More Christian Apocrypha Updates 7: The Death of Judas

November 13, 2017 by Tony

[This is the latest in a series of posts on texts to be featured in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures edited by Brent Landau and I. The material here is incorporated also into the information on the texts provided on my More Christian Apocrypha page].

The fourth book of Papias's lost Exposition of the Sayings of the Lord contains a tradition about the death of Judas that is different from what we find in both Matt 27:3-10 and Acts 1:18-20. This tradition, preserved in a long version and a short version in Greek catenae (collections of extracts from biblical commentators), states that Judas was punished for his betrayal of Jesus by becoming "inflamed in the flesh"—so large that he could not through narrow streets, his eyes swollen shut, his genitals enlarged and filled with pus and worms. Death came to him "in his own land" and no one can pass through there without holding their nose.

Papias's account of the death of Judas, prepared for us by Geoffrey Smith, is one of two contributions in the MNTA collection that derive from non-biblical traditions transmitted by patristic writers. This material blurs the definition of "apocrypha"—does the fact that Papias knows this story make it more valued, perhaps more historical, more "orthodox," than if it were contained in an apocryphal text? A similar situation exists with sayings of Jesus contained in the Apostolic Fathers—the presence of a saying in, say, 1 Clement makes the saying orthodox and many would count it …

New in Print: Two books on Jewish Pseudepigrapha

August 28, 2014 by Tony

Susan Docherty, The Jewish Pseudepigrapha: An introduction to the literature of the Second Temple period (London: SPCK, 2014).This looks like a nice counterpart to my Secret Scriptures Revealed book (also from SPCK). Here is the publisher's blurb:

An understanding of the Jewish Pseudepigrapha forms an integral part of all courses on New Testament background and Christian origins This will be the first student introduction to appear for over thirty years Highlights the key theological themes and significance of each text Reviews the texts on their own merits as examples of early Jewish religious literature as well as looking at the light they shed on NT theology and scriptural interpretation This is a concise yet comprehensive guide to the Pseudepigrapha: the Jewish texts of the late Second Temple Period (circa 250BCE – 100CE) that are not included in the Hebrew Bible or standard collections of the Apocrypha. Each chapter deals with a specific literary genre (e.g. apocalyptic, testaments, rewritten Bible), encouraging readers to appreciate the texts as literature as well as furthering their understanding of the content and significance of the texts themselves. As well as providing helpful introductions to the different genres, the book surveys key issues such as: date, authorship, original language; purpose; overview of contents; key theological themes and significance.

Joel M. Hoffman, The Bible's Cutting Room Floor: The Holy Scriptures Missing From Your Bible (Macmillan, 2014). The book was recently reviewed on Patheos by James McGrath. Here is the publisher's blur:

The Bible you usually read is

…

More Christian Apocrypha Updates 6: Dialogue of the Paralytic

November 13, 2017 by Tony

Dial. Paralytic is an elaboration of the story of Jesus and the paralytic from John 5:1–15, though here the encounter is situated after the resurrection, perhaps as late as the fourth century if the paralytic's mention of Arius (d. 336) is original to the text. Christ descends to earth and sees the paralytic. His situation is grave: “disabled and helpless, paralyzed and deprived of the use of all his limbs; he was indeed blind, without strength in his hands, disabled of the two feet and covered with wounds.” He asks Jesus who he is, but Jesus is evasive about his identity. He says, “I am a man who walks a lot, a traveler.” At one point he says he has traveled from India. The two begin to discuss Christ, who was famed as a healer. The paralytic had heard of Christ but no one could carry him to the healer to be cured. Jesus then questions why the man is afflicted: “Whereas you have hopes at this point in Christ, why did he not cure you? Would you not be unbelieving and guilty of very serious sins?” Then follows a series of exchanges recalling the protests of Job to his friends who sought some …

