Apocryphicity
A Blog Devoted to the Study of Christian Apocrypha
Nicola Denzey Lewis, Visiting Associate Professor at Brown University, answers the question “How many gospels were “excluded” from the Bibles as we know them today? And why?” on the Bible Odyssey web site (HERE).
The “Ancient Jewish and Christian Apocalypses: Transfer of Knowledge and Genre Definition” conference takes place at Freie Universtät in Berlin November 14-15, 2014. Presenters include Martha Himmelfarb and John J. Collins. For more information, download the program HERE.
Kelley Coblentz Bautch passed along to me some information about two recent books on Fallen Angels traditions that may be of interest to readers of Christian Apocrypha:
Available only since September, Fallen Angels Traditions: Second Temple Developments and Reception History (ed. A. K. Harkins, K. Coblentz Bautch and J. Endres; CBQMS 53) is a collection of essays that takes up new areas of research in fallen angels traditions. Essays in this volume treat traditions of the rebellious angels in the Hodayot, Book of Jubilees, Book of Revelation, and Apocryphon of John. The fallen angels motif is explored also in the work of Mani, Origen and Justin, as well as in Muslim traditions and Medieval Scholastic theology. Contributors include James VanderKam, Pheme Perkins, John C. Reeve, Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, Todd Hanneken, and Franklin Harkins.
The second, published this Spring, is The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions (ed. A. K. Harkins; K. Coblentz Bautch and J. Endres; Fortress). This sourcebook systematically examines fallen angels traditions for non-specialists and students. Essays examine watchers traditions in Mesopotamian contexts, biblical texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, pseudepigraphical literature, and Patristic and Rabbinic literature. Contributors include: Ida Fröhlich, John Endres, S.J., Randall Chesnutt, Anathea Portier-Young, Scott M. Lewis, S.J., Jeremy Corley, Eric Mason, Karina Hogan, Samuel Thomas, Leslie Baynes, Chris Seeman, Silviu Bunta, Kevin Sullivan and Joshua Burns.
Steve Walton, administrator of the Acts and More blog, provides a summary of Simon Gathercole’s plenary paper from the British New Testament Conference (Sept. 4-6, 2014): “Jesus, the Apostolic Gospel and the Gospels.” I can’t say much about the paper without reading it for myself, but it does strike me as presumptuous to start with the determination that the four canonical gospels are distinct as a group from other gospels simply because they are in the canon. Indeed, there are probably more differences (not just in content but in theology) between the Synoptics and John than there is between the Synoptics and some noncanonical texts. The pool of noncanonical texts selected by Gathercole is also somewhat arbitrary: the Gospels of Peter, Truth, Thomas, Philip, Mary, the Egyptians, and Judas. In all, Gathercole’s approach seems to be a throwback to the type of discussion seen in the nineteenth century (e.g., C. E. Stowe, “The Four Gospels: State of the Question in 1851,” Journal of Sacred Literature [Jan. 1886]: 283-314).
For the past three years I have been organizing a session of Christian Apocrypha at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies. Last year we began a partnership with the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies to create a joint session. Normally there is no particular theme to the session, but this year we are looking for papers that tie in to the theme of the York Christian Apocrypha Symposium to be held in September 2015. Papers on other topics are also welcome.
CALL FOR PAPERS: JOINT SESSION ON “CHRISTIAN APOCRYPHA”
The theme for the session this year is Re-write, Re-use and Recycle: Transformations in the Writing of Christian Apocrypha. We are looking for papers that examine the transformation of Christian and non-Christian texts and traditions into apocryphal Christian texts – such as the Christianization of Jewish Pseudepigrapha, the Gnosticization of Jewish and Greco-Roman texts into gnostic Christian texts, elaborations and harmonizations of canonical Christian texts, and other possibilities. We welcome also papers that do not fit this theme. The session will be mounted if there are sufficient proposals (at least five). For further information on the session, contact Tim Pettipiece (tpettipi@gmail.com) or Tony Burke (tburke@yorku.ca).
