(Too Far) Beyond Canon: Has the Re-defining of “Christian Apocrypha” Lost Its Way?

The following is the text of my presentation at the GORE Workshop held at Beyond Canon (Universität Regensburg), 2–3 December 2024.

I have to confess that I’m not particularly comfortable talking about method, about definitions, and rebranding. A few years ago I caused offense at an online conference, at which I led off my response to Tom de Bruin’s work on apocrypha as fan fiction (recently published as Fan Fiction and Early Christian Writings: Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha and Canon) by stating rather bluntly I was not a fan of the comparison (I was told a year later by a participant that my attitude was, shall we say, unwelcome). And I sweated through a semester of teaching the Methods in the Study of Religion course in my program at York University, barely keeping ahead of the students.

But none of us can completely ignore method; definitions are a necessity of studying anything I suppose, but particularly in a field like ours where we are plagued with terminology that has polemical origins and is still used pejoratively by modern theologians.

I’d like to focus today on the parameters of our field, on deciding what texts we study, whether we call them apocryphal, noncanonical, or parabiblical. That is an area in which I have experience, not from writing about the problem, but from having to make choices in several projects about what texts to include or not to include and provide justification for doing so. For the most part I have argued for a broad definition—the more texts the better—but have recently become concerned that this approach may be too unwieldy, that our space outside the canon has become too crowded, that perhaps we have wandered too far beyond the canon and lost our way.

I am going to structure my talk today around four projects that have forced me to think of definitions. As a reluctant methodologist, I have approached the problem of defining apocrypha as I worked, and with each project, it seems, the definition has become more and more broad, bringing in more and more texts, though there are some occasions when I argued for being more restrictive.

The first project is a small introduction to Christian apocrypha that I was asked to write by SPCK Press (later reissued by Eerdmans) called Secret Scriptures Revealed. The book was intended for a popular audience, capitalizing on the surge of interest in apocrypha occasioned by the success of Dan Brown’s novel The DaVinci Code. I came into the study of apocrypha after the discussion on definitions in the 1980s begun by Éric Junod. These discussions resulted in three vital conclusions about our area of research: that apocrypha should not be bound by the time period and genres of the New Testament; that it includes also Christian-authored pseudepigrapha; and that the material would be better called Christian Apocrypha (rather than New Testament Apocrypha). Inspired by this approach, I made efforts to include texts in my introduction that were little known, even by those working in the field, texts such as the Book of the Nativity of the Savior, the Berlin-Strasbourg Apocryphon, the Book of the Rooster, the Revelation of the Magi, and the apocryphal apocalypses of John. I also crafted a definition of apocrypha that I have continued to rely upon:

The term ‘Christian Apocrypha’ designates non-biblical Christian literature that features tales of Jesus, his family and his immediate followers. They are similar in content and genre to texts included in the New Testament; the essential difference is that they were not selected for inclusion in the Bible, either because those who decided on the Bible’s contents did not approve of them, or because they were composed after the time of this selection process.

Of course, this definition is somewhat simplistic because what is “selected for inclusion” varies over time and space and it does not take into account Christian-authored pseudepigrapha, but it at least avoids any reference to a time restriction—apocrypha were composed throughout Christian history, from soon after the death of Jesus up until today.

Which brings us to the second project that was occasioned by another sensation in the media: the publication of the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. In 2011 I began a symposium series at York University designed to bring together primarily North American apocrypha scholars with a particular focus on North American areas of interest. The first symposium was an examination of the Secret Gospel of Mark, the second aimed its sights more broadly with a kind of state of the art on apocrypha studies in North America, and the third, in part, looked at modern apocrypha, a category of the texts that has attracted interest in North America, in particular via several works on the material by Pierluigi Piovanelli, who called for their acceptance in the field as a viable area of study rather than their summary dismissal.