More Christian Apocrypha Updates 5: On the Priesthood of Jesus

November 13, 2017 by Tony

On the Priesthood of Jesus (aka, Confession of Theodosius, Apology of Theodosius) is an example of an embedded apocryphon—meaning, the text comes with a framing story, in this case a dispute between Jews and Christians in the reign of the emperor Justinian I (527–565) during which an account is brought forward that is said to have come from an old codex in Tiberius saved from the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE. It is unlikely, however, that this old account actually existed apart from the larger work. It reveals that, early in the career of Jesus, a position became vacant in the 22-member priesthood. Jesus is put forward as a candidate but the priests must establish that he is a descendant of one of the priestly families. Since Joseph is deceased, they summon his mother, who reveals that Joseph was not Jesus’ earthly father but Jesus is still a suitable candidate because she is descended from the families of Aaron and Judah. As proof of her claim, the priests summon midwives to see if she is still a virgin. Her post partum virginity is established and Jesus is considered worthy of the priesthood. This makes it possible for Jesus to be …

More Christian Apocrypha Updates 4: The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Syriac)

November 13, 2017 by Tony

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas is well-known; it's sometimes shocking portrayal of the young Jesus cursing the townspeople of Nazareth has contributed to its popularity. The text is featured prominently also in the various Christian Apocrypha collections and commentaries. So why include it in MNTA? One of our guiding principles in selecting texts for inclusion is to consider texts that need significant updating due to new manuscript discoveries and new determinations of the text's original form. Inf. Gos. Thom. is seen most often in its Greek and Latin forms, both of which are relatively late. The Syriac form, on the other hand, has very early material evidence (two MSS are from the 5th/6th centuries) and is believed to reflect well the original form of the text—most notably, it lacks ch. 1, with the text's attribution to Thomas, and the beneficent miracles of chs. 10, 17, and 18; ch. six is also lengthier, with a dialogue between Jesus and his teacher that is absent in many of the Greek MSS. Despite the obvious value of the Syriac tradition, there has been little effort to update the text since its initial publication in 1865.

The Syriac tradition is divided into three forms: Sa (comprising the two …

More Christian Apocrypha Updates 3: The Hospitality of Dysmas

November 13, 2017 by Tony

[This is the third in a series of posts on texts to be featured in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures edited by Brent Landau and I. The material here is incorporated also into the information on the texts provided on my More Christian Apocrypha page].

Some of the texts included in the MNTA volume are free-floating stories incorporated into variations of previously-published texts. The tales of the "Good Thief" are prime examples of this phenomenon. This "Good Thief" is the bandit promised salvation by Jesus on the cross in Luke 23:40-43. Christian imagination provided additional information about this bandit in a number of stories in which the bandit meets Jesus and his family during their sojourn in Egypt. The most well-known of these tales is found in the Birth of the Savior 111-25 (M.R. James's Latin Infancy Gospel), re-published recently in the Ehrman-Pleše Apocrypal Gospels collection (p. 146-55). The story included in MNTA vol. 1 is a variant of this tale incorporated in certain manuscripts of the Acts of Pilate.

The story takes place during the Holy Family's journey to Egypt. There they meet a bandit named Dysmas. Taken by Mary's beauty and proclaiming her the Mother of God, Dysmas brings the family to his home. The bandit leaves to hunt wild game. In the meantime, his wife draws a bath for Jesus. Dysmas's child, leprous and colicky, is cured by bathing in the same water. When Dysmas returns, the miracle is revealed to him and he …

More Christian Apocrypha Updates 2: Revelation of the Magi

November 13, 2017 by Tony

[This is the second in a series of posts on texts to be featured in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures edited by Brent Landau and I. The material here is included also on my More Christian Apocrypha page].

The Revelation of the Magi has appeared recently in an English translation: Brent Landau, Revelation of the Magi: The Lost Tale of the Wise Men’s Journey to Bethlehem (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 2010), based on his dissertation (to be published in CCSA) “The Sages and the Star-Child: An Introduction to the Revelation of the Magi, An Ancient Christian Apocryphon” (Ph. D. diss.., Harvard Divinity School, 2008 [available HERE]). Brent and I did not feel it was necessary to include another translation of the text in the MNTA volume, but did want to expose a wider audience to the text. So, we decided to include an introduction and a summary. The same strategy was going to be employed for the Armenian Infancy Gospel (recently translated into English by Abraham Terian) and the apocryphal Apocalypses of John, but those contributions have not materialized.

