2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium Profiles: Lorenzo DiTommaso

July 30, 2013 by Tony

This year's York Christian Apocrypha Symposium, “Forbidden Texts on the Western Frontier: The Christian Apocrypha in North American Perspectives,” is only a few months away (September 26–28, 2013; mark your calendars). In the weeks leading up to the event, I will be posting here and on the the Symposium web page short profiles of the conference participants. For more information, see the Symposium web page (HERE).

Lorenzo DiTommaso

Lorenzo DiTommaso is Professor and Chair of the Department of Religion at Concordia University in Montréal. He specialises in the study of apocalypticism, from the book of Daniel to contemporary popular culture. In the field of Christian Apocrypha, he has published several studies on late antique and mediaeval Christian apocalyptic literature and on the transmission of the ancient Jewish "pseudepigrapha" in Christian contexts. For the 2013 York Symposium, Professor DiTommaso will respond to the papers in the session on "New Frontiers in Christian Apocrypha Studies."

More Secret Scriptures 6: The Preaching of Simon Cephas in the City of Rome

November 13, 2017 by Tony

(The latest in a series of posts about little-known Christian Apocrypha that could not be included in my recent book, Secret Scriptures Revealed: A New Introduction to the the Christian Apocrypha, now available in Europe and to be released in North America in November, 2013.)

I have added to the More Christian Apocrypha page a little information on a seldom-read text known as the Preaching of Simon Cephas in the City of Rome. The text was published in 1864 by William Cureton from two manuscripts, but four more have become available since his day. Hopefully we will include the text in a future volume of the More Christian Apocrypha series. You can read the entire text HERE.

2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium Profiles: Lee McDonald

July 30, 2013 by Tony

Lee Martin McDonald, “Debating Canon Formation: Why and Where Scholars Disagree”

Lee Martin McDonald is President Emeritus and Professor of New Testament Studies at Acadia Divinity College, Acadia University in Nova Scotia. He is also the author and editor of some thirty books, including Early Christianity and Its Sacred Literature (Hendrickson, 2000); The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (2007), The Formation of the Bible: The Story of the Church’s Canon (Hendrickson Publishers, 2012), Forgotten Scriptures: The Selection and Rejection of Early Religious Writings (Westminster John Knox Press, 2009), The World of the New Testament (Baker Academic, 2013), and the recent The Story of Jesus in History and Faith: An Introduction (Baker Academic, 2013). He was President of the Institute for Biblical Research (2006-2012) and is an ordained minister in the American Baptist Churches USA and has served as a U.S. Army Reserve chaplain.

Much of McDonald’s research focuses on the formation of the Christian biblical canon as well as the non-canonical texts that also played a role in early Christianity. He claims: “As manuscript scholars know, the ancient manuscripts do …

Apocrypha (Journal) vol. 23

July 25, 2013 by Tony

Volume 23 of the journal Apocrypha is now available. The volume contains:

Els Rose, “Virtutes apostolorum: Editorial Problems and Principles”

Maximilian Diesenberger, “Reworking the Virtutes apostolorum in the Salzburg Sermon-Collection (1st quarter of the ninth century)”

Marieke van Acker, “A (Socio)linguistic Approach to Hagiographic Text Transmission: the Torino Collection Biblioteca Nazionale D.v.3. (8th/9th c.)”

Rémi Gounelle, “Editing a Fluid and Unstable Text: The Example of the Acts of Pilate (or Gospel of Nicodemus)”

Zbigniew Izydorczyk, “On the Evangelium Nicodemi before Print: Towards a New Edition”

Rota Beyers, “The Transmission of Marian Apocrypha in the Latin Middle Ages”

Caitríona Ó Dochartaigh, “Homiletic Texts and the Transmission of Eschatological Apocrypha in a Medieval Irish Context”

Mariken Teeuwen, “The Digital Edition: New Possibilities and Challenges”

Jean-Marie Duchemin, “Un réexamen des notices de Théodore Bar Konaï sur les mandéens”

André Gagné, “Jésus, la lumière et le Père vivant. Principe de gémellité dans l’Évangile selon Thomas”

Tedros Abraha, “Some Philological Notes on the Mäúéüäfä ‘Éräfétä läMaryam ‘Liber Requiei’”

A Tribute to M. R. James

July 25, 2013 by Tony

Philip Jenkins has contributed a post ("James the Great") to the blog The Anxious Bench on his appreciation of CA scholar Montague Rhodes James, known for, among other things, his collection The Apocryphal New Testament (1924; corrected edition in 1953 and completed updated by J. K. Elliott in 1993) as well as the editing of a number of apocryphal texts in the volumes of Apocrypha anecdota (vol. 1; vol. 2). Jenkins notes several of his other important works in his post. Via Paleojudaica.

