Christian Apocrypha at SBL 2019
The 2019 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature takes place November 23–26 in sunny San Diego, California. To help prepare for the event, I have compiled all of the presentations focusing on Christian Apocrypha, this time with abstracts (since they tend to vanish from the SBL site soon after the conclusion of the meeting). See you in San Diego.
1. Christian Apocrypha Section sessions:
S24-119 Christian Apocrypha (9:00 AM to 11:30 AM)
Theme: The Christian Apocrypha in Material Culture and Art
Brent Landau, University of Texas at Austin, Presiding
Adeline Harrington, University of Texas at Austin: “Apocryphal Oxyrhynchus: The Literary Landscape of a Late Antique City”
Recent scholarship on Christian apocrypha has made a decisive turn away from dichotomous models that present a stark discontinuity between the diverse, often ‘heretical’, literary practices of the early church and the canonical, authoritarian late antique church. As we have seen, apocryphal writings continued to be widely produced, copied, and distributed across the Mediterranean throughout antiquity. It is significant, however, that a large number of our earliest apocryphal (and canonical) Christian texts come from a single city: Oxyrhynchus. Our manuscript evidence from this city is often isolated from its original Oxyrhynchite context, as has been long noted by scholars like Eldon Epp. This paper sits within a larger dissertation project on the Christian literary culture in Oxyrhynchus. Focusing on the apocryphal material within the city, I trace the local trends in apocryphal production diachronically, paying special attention to manuscripts dated from the fourth to sixth centuries CE. As I will demonstrate, already by the fourth century, there is a cessation of certain types of apocryphal literary production (esp. gospel narratives) and a clear continuity of others. Fragments of Hermas, for instance, were copied continuously from the second to late fourth century. Likewise, the production of apocryphal acts continues well into the sixth century. How does the Oxyrhynchus collection align with our manuscript evidence elsewhere? What might the abundance of certain types of late antique apocrypha in the city tell us about attitudes towards Christian literary production more generally? In a city once hailed as completely “devoid of heretics,” the apparent diversity of literary and pseudo-literary texts in the area presents a dynamic picture of the competing and complimentary discourses of the later periods of the city.
Rick Brannan, Faithlife/Appian Way Press: “Four Logia from Fragmentary Early Christian Papyri”
Sayings of Jesus are all over in Christian writings. They are found in the New Testament gospels, of course. They are also found in canonical material outside of the gospels. They are found in apocryphal gospels, acts, and apocalypses as well as works of early Christian writers. But the papyri, those incomplete fragments of theological tracts, homilies, commentaries, liturgies, hymns, and who knows what else, also contain mention of sayings of Jesus. This paper examines four logia that occur in three relatively early papyri (P.Amh. Gr. 1 2, AD/CE 300–399; P.Iand. 5.69, AD/CE 300–399; and P.Gen. 3.125, AD/CE 150–249). These logia are not cataloged in Stroker’s “Extracanonical Sayings of Jesus,” which organizes and presents extracanonical sayings of Jesus from a wide array of sources.
Emily Laflèche, University of Ottawa: “Temple, Tomb, Thecla? The Heavenly Ascent of the Seven Virgins and the Curious Connection to Thecla in the Exodus Chapel at El-Bagawat”
My paper aims to challenge the identities of the structure depicted in the procession of seven virgins fresco, located in the Exodus Chapel at El-Bagawat, Egypt (Kharga Oasis), by identifying the structure as both a temple and a tomb. The image of Thecla in proximity to the procession has divided scholars by questioning whether Thecla is connected to the procession of the seven virgins. My paper will address the following questions: In identifying the structure as both a Temple and a tomb, how does this impact the identity of the seven virgins? What purpose does Thecla serve for the group of Christians who created this fresco? What connection does Thecla have with heavenly ascent? Previous scholarship has aimed to locate this fresco within a single literary context; consequentially this fresco has been argued to depict a number of different events. Scholars have proposed that the fresco represents the procession of the Virgin Mary to the temple described in the Protoevangelium of James 7:2; Pseudo-Matthew 4; Nativity of Mary 6 (Cartlidge & Elliott 2001; Martin 2017) or the procession of the wise and foolish virgins in the Gospel of Matthew 25: 1-13 (de Bock 1901; Stern 1960; Thérel 1969). Other scholars have proposed the fresco represents a procession of virgins guiding a soul to the heavenly Jerusalem Temple and that this procession is connected to the cult of St. Thecla (Stern 1960; Thérel 1969; Davis 2001, 1999). Building on the work of Stern, Thérel, and Davis, I will investigate the connection between virginal processions and the ascent of the soul, as well as the prominence of the cult of saint Thecla in Late Antique Egypt, in order to identify Thecla’s connection to this particular ascent at El-Bagawat. My research will explore the use of funerary imagery in early Christian literature, focussing on heavenly ascent and the imagery of the structures representing the afterlife, specifically in: Pistis Sophia, Exegesis on the Soul, the Gospel of Philip, NCE 156, and Flavia Sophe. By situating the heavenly ascent of the soul within the context of early Christian discourse and practice, I aim to uncover why Thecla is depicted alongside this ascent.
Rob Heaton, University of Denver: “The Salvific Tower of the Shepherd of Hermas in Early Christian Reception”
In spite of the demonstrable centrality of the image of the tower within the Shepherd, early patristic readers of the text—at least those who left behind their impressions and construals of Hermas’s dream-sequence and its later recapitulation—are often silent about the metaphor and its implications. Origen imagined that the tower signified Christian unity that overrode its diverse construction “from many stones,” while his predecessor Clement affirmed the Shepherd’s seven virtues that supported the tower and thus bound the church together. Further afield from the academic environment of third-century Alexandria, the earliest stratum of the Neapolitan catacomb of San Gennaro prominently features perhaps the only ancient artistic representation from the Shepherd of Hermas: a fresco portraying the construction of the celestial tower into which saved and useful (euchr?stoi) believers will be preserved and enshrined (Herm. Vis. 3.5.1-3 [13.1-3]). Though this fresco has often treated as a curiosity, and even as an embarrassment that must be explained away given the Shepherd’s noncanonical status, I accept it a bona fide example of the popular reception of Hermas’s text. Specifically, the fresco’s presence in the most ancient room of the catacomb, and the absence of other normative Christian iconography therein, belies the centrality of the Shepherd of Hermas to the community’s Christian experience. Its preservation may even hold an advantage over the musings of Clement and Origen, for instead of an appearance in a contextually displaced theological treatise, the catacomb painting illustrates how some in a community of early Christians cherished, lived out, and took to heart precisely the heterotopian message that Hermas wished to convey: that is, the tower as a representation of salvation beyond the earthly city toward which believers must actively strive. More precisely, I argue that the San Gennaro fresco preserves a primitive aretological approach toward salvation, before the constrictive enforcement of a canon or even of a particular Christian soteriology, when a community living in the New City not far from Hermas’s Roman home could aspire to have earned their places “in the tower with the holy ones of God,” expressing their collective identity in terms unique to the Shepherd (Herm. Vis. 3.8.8 [16.8]).
Business Meeting
S24-307 Christian Apocrypha (4:00 PM to 6:30 PM)
Theme: Collected and Orphaned Christian Apocryphal Texts
Acacia Chan, University of Texas at Austin, Presiding
Christoph Markschies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin – Humboldt University of Berlin: “Edgar Hennecke: A Non-Harnackian View on the Apocrypha by a Pupil of Harnack”
Edgar Hennecke (1865-1951) was a quite typical example of a large group of German Protestant ministers: living in small parishes in the countryside, engaged in their pastoral work and at the same time deeply devoted to research in certain fields. Although Hennecke was deeply influenced by Adolf Harnack he devoted his life as researcher to fields completely neglected by Harnack: research concerning Patron Saints of Churches and concerning New Testament Apocrypha. While Harnack estimated this literature as more or less not worth reading, Hennecke (like Harnack’s successor Hans Lietzmann) thought of apocryphal literature as a valuable source for Christian piety also of simpler Christians (in different meanings of the term “simple”). To a certain extant he also took over views and results of the “Religionsgeschichtliche Schule”, also critically discussed by his teacher Harnack. During his lifetime he brought together with the help of colleagues a widespread German translation of “New Testament Apocrypha” in two editions and a “Handbook” with explanations. The paper will explain Hennecke’s concept of “Apocrypha” in the context of his biography and other approaches of his time and also mark the limits of his own approach, which was continued by his pupil Wilhelm Schneemelcher, also educated in the tradition of Harnack and Lietzmann, an approach that underwent serious crisis in the last decades of the 20th century.
