Christian Apocrypha at the 2014 SBL

November 13, 2017 by Tony

Here is a quick rundown of the sessions and papers at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature focusing on Christian Apocrypha. I hope I found them all. See you in San Diego.

Christian Apocrypha Section sessions:

S22-118: Christian Apocrypha
11/22/2014 ~ 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Theme: “Canonical/Apocryphal” and Other Troublesome Binaries
Tony Burke, York University, Presiding
Matthew R Crawford, University of Durham: “The Diatessaron, Canonical or Non-canonical? Rereading the Dura Fragment”
Cornelia Horn, Catholic University of America: “Christian Apocrypha in Georgian on Jesus and Mary: Questions of Canonicity, Liturgical Usage, and Social Settings”
Richard I. Pervo, Saint Paul, Minnesota: “Canonical Apocrypha”
Shaily Shashikant Patel, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: “Magical Miracles and Miraculous Magic: Discourse of the Supernatural in the Acts of Peter”
Brad F. King, University of Texas at Austin: “Reframing the Apocryphon of John: ‘Christianizing’ Revisions in the Long Recension”

S22-210: Christian Apocrypha
11/22/2014 ~1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Theme: Presenting the Christian Apocrypha to Non-Scholarly Audiences
Brent Landau, University of Texas at Austin, Presiding
Panelists:
Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Author of Lost Christianities and The Other Gospels
Nicola Denzey, Brown University, Author of Introduction to ‘Gnosticism’: Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds
Robert Cargill, University of Iowa, Consulting Producer on History Channel’s Bible Secrets Revealed
Roger Freet, HarperOne, Panelist, Executive Editor at HarperOneBreak
Hal Taussig, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, Editor of A New New Testament
Tony Burke, York University, Author of Secret …

Translating Joseph and Aseneth: My Role in Jacobovici and Wilson’s “Lost Gospel”

November 17, 2014 by Tony

Last Monday morning a story appeared in the press, first in England but very soon all around the world, about a “lost gospel” that contains evidence that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and had two children. You’ve probably heard something about it by now, and you may know I had a hand in this project—a book, The Lost Gospel: Decoding the Ancient Text that Reveals Jesus’ Marriage to Mary the Magdalene (Harper Collins, 2014) by Simcha Jacobovici and Barrie Wilson, and forthcoming documentary. The “lost gospel” of the title is a Syriac text: the Story of Joseph and Aseneth embedded in the chronicle of Pseudo-Zacharias Rhetor. I translated the text from two manuscripts at the British Library (one from the sixth-century and another from the twelfth). Since some people have been asking about the translation, and where I stand on the book’s argument, I thought I’d write something about my involvement in the project.

About six years ago Barrie Wilson, my colleague at York, asked me if I knew of an aspiring scholar with knowledge of Syriac who could translate a text for him. He meant me. Barrie was involved in hiring me at York ten years ago and we continue even today to interact, on thesis committees, etc., though now Barrie is retired. I was looking at the time for opportunities to exercise my Syriac skills. So, for both of these reasons, I had to say yes. I think Barrie told me then (if not, soon after) that …

“Lost Gospels” of the Nineteen Century

November 8, 2014 by Tony

On Monday (November 10) I will be giving a talk at York University on so-called Modern Apocrypha. The presentation is based on a paper I will be presenting as part of the 2015 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium, “Fakes, Fictions, Forgeries: Writing Ancient and Modern Christian Apocrypha.” Here is the abstract:

In the late 19th century, the excitement that was stirred by the discovery of apocryphal Christian texts in monastic libraries in the East inspired the creation of new apocryphal texts. Some of these were published as works of scholarship—such as H. C. Greene and C. Mendés’s edition of The Gospel of the Childhood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and G. J. Stevenson’s The Long Lost Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles—but they were quickly dismissed as modern forgeries. Little attention has been paid to these “scholarly apocrypha,” the goals behind their invention, and their reception. But this neglected sub-genre of Christian Apocrypha offers much for understanding the accusations of forgery for such texts as the Secret Gospel of Mark and, more recently, the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.

The presentation takes place from 4-5:30pm in Room 0101, Vanier College. For those interested in reading more about the texts, here is the material featured on the handout that accompanies the presentation:

Studies of Modern Christian Apocrypha

Beskow, Per. Strange Tales about Jesus: A Survey of Unfamiliar Gospels. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983.

Beskow, Per. “Modern Mystifications of Jesus.” Pages 458-74 in The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament.…

Book Review: Christopher W. Skinner, What Are They Saying about the Gospel of Thomas?

November 3, 2014 by Tony

Back in the summer, Christopher Skinner sent me a copy of his book, What Are They Saying About the Gospel of Thomas? (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2012). It is a slim book (around 120 pages), so it did not take long to read, nor did it take me long to make some notes on its contents. What did take a long time is for me to get around to finally blogging about it!

At first I was a bit leery about the book. I have read a number of discussions of the Christian Apocrypha from what one might call “conservative” scholars writing for presses with denominational affiliations. I have been critical about the authors’ polemical/apologetic aims and the shortcomings in their knowledge of the field. I was ready to place this book within that group. It didn’t help that the testimonials on the back cover were from scholars whose work veers close to the conservative end of the spectrum of thought on the text—i.e., they hold to the opinion that Gos. Thom. is late (second-century) and dependent on the NT texts. So, I expected to be unhappy with Skinner’s examination of Gos. Thom.

I found instead that the book is a fair and balanced treatment of a broad range of scholarship on the text. Skinner, currently based at Mount Olive College in North Carolina, is no stranger to Gos. Thom. He has contributed a monograph—John and Thomas–Gospels in Conflict? Johannine Characterization and the Thomas Question (Princeton Theological Monograph Series …