Apocryphicity

Christian Apocrypha Sessions for the 2018 SBL Annual Meeting

April 16, 2018 by Tony

The 2018 SBL Annual Meeting will have four sessions from the Christian Apocrypha Section. Dates, times, and locations will be announced later.

Session 1 (in conjunction with the Religious Competition in Late Antiquity)
Religious Competition in the Christian Apocrypha
Arthur Urbano, Providence College (Rhode Island), Presiding
Jacob A. Lollar, Florida State University: “What Has Ephesus to do with Edessa?: The Syriac History of John, the Cult of the Dea Syria, and Religious Competition in Fourth-Century Syria”
Jung Choi, North Carolina Wesleyan College: “Two Bodily Practices in the Acts of Peter”
Shaily Shashikant Patel, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University: “Magic and Polysemy: The Case of the Pseudo-Clementines”
Christopher A. Frilingos, Michigan State University: “Blood Into Stone: Violence, Sanctuary, and ‘Jewish Christianity’ in the Protevangelium Jacobi”
Lily Vuong, Central Washington University, Respondent

Session 2
New and Neglected Christian Apocryphal Texts
Tobias Nicklas, Universität Regensburg, Presiding
Chance Bonar, Harvard University: “An Introduction to 3 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John”
Florentina Badalanova Geller, Freie Universität Berlin: “Apocryphal Gospels and the Folk Bible”
Tony Burke, York University: “Opera Evangelica: The Discovery of a Lost Collection of Christian Apocrypha”
Bradley Rice, McGill University: “The Suspension of Time in the Book of the Nativity of the Savior”
James E. Walters, Rochester College: “The (Syriac) Exhortation of Peter: A New Addition to the Petrine Apocryphal Tradition” (20 min)

Session 3
Sex and Violence in the Christian Apocrypha
Janet Spittler, University of Virginia, Presiding
Catherine Playoust, University of Divinity:
“‘And …

2018 New Testament Apocrypha Course: Week 7

March 1, 2018 by Tony

Our second week looking at resurrection texts focused on apocalypses. We began with a short reading from the beginning of the Apocalypse of Paul with its claim to have been found, along with a dusty pair of shoes, in a chest in the home of Paul in Tarsus. We have seen such claims before in the Coptic Pseudo-apostolic memoirs. It’s a curious feature: for all orthodox Christianity’s bluster about apocryphal texts being fakes and forgeries, many orthodox writers had little hesitation in creating some of their own apocryphal texts to serve their own purposes. The look at this introduction served as a lead-in to the conventions of apocalyptic literature, including, as in Apoc. Paul, the motif of hiding a book away and rediscovering it centuries later when all of its prophecies appear to have come to pass.

After a brief discussion of the canonical Book of Revelation, we spent a short time looking at several apocryphal apocalypses of John. The first of these, usually called 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John, continues the story in Revelation with John asking additional questions of Jesus, this time about the form that the dead will take when they rise from the grave: as thirty-year-olds and bodiless, without any distinguishing features (shape, size, colour). Another text, the Questions of James to John, features James asking John questions about redemption. Simon Peter and Mary Magdalene are presented as examples of people who had committed grave sins yet they repented and achieved salvation. Mary, …

2018 New Testament Apocrypha Course: Week 6

February 17, 2018 by Tony

Our first of two classes on Passion and resurrection gospels began and ended with the Gospel of Mary. We read the conclusion to Gos. Mary as a group and I had the class consider who the Mary of the text is (the Marys tend to blur in apocryphal traditions), why the apostles doubt her vision (did the author anticipate resistance to the text’s “strange teachings”?), and what to make of the interplay between Peter and Mary (a microcosm of orthodox and “heretical” group conflicts?).