Stephen Hopkins, University of Central Florida: “A Haunted Scholar: M.R. James and the Apocryphal Impulse”
Even almost a century after his passing, the name of M. R. James is a constant presence in the fields of Biblical studies, Medieval studies, and Manuscript studies. His fastidious and numerous manuscript catalogues set an enduring standard for scholars. Of course, to this day James is also revered in another field entirely: ghost stories. As Darryl Jones says in the introduction to his recent edition of James’s works, he is “the very greatest ghost story writer.” Most scholars interact with James in one of these two venues, but seldom both. The major biographies focus on his academic life almost exclusively (the minor exception being Michael Cox, who devotes a single chapter to the stories, “A Peep into Pandaemonium”). The question must be asked: was James’s expertise in apocrypha related to his deft ability to tell a spellbinding ghost story? To date, only one major study has approached James’s bifurcated body of work as a whole: Patrick J. Murphy’s recent Medieval Studies and the Ghost Stories of M.R. James argues that James’s intimate knowledge of the Middle Ages informed his thrillers, and that his ghost stories are not the “idle fancies” James claimed. He writes, “James was keenly interested in his profession’s uneasy relationship to other scholarly, occupational, and hobbyist modes of engaging with the past.” That is, the ghost stories dramatize the tension between don and dilettante James felt working in an as-yet-undefined field. This certainly rings true. Yet so many of the ghost stories feature antiquarians haunted by the religious past they study—quite literally. This paper asks: what other unholy spirits haunted Monty? In a letter (cited in Cox), James’s parents once expressed regret that he had wasted his considerable academic talents by not being in the priesthood; likewise his colleague A.C. Benson quipped, “no one alive knows so much or so little worth knowing.” Elsewhere, in his famous volume on apocrypha he writes that one can tell them apart from real scripture by their nature. Taken together, these threads suggest a religiously rooted specter animating his work on supposedly trivial apocrypha. I argue first that James’s avid knowledge of apocrypha was fueled by his desire to remain connected to the faith he held dear, yet felt aloof from. James’s academic work on apocrypha and his ghastly work as a ghost story author formed two sides of the same spiritual coin. Taken together, we can see that his fiction and scholarship explore the same thing from two angles: aberrant spirituality under the guise of “Useless Knowledge” (the title of his first academic paper).
Tony Burke, York University: “Four Syriac ‘Orphan’ Apocrypha Relating to the Birth and Death of Jesus”
Geerard’s Clavis apocryphorum Noui Testamenti combines four short “orphan” texts together in one entry numbered 309. These texts are: 1. the Epistles of Longinus and Augustus, 2. the Epistle of Ursinus, 3. the Epistle of Patrophilus to Ursinus, and 4. the Epistle of Ursinus to Patrophilus. Each of them features testimony from contemporaries of Jesus inquiring about events and portents related to his birth and death. Geerard’s brief notes state that they were published as appendices to Ignatius Rahmani’s edition of the Syriac Acts of Pilate in 1908. The proposed paper seeks to bring some clarity to Geerard’s notice by providing translations of the texts and identifying their sources, not only in Syriac Acts of Pilate manuscripts that have surfaced since Rahmani’s time but also in works by other Syriac writers that also transmit the stories. As it turns out, Rahmani excerpted the stories, without acknowledgement, from a text known as Prophecies of Pagan Philosophers about Christ. But the pieces do appear in other contexts, including the Chronicle of Bar Hebraeus, Solomon of Basra’s Book of the Bee, the Chronicle of Michael the Syrian, and in Arabic in Agapius of Hierapolis’ Kitav al-‘unvan. It is not clear at this point, where the short texts originated—did they begin as part of the Prophecies? or did the author of the Prophecies incorporate independent tales? The answer may mean a re-evaluation of the pieces as “orphan” texts, as well as a determination of whether the Prophecies as a whole should be considered an apocryphon.
Jacob A. Lollar, Abilene Christian University: “‘Listen to a Story, That Is Not a Story…’: Eusebius, John the Son of Zebedee, and John and the Robber in the Syriac Tradition”
In the recent volume of New Testament Apocrypha, Rick Brannan discussed the story of John and the Robber, a narrative about John the son of Zebedee in western Anatolia, who adopts a young man who then turns to a life of crime. John had left the youth in the charge of a local presbyter and, upon returning, John is forced to intervene and rescue the young man from his new life of crime. This story originally comes from the Quis dives salvatur of Clement of Alexandria and was later adapted by Eusebius (HE 3.23.1-19) and is also found in the Virtutes Iohannis. The story also circulated independently, however, and made its way into Syriac eventually—both independently as well as through Eusebius. Recently, I discovered that the John and the Robber narrative was incorporated into the History of John, an original Syriac apocryphon that was, in one transmission tradition, attributed to Eusebius. This paper will put forth two hypotheses: first, I will attempt to untangle the web connecting all of the Syriac versions of John and the Robber together. I will argue that it was first introduced to Syriac Christians via Eusebius, possibly as early as the mid-fourth century, and from there it took on new life and occasionally circulated independently. The second hypothesis concerns the role that Eusebius’ writings played in introducing apocrypha into the Syriac tradition. Specifically, the translation of the Ecclesiastical History into Syriac served as a kind of catalyst for curiosity about apostolic narratives—particularly John, in this instance, but also others, such as Thaddaeus/Addai. Eventually, individual stories began to circulate—such as John and the Robber—and others were invented—such as the History of John. Such characters and stories were relics, of a sort, of the apostolic age. Moreover, they had received approval from the “great church” in the West, via their inclusion into Eusebius’ history. Thus, Eusebius’ writings may serve as a point of departure for the introduction of apostolic narratives into the burgeoning Syriac churches who were interested in joining their own histories with those of the churches in the West.
S25-311 Christian Apocrypha (4:00 PM to 6:30 PM)
Theme: Narratives and Motifs in the Christian Apocrypha
Ian Mills, Duke University, Presiding
Ally Kateusz, Wjingaards Institute of Catholic Research: “Debunking lectio brevior potior as a Rule of Thumb for Reading Early Christian Narratives about Women Leaders”
Ever since Hippolyte Delehayes, the shortest editions of apocryphal narratives often have been assumed to be the oldest. Yet for decades textual critics have been issuing warnings about lectio brevior potior, that is, the shortest reading is the preferred reading. For example, Jennifer Knust and Tommy Wasserman in their 2018 book point out, “Recent studies of the most ancient copies of the New Testament books have uncovered a striking fact: scribes omitted portions of the texts they were copying more often than they added to them. This finding is especially startling given the by now centuries-old text-critical criterion lectio brevior potior (prefer the shorter reading)” (115-16). Respected textual critics such as Larry Hurtado, Bruce Metzger, Eldon J. Epp and Gordon D. Fee have issued these warnings. Outside the canon, in 2012 Mark Goodacre demonstrated that some of the short sayings in the Gospel of Thomas have a “missing middle” and therefore must be a truncated version of the longer, and thus older, canonical saying. With respect to Christian and Jewish apocalypses, Richard Bauckham said the textual tradition tends to abbreviation, not expansion, and François Bovon likewise said that the very oldest apocryphal Acts were very long. Sometimes scribes may have merely truncated a text out of laziness or for easy reading, but the warning especially applies when a text later became considered objectionable, offensive, or “heretical.” For example, in the Jan-Feb 2017 JECS, Aaron Michael Butts demonstrated that Ephrem’s most complete writings survive only in the very oldest and longest manuscripts, because later copyists purged what did not conform to later theology. Despite this, some scholars continue to appear unaware of the warnings. For example, unlike Knust and Wasserman, Matthew Larsen in his 2018 book does not engage with the warnings when concluding that Mark comprises short early notes later expanded into Matthew, an argument essentially the opposite of Goodacre’s. In this presentation I will address extracanonical narratives about early Christian women leaders, starting with the Dormition narrative about the death of Jesus’s mother. The very oldest surviving nearly complete Dormition manuscript, despite some lacunae, is the underscript of a fifth-century Old Syriac palimpsest, a Six Books Dormition narrative translated by Agnes Smith Lewis. Its text was almost twice as long as the next oldest published Dormition manuscript, a sixth-century Syriac, as well as the medieval Six Books manuscript with an Ethiopic translation that Stephen Shoemaker privileges. I will visually demonstrate that scribes behind the two later manuscripts excised different sections of the longer narrative, independently eliminating different markers of Mary’s authority for their shorter editions. I will apply the conclusion that the longest edition of a narrative about a women leader is the oldest to the longest surviving editions of narratives about four women evangelists: Thecla, Mariamne, Irene, and Nino. In each case the longest edition of the narrative calls the woman evangelist an “apostle” and describes her baptizing-washing-sealing other people, a remarkable synchronicity that suggests a change in gender theology may be behind shorter editions.
