More from Philip Jenkins on Irish Apocrypha

April 28, 2013 by Tony

"The Three Wise Druids" at Patheos (brought to my attention by Paleojudaica). With a nice shout-out to the work of Martin McNamara (editor of the CCSA editions of the Irish Apocrypha) and others:

Successive conquests and cultural changes have taken a heavy toll of Irish libraries, but enough remains to show just how rich the apocryphal collections would have been. Modern scholars like Martin McNamara, Máire Herbert and David Dumville have painstakingly collected these records, discussing over a hundred items known in Ireland. Many are poetic elaborations of well-known stories, but we also find a full spectrum of widely known alternative texts. In many cases, the texts survive in the vernacular, in Irish Gaelic.

See also Jenkins' earlier post on "Canons of Scripture," which reflects the nuances of current discussion about the canon of the New Testament and the interplay of canonical and non-canonical texts over the centuries.

2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium

April 23, 2013 by Tony

I am pleased to announce, after some delay, the 2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium. The theme this year is “Forbidden Texts on the Western Frontier: The Christian Apocrypha in North American Perspectives.” The event takes place at York University September 26–28, 2013.

The planning for the 2013 Symposium was greatly helped by Brent Landau (University of Oklahoma). We have invited 22 Canadian and U.S. scholars to share their work and discuss present and future collaborative projects. Participants include David Eastman, Nicola Denzey Lewis, Mark Goodacre, Kristian Heal, Charles Hedrick, Cornelia Horn, F. Stanley Jones, and Stephen Patterson

Complete information about the Symposium is available at THIS LINK. We hope you can join us.

Philip Jenkins on Christian Apocrypha in Medieval Britain

April 22, 2013 by Tony

Philip Jenkins, author of (among other things) Hidden Gospels:How the Search for Jesus Lost Its Way (Oxford 2001), has contributed a post to the patheos blog entitled "The First English Bible." The title is somewhat misleading; Jenkins discusses the apocryphal texts circulating in Anglo-Saxon England and Ireland in medieval times, but it is a stretch to consider these texts part of the "English Bible." Certainly canonical and non-canonical texts were both valued and used but not in a single collection and not without a sense that some texts are more valued, more authoritative than others.

An Abridged Martyrium of Cornelius the Centurion

April 19, 2013 by Tony

While working today on my translation of the Greek manuscripts of the Martyrium of Cornelius the Centurion, I happened upon an online abridged version of the text in English. The text appears, often without acknowledgement of the source, on several sites dedicated to Eastern Orthodox Christianity. It seems to have originated from a translation by Stephen Janos of volume three of the series Reference Book for Clergy-Servers [Nastol’naya Kniga Svyaschennosluzhitelya] published by the Moscow Patriarchate, Moscow 1978 & 1979. I am curious about the original source for the tale since it does not match any of the Greek Mss in my possession (though it may simply be an abridgement made from the manuscript published by J.-P. Migne). Here is the text:

The Martyrium of Cornelius, the Centurion

Soon after the Lord Jesus Christ's Ascension into Heaven, a centurion by the name of Cornelius settled at Caesarea in Palestine, who had lived previously in Thracian Italy. Although he was a pagan, he distinguished himself by deep piety and good deeds, as the holy Evangelist Luke records in Acts 10:1. The Lord did not disdain his virtuous life and led him to the knowledge of truth through the enlightening light of faith in Christ.

Once, Cornelius was at prayer in his home. An angel of God appeared to him and said that his prayer had been heard and accepted by God. The angel commanded him to send people to Joppa to Simon, called Peter. Cornelius immediately fulfilled the command. While those …