Apocryphicity
A Blog Devoted to the Study of Christian Apocrypha
Month: December 2009
New Apocrypha Collection from Oxford
Oxford University Press is releasing in June a new collection of Christian Apocrypha, The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations, compiled by Bart Ehrman and Zlatko Plese. It is touted as a multi-lingual collection–i.e., it features the texts in their original languages as well as in English. The table of contents shows that it features the typical texts one finds in such collections, though the Acts of Pilate material is unusually extensive. The contents also lists the curious item of "Infancy Gospel of Thomas C." You can read more about it HERE.
More Christian Apocrypha
I mentioned in a previous post several texts that tend to be omitted from "New Testament Apocrypha" collections and thus have been neglected in scholarship. Typically this is because they are relatively late texts and thus fall outside of the temporal parameters of the formation of the New Testament. As a means of attracting attention to these texts I have added a new page (More Christian Apocrypha) to my site focusing on the texts. At the moment it is little more than a list of the material but I will add more information to the page when time permits. Any suggestions for additions and general improvement would be appreciated.
Christian Apocrypha at 2010 SBL
[Since I was not able to attend this year's SBL in New Orleans, I asked Harvard alum and CA scholar Brent Landau to provide this summary for us. Thanks Brent.]
I was only able to attend two of the three Christian Apocrypha sessions at the SBL this year, having missed the session that focused on “Animals as Symbols and Metaphors in Apocryphal Texts.” But the sections I attended had a range of very interesting topics.
The first session (22-210, Sunday 1:00-3:30) was an open session, with papers on the Pseudo-Clementines, the figure of Joseph, and the Protevangelium of James.
Dominique Côté from the University of Ottawa presented a paper entitled “Prophecy in the Pseudo-Clementines.” His basic argument was that the Ps-C are engaged in a conflict with Neoplatonic philosophy, its conception of “the True Prophet” being set over against Greek philosophical thought. Specifically, Côté contends that the Ps-C are responding to Porphyry of Tyre, the student of Plotinus who may also have advised Diocletian during his early fourth-century persecution of Christians. Nicole Kelley of Florida State University was Côté’s respondent, and was generally persuaded by his thesis. She observed that Côté’s work was part of a recent trend in Ps-C scholarship that attempts to understand the Ps-C as late antique (3rd-4th c.) documents rather than seeking after a 1st or 2nd c. primitive core (the so-called Grundschrift or “Basic Writing”).
Reidar Aasgaard from the University of Oslo, with a copy in hand of his …
A Debate on Secret Mark?
Peter Jeffery, author of The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled, added a comment to my post from a few weeks ago on the Secret Mark articles in Biblical Archeological Review. He wrote:
I did not write for BAR because I was never asked to. I didn't know there would be a special issue on the Secret Gospel until it was actually out. If I had been asked and given a reasonable deadline I would have written something. Koester was not on the 2008 SBL panel but spoke from the floor. I was not on that panel either because I wasn't asked to be. Nor was I permitted to publish a response to Brown's RBL review. "When is a real scholarly debate about Secret Mark going to happen?" you ask. When people start including me.
First, my mistake, Koester was not on the panel; he’s just such a big presence, I guess, that my memory elevated him to featured speaker (heh). More to the point, Jeffery’s comment has led me to thinking about what would be an appropriate forum for a full debate on the text. One of the problems with the SBL panel is that the panelists did not adequately respond to one another’s evidence for forgery/hoax—Brown and Pantuck did respond to points previously made by Carlson, but Carlson and the other panelists did not respond to Brown and Pantuck. But to be fair, Carlson et al should be granted opportunity to prepare a cogent rebuttal. Another problem …
Review of Tim Newton’s The Forgotten Gospels
The new Review of Biblical Literature has a review of a new CA collection/commentary by Tim Newton: The Forgotten Gospels: Life and Teachings of Jesus Supplementary to the New Testament: A New Translation (Berkley, Calif.: Counterpoint, 2009).