Justin M. Glessner, DePauw University: “Who’s ‘Your Hegemon’ (Paidika 4.1)?! Joseph in the Paidika”
While a good majority of the recent spate of scholarship on the Paidika fixates on questions related to the fixation of this collection of tales—propagating its pro-Jesus propaganda, as it were—and defends the good-newsiness of seemingly anomalous aspects of Jesus’s character by reading the Paidika alongside other ancient representations of idealized childhoods, typical childhoods, or conventional portrayals of deities, in turn and/or in combination (Aasgaard; Burke; Cousland; Kaiser; Litwa; Paulissen; Upson-Saia), the present study is not an(other) attempt to explain (away) such anomalies. In conversation with such prior and other (Davis; Frillingos) reception critiques of Jesus in the Paidika, I offer here an aligned study focused on some of the collection’s secondary (more implicitly) gendered concerns that intersect with the reception of the biblical figure of Joseph (of Nazareth). Joseph makes a substantial appearance in this work as well, and, as has rarely been acknowledged or put to gender-critical and queer reflection, Joseph is never far from the narrative center (even when he is). Similar to his showings in the Gospel of Matthew (Matt 1-2) and the Protevangelium of James (PJ 9-19)—and unlike in the Gospel of Luke—all of the Paidika tales that feature Joseph (Paidika 2-8; 11-14; 17) are arguably narrated from his (not Jesus’s or Mary’s) ‘point of view’. Especially considering the literary significance of this unique reception of Joseph (rather than Jesus) throughout the tales, then, in this paper I unpack how this Joseph, too, exhibits a range of ambivalent and disruptive engagements with notions of ancient, Graeco-Roman masculinities—exposing the unstable worlds of ‘everyday’ men in times of trial and hardship and a number of concerns that intersect with and unevenly cite indices of hegemonic (and other) masculinity (Connell), namely: household governance and provisioning, observance of laws/norms, and self-mastery; (pro)creative capacity, heir generation, and paternity; and verbal prowess, persuasion and (storytelling?) performances. I am concerned here, as in my other reception work on the figure of Joseph, not just with description of the makings (the ‘everyday’ constituents) of Paidika’s ‘Average Joe’, but I also attempt to expose and destabilize the various mechanisms behind and in front of the making (discursive construction of the ‘everyday’) of Paidika’s ‘Average Joe’. This work, too, is arguably Joseph’s tale, and, as suggested by James H. Liu and János László with regards to prototypical in-group characters in historical narratives, Joseph’s point-of-view characterization in the Paidika feasibly plays a key role in mediating collective memory and putative group identity, concurrently bound up with the processes of ‘everyday’ gendered self-fashioning. In the Paidika tales Joseph is putatively our guide, but his ‘hegemon’-y (Paidika 4.1) is far from stable. My findings expose some of the ideological contours behind Joseph’s colorful reception in the Paidika and open interpretive possibilities for queering even ‘everyday’ “fantasies of masculine power and plenitude” (Brintnall) in early Christianity and beyond.
Stephanie Janz, Universität Zürich: “Mary and the Gospel of Thomas: A Narratological Perspective”
The Coptic Gospel of Thomas (G.Thom) is one of the most important, and yet one of the most controversial, apocryphal writings from the first centuries of Christianity. The great interest in this text is reflected in the huge number of different approaches trying to get access to the text. Since these approaches are based on different assumptions about the methodology and the religious-historical position of G.Thom, the interpretations of this text are diverse. For a long time, research on G.Thom has concentrated on reconstructing earlier stages of the text, using the complete Coptic version and the Greek fragments to get new information on the historical Jesus and the early Jesus movement. Furthermore, due to the seemingly fragmental character of G.Thom, its sayings have been mainly interpreted by way of analogy from other texts. However, such an approach is insufficient, since each text is distinct both as to form and content and deserves individual treatment. Thus, it is necessary to analyse a text thoroughly before interpreting it, which means that the analysis of an individual section cannot remain independent of the overall context of the work. This is an important aspect of narrative criticism, which has become a valuable tool for analysing biblical texts and which—in contrast to historical criticism—is not concerned with the origins of a text, but its main focus is on the final form of the text. Even though, unlike the canonical gospels, G.Thom lacks an overarching narrative, some of the sayings contain narrative elements. Moreover, single sayings are linked by catchwords, leading themes and literary forms. The connections are at times scattered throughout G.Thom. In the course of reading, the readers gain knowledge to which they later return and which influences their understanding of the sayings. What has previously been read therefore forms the background for the understanding of what is to come. Due to these reasons, this paper will examine whether, and to what extent, it can be useful to apply narratological ideas to G.Thom. This paper will argue for a methodological approach, which goes beyond the individual sayings and takes into account the entire writing by asking for links between the sayings. In this way, an approach to the G.Thom is to be developed, which perceives the text in its peculiarity and wholeness and takes into account the multiplicity of the sayings. This may allow a new understanding of G.Thom as an independent witness to early Christianity. Moreover, G.Thom might be released from questions of a tradition-critical nature and its close connection with the canonical gospels. By going beyond the individual sayings, it can be examined whether G.Thom is a coherent whole, or indeed just a collection of isolated sayings that are not connected to each other. This paper will show possible results of such an approach by using the example of the sayings mentioning Mary (G.Thom 21 and 114).
Carl Johan Berglund, Uppsala University: “Discipleship Ideals in the Apocryphal Acts: A Radical Departure from the Gospels?”
It is well known that early Christian authors often expressed their theological convictions in narrative rather than argumentative form – in the way they selected, framed, and presented their stories about Jesus and the early Christian movement. What is less well studied is how these views were received and transformed when later generations formed their own narratives about Jesus, disciples, and martyrs. This paper identifies discipleship ideals – characteristics of an ideal Christian disciple – in key passages from the apocryphal acts of the apostles John, Peter, and Andrew, and discusses whether these ideals are continuous or discontinuous with similarly expressed discipleship ideals of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke.
Jenna Whalley-Kokot, Boston College: “A Living Martyr: Martyrdom Motifs and Baptism of Blood in the Greek Acts of Thelca”
The Acts of Thecla 4:9 (ATh) features a peculiar baptism in which Thecla jumps into a pool of water in an arena just as she’s about to be martyred and proclaims that she is baptized. Thecla survives the ordeal. I argue that, despite her survival, the nearest ancient precedent for her baptism is baptism of blood – a tradition whereby a person’s death for their faith was considered a form of baptism if they did not have a valid water baptism. Several features in ATh situate Thecla’s baptism within the context of martyrdom traditions. The narrative arc employs persecution on the grounds of faith, a trial, and a death sentence involving public spectacle. The setting for her baptism is in the arena and in a pool of creatures which are intended to kill her. The occasion of her baptism is referred to as her last day and following the rite resurrection language is employed, suggesting that her baptism is to be read as an analogue for her death. While martyrdom motifs in ATh have not gone unnoticed, commentators tend to reject baptism of blood as a model to explain Thecla’s baptism since she does not perish. Jeremy W. Barrier and Peter Wallace Dunn both seize on the lack of a baptizing agent and conclude that Thecla must have baptized herself or that she was miraculously baptized by God. Elisabeth Esch-Wermeling argues that, since terminology for martyrs is derived from vocabulary for witnesses, Thecla already received the equivalent of a martyr’s baptism from her witness in her first trial and questions the need for a baptism in ATh 4:9. I account for the type and function of Thelca’s baptism by attending to two features of baptism of blood traditions which have not been fully brought to bear upon Thecla’s baptism: the baptizing element (water or blood) and agency. First, (contra Esch-Wermeling) by the end of the second century the act of witnessing cannot be equated with the title “martyr” or with baptism. Secondly, (contra Barrier and Dunn) there is no precedent in ancient Christian traditions for self-baptism and the middle voice with the verb “to baptize” is also rare. Yet, lack of an agent is typical of accounts of baptism of blood (historical or fictional). Here, James W. Dale’s work highlighting the focus on baptizing elements (water or blood) and their interchangeability in Christian antiquity is instructive for recognizing baptism in Thecla’s second trial but not in her first. In a baptism of blood, blood is substituted for water. If blood and water are interchangeable as baptizing elements, Thecla’s baptism follows the pattern of a baptism of blood, albeit with water. The author underscores the martyrological nature of the baptism, with references to her “last day,” death, and resurrection.
