Why I Study the Christian Apocrypha
I have been working recently on an introduction to a book on the Christian Apocrypha aimed at a popular audience. The introduction contains a short autobiographical section on what attracted me to study the Christian Apocrypha. I thought it might be of some interest to readers of Apocryphicity.
Why am I such an advocate for the Christian Apocrypha? Have I been “burned…by orthodox Christianity” as Ben Witherington suggests (in The Gospel Code: Novel Claims About Jesus, Mary Magdalene and Da Vinci [Downers Grove, Ill: InterVarsity Press, 2004], p. 172-174, and What Have They Done With Jesus? Beyond Strange Theories and Bad History—Why We Can Trust the Bible [San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2006], p. 4-5)? Am I trying to prove I am a “good critical scholar” by “discrediting” the New Testament? Or have I been “misled…by the powers of darkness”? I hope the answer to all of these questions is no. But the answer is connected to faith—or more rightly, a reaction to a faith once held.
I grew up in England in a Roman Catholic home, though my family was not particularly devout. My father was greatly interested in religious questions—Who was Jesus? What happens when we die? Did Marian apparitions truly occur? When will the apocalypse happen?—but not overly concerned with religious practice; indeed, we rarely attended church. But I did believe. I believed the gospels were written by the apostles of Jesus, I believed I had to be good if I wanted to avoid eternal damnation, and I …
Acadia Divinity College's Lee Martin MacDonald, author of The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (1995; 2nd ed. Hendrickson, 2007) and co-editor of The Canon Debate (Hendrickson 2002), has recently released Forgotten Scriptures: The Selection and Rejection of Early Religious Writings (WJK 2009).The title is somewhat misleading–it reads as if it is a collection of apocryphal texts, when in reality it is a study of the canon selection process for the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. MacDonald is a true expert on this topic and what he has to say is an excellent corrective to the anti-CA apologists (often discussed here) whose knowledge of canon-selection (and its implications for the study of the CA) tends to be limited and constrained by their faith commitments. I may have occasion to post on some of MacDonald's observations at a later date.