Christian Apocrypha at the 2014 CSBS/CSPS: A Report
The Annual Meetings of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies and the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies took place last weekend (May 23-26) at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. Both societies are modest-sized groups of scholars; their gatherings are nothing on the scale of SBL or NAPS—the CSBS meeting, the larger of the two, regularly features 60-70 papers. But the gatherings are no less valuable and, in my opinion, far more friendly and collegial (they’re full of Canadians after all). They provide a welcome opportunity for Canadians living near and far to reconnect with one another.
For the past three years I have been leading a session at the CSBS on Christian Apocrypha. So far, the session has progressed without a guiding theme; with such a small number of scholars, it is best to keep the focus of the session as broad as possible. There was one major change this year in that we partnered with CSPS for a joint session. The goal was to expand our pool of possible presenters. As a result, we ended up with a good balance of New Testament and Patristics scholars, examining and discussing the texts through the particular perspectives of their fields. Also for this year I relinquished my role as chair of the session to Tim Pettipiece of the CSPS.
The first paper was “The Dialogue of the Saviour and the Synoptic Gospels” by Anna Cwikla, a student at the University of Toronto. Cwikla offered an overview of early theories (by …