What More Do You Need? The Next Wave in Christian Apocrypha Texts and Translations

The following paper was presented at the 2023 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.

This paper has two goals: to narcissistically acknowledge and celebrate the publication this past summer of the third volume of the More New Testament Apocrypha series, edited by me with contributions from numerous SBL and NASSCAL (North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature) members, and to consider, where we as members of the field might go next in our editing and translation efforts. The question is raised, in part, because Eerdmans, the publisher of the MNTA series, has said that it will publish additional volumes, and I am continually asked whether there will be More MNTA, to which I respond, “Why do you hate me so?” Because the volumes are a LOT of work and as my wife will attest, editing makes me very grumpy. I also have projects of my own to write; a scholar cannot live on editing alone. And I have to wonder how much additional volumes of MNTA are really needed, given the other options that have become available over the past few years for scholars to publish both texts and translations.

So this paper asks “What More Do You Need?” and by “you” I really mean “we,” the Christian apocrypha scholars of SBL and NASSCAL and anyone who studies and reads this material. As scholars who, I hope, want to collaborate, where do we go from here? What projects do we want to collaborate on? How do we continue to grow our field? I hope we can take this opportunity to consider these questions.

1. The Origins of MNTA

But let me backtrack a little and talk about the origins and intentions of the series before I advocate for its redundancy. The MNTA series was born in Canada in 2006 at a workshop convened by Pierluigi Piovanelli at the University of Ottawa. Pierluigi invited all of the big names in apocrypha studies in North America—and me (I was actually not yet a “big name” but was certainly happy to be included). The conference was a celebration of sorts for the release of the second volume of AELAC’s excellent French apocrypha collection Ecrits apocryphes chretiens. Though Pierluigi taught in Ottawa (at the time) and participated in the SBL, he also was active in AELAC and endeavored to build bridges between European and North American apocrypha scholars.

After the presentation of our papers, the participants in the workshop assembled for a meeting in which we discussed the possibility of a collaborative project. One suggestion was an English translation of the EAC series, which I thought was not bold enough. Don’t we (North American scholas) have something to contribute? Does our own scholarship not have value? Another suggestion was to come up with a Christian apocrypha counterpart to the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha project that was in process at the time by Jim Davila who was present at the workshop (the first volume appeared in 2013, and the long-awaited sequel should be going to press very soon). The idea of that series was to create a supplement to James Charlesworth’s two-volume Old Testament Pseudepigrapha series—not translating the same texts but covering texts not included or presenting new translations of texts if required by the discovery of new manuscripts or parallel literature.

A few years went by without movement on any of these ideas until I approached Brent Landau about getting the MNTA project off the ground. The first volume appeared in 2016 (co-edited with Brent), vol. 2 in 2020, and vol. 3 this past summer (both edited by me alone).

I am often asked about how we decided which texts we would include in the series. In this we followed the lead of MOTP in seeing the volume as a supplement to a prior English collection (in our case J. K. Elliott’s Apocryphal New Testament) and included whatever our interested colleagues volunteered to do, or what we were able to convince people to do. We didn’t try to divide by genre, like Hennecke-Schneemelcher with one volume on gospels and another on everything else; instead, each volume features an assortment of texts in each standard category of texts (gospels, acts, epistles, and apocalypses). We had a general cutoff of composition around the tenth century but did not apply that too rigidly; we certainly avoided “modern” apocrypha, though Bradley Rice and I are toying with the idea of putting together a modern apocrypha collection in the future. We looked also at the texts included in the expansive French and Italian collections and tried to include the ones that had not yet appeared in English.

