Apocryphicity

A Blog Devoted to the Study of Christian Apocrypha

The Sisters of Sinai

by Tony

I have just finished reading Janet Soskice’s popularization of the discovery of the famous Sinai palimpsest by Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Smith Gibson (The Sisters of Sinai: How Two lady Adventurers Discovered the Hidden Gospels. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2009). The “Hidden Gospels” alluded to in the title refers not to non-canonical texts (as it often does) but to a fourth-century Syriac translation of the canonical gospels hidden under a seventh-century collection of tales of women saints. The palimpsest represents our earliest complete witness to the gospels, albeit in translation, and caused quite a stir upon its publication in the late nineteenth-century.

The Smith twins found the manuscript on a trip to St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai. Soskice documents the struggles of their various trips to the monastery to work on this and other manuscripts, and their struggles to be taken seriously as scholars in nineteenth-century England, a time when women were not allowed to obtain university degrees. Along for one of the trips to the Sinai were other famous scholars from Cambridge: Rendel Harris, Francis Burkitt, and Robert Bensly. One of the book’s most interesting stories is the infighting that took place among the expedition over the division of labour transcribing the palimpsest and over who would take the glory for the find.

Soskice also discusses the discovery of Codex Sinaiticus by Constantin von Tischendorf, who preceded the twins in his own well-known trip to Sinai and whose suspicious activities in securing Sinaiticus made …

Continue Reading

CA Web Site of the Week 2

by Tony

The Christian Apocrypha Web Site of this week is the home page of the Association pour l’étude de la littérature apocryphe chrétienne (AELAC). AELAC is an academic association based in Switzerland and France dedicated to the publication of finely-crafted critical editions of Old and New Testament Apocrypha in a series called Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum. To date, editions have appeared on various Apocryphal Acts, the Ascension of Isaiah, Irish Apocrypha, and most recently the Kerygma Petri; the next volume to be published will likely be my edition of the Greek tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.

The site contains an overview of all of the society’s publications, including the CCSA volumes, their related Instrumenta (concordances), the popular-market translations of the Collection de poche, the journal Apocrypha, the yearly Bulletin de l’AELAC, and the wonderful two-volume CA collection Écrits apocryphes chrétiens published in the Pléiades series. You can also find here information on the annual Réunion that takes place in Dole, France.

Another useful feature of the site is a bibliography of work by the members of the association. It is arranged both by author’s names and by text. The only shortcoming of the site is that it is woefully out of date (the last Bulletin posted is from 2007, and the last table of contents of Apocrypha is vol. 16 from 2004).

Continue Reading

Secret Mark in Biblical Archeology Review

by Tony

The latest issue of Biblical Archeological Review (Nov/Dec 2009) features a series of articles on Secret Mark. This is the second time in recent memory (Scott Brown contributed a piece back in 2005) that BAR has looked at the text. Presumably the topic is attractive to BAR editor Hershel Shanks, who is a vociferous supporter of the authenticity of certain artifacts such as the James Ossuary. Several other bloggers have commented on the articles (including James Tabor at Taborblog, and Timo Paananen at Salainen evankelista; note also Mark Goodacre at NTblog has recently posted a clip of an interview by Morton Smith from 1984); I’d like to offer a few comments on them also.

The first article, available for free on the BAR web site, is an overview written by Charles Hedrick of the discovery of the manuscript. Hedrick has been one of the most vocal supporters of the manuscript’s authenticity but his task here was to provide a neutral discussion of the basic facts of the discovery, Smith’s early work on the text, the scholarly reaction to this work, and the three recent monographs on Secret Mark written by Scott Brown, Stephen Carlson, and Peter Jeffery.

The second article presents the case for the forgery of the text. It is written not by Carlson nor by Jeffery nor by any other supporter of the forgery hypothesis (such as Birger Pearson or Bart Ehrman) but by Hershel Shanks. Shanks’ requests to such scholars were turned down for …

Continue Reading

CA Web Site of the Week

by Tony

As I work through my web site (tonyburke.ca) and update various materials (including my links to sites focusing on the Christian Apocrypha), I thought it would be useful to offer more expansive descriptions of sites of interest in a series of “CA Web Site[s] of the Week” (cue applause). The first is Andrew Bernhard’s gospels.net.