We carried this discussion of orthodoxy and heresy into our discussion of the next text examined this week: the Revelation of Peter. As a Nag Hammadi text, Rev. Peter is not usually discussed among Passion gospels, but it is set during the crucifixion of Jesus. Its docetic Christology—i.e., the divine Christ only “seemed” to be human, and departed the body of Jesus of Nazareth at the crucifixion—makes Rev. Peter one of the most controversial texts among the Christian Apocrypha and elicited much discussion from the class. We followed up Rev. Peter with a look at other texts that share the crucifixion-substitution motif, including Irenaeus’s description of the teaching of Basilides, the Second Treatise of the Great Seth, the Acts of John, the Qur’an (Sura 4.157), and the Gospel of Barnabas. To supplement this survey of literature we looked also at a segment from the documentary Secret Lives of Jesus focusing on Basilides and Rev. Peter.

The Gospel of Barnabas’s

…

2018 New Testament Apocrypha Course: Reflections on Week 5

February 8, 2018 by Tony

The second of our classes focusing on the ministry of Jesus (that is, the time between his childhood and his Passion) included two letters, two fragmentary texts, and two complete gospels.

We began by reading the Epistle of Lentulus, a letter attributed to a Roman official at the time of Jesus and which contains a detailed description of Jesus. I asked the students to consider as we read evidence from the text that indicates it is a medieval (not ancient) composition—e.g., Lentulus’s use of Jewish terminology he is unlikely to have known (“prophet,” “Nazarene,” the quotation from Psalm 45:2), and the Aryan (rather than Palestinian) looking Jesus he describes. I noted that many scholars of Christian Apocrypha would label this text “inauthentic” or a “forgery” and asked the class to consider why a later apocryphal text should be valued differently from ancient apocrypha. To my mind (and to the minds of several of the students who responded), there really is no difference—they are all fictional representations of figures from early Christianity and all worthy of study for what they can tell us about the interests of the writer and his/her time period.

We turned next to the Abgar Correspondence and a discussion of H.J.W. Drijvers’ theory that the letters were created to obscure the history of Manichean evangelization in Edessa (e.g., Mani’s apostle Addai preached in Syria, the Correspondence and its sequel the Doctrine of Addai replaces Mani’s disciple with a Christian missionary of the same name). We watched

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2018 New Testament Apocrypha Course: Reflections on Week 4

February 1, 2018 by Tony

My course on the New Testament Apocrypha focused this week on part one of a two-part discussion of “Ministry Gospels”—i.e., texts focusing on Jesus’ adult life, between the infancy gospels and the passion narratives. For this first part we looked at agrapha and fragmentary texts, the latter group including Jewish-Christian gospels, several papyri from Oxyrhynchus, and the Secret Gospel of Mark. Our next class is dedicated to complete Ministry Gospels, namely the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip, and two fragmentary texts we ran out of time to cover: the Gospel of Peter, and the Gospel of the Savior.

We began with agrapha, the “unwritten” sayings of Jesus, though clearly they are written or we wouldn’t have them to study. More accurately, the term denotes sayings of Jesus that are not in the New Testament Gospels, appearing as variants in Gospel manuscripts, Acts, fragmentary apocryphal texts, works of the Apostolic Fathers, in Islamic texts (go HERE for a selection of some of these), and such unlikely locations as a mosque in India, which bears the inscription “Jesus, on whom be peace, said: ‘The world is a bridge. Go over it—do not settle on it!’” I discussed the methodology scholars of the agrapha use to reduce the great number of agrapha (270 by one count) to a manageable amount of “authentic” Jesus material (though I cautioned that this is not necessarily the goal of the study of this material; there are reasons enough to study any …

2018 New Testament Apocrypha Course: Reflections on Week Three

January 25, 2018 by Tony

This week’s class focused on Infancy Gospels, with particular emphasis on the Infancy Gospel of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the earliest examples of this literature. We began, however, with a discussion of the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. It helps considerably to have the students spend some time discussing canonical texts, in part so they can see what the noncanonical texts do with the earlier traditions and also because some students come into the course without any knowledge of Christian texts, biblical or otherwise. So we read Matthew 1-2 together and noted its similarities and differences with Luke 1-2. The differences are particularly significant as infancy gospels like Infancy James must confront these differences in the process of harmonizing the two accounts. I discussed also the reference to Jesus’ brothers and sisters (and lack of mention of Joseph) in Mark 6:3 and the anti-Christian polemic in Celsus’s True Doctrine, the Talmud, and the Toledot Yeshu (all in anticipation of our examination of Infancy James).