And I consulted the Clavis Apocryphorum Novi Testamenti (CANT), an indispensable reference work assembled by the scholars of AELAC in 1992 that presents information about sources and editions on a total of 346 texts. What are of particular of interest to me are the texts marked as “unedited.” The guidance of CANT is a two-edged sword. In some ways the volume established the parameters of the field—these are the texts we call Christian apocrypha. But it is not perfect. The Dormition accounts, for example, are divided in unhelpful ways, with versions that are simple translations assigned their own clavis number. For example, the Six Books Dormition of the Virgin has five separate entries, covering Syriac, Arabic and Ethiopic versions; the Homily on the Dormition attributed to Cyril of Jerusalem has three. The two manuscripts of the Martyrdom of Zechariah, which I worked on for MNTA 3, are assigned separate clavis nos. (180.1 and 180.4); a Martyrdom of James (CANT 274) is just an excerpt from Eusebius and really should not be in the clavis at all. Some texts are completely missing, including several papyri, a number of Nag Hammadi texts (e.g., the Apocryphon of James), the Book of the Rolls, the Syriac Gospel of the Twelve, the Life of Judas, and many others (not including, of course, texts that have come to our attention in the decades since CANT’s publication).

CANT also includes a number of Byzantine texts that threaten to strain the definition of apocrypha. The Hypomnemata of Symeon Metaphrastes, for example, are essentially rewritings of earlier apocryphal acts, though they are very important for demonstrating the wide dissemination of these traditions (for example, the Acts of Thecla is known in 45 Greek manuscripts, which is a significant number, but to get a real sense of its popularity add to these the 90 or so cataloged manuscripts of Symeon’s Martyrdom of Thecla which is actually quite faithful to the original text). Some contemporaneous encomia, such as those written by Nicetas the Paphlagonian, are less useful as they give only bare details about the lives of the apostles and testify more to the knowledge of the texts than really presenting new or revised narratives. CANT includes one of these (on Andrew; CANT 228) but the presence of this one text tempts us to consider the others. Generally Nicetas’s works are appealing when they present something that we don’t see anywhere else; for example, Francois Bovon discussed in an article (“Byzantine Witnesses for the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles,” in Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, ed. François Bovon, Ann Graham Brock, and Christopher R. Matthews [Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions, 1999], 87–98) the Encomium on James, Son of Alphaeus by Nicetas, but it is only valuable because we have no other Greek text on this apostle (well, there is one, a Greek martyrdom, but it is not yet published), and as it turns out, what it says about James is rather meagre. A handful of other Byzantine encomia (such as the Encomium on John by Blemmydes and the Encomium on Barnabas by Alexander Monachus) are more expansive and certainly deserve our attention.

The question that arises from all of this discussion of the European collections and the Byzantine texts is: are there candidates here for texts that still need to be translated, and in some cases, edited? The answer is yes. For apocrypha scholars there is still much work to be done.

2. The Impact of MNTA

After seven years and three volumes of the MNTA series, it is worth asking how well has it realized its two goals: offering scholars and readers useful resources for study and providing North American scholars with a venue for their work. With regards to the first goal, Janet Spittler and I were guests on a podcast recently and she remarked to the hosts that the MNTA series has awakened interest in the texts that is has covered, inspiring scholars to create new work based on the translations. She mentioned particularly the Acts of Thomas and His Wonderworking Skin, and I have noticed new work on the Epistle of Christ from Heaven, and the First Apocryphal Apocalypse of John. The volumes have also been universally praised in published reviews and panel discussions. As for providing a venue for North American scholars I have to say that the contributors are NOT exclusively North American—but nor are the contributors to the AELAC collection all French and Swiss, and Christoph Markschies’ German collection all German. Contributions have been welcomed by anyone who writes in English; nevertheless, the project’s home is North America and contributors naturally come to the project through North American academic networks such as SBL. As for providing a forum for scholars, it certainly has fulfilled that goal, but particularly, I think, in offering opportunities for publishing to early career scholars as well as a handful of graduate students who have worked on translations with established scholars.

