Years in the Making: The Debut of NASSCAL’s Early Christian Apocrypha Series

The North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature (NASSCAL) is celebrating the release of the first two volumes in their Early Christian Apocrypha series: The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary, by Brandon W. Hawk, and The Protevangelium of James, by Lily C. Vuong. To be clear, the two books are numbered volumes 7 and 8 because NASSCAL is continuing a series that was begun by Julian V. Hills, who edited six volumes of texts for Polebridge Press.

The process of getting these two books to publication began in 2015. NASSCAL had been formed a year earlier and the directors were considering options for publishing projects that could be venues for the work of our members. The first volume of the More New Testament Apocrypha series was near completion, and though it is not explicitly a NASSCAL project, many of its contributors were NASSCAL members. MNTA focuses on texts that are not normally included in apocrypha collections, but we had members of the society interested in working on some of the “standard” apocryphal texts—such as the Gospel of Thomas and the Apocalypse of Peter. We looked at the work of the French and Swiss apocrypha group l’AELAC (Association pour l’Étude de la Littérature Apocryphe Chrétienne), who publish a series of pocket-size translations called La collection de poche apocryphes. But there already existed a North American pocketbook series of apocrypha in English.

Westar, the association behind the Jesus Seminar, have a number of publications aimed at disseminating the work of their scholars to a wide readership. One of these is The Complete Gospels, edited by Robert Miller. It features new translations of the canonical gospels alongside a number of apocryphal gospels. They also publish the Early Christian Apocrypha series, which, for the most part, features individual translations of apocryphal acts (with the exception of The Didache, by Clayton N. Jefford, and The Epistle of the Apostles, by Julian Hills). The goal of the series editors was to publish the five “great” apocryphal acts in the series and then collect them in a volume on the model of Miller’s gospel compilation. The NASSCAL board thought perhaps we could work with Hills to produce additional volumes.
Janet Spittler and I met with members of the Polebridge publishing team at the 2015 SBL annual meeting in Atlanta. The meeting was brokered by Phil Harland, my friend and colleague at York University, who had recently joined Westar and was part of an effort in the group to steer it toward more rigorous scholarship. Our meeting was very productive, laying the groundwork for assuming editorial control of the EAC series and producing also a monograph series. Westar also hoped NASSCAL members would become involved in their group and I was invited to present at a future meeting of Westar in Santa Rosa, California (in March 2017). Over the next year I met and corresponded with Westar’s David Galston to establish editorial boards and mandates for the two series and the NASSCAL board worked on recruiting contributors.

For ECA we naturally wanted to begin with infancy gospels. I had met Brandon Hawk at the 2015 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium, for which he delivered a paper on the influence of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew in medieval sermons. He seemed to be a natural fit for Ps.-Mt., which is a Latin expansion of the Protevangelium of James created around the seventh century. Because much of it is derivative of Prot. Jas., the text usually appears in apocrypha collections only in excerpts. Several branches of the tradition include additional material, including much of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, portions of a lost infancy gospel scholars call the Book of the Nativity of Our Savior, and other free-floating stories. A volume that included all of this material would be extremely valuable to scholars. Lilly Vuong was asked to work on the Prot. Jas. volume because of her well-regarded published thesis Gender and Purity in the Protevangelium of James (WUNT 2.358; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2013). A few other contributors were tentatively lined up for the future with the goal of releasing two volumes a year. Everything was in place for launch at the 2017 SBL. But that was not to be.

Brandon turned in his manuscript in June 2017, just slightly later than expected, and the book was edited over the next several months. The manuscript was sent to Polebridge in August. Lily asked for an extension on her manuscript until December. Then in November, Polebridge informed us that they were ceasing operations but were in negotiations to continue as an imprint of Wipf & Stock. It became apparent also that they were abandoning their move toward more rigorous scholarship, and several of the new members, including Phil, decided to leave the group. NASSCAL had to re-evaluate its relationship with Westar. After some discussion we decided to continue only the Early Christian Apocrypha series and waited for guidance on how to reformat Brandon’s manuscript for the new press.

It was another year before the relationship between Polebridge and Westar was settled. Both manuscripts were submitted to the press in September of 2018 with minimal changes in format. I already had a relationship established with Wipf & Stock from their publication of the proceedings of the York symposia. They were very accommodating to our requests for the layout and cover artwork for the books and patiently endured several months of revisions. Our authors also were very patient throughout the entire process, particularly Brandon, who had to wait almost two years to see his book in print. And my partners on the editorial board—Janet Spittler and Brent Landau—contributed much behind the scenes, with suggestions for improving the translations and introductions. The result of all this work is two very attractive and inexpensive volumes that are readable for Westar’s audience of non-specialists yet also valuable for scholars who work on these texts.

It will be another few years before we see more volumes in the series. The transition to Wipf & Stock was somewhat chaotic and uncertain, so we wanted to guide these two books through publication before proceeding further. Below is a list of volumes in progress along with a preliminary list of texts we would like to see covered in the series.

Forthcoming

The Acts of Paul, by Julian V. Hills
The Apocalypse of Peter, by Julian V. Hills
The Apocryphal Epistles of Paul, by Philip L. Tite
The Ascension of Isaiah, by Catherine Playoust
The Gospel of Peter and the Preaching of Peter, by Ruben Dupertuis
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, by Tony Burke
Legends of the Holy Rood Tree, by Stephen C. E. Hopkins

Planned Volumes

The Acts of Pilate
Agrapha and Gospel Fragments
The Apocalypse of Paul
The Dormition of Mary
The Epistles of Jesus and Abgar and the Doctrine of Addai
The Gospel of Judas
The Gospel of Mary
The Gospel of Thomas
The Questions of Bartholomew
The Vengeance of the Savior and Related Texts

The books can be ordered from Wipf & Stock, Amazon, and other online sellers. For more information on the series and the individual volumes (including 20-page previews) visit https://www.nasscal.com/early-christian-apocrypha-series/.