More Secret Scriptures 5: Pseudo-Memoirs of the Apostles

July 23, 2013 by Tony

Alin Suciu, administer of his self-titled blog, recently completed his PhD. at University Laval in Quebec. His dissertation—“Apocryphon Berolinense/Argentoratense (Previously Known as the Gospel of the Savior). Reedition of P. Berol. 22220, Strasbourg Copte 5-7 and Qasr el-Wizz Codex ff. 12v-17r with Introduction and Commentary”—is available, at lest temporarily, on his blog (HERE). Though I am interested in Suciu’s work on the so-called “Gospel of the Savior,” it is a particular section of his dissertation that attracted my attention. In a chapter entitled, “The Place of the Apocryphon Berolinense/Argentoratense in Coptic Literature” (p. 71-129), Suciu situates the gospel within the genre of what he calls “Pseudo-Memoirs of the Apostles.” The texts are usually found embedded in homilies attributed to such recognized Church Fathers as Cyril of Jeusalem, John Chrysostom, and Basil of Caesarea; the author pauses in his address to quote from a book found, typically, in the home of the mother of John Mark in Jerusalem (mentioned in Acts 12:12), and which contains first-hand testimonies recounting the words and deeds of Jesus. These books are ascribed to particular apostles (e.g., Peter, Bartholomew, and James …

2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium Profiles: Brent Landau

July 26, 2013 by Tony

Brent Landau, “The ‘Harvard School’ of the Christian Apocrypha”

The Revelation of the Magi (for Brepols’ Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum) expands upon his earlier popular work on the text for Harper Collins (2010). Landau, whose dissertation provided the first annotated English translation of this third-century apocryphal text, has theorized the Revelation is actually a first-person account of early Christian visionary experiences.

“The Revelation of the Magi is absolutely fascinating,” Landau says, “because it claims something that no other early Christian text does: that the Star of Bethlehem was actually Jesus himself, who is able to change his form at will. It also has a very strange story about the star producing some ‘food’ for the Magi that allows them and the people of their country to see visions of Jesus’ life on earth. I wonder whether some early Christians might have taken their own visionary experiences (possibly involving the ingesting of some hallucinogenic substance) and wrote them down as if they were the Magi themselves.”

Landau received his Doctor of Theology from Harvard University in 2008. The program, often dubbed “the …

More Secret Scriptures 4: The Martyrdom of Pilate and the Lament of the Virgin

November 13, 2017 by Tony

Many readers of the Christian Apocrypha are aware of the large corpus of texts known as the Pilate Cycle—most prominent among these is the Acts of Pilate (also known as the Gospel of Nicodemus). There is one other text that describes Pilate's involvement in Jesus’ death, though this one is not discussed in connection to the Pilate Cycle, likely because so few scholars are aware of it. The text is the Martyrdom of Pilate, and it forms the second of two interrelated homilies ascribed to a certain Cyriacus, bishop of Behnesa (known earlier as Oxyrhynchus), though we have no other records of such a bishop.The two homilies—today available only in Ethiopic, Garshuni, Arabic, and Coptic fragments—seem to draw upon an apocryphal text in which Gamiliel, the first-century rabbi featured in Acts 5:34–40, is the narrator. Some scholars have called this source the Gospel of Gamiliel.

In the first homily, called the Lament of the Virgin, Jesus’ mother is stricken by grief at the suffering of her son. She weeps for him, first at the foot of the cross as in John 19:25–27, and then at the tomb, where she sees Jesus raised. The Virgin Mary thus replaces Mary Magdalene as …

Hugoye article on Syriac Infancy Gospel of Thomas now available

July 10, 2013 by Tony

My article on the Syriac tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (titled, "The Infancy Gospel of Thomas from an Unpublished Syriac Manuscript. Introduction, Text, Translation, and Notes") can now be seen in preview at the Hugoye site (HERE). Here (once again) is the abstract:

The Syriac tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (IGT) has been published from three manuscripts, two of which hail from the 5th or 6th centuries. Unfortunately, all three sources lack large sections of the text. In 1914, Paul Peeters discussed a fourth Ms (Vat. Syr. 159 from the 17th century) preserving the entire text, but until now, that Ms has not been published. This article presents a diplomatic edition of Peeters’ Ms, comparing its readings with those previously published, and with another Ms very similar to Peeters’. Also included are a comprehensive overview of other Syriac sources for IGT, and a discussion of Peeters’ theory of Syriac composition for IGT.

Now that this article is in print, I can continue work on a full critical edition of the Syriac Infancy Gospel of Thomas to be published by Gorgias Press.