For Infancy James we looked first at a segment from the documentary Banned From the Bible (History Channel, 2003), which helped students recall the contents of the text and opened up conversation on some of the interpretations and implications of the text. I emphasized in our discussion that there are several features of the text that have become integral to Christian teaching about Mary, including the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, the Doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity, the names …

Book Note: What Did Jesus Look Like?

January 22, 2018 by Tony

Christian Apocrypha enthusiasts, particularly those interested in the Pilate Cycle, the Epistle of Lentulus, and/or the Doctrine of Addai, may want to seek out Joan E. Taylor’s new book What Did Jesus Look Like? (T & T Clark, 2018). Complete details can be found on the Bloomsbury web site. Here is the abstract:

Jesus Christ is arguably the most famous man who ever lived. His image adorns countless churches, icons, and paintings. He is the subject of millions of statues, sculptures, devotional objects and works of art. Everyone can conjure an image of Jesus: usually as a handsome, white man with flowing locks and pristine linen robes.

But what did Jesus really look like? Is our popular image of Jesus overly westernized and untrue to historical reality?

This question continues to fascinate. Leading Christian Origins scholar Joan E. Taylor surveys the historical evidence, and the prevalent image of Jesus in art and culture, to suggest an entirely different vision of this most famous of men.

He may even have had short hair.

2018 New Testament Apocrypha Course: Reflections on Week Two

January 25, 2018 by Tony

Last week I began the latest incarnation of my course “The New Testament Apocrypha” (syllabus posted on my parent site HERE). As in previous years, I am posting weekly reflections on each week’s lecture, in part to encourage pedagogical discussion on how to teach this material (and I won’t always do it well), and to provide a forum for my students to offer their thoughts on the course (and thereby gain additional participation marks).

The first class mostly comprised housekeeping: going over the syllabus, providing some background on the New Testament for the benefit of students who have never taken a course in Christianity, and running over some basic concepts (“apocrypha,” “canon,” etc.). The second class, which took place last night, had more substance, so I start this reflections series at week two.

This second class covered two topics: canon formation and the categories of orthodoxy and heresy. The readings entailed an assortment of canon lists from our primary text collection (Bart Ehrman’s Lost Scriptures) a few chapters from our course textbook (my Secret Scriptures Revealed), and a chapter from Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity.

The class began with reading the Muratorian Fragment as a group. I like to start each class with a discussion of one of the assigned texts; it gets people talking early in the night rather than at the end, when they are starting to get tired (this is a three-hour evening class after all). We went through this …

Update on More New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 2

January 10, 2018 by Tony

The first volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (co-edited with Brent Landau) was published just over a year ago. Even before the book went to press, we were planning the contents of volume 2, and included a preliminary list of its contents at the end of the introduction. There have been some changes to that list, even some changes to the names given to the texts, and I present the (hopefully) finalized table of contents below. All of the contributors are making a final push at submitting their work over the next few months and we are on track for sending the manuscript to the publisher at the end of the summer. There are 38 texts in total, at least four never before published, about ten translated for the first time in a modern language, and many of the remainder appearing in English for the first time. Of particular interest are a group of texts relating to the birth and martyrdom of John the Baptist and a selection of apocryphal apocalypses of John.

