Apocryphicity

A Blog Devoted to the Study of Christian Apocrypha

2007 SBL Report

by Tony

As promised in my last post, here are some brief comments about this year’s Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. Keep an eye out also for Jim Davila’s roundup on Paleojudaica (he may even have some good photos) and April DeConick’s comments on Forbidden Gospels.

The meeting took place in sunny San Diego, California—a wonderful location. Usually I try to take some time at conferences to check out the city a little but most of my wanderings were relegated to the boardwalk behind the hotels and a trip to the nearest mall for gifts for loved ones. One night was dedicated to a death-defying trip south of the border to Tijuana. After polling about 1000 other academics, I could find only one other brave soul willing to join me on this “spiritual quest” (the “spirit” in this case was a bottle of Tequila); in retrospect, they are far wiser for it.

On day two I took in the papers of the Early Christian Families Group and an AAR session on “The Holy Child: Traditions of the Infant and Child Jesus”. In the evening I squeezed in at the end of the crowded session on “Books of the Gospel of Judas: An Evening with the Authors” and stayed around long enough to introduce myself to April DeConick (of Forbidden Gospels fame).

Day three was spent at two Christian Apocrypha sessions. The highlight of these sessions for me was the presentation by Abraham Terian on his forthcoming edition of …

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A Judas Compendium

by Tony

April DeConick at The Forbidden Gospels mentions a forthcoming book by Marvin Meyer on the full range of Judas traditions from early Christian writers. The book is due in November and is titled Judas: The Definitive Collection of Gospels and Legends About the Infamous Apostle of Jesus. This is a welcome resource as these traditions, though not all contained in gospels, are nevertheless apocryphal traditions and deserve greater exposure and discussion.

Fragments, Agrapha, and Secret Mark

by Tony

(I recently moved into a new house and have been without an internet connection at home for two weeks. So, I am a little behind on posting my usual post mortem of my New Testament Apocrypha class. Here is last week’s post; this week’s will follow shortly).

This week’s New Testament Apocrypha class covered the agrapha and fragmentary gospels. The course is structured so that we review an orthodox/canonical text and then discuss related heretical/non-canonical texts. This week the orthodox text was Mark. The point of the structure is to have the students see how the apocrypha expand upon or react to other texts (the assumption is that the apocrypha are later than the canonical material, though my lectures note the theories of Koester, Crossan, et al who claim otherwise). This structure also allows us to look at the orthodox material for heretical ideas, or ideas that heretics will read into them, such as Mark’s adoptionist Christology.

In our discussion of agrapha I was struck by the methodology employed to delimit the 270-or-so known agrapha. It makes sense to eliminate some material from the corpus, such as material now identified as apocryphal texts (Gospel of Thomas) or fragmentary texts typically featured separately in editions (Papyrus Egerton). But otherwise the goal  appears to be to find which agrapha could go back to the historical Jesus. Therefore, anti-Christian polemical sayings are eliminated, as are agrapha from Muslim sources (indeed many of these are transformations of narratives from …

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Old Georgian Palimpsest of Protevangelium of James

by Tony

I discussed a few weeks ago the topic of palimpsests in CA studies. Anyone interested in the topic may want to see the recent publication J. Gippert, Palimpsest Codex Vindobonensis georgicus 2 (Monumenta Palaeographica Medii Aevi: Series Ibero et Caucasia. Turnhout: Brepols, 2007). This Old Georgian codex contains a number of biblical, hagiographical, and homiletic texts, but the text of interest to us is a version of the Protevangelium of James from the fifth to the eighth century. More than 95 % of the codex has been deciphered.

Stephen Patterson reviews Craig Evans’s Fabricating Jesus

by Tony

The latest Review of BIblical Literature features a review of Craig Evans's apologetic work  Fabricating Jesus (previously discussed HERE) by Stephen Patterson. Patterson has pubished widely on the Gospel of Thomas; but, unlike my own review of the book, Patterson's review devotes little space to Evans's approach to the CA. It focuses instead on Evans's approach to the canonical gospels and to the scholars wth which Evans's takes issue. Here is an excerpt from the review:

After spending an unpleasant week with this book, it is all too tempting to let Evans’s own words come back to haunt him: “I am appalled at much of this work. Some of it, frankly, is embarrassing.” But this would not do. My real difference with Evans is that I do not share his evangelical stipulations about the text. This is a divide that we must increasingly deal with in biblical studies. Competently trained scholars now operate on both sides of this great divide. How we handle that difference honestly and respectfully is our unique challenge. On that score this book fails miserably and can best serve as a counterexample of how not to engage one’s colleagues in discussion and debate.

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Christian Apocrypha at the 2007 SBL Meeting

by Tony

The Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature is fast approaching (Nov. 17-20). The Program has been posted on-line and several bloggers have been drawing attention to particular sessions (see The Forbidden Gospels on the Gospel of Judas papers). Here are the complete details of the Apocrypha sessions:

November 19, 1-3 pm

Christopher Matthews, Weston Jesuit School of Theology, Presiding Antti Marjanen, University of Helsinki
Does the Gospel of Judas Rehabilitate Judas Iscariot? (25 min)
Discussion (5 min)
Edward Dixon, Emory University
A Hope for Status Inversion in the Acts of Thomas (25 min)
Discussion (5 min)
Derek S. Dodson, Baylor University
Dream Magic: The Dream of Pilate’s Wife and the Accusation of Magic in the Acts of Pilate (25 min)
Discussion (5 min)
Jennifer A. Glancy, Le Moyne College
Mary in Childbirth (25 min)
Discussion (5 min)
Paul G. Schneider, University of South Florida
A Johannine Trajectory for the Lord's Secret Sacrament (25 min)
Discussion (5 min)