Bernhard, an Oxford Graduate, is the author of Other Early Christian Gospels (London: T & T Clark, 2006) a study of the CA texts preserved in early papyri (e.g., P.Oxy. 840, The Egerton Gospel, the Greek manuscripts of the Gospel of Thomas, and others). These particular texts were the focus of the previous incarnation of this site, Jesus of Nazareth in Early Christian Gospels.

The current site contains resources for the study of twelve texts: the Gospels of Thomas (which receives the most attention), Judas, Mary, Peter, Egerton, P. Oxy. 840, the Jewish-Christian gospels, Secret Mark, and the Infancy Gospels of James and Thomas. For each gospel, Bernhard provides a list (and sometimes images) of the extant manuscripts, a select bibliography, scans of secondary sources (where available), and links to on-line resources.  The site features also a blog (which has been quite active of late with discussions of Secret Mark and the Gospel of Thomas) and a page of supplementary resources (e.g., links to texts from the Church Fathers, lexicons, etc.).

Gospels.net’s greatest contribution is the images of the manuscripts …

Continue Reading

Work in Progress

by Tony

Apocryphicity has suffered from considerable neglect lately. There are several reasons for this. For one, I am under review for Tenure, and the file preparation has taken some of my time. Also, I have a heavy course load this semester. And, there has been an illness (and subsequent death) in the family, leading to the abandonment of my SBL paper (see further below) and a curtailing of other projects.

Nevertheless, it’s probably time to put some work into my languishing Blog. I thought I’d begin with some updates on a variety of projects.

1.  I look forward very soon to seeing the proofs for my critical edition of the Greek tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.  The edition is based on my 2001 doctoral dissertation (available HERE) and is to be published in the Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum. The editing process has taken a considerable amount of time, but the end product will be much superior to the dissertation. We should see the edition some time in 2010 (hopefully by the l’AELAC Réunion in June).

2. I am following up my Greek edition of IGT with work on the Syriac tradition of the text (for more information see HERE). This was the focus of

Continue Reading

Reidar Aasgaard’s The Childhood of Jesus

by Tony

I'd like to congratulate Reidar Aasgaard on the publication of his new book, The Childhood of Jesus: Decoding the Apocryphal Gospel of Thomas. Reidar has been working for several years now on this text; some of you may have seen him present his work at the meetings of the SBL or AELAC. This is the first book devoted solely to Infancy Thomas in quite some time (the most recent being Thomas Rosen's excellent study, The Slavonic Translation of the Apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas in 1997). Best of luck Reidar. For more information , download the promotional PDF here. 

The Legend of the Thirty Pieces of Silver

by Tony

Way back in April 2008 I mentioned coming across a new Judas apocryphon (The Legend of the Thirty Pieces of Silver) in a Garshuni Ms. Turns out it was not that new after all, but it has been all-but-forgotten in scholarship for over a century. Slavomír ÄŒéplö of Comenius University in Slovakia and I decided to pursue the text and have put together a critical edition (or two) of the Syriac tradition of LTPS.

The Syriac version of the text was first seen in two previous editions of Solomon of Basra’s Book of the Bee, a collection of theological and historical texts covering events and figures from creation to the final day of resurrection. Our edition draws on the Bee Mss as well as eight additional unpublished Syriac Mss and two in Garshuni. The material is divided into two recensions: a Western recension found in five Serta Mss and the two in Garshuni, and an Eastern recension in the remaining three Madhnaya Mss and the Book of the Bee.