The text is available in a single Syriac manuscript (Vatican, Biblioteca apostolica, syr. 162) of a larger text known as the Chronicle of Zuqnin. There are a number of apocryphal Jewish and Christian texts that have been preserved in such chronicles and compendia (e.g., Joseph and Aseneth, material in the Book of the Bee and the Cave of Treasures). The story is told from …

More Christian Apocrypha Updates 1: Legend of Aphroditianus

November 13, 2017 by Tony

Over the next few weeks I will be doing final edits of the contributions to the collection I am editing with Brent Landau called New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. At the same time, I have to prepare a bibliography on Christian Apocrypha for the Oxford Online Bibliographies project. I thought I could combine those efforts with updates to my More Christian Apocrypha page and, to top it all off, throw in some blog posts on the texts as a preview to the volume.

The first text in the collection is the Legend of Aphroditianus (aka “The Narrative of Events Happening in Persia on the Birth of Christ,” erroneously attributed to Julius Africanus) prepared for us by Katharina Heyden who has worked previously on the text for her monograph, Die “Erzählung des Aphroditian.” Thema und Variationen einer Legende im Spannungsfeld von Christentum und Heidentum (Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 53; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009). A previous English translation of the text is available in ANF 6:127-30 (online text).

The sources for the Legend are quite extensive. It is embedded in multiple Greek manuscripts of De gestis in Perside, an anonymous 5th/6th-century fictional account of a dispute between Pagans, Christians, and Jews set in Persia. In addition, it is incorporated in John Damascene’s Homily on the Incarnation of Christ (also Greek; 8th cent.), and available in two Slavonic recensions translated from Greek (one of these has been translated into Romanian), and an Armenian version (unedited).

The Legend …

Call for Papers: 2015 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium

August 15, 2014 by Tony

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS

York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium Series 2015

“Fakes, Forgeries, and Fictions” Writing Ancient and Modern Christian Apocrypha

September 24-26, 2015

We are pleased to announce the third of a series of symposia on the Christian Apocrypha hosted by the Department of the Humanities at York University in Toronto, Canada and taking place September 24 to 26, 2015.

The 2015 symposium will examine the possible motivations behind the production of Christian apocrypha from antiquity until the present day. Have authors of the Christian apocrypha intended to deceive others about the true origins of their writings? Have they done so in a way that is distinctly different from NT scriptural writings? What would phrases like “intended to deceive” or “true origins” even mean in various historical and cultural contexts? This symposium has been inspired by the recent publication and analysis of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, and it will, among other topics, examine what the reactions to this particular text—primarily in popular media, including biblioblogs— can tell us about the creation, transmission, and reception of apocryphal Christian literature.

We encourage scholars from across North America to join us and share their research on topics that include but are not limited to: pseudepigraphy, modern apocrypha, authorship as canon criterion, possible motives for composition of “apocryphal” texts, the reception of Christian apocrypha in scholarship and/or popular media, and the recycling of non-Christian texts into Christian apocrypha. The program will include a panel focusing on the reception of …

New in Print: Infancy Gospel of Thomas Reader

June 6, 2015 by Tony

Hadavas, Constantine T. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas: An Intermediate Ancient Greek Reader (Beloit, WI: CreateSpace, 2014). Hadavas is Chair of the Department of Classics at Beloit College. I’m interested in seeing what Greek text he is using (likely it is Tischendorf’s Greek A with variants from Greek B and D). Here is the abstract:

The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (c. 150 CE) is an excellent text for students who have completed the first year of college-level Ancient Greek. Its length is short, its syntax is generally straightforward, and its narrative is inherently interesting, for it is the only account from the period of early Christianity that tells of the childhood of Jesus. This student edition includes grammatical, syntactical, literary, historical, and cultural notes. Complete vocabulary is provided for each section of the text, with special attention paid to the differences between Koine Greek and Classical Greek meanings and usage. Since the Infancy Gospel of Thomas possesses an unusually rich textual history, this edition also includes a selection of the most interesting variant readings.