S26-110 Christian Apocrypha / Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative (9:00 AM to 11:30 AM)
Theme: The Narrative Self: a Session in Honor of Judith Perkins
Janet Spittler, University of Virginia, Presiding
Nicola Denzey Lewis, Claremont Graduate University: “Sex, Suffering, Subversion, and Spectacle: The Feast of Saint Cristina of Bolsena”
Each year in the small Tuscan town of Bolsena, the townspeople gather to celebrate the memory of their patron saint, Cristina. Cristina was martyred in late antiquity, but not before having been tortured in a manner both grisly and spectacular: she was (among other things!) tortured with poisonous snakes, shot through with arrows, scourged, boiled, and drowned. Her breasts and tongue were severed. Remarkably, Cristina’s sufferings are not merely recounted through a reading of her martyrology at the church dedicated to her; instead, the entire town participates in a graphic and elaborate enactment of her torture and martyrdom – the sole “passion play” in Italy dedicated to the memory of a female saint. Furthermore, the manner in which the town enacts Cristina’s martyrdom is in itself remarkable, for the manner in which it “queers” religious spectacle, playing with contemporary understandings of place, identity, suffering, and the female body.
Jo-Ann Brant, Goshen College: “Aversion as a Rhetorical Strategy in the Acts of Thomas and Buddhist Tradition”
The Acts of Thomas version of Christianity requires complete sexual abstinence even within the bonds of marriage, a requirement treated by his Indian audience as a wholly new concept. Given that the Greco-Roman world was fascinated by all things Indian including their sexual asceticism and given that the Church in India, or elsewhere, apparently did not follow Thomas’ call for extreme celibacy, Thomas presents a puzzle. I make sense of this puzzle by looking at how Buddhist stories contain a similar rhetoric of aversion in order to teach acceptance and generosity.
Meira Kensky, Coe College: “Ephesus, Loca Sancta: The Acts of Timothy and Religious Travel in Late Antiquity”
At the beginning of her important study of the late antique practice of pilgrimage to holy people, Georgia Frank states that “[t]he first step for any pilgrim lands not on the road, but somewhere in the imagination.” Before one hits the road, one hits the books or hears the stories. Stories about holy people and holy places proliferated and were even written to invite – or entice – people to visit. This essay argues that the Acts of Timothy was written in the fifth century CE as part of an attempt not only to revitalize the waning ecclesiastical fortunes of Ephesus but to affix this once “great metropolis,” now in the shadow of Constantinople, firmly on both the literal and imaginative maps of potential religious travelers. By examining the details of this curious text, we can see how it establishes Ephesus as a critical place in the fabric of early Christian memory and even sketches out an itinerary for travelers who would visit the city.
Jeannie Sellick, University of Virginia: “Drunk in Love: Who’s Afraid of a Spiritual Marriage”
In one of the opening scenes of the Acts of Thomas, a newlywed couple receives an unexpected guest in their bridal suite. The interloper lectures the couple about the woes of sex, benefits of chastity, and the danger of children. The night reaches its climax as the lovebirds decide to “abandon [the] filthy intercourse” and instead adopt the “incorruptible and true marriage.” Here the role of wedding crasher is, of course, played by Jesus and through his impassioned speech he convinced the lovers to transform their corporeal union into a spiritual marriage. Though tantalizing, this scene from the Acts of Thomas has often been overlooked in wider conversations of spiritual marriage in late antiquity. Judith Perkin’s essay “Fictional Narratives and Social Critiques” offers scholars a useful framework with which to bring scenes from the Apocryphal Acts into conversation with broader discussions of Christian social history. For this paper, I use this titillating scene from Thomas as lens through which to explore the issue of spiritual marriage among early Christians.
Jennifer Barry, University of Mary Washington: “A Bad Romance: Melania the Younger and the Male Fantasy”
Judith Perkins, in her now classic on the suffering self, helpfully reoriented our understanding of how Christians used the suffering body to articulate the parameters of a unified Christian narrative. Here I draw on Perkin’s work to begin to push our understanding of the suffering self to a suffering gendered self in the fantastical bios written and dreamed of by men. To narrow my focus, I will examine Gerontius’s labor of love, the Life of Melania the Younger. The author makes it clear that this is an intentional exercise in memory making as well as a performance of personal piety. He uses elements of the Greek novel to coax his readers into his vita. The author then insists that it is only when the reader properly interprets the young girl’s early experiences of marital torment that the moral of the story is revealed. I conclude that the young saint’s experience of marital rape is filtered through the imaginative fantasies of late ancient male writer intent on constructing a recognizable (bad) Christian romance.
2. Additional Sessions
S25-228 Inventing Christianity: Apostolic Fathers, Apologists, and Martyrs (1:00 PM to 3:30 PM)
Theme: The Afterlives of the Apostles
Stephanie Cobb, University of Richmond, Presiding
David L. Eastman, The McCallie School: “Pauline Primacy over Peter in the Apocryphal Acts”
An important issue negotiated in the apocryphal acts was the relationship between Peter and Paul. Paul’s description of the Antioch incident (Gal 2) suggests tension between the apostles at one point, yet the author of Acts shows continuity in their message and mission, particularly through the Jerusalem Council in Acts 15, where a group that included Peter issued a statement that supported the Pauline mission. The author of 2 Peter offers a somewhat ambiguous endorsement of Paul’s writings, but otherwise the literary record goes silent about the connection between Peter and Paul. The apocryphal acts present later reconstructions and reimaginations of the afterlives of the apostles, and here the Peter–Paul relationship continued to be an object of speculation. This paper examines the Acts of Peter and Acts of Paul through the lens of the Peter–Paul question. The Acts of Peter presents Peter as a relatively successful preacher and wonder-worker, a foundational figure in Roman Christianity. However, details in the Acts of Paul show that another author/editor viewed Paul as the primary figure for the Roman church. In this text two forms of evidence are presented for this perspective. First, Paul’s preaching was more successful in overturning Roman power structures. Second, Paul courageously stayed in Rome to face his fate, unlike Peter, who in the Acts of Peter had attempted to leave Rome to avoid martyrdom and in the Acts of Paul is implicitly labeled a “deserter.”
Meira Z. Kensky, Coe College: “Go to Hell: Vicarious Travel with Peter in the Apocalypse of Peter”
In the Apocalypse of Peter, Peter travels to hell and, with the help of tour guides, get to view the punishment of the damned. He interacts with their tour guides, asking questions, and get surprising answers. Readers are invited to come along on this tour, which teaches them about how to live a moral life in this world, and about the ultimate justice that stands behind the mysterious universe. They also get to experience the vicarious pleasure of watching bad people get what is coming to them. For early Christians, these apocalyptic journeys were as close they could get to going to hell in their lifetime. In communities that increasingly valued various forms of religious travel, it is worth asking whether reading or hearing these texts fulfilled the same functions as undertaking a journey oneself, and if so, what it means to go to hell in this context. In this paper, I will discuss how traveling through texts became increasingly possible given both the surge in cartographical and geographical literature in the first few centuries CE, and the increasing popularity of travel narratives, well parodied by Lucian of Samosata in texts such as the Vera Historia. In particular, I will discuss the way Pausanius’s Description of Greece brings readers on the journey through Greece, as if they were traveling themselves, and thus became an opportunity to teach people about the world and to invite readers to think about their place in it. Texts became ways for readers to go to other lands (or even their own lands in a new way), and thus to think with space and place. Readers were interpolated into the texts as fellow-travelers. Texts also became ways for readers to reach lands otherwise inaccessible to them, whether the ends of the earth, the moon, the Isles of the Blest, or Hades. With Peter, readers travel to the different geographic locations of hell, where each place of punishment concretizes both the abstract principles of justice and the consequences for individual transgressions. They are invited to think about their own behavior and values, and thus re-conceptualize their place in the world. I will demonstrate, in particular, that their travels force them to confront the issue of God’s justice in a physical, visceral way, and that rather than inviting them to exercise compassion and mercy, the Apocalypse of Peter attempts to reshapes travelers’ ideas about justice and God, so that when they return to the world, they are transformed.