Pseudo-Eusebius of Caesarea, On the Star by Brent Landau

The Adoration of the Magi by Adam McCollum

The Rebellion of Dimas by Mark Glenn Bilby

The Hospitality and Perfume of the Bandit by Mark Glenn Bilby

A Homily on the Life of Jesus by Timothy Pettipiece

Severian of Gabala, An Encomium on the Apostles by Alin Suciu

The Book of the Rooster by Pierluigi Piovanelli

Pseudo-Evodius, On the Passion and Resurrection, by Dylan M. …

2018 Conference for the North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocrypha (NASSCAL)

December 22, 2017 by Tony

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS

North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature

The Material of Christian Apocrypha

University of Virginia

November 2018

Confirmed speakers: Mary Cunningham (Nottingham), Maria Evangelatou (University of Southern California), Derek Krueger (UNC Greensboro), and Robin Jensen (Notre Dame)

We invite abstracts for a conference on the “Material of Christian Apocrypha,” hosted by the University of Virginia’s Department of Religious Studies and McIntire Department of Art, under the auspices of the North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature. We hope to assemble a group of participants who will address two interrelated yet distinct topics: 1) the physicality of our apocryphal texts (i.e. various aspects of the manuscripts or papyri themselves), and 2) the representation of apocryphal narratives in other forms of material culture (e.g. frescos, mosaics, sculptures, icons, pilgrimage objects, reliquaries, etc.). By drawing our collective attention to the material aspects of the literary and the literary aspects of the material, we hope to spark a fruitful and enduring exchange between scholars and students rooted in both areas. Questions to be posed include: What do the physical aspects of manuscripts and papyri tell us about the use and value of the apocryphal texts they contain? Which apocryphal traditions attain such a level of scriptural authority that they appear in art, iconography, church decoration, and biblical manuscript illuminations? What do discussions of images within apocryphal texts, such as the portrait of John the Apostle described in the Acts of John, …

2017 SBL Diary: Day Three

November 29, 2017 by Tony

The third and (for me) final day of the annual meeting began with a breakfast with the NASSCAL executive. The annual meeting presents an opportunity for the executive to meet informally, with a loose gathering of whoever happens to be at SBL—which is usually most of us. I presented the group with an update of our various projects, including the e-Clavis (now at 64 texts completed and another 26 in progress), the Early Christian Apocrypha series (with Brandon Hawk’s Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew translation at the press and Lily Vuong’s Protevangelium of James near completion), the Studies in Christian Apocrypha series (with one title in progress, one in the proposal stage, and another two possibilities discussed), and the first NASSCAL conference (planned for the University of Virginia in September of October 2018). NASSCAL is now two-and-a-half years old and looking back, we have accomplished an awful lot in that short time.

After breakfast Brent Landau and I headed over to the review session for our book New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. It featured an all-star panel: David Brakke (Ohio State University), Philip Jenkins (Baylor University), Valentina Calzolari Bouvier (University of Geneva), Julia Snyder (Universität Regensburg), Judith Hartenstein (Universität Koblenz – Landau), Christoph Markschies (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin – Humboldt University of Berlin), and for a student perspective, J. Gregory Given (Harvard University). Two of the respondents have already posted their comments online (Jenkins and Brakke). All of the reviewers were effusive in their compliments about the volume: Calzolari …

Guest Post: David Brakke “The abundant, never-ending Christian apocrypha, which no list can contain”

November 28, 2017 by Tony

David Brakke appeared on the 2017 SBL review panel for New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. I really enjoyed his paper and asked him to allow me to publish it here.

Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I have decided, after investigating everything carefully from the first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.

So the author of the Gospel of Luke explained his decision to write a story that many had already written. His account would be carefully investigated and orderly and so give the truth.

1900 years later José Saramago placed these words as the epitaph to his novel, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, and so signaled his own audacity and anxiety about telling a story that had been told countless times before. Saramago’s specific challenge of rewriting what has already been written about Jesus becomes in the novel emblematic both of any human being’s inability to rewrite the story that has been written for him or her and also of the Western novelist’s predicament at the end of modernity: How can one write when so many words have gone before, or tell a new story when all the great stories have been …

2017 SBL Diary: Day Two

November 28, 2017 by Tony

My second day at the 2017 SBL began with my first Journal of Biblical Literature Editorial Board meeting. I was surprised to see so many people around the table (and so many people that I know). The large number of submissions to the journal means that a large number of manuscript referees are needed, especially if they want to process them in a reasonable amount of time. Apparently there are two Christian Apocrypha (or “other”) editors: me and Pierluigi Piovanelli. I’ve joked that I took this position because it’s the only way I’ll get my name in JBL; John Marshall (University of Toronto) pointed out that it will be in every issue for the next few years!