The program included a panel on the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife with papers and responses by Carrie Schroeder, James McGrath, Mark Goodacre, and Janet Spittler (Schroeder’s and Spittler’s papers can be read HERE). At the time, it was becoming clear that the manuscript was a modern forgery, and I think the identity of the creator was revealed just days before the symposium. But this determination did not affect our work because our interest in the text was about its reception, about how scholars were arguing for or against its authenticity, and what this discussion had to say for our field and for the study of Early Christianity more broadly. For us, this text was an apocryphon, a modern apocryphon, but an apocryphon no less, and it could be studied just like our other texts, with an aim to understand why it was composed? What historical circumstances led to its creation? What sources did it use? Etc. The only thing that distinguished this text from other apocrypha was its time of composition.

While this determination broadens the definition of apocrypha too much for some, my own level of comfort was disturbed by two other categories of texts that were discussed at the symposium. I presented a paper on modern apocrypha, again calling for their embrace by apocrypha scholars, but distinguishing between two categories of texts: scholarly apocrypha, which like GJW, come with claims of antiquity—like earlier apocrypha they present themselves as texts composed in the first-century and based on manuscript discoveries (such as the Life of Saint Issa by Nicolas Notovitch, or the Second Book of Acts)—and revealed texts, which are presented by the author as revelations from Jesus or an angel made in contemporary times (such as the Aquarian Gospel of Jesus Christ). To me texts of this second category are not “genuine” apocrypha because they are not set in antiquity. I would apply the same criterion on apocalypses revealed to late antique or Byzantine figures, such as the Apocalypse of Pseudo-Methodius, or the Apocalypse of Ephrem. The other issue I had at the symposium was a paper by Eric Vanden Eykel on apocrypha novels (“Expanding the Apocryphal Corpus: Some ‘Novel’ Suggestions”). These are modern retellings of the Jesus story that introduce new tales and new interpretations of events in his life. Examples include Colm Toibin’s The Testament of Mary, Naomi Alderman’s The Liar’s Gospel, and Christopher Moore’s Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal. Something bothers me about including modern novels as Christian apocrypha, but I can’t really explain why. What divides them from, say the Gospel of Peter as a retelling of the Jesus narrative? For one, the novels are composed by known writers—there is no pseudepigraphy here (unless they were ghost written). Second, they are by their self-admission works of fiction; no claim is made for their historicity. But if we broaden our category of apocrypha to include Byzantine works like the Hypomnemata of Symeon Metaphrastes, then pseudepigraphy and claims of antiquity are not necessary criteria. And more and more I see statements by scholars that ancient texts, canonical and noncanonical, were not intended to be understood as historical truth (though on this I am skeptical, given that contemporary readers considered them that way—either accepting them as true or castigating them as lies intended to be taken as truth).

At the final session of the third York Symposium in 2015 the ground was set for the creation of NASSCAL, the North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature. The association was created to foster collaboration between scholars in the field and cognate disciplines, both within North America and abroad. The first expression of these efforts was the More New Testament Apocrypha series, which I created in collaboration with Brent Landau. This project is sister to the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha volumes edited by Jim Davila and Richard Bauckham. Their goal was to create a supplement to the highly regarded collection of pseudepigrapha assembled by James Charleworth in the 1980s, publishing translations of new texts as well as new translations of old texts if warranted by the discovery of new witnesses. Davila and Bauckham established a time limit of the seventh century—before the rise of Islam—though with a few exceptions (the time of composition can be difficult to determine and sometimes more recent texts draw upon earlier sources). We were faced with a similar choice and settled on a rough time limit of the tenth century. This was purely for practical reasons. There are far more Christian apocrypha than pseudepigrapha—CANT lists 346, and there are more besides, particularly if you include modern apocrypha. We also broadened somewhat the type of texts that could be considered apocrypha with orphan stories from variants in manuscripts, such as the various stories of the Good Thief, or from patristic works, such as the story of John and Cerinthus as told by Irenaeus; there’s also the Acts of Nereus and Achilleus, who are certainly not figures from the New Testament but their story overlaps with the travels of Peter and Paul; and a church order, the Teaching of the Apostles, which may seem an odd genre to include but if church orders can be included in the Ethiopic Bible, then why not?

