Book Note: Piovanelli and Burke, Rediscovering the Apocryphal Continent

June 6, 2015 by Tony

The long-in-development essay collection Rediscovering the Apocryphal Continent: New Perspectives on Early Christian and Late Antique Apocryphal Texts and Traditions (edited by Pierluigi Piovanelli, Tony Burke, with Timothy Pettipiece; WUNT 1/349; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015) is now available. The book collects essays from the 2004-2006 SBL Christian Apocrypha sessions and the 2006 Ottawa International workshop (“Christian Apocryphal Texts for the New Millennium: Achievements, Prospects, and Challenges”) hosted by Pierluigi Piovanelli. I was asked by Pierluigi back in September 2013 to help finish the editing of the materials and it is gratifying to see them in print at last. For more information, see the Mohr Siebeck catalog entry, much of which is excerpted below.

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This volume collects the contributions of a group of North American scholars who started rethinking, in 2004, the traditional category of New Testament Apocrypha, largely dominated by theological concerns, according to the new perspectives of a greater continuity not only between Second Temple Jewish and early Christian scriptural productions, but also between early Christian and late antique apocryphal literatures. This is the result of the confluence of two, so far, alternative approaches: on the one hand, the deconstruction of the customary categories, inherited from ancient heresiology, of “Jewish Christianity” and “Gnosticism,” and on the other hand, the new awareness that the production of new apocryphal texts did not cease at the end of the third century but continued well into late antiquity and beyond. These papers bring together for the first time the …

Judas: Friend or Foe

December 8, 2006 by Tony

Craig Evans of Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia is quoted in a recent article on the Gospel of Judas on the CBC web site. Evans here claims that the text was misinterprted by National Geographic’s editing and translation team. John Turner is quoted in support of Evans’ position:

Judas did an evil deed by betraying Jesus to his enemies, Turner said.

"The decision was made that this is a truly shocking, revolutionary document that throws into question all of the traditional Christian claims about the figure of Judas, and the document simply doesn't support that," he said.

Terry Garcia, leader of the society's Judas project, dismisses the criticism, saying those who say the translation is incorrect are a minority

Evans may have been influenced by a paper presented at September’s Christian Apocrypha Workshop by Louis Painchaud. Painchaud’s team is working on a new translation of the text which, in their opinion, corrects erroneous views advanced by recent scholars that the text portrays Judas as Jesus’ most loyal follower. Here is the abstract of the paper:

À PROPOS DE LA (RE)DÉCOUVERTE DE L’ÉVANGILE DE JUDAS

Since its publication by the National Geographic Society last April, the Gospel of Judas has been interpreted and presented by the scholars in charge of its edition and translation as rehabilitating the figure of the apostle, who would be the true disciple of Jesus, the only one who understood his mission, to whom the spiritual Saviour would have asked to deliver him

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A Tale of Two Conferences Redux

November 3, 2006 by

A few days ago I posted a brief summary of two events I attended in September and October. Looking back at what I wrote, it seemed to me that some clarification about the events was in order.

First, they are not “conferences”—one was a workshop attended by a small group of invited scholars, one was a colloquium open to the public. Both had their attractions for me: the workshop featured scholars whose work I respect and focused on texts that I find fascinating (indeed, don’t we all?); the colloquium brought together scholars from a number of different disciplines (Patristics, Rabbinic Judaism, Gnosticism, OT and NT Apocrypha) to share their work and to honour the work of Dr. Charles Kannengeiser. Two very different events with very different goals.

My discussion of the events may have come across as an unfair comparison. Of course, the post was not intended as a “review” of the events, but merely an offering of comments about my experiences as a participant. The Montréal colloquium was of interest to me because of the diversity of the fields represented; but I did feel somewhat out of my element during the papers from outside of my own discipline, and assumed others might have felt the same (though such feelings may reflect only my own inadequacies). I commented in the post how it would be useful to see scholars of such diversity approach a more specific topic so that they could all benefit from working more closely together. Of course, …

On-Line CA Dissertations

November 2, 2006 by

Peter Dunn suggested at the Ottawa Conference that it would be helpful to have a database of links to on-line doctoral dissertations on the CA. In response, I have dedicated a section of my web site to such a database (see here). If you would like to see this list grow, please submit a link to your own dissertation or other known on-line dissertations. Include also a three or four-line summary of the work.

A Tale of Two Conferences

November 2, 2006 by

In September and October I had the pleasure and the privilege of attending two CA-related conferences. The first, a workshop at the University of Ottawa dedicated solely to the CA and attended by prominent North American CA scholars, has been discussed elsewhere (particularly by Jim Davila; see the post here) but deserves mention in this forum. The second, a Patristics conference at Concordia University in Montréal, is also noteworthy for CA studies and, again, deserves mention.

Ottawa, September 30-October 1, 2006: Pierluigi Piovanelli of the University of Ottawa hosted a workshop titled Christian Apocrypha for the New Millennium: Achievements, Prospects and Challenges. Invited were some of North America’s best and brightest, including (among others) François Bovon, F. Stanley Jones, Dennis R. MacDonald, Ann Graham Brock (though Ann was, ultimately, unable to attend), Cornelia Horn, Stephen Shoemaker, Paul-Hubert Poirier, Craig Evans, Annette Reed, and (ahem) me. With the kind permission of the organizer, the complete list of papers is featured below:

Lorenzo DiTommaso (Concordia University), “Jewish Pseudepigrapha and Christian Apocrypha: Definitions, Boundaries, and Points of Contact”
Timothy Beech (St. Paul University), “Unraveling the Complexity of the Oracula Sibyllina: The Value of a Socio-Rhetorical Approach in the Study of the Sibylline Oracles”
Michael Kaler (McMaster University), “Gnostic Irony and the Adaptation of the Apocalyptic Genre”
Robert R. Phenix, Jr. (Saint Louis University), “The Problem of the Source of Balai’s Sermons on Joseph and the Nachleben of Pseudepigraphical Joseph Material”
James R. Davila (University of St. Andrews), “More Christian Apocryphal Texts”
Louis

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