Proposed titles, an abstract of approximately 100 words, and an indication of audio-visual requirements and accessibility requirements should be submitted by 31 January 2015 by email to the CSPS programme coordinator, Theodore de Bruyn (tdebruyn@uottawa.ca). Please write “CSPS Proposal” in the subject line of your email. Proposals may also be sent to …
[This is the latest in a series of posts on texts to be featured in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures edited by Brent Landau and I. The material here is incorporated also into the information on the texts provided on my More Christian Apocrypha page].
The Acts of Timothy recounts Timothy’s tenure as bishop of Ephesus. The Latin version of the text attributes its authorship to a certain presbyter named Polycrates. Timothy is said to have been born to a Greek father and a Jewish mother in Lystra. He was converted by Paul and traveled with him until he settled in Ephesus. After Paul’s martyrdom under Nero, the apostle John, equated here with John of Patmos, arrives in Ephesus. Followers of the disciples bring to John various traditions about Jesus on loose sheets of paper, which he organizes into three gospels and assigns to them their traditional names. Then he composes his own to fill in details missing in the other three. John is then exiled to the island of Patmos by Domitian. Timothy, who is still ruling as bishop, publicly attacks a local pagan festival called the Katagogia. In response, the revelers use their clubs and stones to kill Timothy. The local Christians take the bishop and bury him outside of the city in a place called Pion. Some Greek manuscripts add that his body was later removed to Constantinople. Under the reign of Nerva John returns from exile and becomes bishop in Ephesus until the reign of …
[This is the latest in a series of posts on texts to be featured in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures edited by Brent Landau and I. The material here is incorporated also into the information on the texts provided on my More Christian Apocrypha page].
The Life of John the Baptist is told through the voice of Serapion, an Egyptian bishop of the fourth century, on the occasion of an unspecified feast day for John. It begins with a harmony of details about John’s birth taken from the Gospel of Luke and the Infancy Gospel of James, finishing with the death of Zechariah and Elizabeth fleeing from Herod’s soldiers into the desert. After five years, when John is seven years and six months old, Elizabeth dies, portentously on the same day as Herod the Great. Jesus, “whose eyes sees heaven and earth” (7:3), sees John grieving and spirits himself and Mary to the desert on a cloud. They bury Elizabeth and then Jesus and Mary remain with John for seven days, teaching him how to live in the desert. Then Mary and Jesus return to Nazareth, leaving John under the protection of Gabriel and watched by the souls of his parents. The text then shifts to John’s adult career and the story of Herod Antipas and his affair with Philip’s wife Herodias. The gospel account is expanded with a prologue to the story of John’s death revealing that Herodias and Herod worked together to obtain Philip’s land and …
[This is the latest in a series of posts on texts to be featured in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures edited by Brent Landau and I. The material here is incorporated also into the information on the texts provided on my More Christian Apocrypha page].
Gospel fragments are an ubiquitous feature of Christian Apocrypha collections. These untitled, often mystifying fragmentary manuscripts tease the possibility of lost known or unknown gospels, but they can instead be extracts from harmonies or homilies, or evidence for the phenomenon of secondary orality (canonical gospel stories remembered from oral performance before secondarily attaining written form). The fragments included in MNTA rarely appear in Christian Apocrypha collections.
The first of these fragments is Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 210, a single leaf from a third-century papyrus codex. One side of the leaf contains what appears to be an infancy story in which Joseph receives instructions about Mary from an angel. The other side appears to contain at least two episodes, one with similarities to the saying of Jesus on good trees bearing good fruit and bad trees bad fruit (Matt 7:17-18//Luke 6:43-44), and the other has Jesus begin a Johannine “I am” statement with the declaration “I am an image [of his goodness].” A reconstruction and analysis of P. Oxy. 210 has been provided to us by Brent Landau and Stanley Porter. Porter previously wrote on the text for the Markschies-Schröter German collection. The fragment also appears, in Greek (without English translation) and in photographs, in Thomas A. …