This desire to expand what we call Christian apocrypha is certainly very modern, very post- Junod, so why did we call the series More New Testament Apocrypha? Isn’t that a step backward to thinking about apocrypha as bound by the time limits and the genres of the canon? On the surface yes, but what’s in a title? For us it was a matter of following the precedent established by the MOTP series; just as they modelled their project on James Charlesworth’s series, we modelled ours on J. K. Elliott’s New Testament Apocrypha. And we also saw value in the brand-name recognition such a title would have to a wider readership. Of course, we were criticized for this decision in reviews of the first volume, but a keen reader would have seen and perhaps understood the justification we offered in the introduction.

Closely associated with the MNTA series is NASSCAL’s official project: the e-Clavis. This is an open-access database providing summaries, lists of manuscript sources, and extensive bibliographies of every apocryphal Christian text . . . and then some. At present, there are entries for close to 350 texts, with an additional 500 manuscript descriptions, and 200 for art, iconography, and artifacts. The site has proven quite popular, with an average of 10000 individual visitors a month. But I mention it here because it reflects this ever-expanding definition of apocrypha. For example, there are entries on apostolic lists (rarely covered in apocrypha collections), and several entries for texts similar to the Acts of Nereus and Achilles in that they focus on second-generation Christian figures—followers of disciples, such as Clement ordained by Peter as bishop of Rome, Heracleides ordained by Barnabas as bishop of Tamassus; it even has an entry on Processus and Martinianus, the two guards who watch over Peter in prison. Some would call these texts hagiography—stories of the saints composed or adapted specifically as readings for the saints’ feast day—but the line between apocrypha and hagiography is very blurry; some hagiographical texts are simply adaptations of earlier apocrypha and can be used to reconstruct their sources. But are we going too far beyond the canon by including such texts? I recently asked that question at a presentation by Dan Batovici on the epistles on virginity attributed to Clement of Rome. I am comfortable including the Pseudo-Clementine Romance in the category of apocrypha—it prominently features Peter, after all—and would also add the Martyrdom of Clement, but texts attributed to him that have no connection to other first century figures? I’m not so sure. That opens up questions about other epistles attributed to first century Christians. Is the Epistle of Barnabas apocryphal? Maybe. What about the letters of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite (he is mentioned in Acts 17:34)? Probably not. Well then why do we include the Epistle of Pseudo-Titus? In this case it is an issue of content: the author draws on a range of apocryphal acts in his support of asceticism. So yes, it is related to apocrypha but I don’t think it’s really apocryphal.

Finally, I’ll mention briefly one more project. This is my Introduction to Christian Apocrypha volume for the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Series that I have been working on since 2017. Once again, I see this project as an opportunity to broaden readers’ perceptions about what constitutes an apocryphal Christian text. I am trying to squeeze in every text I can. But my initial drafts were coming in at four times the amount of pages that I was contracted to produce. This is the problem of a broad definition of apocrypha. Paraphrasing the Gospel of John, “There are also many other things that Jesus and his followers did; if every one of them were included in a study of the apocrypha, I suppose the world itself would never see Tony’s Anchor volume in print.” Or something like that. Maybe Schneemelcher and Elliott and our other predecessors had it right by imposing some kind of practical, in their case temporal, limit on what constitutes apocrypha.

But I’m not quite ready to do that yet. I think it is best to err on the side of breadth, to open ourselves up to new texts and new traditions, to appreciate how compelling is the impulse to tell stories about early Christian figures, to use them “to think with” in new contexts. Only by doing so do we understand how much the apocryphal texts are a vital part of Christian history and culture, that these texts were not always, in all places, condemned to destruction. And I think those of us who study apocrypha understand well that urge to tell stories; we like to share these texts with others, our colleagues, our friends, our readers; we’re not so different from a Christian in, say, the middle ages meeting up with a friend at a tavern and telling her in a hushed voice, “Hey, I’ve got something new. Something apocryphal!” And then the jackass at the next table says “Hey, THAT’s not apocrypha!” Don’t be that jackass.