Carly Daniel-Hughes, Concordia University – Université Concordia: “Satirizing the Apostle: A Rereading of Gender and Desire in the Acts of Paul and Thecla”
Scholars once read the Acts of Paul and Theclas as a “gynocentric” text circulated by female ascetics. In recent decades, they have explored how gender figures in it rhetorically to promote sexual asceticism. Thecla’s gender transformation marks, it has been argued, her social transition moving from a feminized virgin to a masculinized sexual ascetic by the text’s end. What such readings regularly notice, but less regularly account for, are the curious gaps and contradictions around gender and desire that redound in this colorful tale, such as: Thecla’s seeming erotic attachment to Paul; Paul’s initial support for and then sudden and repeated abandonment of Thecla when danger looms; Thecla’s threat that she will “cut her hair” so that Paul might baptize her (a threat that she does not pursue; she is able to baptize herself in a pool of ferocious seals); the text’s repeated (prurient?) attention to Thecla’s nakedness; and the text’s privileging of mother-daughter networks, Thecla and Queen Tryphaena and Thecla and her own mother. The Acts of Paul and Thecla, ultimately, provides a complex commentary on gender and desire. This paper asks: are these narrative tensions a reading of Paul’s own confounding statements on gender and sexuality in 1 Corinthians? Scholars have presumed that Paul’s appearance in this text to be positive, a source of authorization for a gospel of chastity. Thus, Dale Martin argues that Paul appears “to promote a woman-centered, though admittedly androgynous, form of ascetic Christianity set up in direct opposition to the male-dominated, traditional household as promoted…by the Pastoral Epistles” (Sex and the Single Savior, 116). On this account, the Acts of Paul and Thecla cuts through the tensions in Paul’s discourse by emphasizing his pro-ascetic statements, where texts like 1 Timothy amplify Paul’s concessions to marriage. This paper considers the Acts of Paul and Thecla as participating in a more complicated hermeneutic, which can be traced in other contemporaneous early Christian texts. Benjamin Dunning’s Specters of Paul reveals how a series of early Christian readers of Paul’s letters grappled with the apostle’s tensive constructions of sexual difference, ultimately leaving their own accounts of difference unresolved. Taking a somewhat different approach to Dunning, I suggest that the Acts of Paul and Thecla reads Paul, but perhaps not in a complementary way. Considering whether satirizing the apostle was its initial design, I show that certainly some early readers of the text understood it as engaging with and exposing Paul’s discourse on eroticism and gender as ambiguous, so as to undermine it. The paper offers initial conclusions about what sustained this satirical reading (one that can account for this narrative’s circulation independent of the larger Acts of Paul). Tertullian’s use of Paul’s letters in his inter-communal debates about gender and sexuality provides historical clues as to what motivated the drive to present Paul not as an authority, as scholars have often assumed, but rather as a caricature.
Sara A. Misgen, Yale University: “Characterizing Apostles: Narrative Agency in the Apocalypse of Peter and the Apocalypse of Paul”
The apostles Peter and Paul exerted enormous influence after their deaths not only through the circulation of their writings, but also through their inclusion as characters in Greek-language apocalypses that bear their names. In the second-century Apocalypse of Peter, the titular protagonist is taken on a brief tour of heaven and hell by Jesus at the moment of the Transfiguration (Matthew 17), while Paul goes on a similar, though angelically-guided, tour in the late-third century Apocalypse of Paul. Taken together, these texts illustrate the importance of these two figures in the second and third centuries; the differences in their respective treatment, moreover, provide crucial data for examining how ancient authors established and deployed the apostles’ status. Most contemporary scholarship on these apocalypses has focused on determining relationships of dependence, particularly the dependence of the Apocalypse of Paul on the Apocalypse of Peter, or the connections between these texts and other Christian and Jewish apocalypses. But by using the Apocalypses to compare how Peter and Paul are portrayed, new light is shed on how early Christians constructed the legacies of these figures. This paper examines the narrative agency given to Peter and Paul in their respected Apocalypses and argues that the comparatively greater agency ascribed to Paul portrays him as the superior of the two, as he is able to move heaven by his prayers. Competition between the legacies of Paul and Peter is well attested, both in the New Testament and in apocryphal works like the Pseudo-Clementines. Like these texts, the Apocalypses of Paul and Peter enjoyed wide circulation and popularity among early Christians. Though the protagonist of the Apocalypse of Peter, Peter is mostly silent in the body of the text, speaking only twice. Jesus provides all of the narration and explains the features of heaven and hell, while Peter’s lines are primarily transition points: he opens the tour of hell by crying out at the punishment of the damned and starts the tour of heaven by asking Jesus who he will find there. Paul, in stark contrast, speaks throughout the entirety of his Apocalypse – consistently questioning the angel who leads him through heaven and hell, decrying the punishments he sees in hell, and rejoicing at the rewards of the blessed in heaven. Furthermore, where Peter appears as a passive recipient of his vision, Paul actively participates in his through his speech and prayers. In the penultimate scene, for example, Paul convinces God to cease punishments for the damned on Sundays, a respite that the angels in the narrative were unable to procure, thereby portraying him as someone who alters the afterlife through the strength of his relationship with the divine. In the process, Paul is characterized through his effective agency whereas Peter is characterized through his passivity; Paul moves heaven, Peter does not. Through this comparative study of the Apocalypses of Peter and Paul, some of the narrative means by which apostolic legacies were constructed, deployed, and reshaped by ancient authors are revealed.
Jonathan E. Soyars, Louisville Seminary: “The Afterlives of the Apostles and the Apostolic Role of Hermas’s Shepherd”
The apostolic generation is fundamentally important for the author of the “Shepherd.” Hermas presents the apostles as collectively proclaiming a message about God’s Son throughout the inhabited world and underworld, serving as paragons of virtuous living, and being the foundation upon which present-day Christ-believers are symbolically built. Why, then, does Hermas nowhere name Peter, Paul, or any of the apostles individually? This paper argues that Hermas never mentions any individual apostles because he considered their work and witness to be unfinished and in need of supplementation. He meets this perceived need by crafting the character of the Shepherd, whom he envisions as a unique and timely heavenly messenger and Christian community shaper. Across the Mandates and Similitudes sections, Hermas subtly transfers key qualities of prior apostles to him. This results in the Shepherd’s effectively performing the role of an apostle like those who have already died and thereby continuing in their line. In other words, Hermas presents the Shepherd as an active apostle in his own right, even though he never explicitly designates him as one; indeed, naming the other apostles would have detracted from the Shepherd’s particular functional apostolicity. When the Shepherd first appears, he tells Hermas that he “was sent” to him, presumably by Christ. He communicates discursive content from the divine, primarily ethical instruction, in the form of new commandments and parables that Hermas must preserve and eventually share with others. Perhaps chief among his apostolic activities, the Shepherd aims to correct and strengthen the faith of all those who whole-heartedly repent and to train them in the practice of righteousness. Thus we see the legacy of the past apostles living on in the Shepherd, whom Hermas strategically develops as an apostolic figure sent to his second-century Roman audience, just as the apostles before him had been sent elsewhere in their own day.
S25-329 Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism (4:00 PM to 6:30 PM)
Theme: Two “Rogue” Gospels, Mary, and Judas
Pamela Reaves, Colorado College, Presiding
Michael Kochenash, Hunan University: “Cross-Purposes in the Gospel of Judas: What Judas Intended for Evil, God Intended for Good”
The debate about whether Judas is a hero or villain in the Gospel of Judas may not be as contentious as it was a decade ago, thanks especially to transcriptional corrections and robust scholarly debate, but the precise nature of Judas’s characterization and the value of his betrayal remain unsettled. In this paper, I argue that the Gospel of Judas can be read as modeled on the Genesis story of Joseph, especially Gen 37. Judas shares the name of Joseph’s fourth-oldest brother, the one who convinces the other brothers to sell Joseph into slavery; and as Louis Painchaud has observed, Judas’s question in Gos. Jud. 46.16 echoes that of Judah in Gen 37:26. Moreover, in the Gospel of Judas, Jesus interprets the visions/dreams of the Twelve and of Judas, and immediately prior to Judas’s betrayal of Jesus, Jesus describes Judas’s star as ruling over the other stars, apparently those of the Twelve, and over the twelve realms. Readers with the appropriate cultural competence can interpret the rhetorical force of these parallels as communicating about the nature of Judas’s betrayal of Jesus. Whatever Judas’s intention regarding his betrayal of Jesus, it played an instrumental role in a salvific process. Readers can thus imagine Jesus addressing Judas using Joseph’s words, “Even though you intended to do harm to me, [the one true] God intended it for good.”
