catalogues, and some items come from word-of-mouth reports by colleagues. So, it is to be expected that the lists will contain some errors, which can …

Reflections on Teaching Gnosticism III: Valentinianism

February 28, 2008 by Tony

Despite my interest in Gnosticism and all things apocryphal, I must confess that I find reading one Gnostic cosmogogical myth after another rather tedious. I have speculated before that perhaps other young religious systems went through a similar process of crafting such myths before an official one (or two) became standard. For Christian and non-Christian Gnosticism we get to see mythmaking in process—in all its joys and pains.

So, I struggled a little this week to find something in our discussion of Valentinianism that would excite me, and therefore excite the class. We ambled through the lecture material—an overview of sources, a tour of Ptolemy’s myth, a catalogue of sacraments, and a peak here-and-there into some of the texts (including the Gospel of Truth, the Gospel of Philip, and the extant fragments of Valentinus’ works). Then we were left with an hour to do…something.

I decided to try our hand at Valentinian exegesis. I selected three pericopae from the gospels to examine: the Parable of the Sower, the Parable of the Unjust Judge, and the Woman with a Hemorrhage. The selection was somewhat random; I figured that we’d get more out of the endeavour if they were not obvious (the Johannine Prologue, for example, invites Gnostic exegesis and would be too easy). So the class was broken into groups and asked to do an allegorical reading of the pericopae—put more specifically, they were to read Valentinian cosmology and anthropology into (or is that out of?) the texts.

The …

Reflections on Teaching Gnosticism II: The Gospel of Judas

February 19, 2008 by Tony

The first assignment due in my current Gnosticism course is a translation comparison. The goal of the assignment is for students to see how much work is involved in putting together an edition of a text and how the editor’s decisions can greatly affect how one reads or understand the text. This is particularly so with fragmentary texts. In previous years I have used the translations of the Apocalypse of Adam in Layton’s Gnostic Scriptures and Robinson’s Nag Hammadi Library.

This year I opted for the Gospel of Judas by Marvin Meyer (The Nag Hammadi Scriptures) and April DeConick (The Thirteenth Apostle). I chose this text for three reasons: it is well-known to (though not well-read by) the wider public, the assignment would force the students to read the gospel very carefully and thus lead (hopefully) to a rewarding discussion of the text, and the interpretation of the text is highly contentious.

Meyer and DeConick have been in conflict over their particular interpretations of the text; their positions are available for all to read in an article on Meyer’s site (see HERE) and a series of responses on DeConick’s blog (see HERE). But I hoped the students would not see this exchange before writing the paper; it is preferred that they find the major contentious passages themselves and thereby avoid trying to understand why each scholar arrived at his/her position but focus purely on the general issue of the choices involved in the …

Manuscripts from the Deir al-Surian Monastery

February 18, 2008 by Tony

A story is making the rounds of the blogging world of a manuscript discovery from the Deir al-Surian monastery in Egypt. The story (found HERE) focuses on the recovery of a missing page of a codex housed at the British Library. The missing page, a list of Christian martyrs from Edessa in 411, was recently found beneath a floor in the monastery. But what is most interesting about the story (to me, at least) is the following:

The fragments were among hundreds discovered beneath a floor in the Deir al-Surian, which is itself a treasure trove of ancient books. Dr Brock and his colleague, Dr Lucas Van Rompay of Duke University in North Carolina, are now working on the first catalogue of the many manuscripts that are more than 1,000 years old.

Let’s hope some apocryphal texts will be found among the manuscripts.

Reflections on Teaching Gnosticism I: The Syllabus

February 12, 2008 by Tony

In 2007 I used the Apocryphicity blog as a host for some musings on the weekly classes of my course on the New Testament Apocrypha. I am now teaching the counterpart to that course: Gnosticism. Though a little late into the semester now, there’s no reason to let that prevent me from posting some thoughts on the course to date. We’ll begin with a discussion of the course syllabus (available HERE).

1. Course Texts. This is the third incarnation of the Gnosticism course. The first two versions were constructed around Kurt Rudolph’s Gnosis. I found Rudolph’s book useful but occasionally had to teach against it as some of his assertions about the origins of Gnosticism and of Mandaeism are now out-of-date. So I thought I’d try out Birger Pearson’s new book, Ancient Gnosticism: Traditions and Literature. So far I am not very happy with it. While I like how he divides his discussion into the various groups (Sethianism, Valentinianism, etc.), much of what Pearson does is summarize the material. He also makes numerous assertions about the origins of the texts without offering support (leaving the reader somewhat bewildered at how he arrives at the dates he provides). I will play out the year with the book but I do not think I will use it again. This is the first year also for Meyer et al’s new Nag Hammadi Library volume. In previous years I used Bentley Layton’s Gnostic Scriptures, which, alas is currently out-of-print. But …

Christian Apocrypha Session SBL 2008

November 13, 2017 by Tony

The deadline is fast approaching for proposals for the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. The meeting takes place in Boston, November 21-25. Anyone interested in submitting a proposal to the Christian Apocrypha Section (really, the only section that truly matters) can find details at THIS LINK. Proposals must be in by March 1. I will be there once again this year, this time presenting on my ongoing work on the Syriac Jacobite tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.