Apocryphicity

This is the ninth in a series of profiles of the presenters at the upcoming 2015 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium to be held September 25-26 at York University in Toronto. Only a few weeks away! Remember, if you register for the symposium, you will receive drafts of the papers in advance, thus enabling you to participate more fully in the discussions that follow. For registration information, visit the YCAS 2015 web site (HERE).

Bradley Rice is the third of our doctoral students presenting at this year’s Symposium. He is a doctoral candidate in New Testament/Early Christianity at McGill University in Montréal. After working for nearly 10 years as associate editor of the Contexticon of New Testament Language (Oxford University Press), he has now shifted his primary research focus to Christian Apocrypha, and has recently contributed a translation of the Dialogue of the Paralytic with Christ for the first volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (Eerdmans).Rice became interested in Notovitch’s Life of Saint Issa after discovering that the Dialogue of the Paralytic—an early medieval apocryphon extant only in Georgian and Armenian—contains what may well be the earliest mention of Jesus’ travels to India. “These few lines were tantalizing in the extreme,” he says, “and led me to explore the mass of esoteric nineteenth- and twentieth-century literature that locates Jesus in India prior to his public ministry and/or after his crucifixion.” He further remarks that “historically speaking, it is highly unlikely that Jesus ever left Palestine.

This is the eighth in a series of profiles of the presenters at the upcoming 2015 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium to be held September 25-26 at York University in Toronto. Remember, if you register for the symposium, you will receive drafts of the papers in advance, thus enabling you to participate more fully in the discussions that follow. For registration information, visit the YCAS 2015 web site (HERE).

This is the seventh in a series of profiles of the presenters at the upcoming 2015 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium to be held September 25-26 at York University in Toronto. Remember, if you register for the symposium, you will receive drafts of the papers in advance, thus enabling you to participate more fully in the discussions that follow. For registration information, visit the YCAS 2015 web site (HERE).

Pamela Mullins Reaves is Assistant Professor of Religion at Colorado College, where she teaches courses in biblical studies, early Judaism, and early Christianity. She recently completed her Ph.D. in Ancient Mediterranean Religions at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2013). Reaves’ research focuses on late second-century Christian traditions, primarily those that reveal diverse perspectives and related rifts among early Christians, especially regarding martyrdom.

Her study of the Coptic Apocalypse of Peter (NHC VII,3) has encouraged her to examine competing claims of apostolic authority more closely. In this text, suffering on the physical level lacks value, exhibited through its revelatory report of the crucifixion. “I understand the association of this view with Petrine authorship as significant, reflecting a challenge to the emerging proto-orthodox traditions of Peter as a key martyr,” notes Reaves. Considering another Petrine apocryphal writing from Nag Hammadi, the Letter of Peter to Philip (NHC VIII,2; Cod. Tch.), alongside the Apocalypse of Peter, Reaves similarly understands its perspective on suffering as complicated, perhaps a counter to enthusiasm for martyrdom in the early Church.

Reaves’ interest …

This is the sixth in a series of profiles of the presenters at the upcoming 2015 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium to be held September 25-26 at York University in Toronto. Remember, if you register for the symposium, you will receive drafts of the papers in advance, thus enabling you to participate more fully in the discussions that follow. For registration information, visit the YCAS 2015 web site (HERE).

Greg Fewster is another of the three graduate students presenting at the Symposium. He is a doctoral student at the University of Toronto’s Department for the Study of Religion, working in the collaborative program in Book History and Print Culture. He is the editor of Paul and Pseudepigraphy (Brill, 2013) with Stanley Porter and author of “Hermeneutical Issues in Canonical Pseudepigrapha,” in that volume and “Can I Have Your Autograph? On Thinking about Pauline Authorship and Pseudepigraphy,” published in the Bulletin for the Study of Religion (2014). These articles engage developments in critical authorship theory and their relevance to the question of Pauline authorship of the Pauline corpus.