David Brakke, Ohio State University: “‘In the Midst of the Children’: Finding Jesus in the Gospel of Judas”
This paper proposes a new solution to the textual problem of Gospel of Judas 33:18–21 and thereby interprets Jesus’ arrivals and departures as key to the gospel’s structure and its understanding of the saved. The gospel offers a brief summary of Jesus’ earthly ministry as the prologue to the four appearances of Jesus to his disciples and/or Judas that follow. The summary concludes, “And many a time he is not revealing himself to his disciples, but nhrot you are finding him in their midst.” The Coptic nhrot must be corrupt, and most scholars have accepted the original editors’ suggestion that it is related to the Bohairic ?roti, “child,” and they translate, “but as a child you are finding him in their midst.” As others have pointed out, however, ?roti is attested almost always as a plural (Crum 631a), and the text lacks the indefinite article (ou) for “as a child.” These problems are overcome if we understand nhrot as “the children” and thus as the extraposited antecedent of “their” in “in their midst” (Layton, Coptic Grammar §330). That is, “And many a time he is not revealing himself to his disciples, but you are finding him in the midst of the children.” The sentence does not, as previous translations suggest, contrast the manner in which Jesus appears to the disciples—as himself or as a child—but to whom and how Jesus relates—to the disciples by mere appearance or to the children by being found in their midst. (It is possible that “you are finding him” should be emended to “he is being found.”) So understood, the sentence provides an appropriate segue from the prologue to the body of the gospel, in which Jesus comes and goes from the disciples. Three appearances are marked by Jesus being said either to come or to appear and, in two cases, then to depart (33:20–36:10, 36:11–37:20, 37:20–44:14); a fourth appearance, to Judas, follows, ending with departure on a luminous cloud (44:15–58:6). An epilogue, describing Judas’ handing over of Jesus, concludes the gospel. Jesus’ coming and going provides the gospel’s structure, and it corresponds to the gospel’s division between the disciples and their followers, on the one hand, and the saved people, on the other. When the disciples ask Jesus where he has gone after he leaves them, he replies, “I went to another great and holy race” (36:11–17). The chosen race does not consist of “offspring of this aeon” (37:2), but presumably of “the children” in whose midst Jesus is found when he is not appearing to the disciples. Jesus is to be found, not in his fleeting appearances to the disciples nor in the thanksgiving over the bread that they and their successors celebrate, but only among the children of the great and holy race, whose absence from the gospel’s narrative space its readers are invited to fill.
Elizabeth Schrader, Duke University: “Mary Magdalene as the Beloved Disciple in Earliest Christian Interpretation”
This paper is an exploration of three early Christian texts’ treatment of Mary (Magdalene), each of which survive in only one or two ancient copies. Manichaean Psalm 187, a Coptic text surviving on a single fourth-century papyrus leaf, is widely agreed to be a reworking of John 20’s encounter between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Commentators including Antti Marjanen, Majella Franzmann, and Jane Schaberg have emphasized the unique commission given to Mary Magdalene by the resurrected Jesus: she must go to the Eleven “wandering orphans,” because they have been persuaded by the “traitor” to return to their former occupations as fishermen. When Peter and the other disciples repeatedly scorn Mary Magdalene’s message, Jesus instructs Mary to say to them, “It is your Lord.” Yet these modern commentators have not discussed two other important intertexts with the Fourth Gospel: John 14:17-18, where Jesus promises to send the Paraclete to his “orphaned” disciples, and John 21:7, where the “disciple whom Jesus loved” identifies Jesus to Peter and the other fishermen via the phrase “It is the Lord!” Thus it appears that the ancient author of Manichaean Psalm 187 identified Mary Magdalene with both the Johannine Paraclete and the Beloved Disciple. What might have caused the psalmist to make this identification? New Testament exegetes including Sandra Schneiders and Esther de Boer have already argued that John 19:25-27 can be read as identifying Mary Magdalene with the Beloved Disciple at the cross; could the ancient psalmist have made a similar interpretive move? This paper will also examine the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Mary – ancient texts which (according to Schneiders, Marjanen, Raymond Brown, and Christopher Tuckett) also identify Mary Magdalene with the Johannine Beloved Disciple. From these three “gnostic” texts that have just barely survived complete suppression, I will argue that in earliest Christianity, there was a minority tradition that the Johannine Beloved Disciple was to be identified with Mary Magdalene. This tradition would have been in direct competition with the early tradition that of John of Zebedee was the Beloved Disciple (a position reflected by texts like the Acts of John and the majority of early patristic commentary).
Eric Crégheur, Université Laval: “The Last Page of the Askew Codex: A Witness of the Long Ending of the ‘Gospel of Mark’ or a New Christian Apocrypha Hidden under Our Nose?”
Neglected by modern research, the Gnostic treatise of the Askew Codex known as the “Pistis Sophia” is as much characterized by its length as by a convoluted and obscure system, still misunderstood today. The treatise is divided into four parts and ends with a decoration. However, after this decoration, on the front of a new folio, a scribe copied 22 lines of a short text that has apparently no connection with what precedes it. Considered a witness of the long ending of the “Gospel of Mark” as early as 1869, this brief excerpt still poses several problems. In this paper, we propose to look at this text anew, in order to clarify the nature of its relationship with the rest of what was preserved in the Askew Codex, with the long ending of Mark, and with what can be found in patristic literature, as to determine whether or not we could have before us a witness of a still unknown Christian apocrypha.
Jonathan K. Henry, Princeton University: “Our Demons in Common: A Shared Concept in Mainstream Apologists and So-Called Gnostic Texts”
One way of defining the core tenants of early Christian belief is by identifying the doctrines about which Christians most vehemently disagreed with one another (e.g., the nature of Jesus, the meaning of his death, or the mechanisms for accessing redemption). This is promoted by, and it further promotes, the use of a heresiological lens for analyzing the evolution of Christianity. In this paper, I will adopt the opposite approach by investigating one of the few beliefs Christians seem to have held in common: ideas about the insidious origins of the traditional Mediterranean gods, and the real-world implications of their deception. While such demonological beliefs have been abundantly documented in the case of traditionally mainstreamed Christian literature, the presence of these teachings in so-called gnostic texts has been less frequently studied. In this paper, I will show how some of the Nag Hammadi texts participated in a common apologetical discourse alongside more traditionally received Christian authors. In particular, I will investigate shared features between the Untitled Treatise on the Origin of the World and apologists like Tertullian and Justin Martyr. Like Justin, the Untitled Treatise rejects traditional Mediterranean piety as the work of bloodthirsty demons; the text’s complex demiurgical myths are deployed simply to reveal this larger truth to the reader. I will discuss the sources from which the Untitled Treatise seems to have received its traditions about the fallen angels, further highlighting some of the similarities between this text and more mainstream Christian apologists. Additionally, I will discuss how the anti-demonic invective employed by disparate authors (e.g., Irenaeus, the Testimony of Truth) against their fellow Christians can demonstrate shared beliefs about gods and demons upon which this form of rhetoric rests. In closing, I will consider some of the implications of seeing demonology as a probable sine qua non of early Christian belief.
3. Individual Papers of Interest in Other Sessions
S23-212 Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti (1:00 PM to 3:30 PM)
Robyn Whitaker, University of Divinity: “Decoding Animals in Early Christian Apocalypses and the Physiologus”
This paper explores correlations between demonization and other preoccupations with animals in early Christian apocalypses and the decoding of physical and behavioral characteristics of animals in the Physiologus.
