Month: November 2013

On Friday, November 1 world-renowned Christian Apocrypha scholar François Bovon died after a long illness. Many of us learned of his passing on Saturday; a formal statement from Harvard’s Dean David Hempton was issued on Monday. Among François’ many scholarly accomplishments are his work on recovering the text of the Acts of Philip and his involvement with AELAC, particularly his supervision of the first volume of the Écrits apocryphes chrétien collection.

I did not know François well but we did interact over the years. I became acquainted with his work when researching my doctoral thesis on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. I particularly valued his essay on “Editing the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles” for the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (1999) volume edited by François (with Ann Graham Bock and Christopher Matthews) and featuring essays by his colleagues and students at Harvard Divinity School. I continue to recommend the essay to anyone brave enough to delve into text-critical work.

During the last stages of my thesis research, I needed to get a look at some hard-to-get materials that were available at Harvard but not obtainable through Interlibrary Loan. I contacted François out-of-the-blue and asked if he could arrange for a graduate student to look at the material for me. He was very gracious about the request and was able to make it happen. We met formally at SBL a short while after. The meeting was one of those typical (well, typical for me) initial interactions with fellow academics: …