3. MNTA 4

The work of growing our corner of the field must continue, of course, but will MNTA be part of that effort? Will there be an MNTA 4 or 5 or, God help us, 6? I can certainly envision the contents of a subsequent volume. MNTA 1 included a list of texts that I hoped to include in vol. 2; several of these did not appear, for a variety of reasons, and the same occurred for the prospective list in vol. 2 for vol. 3. So there are a few “leftovers” to which I would add a number of other possibilities:

Acts and Death of James, Son of Zebedee
Acts of Aquila
Acts of Matthew
Acts of Matthias
Acts of Peter and Paul
Acts of Simon and Theonoe
Acts of Stephen
Acts of Thaddaeus
Apostolic Lists
Book about the Birth of the Savior
Book of the Rooster
Dormition of Luke
Dream of Nero
Encomium on Barnabas, by Alexander Monachus
Epistle of the Presbyters and Deacons of Achaea
Hypomnema on the Life and Miracles and Martyrdom of Philip
Infancy of the Savior (Arabic Infancy Gospel)
Life and Acts and Metastasis of John
Life and Conduct of John the Baptist
Life of Andrew, by Epiphanius Monachus
Life of Pilate
Martyrdom of Ananias
Martyrdom of Hermione
Martyrdom of James, Son of Alphaeus (Greek)
Martyrdom of Judas Thaddaeus
Martyrdom of Stephen
Miracles of Mary in Bartos
Miracles of Thomas
Mystery of the Judgment of Sinners
On the Star, by Pseudo-Eusebius of Caesarea
Passion of Processus and Martinianus
Passion of Thomas
Prayer of Mary at Bartos
Passion of John the Baptist
Preaching of Peter to Faustus
Revelation of Stephen
Story of Andrew
Story of Peter and Paul in Rome
Story of Peter, John, and Paul in Antioch
Story of the Talking Skull
Teaching of the Lord
Vision of Theophilus

I’m actually surprised at the size of this list; there really is no shortage of texts to work on. The problem, of course, is finding people willing or able to work on these texts, which is partly why they still remain untranslated. Perhaps some people are simply unaware that these texts even exist. Each one would be a good candidate for an SBL presentation, article, or doctoral student dissertation. Which brings me to my next point: MNTA need not be the venue for translations of these texts. There are other options.

3.1 Early Christian Apocrypha

Because the MNTA volumes avoided the “canonical” apocrypha, the first iteration of the NASSCAL executive created the Early Christian Apocrypha series as a venue for those who were interested in publishing new translations and commentary on these classic texts. Actually, we didn’t exactly “create” the series; it had an earlier life under the editorial guidance of Julian V. Hills and was published by Westar in its now-defunct Polebridge Press imprint. We staged a “friendly takeover,” publishing our first two translations in 2019: Brandon Hawk’s Pseudo-Matthew and the Nativity of Mary and Lily Vuong’s Protevangelium of James. Added to these are the fresh-off-the-press translation of the Doctrine of Addai by Jacob Lollar, and the late-antique Life of Thecla by Andrew Jacobs, the Acts of Paul by Melissa Sellew, and (fingers crossed) the Infancy Gospel of Thomas by me. Also in the planning stages are the Ascension of Isaiah by Warren Campbell and the Apocryphal Epistles of Paul by Philip Tite.

Already in this list we see some loosening of the boundaries between early and late apocrypha (the Life of Thecla is not one of the “canonical” apocrypha, nor for that matter is the Doctrine of Addai, though it is quite well-known). It may well be that some texts in my list would better fit this format than MNTA. So in a post MNTA world, the EAC series, with an expanded mandate, could be a good venue for more than just the early texts (despite its title). The series’ success, however, depends on involvement and it has been a little difficult so far to recruit writers, despite the attractiveness of a short monograph in an affordable series overseen by a crack team of editors.