S23-333 Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds (4:00 PM to 6:30 PM)
Dylan M. Burns, Freie Universität Berlin: “Revisiting the Codicology of the Berlin Gnostic Codex (BG 8502)”
One of the important artifacts in the study of Coptic Gnostic and apocryphal literature is the so-called ‘Berlin Gnostic Codex,’ BG 8502, which contains The Gospel of Mary, a short version of The Apocryphon of John, The Wisdom of Jesus Christ, and the Act of Peter. Although this single-quire papyrus codex was acquired and studied by Carl Schmidt even before the twentieth century, it was not published in its entirety until after the Nag Hammadi discovery in 1945, and in some ways this petit codex was and remains overshadowed by the NHC in scholarship. Fine work on the codicology of BG 8502 has been conducted by Schmidt, Till, and Schenke, as well as Robinson, but much work remains to be done, as highlighted by Krutzsch. BG 8502 also assumes new importance today, given the legend of its discovery in a tomb (cf. Nongbri), and the role that its leather cover plays in research into the possible monastic provenance of the NHC (Lundhaug/Jenott). In light of Nongbri’s monograph God’s Library and other recent contributions to codicology, this paper will re-introduce BG 8502 in comparison with other early Christian papyrus codices, asking new questions about its dimensions, binding, folia, ink(s), and—last but not least—its leather cover, which is famously said to contain an autograph testifying to its ownership by a monk.
S24-116 Book History and Biblical Literatures (9:00 AM to 11:00 AM)
Hugo Lundhaug, University of Oslo: “Imaginary Apostolic Books in Coptic Manuscripts”
It is a common feature of the later Coptic apocrypha, recently labeled as ‘Apostolic Memoirs’ (A. Suciu) or ‘Diaries of the Apostles’ (J. Hagen), that the main apocryphal contents of these texts, usually presented as a revelatory dialogue between Christ and the apostles, are found embedded in pseudepigraphical frame-narratives, usually presented as sermons given by important figures of the church in the fourth and fifth centuries, such as Cyril of Jerusalem or Timothy of Alexandria, describing the discovery of the purportedly apostolic book. This paper discusses the ways in which the creation, use, and storage of these imaginary apostolic books are described in these frame-narratives, as well as their function in light of the monastic context of the production and use of the Coptic manuscripts in which these texts are found. The paper also discusses possible implications of the fact that although there seems to have been a tendency over time towards embedding Coptic apocryphal narratives within pseudepigraphical frames, with stories about book-discoveries, we also find similar texts directly attributed to apostles, but without such frame-narratives, in late manuscripts.
Liv Ingeborg Lied, MF Norwegian School of Theology and Marianne Bjelland Kartzow, Universitetet i Oslo: “Books Known Only by Title: Exploring the Gendered Structures of the First Millennium Imagined Library”
References to books ascribed to figures known from the extended biblical narrative are abundant in Jewish, Christian, Manichean, Muslim, and other texts from the first millennium. One intriguing category of such references that remains largely unexplored is books known only by title. Books known only by title are postulated books, surviving neither as extant documents nor as excerpts or quotations of any substantial length; these books are claimed books. Often, we do not know whether these books were “real” (hence: “lost”) or “imagined,” but what we do know is that they have lived on as named entities through the medium of other writings. Books that fall into this category are found, for instance, in lists of apocryphal books; in annotations added by later hands in the margins of surviving manuscripts; as well as in literary accounts across the language traditions of the Middle East and the Mediterranean area. In a preliminary study of books known only by title, we discovered—much to our surprise—that several of these books are ascribed to female figures, such as Eve, the daughters of Adam, and the mysterious figure of Noriah. Until now, these postulated books ascribed to female figures of the biblical narrative have not attracted much attention. The practice of ascribing potentially fictitious books to female figures has been neither mapped nor analyzed nor systematically explored as a historical, literary and socio-rhetorical phenomenon. “Books Known Only by Title: Exploring the Gendered Structures of the First Millennium Imagined Library” is the 2020/2021 Humanities research project at the Center for Advanced Study (CAS) at the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters in Oslo. The project is co-chaired by Marianne B. Kartzow and Liv I. Lied. At the 2019 SBL Annual Meeting in San Diego, we wish to engage the analytical potentials of the concept “books known only by title” and reflect on the gendered dynamics of such postulated books—in dialogue with the SBL Book History unit. How may the category “books known only by title” and the (academic) biography of such books challenge and benefit current discussions about first millennium books—real and/or imagined?
S24-122 Early Christianity and the Ancient Economy (9:00 AM to 11:30 AM)
David A. Creech, Concordia College – Moorhead: “For Whose Sake Heaven and Earth Came into Being: Anti-cosmicism and the Rejection of Alms in the Coptic Gospel of Thomas”
Gospel of Thomas saying 12 is often understood as an early affirmation of James the Just as the leader of the nascent Christian movement. Read in the context of sayings 10-14, we see rather a rejection of James and his attention to concrete human needs. Read alongside other texts found at Nag Hammadi we also find a debate in early Christianities about the place of embodied expressions of piety in general and a rejection of charity in particular. Whatever the original intent of the saying in the Gospel of Thomas, its final form critiques acts of mercy and the Christian leaders who advocate for them.
S24-129 Inventing Christianity: Apostolic Fathers, Apologists, and Martyrs / Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism (9:00 AM to 11:30 AM)
Benjamin Dunning, Fordham University: “Karen L. King’s Contributions to Early Christian Studies”
This paper celebrates the career of Karen L. King, Hollis Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School.
AnneMarie Luijendijk, Princeton University: “The Gospel of Mary at Oxyrhynchus (P.Oxy. L 3525 and P.Ryl. III 463): Rethinking the History of Early Christianity through Literary Papyri from Oxyrhynchus”
Some might argue that the Gospel of Mary was a marginal source to the majority of Christians in antiquity, and the story of a woman who followed Jesus and understood his teachings better than did the male disciples was a strange tale. By looking closely at one fragment of the Gospel of Mary from Oxyrhynchus, this paper shows by the form and the hand of this papyrus that such texts, like the Gospel of Mary, which disappeared in the course of history, were not just random and aberrant sources. They were not merely the fodder of heresiologists, examples of disregarded sources. Rather, these sources circulated and were widely read, appearing in different forms and hands.
S24-330 Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism / Early Exegesis of Genesis 1–3 (4:00 PM to 6:30 PM)
David A. Creech, Concordia College – Moorhead: “Editorial Fatigue in the Apocryphon of John”
The Apocryphon of John is a sustained rewriting and interpretation of Genesis 1-9. Although Moses is explicitly corrected at five points in the text, Genesis’ account of creation is nonetheless the basis for the Apocryphon’s cosmogony and anthropogony. The ambivalent treatment of the biblical text is especially curious in that Moses is only “corrected” at points where there appears to be little disagreement. The problem is further compounded by the fact that the four extant versions of Ap. John (five if you include Irenaeus’ summary of the first third of the text) reveal that the text is evolving over time and in spite of the critiques of Moses, the redactors appear to return to the biblical text. But is the citation of the biblical text and return to the language in Genesis intentional? The 1998 article by Mark Goodacre, “Fatigue in the Synoptics,” in New Testament Studies 44 (1998): 45-58, may offer helpful insights into the question. In the article, Goodacre explores the impact of editorial fatigue when copying texts. He suggests that as copyists worked deeper into texts they would out of familiarity with the original text return to the wording in the source they were copying, even if it created interpretive problems in the resulting text. This paper will examine the possibility of editorial fatigue in the Apocryphon of John’s retelling of the aftermath of eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil (NHC II 23,32-37). Both the recognition of nakedness in NHC II 23,32–33 and the cursing of the earth in NHC II 23,37 return to the language found in Gen 3:7-10 and Gen 3:17, respectively. If editorial fatigue explains this return, what does this mean for our understanding of the authorship and audience of the Apocryphon? Note to chair: I think that this paper will work for the session on ancient exegesis of Gen 1-3 or for the session devoted to Karen King. My work with the Apocryphon of John was initially inspired by Professor King’s article, “Approaching the Variants of the Apocryphon of John,” in The Nag Hammadi Library after Fifty Years (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 105-37. Many of her books and articles informed the conclusions in my book, The Use of Scripture in the Apocryphon of John: A Diachronic Analysis (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2017). This paper is an extension of that research.