Greg’s research focuses broadly on early Christian book culture, including literacy, book production and consumption, and social aspects of reading, which serves as a context for studying the composition and reception of pseudepigraphy. This year, Greg has and will be presenting papers on the production and reception of the letter of James, the collection of Paul’s letters, and the Euthalian apparatus of the Pauline corpus.

Abstract

“Paul as Letter Writer and …

This is the fifth in a series of profiles of the presenters at the upcoming 2015 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium to be held September 25-26 at York University in Toronto. Remember, if you register for the symposium, you will receive drafts of the papers in advance, thus enabling you to participate more fully in the discussions that follow. For registration information, visit the YCAS 2015 web site (HERE).

Brandon W. Hawk is Assistant Professor of English at Rhode Island College. He is currently working on his first book, Preaching Apocrypha in Anglo-Saxon England, which challenges normative assumptions about versions of parabiblical gospels, acts, and apocalypses in Old English sermons, suggesting that these apocrypha are a significant part of the apparatus of tradition inherited by Anglo-Saxons.

While earning his MA (2007) and PhD (2014) in the Medieval Studies Program at the University of Connecticut, Hawk learned the value of interdisciplinary scholarship. With this perspective, most of his interests in research and teaching encompass what might be called transmission studies: the afterlives of texts and ideas, including circulation, translations, adaptations, and representations in various cultures and media. About his research, he says, “Scholars have focused to a large extent on early Christian Apocrypha, but many apocrypha have yet to be studied from the medieval period—either created then, or transformed into new iterations.” One of these texts is the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew, an expansive Latin adaptation of the earlier Protevangelium of James, which circulated widely in the …

This is the fourth in a series of profiles of the presenters at the upcoming 2015 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium to be held September 25-26 at York University in Toronto. Remember, if you register for the symposium, you will receive drafts of the papers in advance, thus enabling you to participate more fully in the discussions that follow. For registration information, visit the YCAS 2015 web site (HERE).

Ross Ponder is one of three student presenters at this year’s Symposium. Noting the high level of graduate student involvement in the previous symposia, we believed it would be beneficial to invite students to also present papers. Ponder is currently an advanced Ph.D. student in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, specializing in in the cultural history and artifacts of early Judaism and Christianity. He holds a M.A. in Religious Studies from UT-Austin, a M.Div. in early Christian studies from Boston University, and a B.A. in Classics from UT-Austin.

Ponder’s research usually revolves around the textual and material evidence of ancient Christianity. His interests include papyrology, apocryphal narratives, and understanding ancient cultures with the help of modern social theory. Ponder continues work on several projects: an analysis of the rhetoric of divine benefaction and patronage in Paul’s letter to Philemon; an examination of the competing cultural memories for the martyr Vibia Perpetua in late antiquity; a queer reading of the reproduction process in the parable of the sower (Mark 4:1-20); and a reexamination …

This is the third in a series of profiles of the presenters at the upcoming 2015 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium to be held September 25-26 at York University in Toronto. Remember, if you register for the symposium, you will receive drafts of the papers in advance, thus enabling you to participate more fully in the discussions that follow. For registration information, visit the YCAS 2015 web site (HERE).

The Symposium begins Friday morning with  a presentation by Stanley E. Porter. Porter is Professor of New Testament, as well as President and Dean, and holder of the Roy A. Hope Chair in Christian Worldview, at McMaster Divinity College in Hamilton, Ontario. McMaster Divinity College is a free-standing theological seminary and graduate school located on the same campus as its sister university. Porter is the author of over twenty-five volumes, as well as editing well over ninety volumes of different types. His published scholarly works span the range of New Testament and related studies, from the Gospels to John to Acts to the Pauline letters and the rest. He is especially interested in Greek language and linguistics. Porter recently published a biography, Constantine Tischendorf: The Life and Work of a 19th Century Bible Hunter (Bloomsbury, 2015), and Linguistic Analysis of the Greek New Testament: Studies in Tools, Methods, and Practice (Baker, 2015), and he has a forthcoming commentary, The Letter to the Romans: A Linguistic and Literary Commentary (Sheffield Phoenix, 2015) and a forthcoming volume entitled When Paul Met …

The 2015 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium is just six weeks away. As the event approaches, I will be posting information about the presenters along with abstracts of their papers. Remember, if you register for the symposium, you will receive drafts of the papers in advance, thus enabling you to participate more fully in the discussions that follow. For registration information, visit the YCAS 2015 web site (HERE).