After the meeting, I went to my first session of the day: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti’s presentation of papers from the new Richard Pervo festschrift Delightful Acts. The session included a paper by NASSCAL Vice-President Janet Spittler (University of Virginia) entitled “Joking and Play in the Acts of John.” She opened with statement by John Chrysostom (Hom. Heb. xv) that Jesus never laughed. That may be true for the Jesus of the New Testament but he laughs plenty in apocryphal texts. Spittler looked at three case studies of Christian humor from the Acts of John: when John jokes with Lycomedes about John’s portrait (26–29), the obedient bed bugs (called by the writer “a certain comic act,” 60–61), and the episode when John sees Jesus in many forms, including …

2017 SBL Diary: Day One

November 23, 2017 by Tony

Every year after the SBL Annual Meeting I take some time to compile a summary of my activities—the sessions I attended and/or participated in, meetings I had with scholars and publishers, books I purchased, and receptions I crashed. I do this for those interested in Christian Apocrypha who could not attend the meeting and also in lieu of tweets because Wi-fi access tends to be somewhat spotty. Since I write at a snail’s pace, this summary will be split into three separate posts that will appear over the next few days.

I flew into town Friday around 2:30 pm—far earlier than normal—and thought I could spend the rest of the afternoon leisurely wandering around the book display. That way I wouldn’t have to squeeze the tour in between papers or skip a session. Unfortunately, the display was not yet open, so I had to find something else to do (and who am I kidding? it’s not like I would only go once anyway). So I went back to my room to iron my balled-up suit and do a little work before meeting up with Brent Landau. Over dinner we discussed, among other things, the progress on the second volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, which has been a bit sluggish due to some contributors having to withdraw because of other commitments or changes in their careers. The first volume contains a provisional list of texts to be included in vol. 2, and that list is looking less …

Christian Apocrypha Books to Look for at SBL 2017

November 13, 2017 by Tony

One of the highlights of the SBL Annual Meeting is the publishers exhibition. As you make your way from one booth to another, keep an eye out for these new books.

Baylor

Dirk Rohmann. Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity: Studies in Text Transmission.

Bloomsbury

Alessandro Falcetta. A Biography of James Rendel Harris 1852-1941. The Daily Discovers of a Bible Scholar and Manuscript Hunter.

Lee Martin McDonald. The Formation of the Biblical Canon. 2 vols.

Brill

Robert W. Thomson. Ners?s of Lambron: Commentary on the Dormition of Saint John. Armenian Text and Annotated Translation. ARTS 1.

De Gruyter

Liv Ingeborg Lied and Hugo Lundhaug, eds. Snapshots of Evolving Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology. TUGAL 175.

Gorgias Press

János M. Bak. Introduction to Working with Manuscripts for Medievalists.

Tony Burke. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Syriac Tradition: A Critical Edition and English Translation. Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 48.

Amir Harrack, ed. and trans. The Chronicle of Zuqnin: Parts I and II. From the Creation to the Year 506/7 AD.

Mohr Siebeck

Jan N. Bremmer. Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity. Collected Essays I. WUNT 379.

David Creech. The Use of Scripture in the Apocryphon of John. A Diachronic Analysis of the Variant Versions. WUNT II/447.

Patricia A. Duncan. Novel Hermeneutics in the Greek Pseudo-Clementine Romance. WUNT.

Jörg Frey et al., eds. Between Canonical and Apocryphal Texts: Processes of Reception, Rewriting, and Interpretation in Early Judaism and Early Christianity…