3.2 Texts and Translations

It may be that our colleagues would be more interested in creating translations with accompanying critical editions. I’ve toyed with the idea of approaching SBL about an MNTA supplementary series (of sorts) that could be a venue for some of the texts translated for MNTA that are based on contributors’ own critical editions—for example, the John the Baptist texts that appear in vol. 1 and 3, some of which were translated by me. But such a series could also serve as a venue for entirely new projects, such as a collection of the Hypomnemata of Symeon Metaphrastes. The advisory committee for SBL’s Christian Apocrypha Section discussed this possibility last year, with the idea of a session (or more) on texts by Symeon that would be collected in a volume. Most of the Hypomnemata appear in Migne’s Patrologia Graeca but based on a single manuscript (one or two have appeared only in Latin translation). Some Russian scholars have made critical editions of a few of the texts but still based on a small number of witnesses. To date only one has appeared in English translation: Acts of Cornelius in MNTA 1, translated by me (for the Greek text) and Witold Witakowski (for the Ethiopic).

Symeon’s Hypomnemata have been neglected because they are not “early” and because of the prevailing view in the study of hagiography that Symeon’s transformed texts are replacements that wiped out the earlier texts. But that’s not the case; the early versions continued to be transmitted. Also, Symeon’s versions are worthy of study because they circulated so widely.

A second option would be a collection of translations, or texts and translations, from the Pseudo-Abdias Apostolic Histories collection of apocryphal acts. The standard edition is that of Fabricius based on a single manuscript (there are over 100), but some texts within the collection have been re-edited based on several manuscripts and a few have appeared in English translation. But a full English translation of the entire collection would be valuable; there have been plans to do so for a long time but it has not appeared.

Another venue for texts and translations is NASSCAL’s new open-access journal, currently in its planning stages with a possible launch late in 2024. Contributions would be double-blind refereed, which would be helpful for scholars at institutions where such metrics are particularly important.

3.3 Outside Projects

So far I have focused on projects within SBL and NASSCAL but one of the reasons why further MNTA volumes may not be required is because of alternative projects in development. Hugo Lundhaug’s Storyworlds in Transition team, who presented on their work at SBL last year, are poised to publish a collection of translations of Coptic apocrypha (a range of apocryphal acts, fragments, and homilies). Ivan Miroshnikov has recently completed a volume in the series Parabiblica Coptica with editions of three texts translated in MNTA 3: the Acts of Andrew and Paul, the Preaching of Philip, and a portion of the Homily on the Passion and Resurrection by Pseudo-Evodius of Rome. No further volumes are planned but Ivan will doubtless continue working on Coptic apocryphal acts in various venues. Sarah Parkhouse and Francis Watson have created the series Coptic Gospels and Associated Texts, which focuses primarily on Nag Hammadi texts, but could, perhaps, broaden to include other texts. Certainly this series would render translations of some “canonical” apocrypha in the ECA series redundant. Brepols has included some apocrypha in its English series Library of Christian Sources (Protevangelium of James and the Acts of John), and their Apocryphes series sometimes features English translations, including the new volume by Stephen Shoemaker on the Dormition and Assumption of Mary.

These are only the projects that I know about; there may be others. The mandate of MNTA precludes needlessly retranslating texts that appear elsewhere; so it may well be that my ambitious list has some texts on it that will be made available in other publications.

4. Looking to the Future

Returning, then, to the goal of the Ottawa Workshop, and the mandate of NASSCAL in general, what do we as a corner of the field of Christian apocrypha want to do next? There are more venues for our work than ever before: MNTA, ECA, the journal, a possible SBL series, and non-NASSCAL projects. I wonder, though, if this might be too much? We are a mighty field, but when it comes to the number of scholars working within it, rather small. Are we in danger of spreading ourselves too thin? So thin that these projects could shrivel on the vine because of a lack of resources?

And are you interested in contributing to these projects? If not, why not? Are there needs in your careers that are not met by these projects? And what of digital projects? I’ve focused today on (mostly) print venues. NASSCAL does, of course, have the e-Clavis site, and the Storyworlds project is constructing their own database of Coptic and related texts. Are there digital projects that we as a group could create or partner with or simply support? What does the future hold for the study of Christian apocrypha? What more do you/we want? What more do we need?