Month: November 2017

The third and (for me) final day of the annual meeting began with a breakfast with the NASSCAL executive. The annual meeting presents an opportunity for the executive to meet informally, with a loose gathering of whoever happens to be at SBL—which is usually most of us. I presented the group with an update of our various projects, including the e-Clavis (now at 64 texts completed and another 26 in progress), the Early Christian Apocrypha series (with Brandon Hawk’s Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew  translation at the press and Lily Vuong’s Protevangelium of James near completion), the Studies in Christian Apocrypha series (with one title in progress, one in the proposal stage, and another two possibilities discussed), and the first NASSCAL conference (planned for the University of Virginia in September of October 2018). NASSCAL is now two-and-a-half years old and looking back, we have accomplished an awful lot in that short time.

After breakfast Brent Landau and I headed over to the review session for our book New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. It featured an all-star panel: David Brakke (Ohio State University), Philip Jenkins (Baylor University), Valentina Calzolari Bouvier (University of Geneva), Julia Snyder (Universität Regensburg), Judith Hartenstein (Universität Koblenz – Landau), Christoph Markschies (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin – Humboldt University of Berlin), and for a student perspective, J. Gregory Given (Harvard University). Two of the respondents have already posted their comments online (Jenkins and Brakke). All of the reviewers were effusive in their compliments about the volume: Calzolari …

David Brakke appeared on the 2017 SBL review panel for New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. I really enjoyed his paper and asked him to allow me to publish it here.

Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I have decided, after investigating everything carefully from the first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.

So the author of the Gospel of Luke explained his decision to write a story that many had already written.  His account would be carefully investigated and orderly and so give the truth.

1900 years later José Saramago placed these words as the epitaph to his novel, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, and so signaled his own audacity and anxiety about telling a story that had been told countless times before.  Saramago’s specific challenge of rewriting what has already been written about Jesus becomes in the novel emblematic both of any human being’s inability to rewrite the story that has been written for him or her and also of the Western novelist’s predicament at the end of modernity: How can one write when so many words have gone before, or tell a new story when all the great stories have been …

My second day at the 2017 SBL began with my first Journal of Biblical Literature Editorial Board meeting. I was surprised to see so many people around the table (and so many people that I know). The large number of submissions to the journal means that a large number of manuscript referees are needed, especially if they want to process them in a reasonable amount of time. Apparently there are two Christian Apocrypha (or “other”) editors: me and Pierluigi Piovanelli. I’ve joked that I took this position because it’s the only way I’ll get my name in JBL; John Marshall (University of Toronto) pointed out that it will be in every issue for the next few years!

After the meeting, I went to my first session of the day: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti’s presentation of papers from the new Richard Pervo festschrift Delightful Acts. The session included a paper by NASSCAL Vice-President Janet Spittler (University of Virginia) entitled “Joking and Play in the Acts of John.” She opened with statement by John Chrysostom (Hom. Heb. xv) that Jesus never laughed. That may be true for the Jesus of the New Testament but he laughs plenty in apocryphal texts. Spittler looked at three case studies of Christian humor from the Acts of John: when John jokes with Lycomedes about John’s portrait (26–29), the obedient bed bugs (called by the writer “a certain comic act,” 60–61), and the episode when John sees Jesus in many forms, including …

Every year after the SBL Annual Meeting I take some time to compile a summary of my activities—the sessions I attended and/or participated in, meetings I had with scholars and publishers, books I purchased, and receptions I crashed. I do this for those interested in Christian Apocrypha who could not attend the meeting and also in lieu of tweets because Wi-fi access tends to be somewhat spotty. Since I write at a snail’s pace, this summary will be split into three separate posts that will appear over the next few days.

I flew into town Friday around 2:30 pm—far earlier than normal—and thought I could spend the rest of the afternoon leisurely wandering around the book display. That way I wouldn’t have to squeeze the tour in between papers or skip a session. Unfortunately, the display was not yet open, so I had to find something else to do (and who am I kidding? it’s not like I would only go once anyway). So I went back to my room to iron my balled-up suit and do a little work before meeting up with Brent Landau. Over dinner we discussed, among other things, the progress on the second volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, which has been a bit sluggish due to some contributors having to withdraw because of other commitments or changes in their careers. The first volume contains a provisional list of texts to be included in vol. 2, and that list is looking less …

One of the highlights of the SBL Annual Meeting is the publishers exhibition. As you make your way from one booth to another, keep an eye out for these new books.

Baylor

Dirk Rohmann. Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity: Studies in Text Transmission.

Bloomsbury

Alessandro Falcetta. A Biography of James Rendel Harris 1852-1941. The Daily Discovers of a Bible Scholar and Manuscript Hunter.

Lee Martin McDonald. The Formation of the Biblical Canon. 2 vols.

Brill

Robert W. Thomson. Ners?s of Lambron: Commentary on the Dormition of Saint John. Armenian Text and Annotated Translation. ARTS 1.

De Gruyter

Liv Ingeborg Lied and Hugo Lundhaug, eds. Snapshots of Evolving Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology. TUGAL 175.

Gorgias Press

János M. Bak. Introduction to Working with Manuscripts for Medievalists.

Tony Burke. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Syriac Tradition: A Critical Edition and English Translation. Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 48.

Amir Harrack, ed. and trans. The Chronicle of Zuqnin: Parts I and II. From the Creation to the Year 506/7 AD.

Mohr Siebeck

Jan N. Bremmer. Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity. Collected Essays I. WUNT 379.

David Creech. The Use of Scripture in the Apocryphon of John. A Diachronic Analysis of the Variant Versions. WUNT II/447.

Patricia A. Duncan. Novel Hermeneutics in the Greek Pseudo-Clementine Romance. WUNT.

Jörg Frey et al., eds. Between Canonical and Apocryphal Texts: Processes of Reception, Rewriting, and Interpretation in Early Judaism and Early Christianity…