New Books on Christian Apocrypha
This is the first of two posts reporting on the sessions on the Christian Apocrypha from the 2012 SBL Annual Meeting. Before I get to the papers, however, I just want to mention several books on the CA that I picked up at the conference.
David L. Eastman. Paul the Martyr: The Cult of the Apostle in the Latin West (SBL 2011). David is one of the contributors to the More Christian Apocrypha volumes. I have yet to look at the book closely, but it draws upon apocryphal Pauline texts, including some of the lesser known late "acts" literature (e.g., the Acts of Paul and Peter).
François Bovon and Christopher R. Matthews. The Acts of Philip: A New Translation (Baylor 2012). This first complete English translation of the Acts of Philip is long overdue. Bovon provides a brief introduction, discussing the new manuscripts used for the edition (published as CCSA 11), and the two contribute the translation. There are few notes and no commentary.
Christoph Markschies and Jens Schröter. Antike christliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung (Mohr Siebeck, 2012). I was very happy to be able to pick this up from SBL (rather than ordering it online) and at a pretty decent price ($102 US for the two-part first volume in softcover). I am looking forward to seeing what advances the editors have made over Schneemelcher's editions. Time to brush up on my German.
I also picked up the second volume of James H. Charlesworth's The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (now in an inexpensive paperback edition from Hendrickson), a reprint of Alan F. Segal's Two Powers in Heaven: Early Rabbinic Reports about Christianity and Gnosticism (2002; Baylor 2012), and Henry Wansborough's The Use and the Abuse of the Bible: A Brief History of Biblical Interpretation (T & T Clark 2010). The Wipf & Stock booth had a preview copy of the Secret Mark volume (available for sale as soon as we finish up the indices) and Eerdmans had a preview of Davila and Bauckham's new Old Testament Pseudepigrapha collection (catalog entry HERE; the street date is listed as June 2013).