Kristine Toft Rosland, Universitetet i Agder: “The Canon of the Apocryphon of John”
Despite Ap. John’s correction of Moses in the four times repeated phrase “Not as Moses said”, the work’s dependence on Genesis has been demonstrated by many. It is therefore difficult to argue that Ap. John rejects the Old Testament, in the manner older scholarship on Gnosticism often did. However, simply discussing its attitude towards ‘Old Testament, ‘the Bible’ or ‘Scripture’ brings up problems. Ap. John quotes Genesis and Isaiah, it alludes to John and other New Testament texts, but it also refers to a book of Zoroaster and it is clearly influenced by Plato. What is, then, the canon of Ap. John? Which works are authoritative and what does being authoritative imply in this case? How is the rewriting of Genesis legitimized, and in which manner may Ap. John itself have been authoritative?
S24-337 Religious World of Late Antiquity (4:00 PM to 6:30 PM)
Stephen J. Shoemaker, University of Oregon: “A New Arabic Apocryphon from Late Antiquity: The Qur’an”
The question of the Qur’an’s literary genre has long vexed scholars, who have often struggled to find a category suitable to the nature of this frequently disjointed and disparate text. Its distinctive literary qualities, not to mention its frequent opacity, can make it difficult to identify a fitting precursor among the vast literary remnants of Mediterranean antiquity. Accordingly, one regularly finds pronouncements to the effect that “the Qur’an is an example of a genre of literature that has only one example.” Yet such a tautology simply evades a difficult and important question: how should we conceive of the Qur’an as a work of literature in relation to its broader literary environment? One important approach that has yet to be explored is understanding the Qur’an is as a biblical apocryphon, and once we begin to look at the Qur’an through this lens, Qur’an’s location within the broader phenomenon of Jewish and Christian production of biblical apocrypha in late antiquity seems unmistakable. Ultimately, the main difference between this particular apocryphon and so many other such compositions is that, like the Book of Mormon for example, a religious group eventually elevated it to a new scriptural authority. Indeed, much as the latter apocryphon would become an “American scripture” that relocates the sacred history of the bible onto American soil, so too the Qur’an is equally an Arabian scripture that Arabizes the biblical traditions. The potential payoff from recognizing the Qur’an as a biblical apocryphon is twofold, as I see it. Firstly, understanding the Qur’an as an apocryphon is sure to bring new perspectives on the nature and significance of both this collection and many of its constituent parts. The category of apocrypha affords a new avenue for approaching the peculiar relationship between the Qur’an and the biblical traditions of Christianity and Judaism. No less significant, however, are the bonds that this perspective forges between the Qur’an and the religious literature of late antiquity. Viewing the Qur’an as a biblical apocryphon allows us to remove it from the subsequent history of the Islamic tradition and see it truly as a product of late ancient religious culture. Thus we can look at the Qur’an with new eyes in order to investigate and better comprehend its relations to the various religious traditions of its historical matrix, including late ancient Christianity and Judaism in particular, without the distracting interference of the later Islamic tradition’s understanding this collection of late ancient religious culture. Recognizing the Qur’an as a biblical apocryphon anchors it to the religious landscape of late antiquity and invites us to read it in new ways within this context.
S25-202 Ancient Fiction and Early Christian and Jewish Narrative (1:00 PM to 3:30 PM)
Rebecca Draughon, University of Virginia: “‘And He Appeared, Standing before Him’: Polymorphic Depictions of Jesus in Light of the Human-Like Angels of the Jewish Novels”
Often in the apocryphal acts, Jesus appears on the scene in a new form or in multiple forms simultaneously. This polymorphic depiction of Jesus, as it shows up in the apocryphal acts, is thought to be a development of the Gospel’s nascent polymorphic tendency. In turn, the Gospel writers themselves are thought to be influenced by the various metamorphoses undertaken by gods in Greek literature. The possibility of Jewish origins for the phenomenon, however, remains largely unexplored by scholars, if not outright denied. This paper seeks to disrupt the notion that Greek sources are the sole influence on early Christian polymorphic depictions. I accomplish this by comparing the polymorphic depiction of Jesus in the Acts of Andrew and Matthias in the City of Cannibals with the depiction of angels assuming very human-like forms in the Jewish novels of Tobit, the Testament of Abraham, and Joseph and Aseneth. The payoff of this strategy is two-fold. First, the literary development of anthropomorphic angels in the novels is often overlooked in favor of the more supernatural and otherworldly depictions of angels that become popular in the Second Temple Period. Taken together, the examples of angels assuming human form in these novels show a development of the concrete anthropomorphic depictions of divine or semi-divine beings present in the Hebrew Bible. Second, the anthropomorphic characterization of divine beings in these texts help us populate the world of ideas wherein Christian authors strove to depict Jesus. Consideration of a human-like class of angelic characters in the ancient Jewish novels can help to fill in the landscape of the type of divine beings Christian writers might have known. By collecting these examples of divine beings that appear as humans, we not only see the development of a literary thread that traces back to the anthropomorphic angel encounters in the patriarchal narratives of Genesis; we also see how the sometimes startlingly human depiction of the post-resurrection Jesus in the apocryphal acts is not necessarily foreign to the Christian writers’ Jewish literary roots.
S25-207 Bible and Visual Art (1:00 PM to 3:30 PM)
Brent Landau, University of Texas at Austin: “Whence the Donkey? How an Apocryphal Tradition Became an Unquestioned Part of ‘The Christmas Story’”
It is common knowledge that Mary and Joseph traveled to Bethlehem for the birth of Jesus by means of a donkey. It is furthermore known that Mary rode atop the donkey, whereas Joseph walked alongside of it, leading the animal. Christmas cards, motion pictures, church Christmas pageants, clip art, and a host of other visual media all include this donkey. They do this in spite of the fact that nothing is said in Luke’s infancy narrative about by means by which Mary and Joseph travel to Bethlehem for the census. The donkey only appears for the first time in a second-century apocryphal infancy gospel, the Protevangelium of James, and this scene in turn is slightly modified in the seventh-century Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew. This paper will trace how Mary and Joseph’s donkey made the jump from apocryphal narratives into artistic representations, with such success that it became an absolutely unquestioned part of “The Christmas Story” (by which I mean the harmonization of Matthew and Luke’s infancy narratives that underlies contemporary depictions of Jesus’ birth in North America and elsewhere).
S25-243 Redescribing Christian Origins (1:00 PM to 3:30 PM)
Stephen Young, Appalachian State University: “Mythmaking about Early Christian Mythmaking: The Legacy of Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy for Early Christian Studies”
The impact of Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (1934) continues to reverberate through scholarship. But how should we understand its legacy? There is a common approach shared both by those who are sympathetic and critical: Bauer established the radical diversity of early Christian communities all the way back to the beginning through his arguments that, in some places, forms of Christianity later classified as “heretical” preceded forms later valorized as “orthodox.” I propose rethinking Bauer’s legacy as an opportunity to intervene within common, often taken-for-granted, paths in early Christian studies. As Bauer motions towards in the opening pages of Orthodoxy and Heresy, his work opened up a space for scholars to think about ancient Christianity outside of the narratives of the traditional “Patristic” Christian sources. This is a space that does not mandate reproducing the mythmaking of Christian sources, but instead facilitates historical, social, and political interrogation. The result is a reconfigured commonsense in scholarship. The interests, categories, and histories-of-Christian-origins within classic sources (e.g., Acts of the Apostles, Irenaeus, Tertullian, Eusebius) are no longer the privileged default. I propose theorizing Bauer’s legacy by thinking with two arenas of scholarship. On the one hand, scholars who have focused on women, gender, and “Gnosticism” in earliest Christianity who do not so much explicitly build on Bauer as exemplify the possibilities of the critical space oriented by his legacy. On the other hand, Evangelical scholars who contest Bauer’s histories of Christianity in different locales in order to reinscribe the narratives of their preferred early Christian sources; to delegitimize the critical space and its restructured commonsense. To rethink Bauer is an opportunity to interrogate our field. It permits decoupling his legacy from what he connected it to, such as specific arguments about the history of Christianity in various locales or narratives about the “Rise of Early Catholicism.” And of greater interest, it suggests also decoupling his legacy from his direct scholarly descendants who developed ideas that have become something of a new, though contested, commonsense for the field (e.g., the radical diversity of earliest Christianity; conceiving of such diversity in terms of “communities” that vied with each other; a way of attending to “heretical” forms of Christianity that unintentionally re-naturalizes distinctions between orthodoxy and heresy, sometimes by simply reversing them).