November 19, 4-6:30 pm

Abraham Terian, St. Nersess' Armenian Seminary The Armenian Gospel of the Infancy (25 min)
Discussion (5 min)
Claire Clivaz, University of Lausanne
Madness, Philosophical, or Mystical Experiment? A Weird Text, Recognitions 2:61-69 (25 min)
Discussion (5 min)
Päivi Vähäkangas, University of Helsinki
The Doctrine of Creatio ex Nihilo in Pseudo-Clementine Literature (25 min)
Discussion (5 min)
Caleb Webster, Claremont Graduate University
Taking Over Thomas: The Subversion of Judas Didymus Thomas in the Edessene Abgar Tradition (25 min)
Discussion (5 min)
Business Meeting (30 min)

November 20, 9-11:30

…
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Technology and the Book

by Tony

While we're on the topic of technology and manuscripts, take a look at this video currently making the rounds on the internet (sorry, I don't know how to embed the video in this post). It is a skit from a Norwegian TV show.

Deciphering Christian Apocrypha Palimpsests

by Tony

Recently I finished reading Reviel Netz’s and William Noel’s The Archimedes Codex: Revealing the Secrets of the World’s Greatest Palimpsest. The book details the acquisition of a thirteenth-century Christian prayer book that contains, as its underwriting, several works by the third-century BCE Greek mathematician Archimedes. One of these works, Floating Bodies, is found in no other source. But in some places the underwriting is incredibly difficult to read. The Archimedes Codex describes the pioneering scientific efforts to recover Archimedes’ works.

The book led me to thinking about palimpsests of CA texts and the possibility that advances in reading palimpsests could aid in recovering our texts. I am aware only of one such palimpsest: Vindobonensis 563, an eighth-century manuscript written over a fifth-century collection of the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and selections from the Gospel of Matthew. Constantin von Tischendorf was the first scholar to see the manuscript and was able to decipher much of it; Guy Philippart (“Fragments palimpsestes latins du Vindobonensis 563 [Ve siècle?]: Évangile selon S. Matthieu, Évangile de Nicodème, Évangile de l’enfance selon Thomas”, AnBoll 90, p. 391-411) revealed more of it in 1972.

Separating the pages of the Archimedes Codex.The manuscript is important for the study of Infancy Thomas as it is the earliest known source we have for the text; unfortunately, only a handful of pages from the original manuscript were used by the eighth-century recycler. Virtually all of this material is readable (save for a few lines on two folios). …

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Top Ten Faulty Arguments in Anti-Apocrypha Apologetics (Part 2)

by Tony

Several weeks ago I posted the first five of ten concerns I have about the treatment of Christian Apocrypha in recent apologetic books, books principally aimed at combating the popularity of The Da Vinci Code. Happily, that first post led to some discussion here and on April DeConick’s Forbidden Gospels blog. Hopefully, this second post will elicit more discussion. Note that I have added a few citations from the apologetic writers as examples of the phenomena—these are not meant to be exhaustive.

6. All Christian Apocrypha scholars are created equal. The apologists’ main opponents are the so-called “new school” or Harvard school featuring the likes of Elaine Pagels, Helmut Koester, and Bart Ehrman (Bock, Missing Gospels, uses this term to great effect). The tendency, though, is to characterize them as a unit, as if all of them were in agreement on every CA text. Certainly their approach is similar—i.e., they are all sympathetic to the texts and their authors/communities—but not all of them agree on such issues as the dating and origins of the literature (e.g., Ehrman disagrees with other “liberal” scholars on the dating of the Gospel of Peter). In addition, there are numerous other scholars of this literature, rarely cited, who are not as radical as the “new school” in their dating of the texts. To characterize all CA scholarship by its most radical works misrepresents the field.

7. Neglect of the “orthodox apocrypha.” The apologists focus their energy primarily on the gospels that are …

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New Film on Jesus’ “Missing Years”

by Tony
The Halo Effect promises to tell the story of Jesus’ life between the ages of 12 and 30, a stage in his life about which even the Christian Apocrypha are mostly silent. You can read about the film HERE but I excerpt the article below:

North Shore Pictures Entertainment, a production company based in Hollywood has optioned Peter Kahalani's screenplay, "The Halo Effect." The script covers the missing years of 12-30, before Christ begins his ministry.

The film has intrigue, murder, plot twists, deception, a new world order, the discovery of hidden manuscripts and an unlikely hero that shows the world that Satan has been in control for many thousands of years masquerading under one of the worlds top formable religions.

"The film never points a finger at any given religion but points to a way to a higher consciousness and a discovery not seen by many of the worlds population," says Kahalani. It is slated for production to begin in May of 2008 in Asia and released worldwide Christmas 2008.

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Vatican Library To Be Closed for Renovations

by Tony
I just learned that the Vatican Library will be closed until 2010 for much-needed renovations. This article from BBC News describes how scholars are scrambling to finish their research before the Vatican Reading Room closes. The article states also that scholars can still obtain microfilm copies of manuscripts during the renovations. Good news as I have a standing order for five microfilms (the Vatican have never been very quick filling orders, mind you, so I still may have to wait until 2010 for my material).

But there is another option. According to an article in the International Herald Tribune, St. Louis University has copies of “nearly half of the medieval and Renaissance manuscripts” from the Vatican archives. The University has been stockpiling the material (on microfilm) since the 1950s; the collection even includes a copy of the Codex Vaticanus. I wonder: perhaps a microfilm order from SLU would arrive far quicker than from the Vatican.