We begin with Bart Ehrman, who has graciously accepted our invitation to deliver the symposium’s keynote address, which takes place the evening of September 25. Professor Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he has taught since 1988. Professor Ehrman has written or edited thirty books, including monographs, editions and translations, and textbooks. Five of his trade books have been New York Times Bestsellers: Misquoting Jesus; God’s Problem; Jesus Interrupted; How Jesus Became God, and Forged: Why the Bible’s Authors are Not Who We Think They Are. His books have been translated into twenty-seven languages.

One of Ehrman’s primary research foci over the past seven years has been forgery in the early Christian tradition. In addition to the trade book, he has published a major scholarly study of the phenomenon, Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (New York: Oxford, 2013). Ehrman introduces his wide-ranging study with these words: “Arguably the most distinctive feature of the early …

The proceedings from the 2013 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium—Forbidden Texts on the Western Frontier: The Christian Apocrypha from North American Perspectives—is now available for order from Wipf and Stock Publishers. The book can be purchased from other retailers (Amazon and even on Kindle) in a few months. Copies will be available also at the 2015 Symposium in September. My thanks go out to all the contributors for their work in getting the papers to press. The table of contents is as follows:

Foreword–Christoph Markschies
Introduction—Tony Burke
North American Approaches to the Study of the Christian Apocrypha on the World Stage—Jean-Michel Roessli
The “Harvard School” of the Christian Apocrypha—Brent Landau
Excavating Museums: From Bible Thumping to Fishing in the Stream of Western Civilization—Charles Hedrick
Scriptural Trajectories Through Early Christianity, Late Antiquity, and Beyond: Christian Memorial Traditions and the longue durée—Pierluigi Piovanelli
Jesus at School among Christians, Jews, and Muslims—Cornelia Horn
Nag Hammadi, Gnosticism, Apocrypha: Bridging Disciplinary Divides—Nicola Denzey Lewis
Canon Formation: Why and Where Scholars Disagree—Lee Martin McDonald
Apocryphal Gospels and Historical Jesus Research: A Reassessment—Stephen J. Patterson
Apocryphal Gospels and the Historical Jesus: A Response to Stephen Patterson—John Kloppenborg
Apocryphal Gospels and the Historical Jesus: A Response to Stephen Patterson—Mark Goodacre
The Distinctive Sayings of Jesus Shared by Justin and the Pseudo-Clementines—F. Stanley Jones
The Tiburtine Sibyl, the Last Emperor, and the Byzantine Apocalyptic Tradition—Stephen J. Shoemaker
Confused Traditions? Peter and Paul in the Apocryphal Acts—David Eastman
Digital Humanities and the Textual Critic: Resources, Prospects and Problems—Kristian …

The 2015 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium—“Fakes, Forgeries, and Fictions: Writing Ancient and Modern Christian Apocrypha”—has a spiffy new web site (an update of the 2011 web site designed by Sarah Veale, accessible at http://tonyburke.ca/conference/) featuring the preliminary schedule, registration information, etc. The careful reader may notice that there are two changes to the line-up of presenters. Paul Dilley and Caitlin Purcell had to withdraw from the conference, but in their places we welcome Brent Landau (now doing double-duty as conference co-organizer and presenter), who joins the panel on writing apocrypha in antiquity with his paper  “Under the Influence (of the Magi): Did Hallucinogens Play a Role in the Inspired Composition of the Pseudepigraphic Revelation of the Magi?”, and Eric Vanden Eykel, who joins the modern apocrypha panel with “Expanding the Apocryphal Corpus: Some ‘Novel’ Suggestions.” Abstracts for both papers are available on the web site.

The proceedings from the 2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium are now in the production stage of publication and should be available for purchase at the 2015 symposium at the end of September. Here is the cover artwork (click to see full size):