LTSP has been published also as part of the works of three Western writers: Godfrey of Viterbo’s Pantheon (ca. 1185), Ludolph of Suchem’s De Itinere Terrae Sanctae (ca. 1350-1361), and John of Hildesheim’s Historia trium Regum (ca. 1364-1375). And the text is extant in additional unpublished Latin Mss and in Arabic, Armenian (discussed HERE), and several European languages including German, English, Italian, Spanish and Catalan. The Syriac version differs notably from the Western versions by its …

Continue Reading

Paul and the Resurrection

by Tony

I was asked recently to take part in an on-line debate on the topic of Paul and the Resurrection. The two debaters were historian Richard Carrier and Jake O-Connell, a theology student at Assumption College in Worchester, Massachussets. I was among four scholars who were called on to assess the debate. Included also is Dennis R. MacDonald (whose assessment is quite witty). You can read the debate HERE and the assessments HERE.

Paper for 2009 SBL Annual Meeting

by Tony

I will be attending the 2009 SBL Annual Meeting in New Orleans in November. Francois Bovon has graciously agreed to respond to my paper. Here is the abstract:

Christian Apocrypha in Ancient Libraries

Several of the most prominent literary discoveries of the past century have been the contents of ancient libraries—i.e., collection of texts, rather than single texts or single codices. Many of these libraries include Christian apocryphal literature. The Oxyrhynchus site, for example, includes material that may have derived from a Christian scriptorum or that was borrowed/copied from the library of Alexandria. Among the texts found at the site are fragments of the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Mary, the Acts of Paul, the Acts of Peter, the Acts of John, the Gospel of Mary, and two unidentified apocrypha. The Bodmer Papyri (aka the Dishna Papers), which may have belonged to a monastery library, include the Infancy Gospel of James and 3 Corinthians. And, the most well-known collection of Christian apocrypha, the Nag Hammadi Library, which may have originated at a nearby Pachomian monastery, features numerous apocryphal texts including the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip. This paper reviews the manuscript evidence of the apocryphal texts from these libraries to get a sense of how the texts were regarded by those who collected them. Do they exhibit any of the features typically found in manuscripts that derive from ancient libraries? Are the apocryphal …

Continue Reading

2009 SBL International Meeting in Rome

by Tony

The International Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature will soon be upon us (June 30 to July 4). I will be presenting a paper at the event (more on that to follow). Here is a list of papers/panels of interest to the study of the Christian Apocrypha.

Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
July 2, 8:30-10:00 AM
Theme: Why Study Extra-Canonical Literature?

Kelley Coblentz Bautch, St. Edward's University, Presiding
Michael Segal, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Panelist
Ida Frohlich, Pazmany Peter Catholic University, Panelist
Pierluigi Piovanelli, University of Ottawa, Panelist
Joseph Sievers, Pontifical Biblical Institute and Pontifical Gregorian University, Panelist
Judith Newman, University of Toronto, Panelist
Jonathan Ben-Dov, University of Haifa, Panelist
Gabriele Boccaccini, University of Michigan, Panelist

Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha
July 3, 8:30-11:30 AM
Theme: New Approaches to the Study of the Pseudepigrapha and Apocrypha

Françoise Mirguet, Universite Catholique de Louvain, Presiding
Rebecca Raphael, Texas State University-San Marcos
Jesus the Disabler: Disability, Eschatology, and Identity in Sibylline Oracles 1.324-386 (25 min)
Timothy B. Sailors, University of Tubingen
The Baptism of Jesus and the Baptism of Adam in the Books of Adam and Eve (25 min)
Pieter M. Venter, University of Pretoria
Triadic Constructs in the Dinah Narrative: Genesis, Aramaic Levi and Jubilees (25 min)
Break (30 min)
Tony Burke, York University and Slavomír Céplö, Comenius University, Bratislava, Slovakia
The Syriac Tradition of the Legend of the Thirty Pieces of Silver (25 min)
Silviu N. Bunta, University of Dayton
The Shorter Recension of the Life of Adam and Eve: Revisiting the Romanian Version…

Continue Reading

Secret Mark at the 2008 SBL Annual Meeting

by Tony

I was a rather bad boy at this year’s SBL, attending only one day of the conference, the day that comprised my own paper on the Syriac tradition of Infancy Thomas and the afternoon session on Secret Mark (“Secret Mark after Fifty Years”). I decided to compose a post on the session because of the text’s importance for those who study the Christian Apocrypha and because of the session’s relation to my recent article and postings on conservative scholars’ approaches to the CA (Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium). My apologies in advance for any infelicities in recording and summarizing the event.

The session was chaired by Mark Goodacre and featured two pairs of scholars: Stephen Carlson (known for his book The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark) and Birger Pearson, who deny the text’s authenticity, and Scott Brown (known for his own monograph on Secret Mark, Mark’s Other Gospel: Rethinking Morton Smith’s Controversial Discovery, and for his responses to Carlson’s book) and Allan Pantuck, who believe it to be an authentic ancient text. There were also two respondents: Charles Hedrick who supported Brown’s and Pantuck’s position, and Bart Ehrman who sided with Carlson and Pearson.

Pearson’s presentation, “The Secret Gospel of Mark: A Twentieth-Century Fake,” offered a selective overview of research on the text—selective, that is, in that it focused on the scholarship that convinced Pearson to go from a supporter of its authenticity to a critic. He cited particularly Per Beskow’s Strange …

Continue Reading

Yet Another “Heresy Hunting” Response

by Tony

The 2008 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature begins tomorrow and I have been so busy working on my presentation on the Syriac tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas that I have neglected the ongoing discussion of my “Heresy Hunting” article. I don’t have time enough yet to respond to Darrell Bock’s formal response, but I will quickly respond to Rob Bowman’s last post.

First, Rob took issue with my characterization of previous work on Gos. Thom. 114. I wrote:

“In response, Bowman excerpted a number of non-conservative scholars (including Pagels, Patterson, and Meyer) who agree that the saying is indeed misogynist. These may not be the best scholars to appeal to in this debate, however, as they write often for popular audiences and their comments on the texts may suffer from the same lack of depth as the apologists I criticize.”

And he responded: 

“I expect to be at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature in a couple of weeks, and I would love to get Burke in a room together with Pagels, Patterson, and Meyer to hear him defend this statement. Pagels, Patterson, and Meyer are without a doubt three of the top mainstream scholars working on the Gospel of Thomas. I also cited Antti Marjanen, whose publications that I cited cannot possibly be described as intended for popular audiences. Burke says nothing about Marjanen, perhaps for this reason. But his statement about Pagels, Patterson, and Meyer is indefensible.”

Now, I don’t …

Continue Reading

New Responses to Heresy Hunting

by Tony

There are an additional three more blog postings relating to my Heresy Hunting article to bring to your attention: Rob Bowman’s response to my last post on Women in the Gospel of Thomas, Darrell L. Bock’s response to the original article on the SBLForum site, and a response to Bock by N. T. Wrong. I will respond to these when the opportunity arises. I only incidentally discover these; if anyone knows of other postings that I have not mentioned, please let me know.

Women in the Gospel of Thomas (a response to Rob Bowman)

by Tony

Rob Bowman has posted another response to my Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium article, this time focusing on the apparent “misogyny” of Gos. Thom. 114. Just to recap the discussion, I stated previously that assessments of the logion as “misogynist” were anachronistic and showed a lack of awareness of scholarship on the text. In response, Bowman excerpted a number of non-conservative scholars (including Pagels, Patterson, and Meyer) who agree that the saying is indeed misogynist. These may not be the best scholars to appeal to in this debate, however, as they write often for popular audiences and their comments on the texts may suffer from the same lack of depth as the apologists I criticize. Mind you, I’m no expert on this text, so I hesitate to say too much about it. But I will limit myself to a few points in my defense.

1. I don’t think Rob can argue that the apologists say little about the logion besides labeling it misogynist. Rob simply supports their conclusion with the views of other scholars. My concern was with the neglect of other scholarship which would more rightly put the saying in its context. Put simply, it looks misogynist to us, but to the author and audience, it may not. That’s what I mean by anachronistic. Far too often these texts are evaluated through modern eyes. The same care that we see being employed with Paul’s “misogyny” in 1 Cor. (i.e., evaluating his comments in the context of life in …

Continue Reading