More New Testament Apocrypha 3 Near Completion

I have spent much of the past month hunkered down, determined to finish up work on the third volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. At time of writing, I’m waiting for two more pieces, and final edits of the remaining chapters are coming back from the other contributors. Things are looking good for sending the complete manuscript off to the publisher (Eerdmans) in September.

The second volume of MNTA was published in the summer of 2020. Like other projects appearing in the middle of a pandemic, the book didn’t get as much exposure as normal. The Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature provides an opportunity for the main demographic of the book (biblical scholars) to pick up a discounted copy; but it’s hard to buy a book at a virtual conference. And a review panel scheduled for the meeting of the Canadian Society for Patristic Studies had to be delayed until 2022. Nevertheless, Benito Cereno and Chris Sims at the podcast Apocrypals devoted three episodes to discussing texts in the volume, Shirley Paulson interviewed me for the Early Christian Writings podcast, James McGrath for his Religion Prof podcast, Rick Brannan tweeted mini-summaries of each text (as he did for MNTA 1), and Ancient Jew Review turned a planned session for SBL into four articles from MNTA contributors. I’m grateful to everyone who helped promote the book, especially in a time when we all have far more pressing concerns.

It may seem surprising that volume 3 is ready so soon after the publication of volume 2. But the last volume was sent to the publisher a year before its street date, and the new one will similarly take a year to make its way through the press. It has helped, though, that part of volume 3 was already “in the can” when I submitted volume 2. Eerdmans were concerned that the book was too large and asked to reduce it by about 60 pages; as a consolation, they agreed to extend the two-volume agreement for the series to a third. I volunteered to cut two of my pieces, and Janet Spittler, Ivan Miroshnikov, and Jamey Walters agreed to each delay one of their contributions. Still, I was determined to do right by my colleagues and get their work out as quickly as possible, so I began the process of determining what else should be included in the collection. The first draft of the introduction to volume 2 included a wish list of possibilities:

The Acts of John by Prochorus
The Acts of Mark
The Acts of Thaddaeus
The Book of Rolls
The Book about the Birth of the Savior
The Book of John the Evangelist
The Book of the Rooster
Dialogue between Jesus and Andrew
Dialogue of Jesus with the Devil
The Discovery of John the Baptist’s Head
The Dream of Nero
The Epistle of James to Quadratus
The Epistles of Longinus, Augustus, Ursinus, and Patrophilus
The Epistles of the Virgin Mary
The Gospel of the Twelve
The Hospitality and Perfume of the Bandit
The Infancy of the Savior (Arabic Infancy Gospel)
John and Cerinthus (Irenaeus, Haer. 3.3.4; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.28)
The Martyrdom of Ananias
The Martyrdom of James
The Martyrdom of Longinus
The Memorial of John the Theologian
On the Star, by Pseudo-Eusebius of Caesarea
The Pseudo-Clementines
The Questions of Timothy to Paul
Revelation of Matthew about the End Times
The Revelation of the Lord’s Prayer
The Revelation of Stephen
The Vision of Theophilus

Looking at this list now, I can see it is rather ambitious. Two of these works alone (the Pseudo-Clementines and the Book of Rolls) are quite lengthy and could practically fill a volume by themselves; the Acts of John by Prochorus and the Arabic Infancy Gospel are also hefty. But I managed to sign up contributors for 17 of the 30 texts in the list and added another eleven; this put the number of contributions at 33, but, as frequently happens with edited collections, four were withdrawn—which is probably fortunate as we were once again pushing the limits of the volume. The finished product will include:

1. GOSPELS AND RELATED TRADITIONS OF NEW TESTAMENT FIGURES

The Hospitality and Perfume of the Bandit, Mark G. Bilby
The Gospel of the Twelve, James Toma
The Dialogue of Jesus and the Devil, Chance E. Bonar and Slavomír Céplö
The Story of the Image of Edessa, Nathan J. Hardy
The Dream of the Rood, Alexander D’Alisera and Samuel Osborn
The Eremitic Life of Mary Magdalene, Brandon W. Hawk   
The Martyrdom of Zechariah, Tony Burke and Sarah Veale
The Decapitation of John the Forerunner, Tony Burke

2. APOCRYPHAL ACTS AND RELATED TRADITIONS

The Acts of Andrew and Paul, Christian H. Bull and Alexander Kocar
The Acts of Andrew and Philemon, Ivan Miroshnikov
The Story of John Meeting Cerinthus, Lorne R. Zelyck
The Acts of John in Rome, Janet E. Spittler
The Acts of John by Prochorus, Janet E. Spittler
The Memorial of John, Rick Brannan
The Martyrdom of Mark, Tobias Nicklas
The History of Paul, Jacob A. Lollar
The Preaching of Simon Cephas in the City of Rome, J. Edward Walters
The Disputation of Peter and Nero, J. Edward Walters
The Acts of Christ and Peter in Rome, Julia A. Snyder and Slavomír Céplö
The Passion of Peter and Paul, Carson Bay
The Preaching of Philip, Ivan Miroshnikov

3. EPISTLES

The Epistles of Ignatius, John, and Mary, Gregory Given
The Epistle of James to Quadratus, Brent Landau, Bradley Rice, and J. Edward Walters
The Epistles of Longinus, Augustus, Ursinus, and Patrophilus, Tony Burke

4. APOCALYPSES

The Revelation of the Lord’s Prayer, Péter Tóth
The Dialogue of Mary and Christ on the Departure of the Soul, Christine Luckritz Marquis
The Questions of John (Interrogatio Iohannis), Stephen C. E. Hopkins
1 Revelation of Matthew about the End Times, Stephen Pelle
2 Revelation of Matthew about the End Times, Charles D. Wright and Stephen Pelle

The goal of the series is to present translations of texts that have never appeared in English or that need updating in light of new manuscript discoveries. Of the 29 texts in the volume, 15 have not appeared previously in English, six of these not in any modern language at all, and four are based on the contributors’ own (as yet unpublished) critical editions.

It’s interesting to see from comparing the two lists how quickly things can change in the field. The wish list includes only one text by the name Revelation of Matthew about the End Times. But a second apocalypse attributed to Matthew was prepared by Charlie Wright and Stephen Pelle, leading to two texts with the same name, now distinguished by numbering them 1 and 2. Also notable is the change of titles: Acts of Mark became the more standard Martyrdom of Mark, Travels of Peter and Christ in Rome became Acts of Christ and Peter in Rome (since the protagonists do little traveling in the text), and the Interrogatio Iohannis, which has gone by several names, went from Book of John to the more appropriate Questions of John.

As with the first two volumes, assigning texts to particular sections proved difficult because genres are so fluid and the texts’ contents are often not reflected in their titles. The Epistles of Longinus, Augustus, Ursinus, and Patrophilus, for example, are four separate “testimonia” texts in which the birth and death of Jesus are announced by pagan writers and rulers. Only two of these texts are actually epistles, and all four ultimately derive from a Syriac text called the Sayings of Greek Philosophers. The Acts of Christ and Peter in Rome resembles apocryphal acts in that it presents tales of Peter after the ascension of Jesus but Peter is accompanied by Christ disguised as a child and he performs miracles similar to those found in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The Gospel of the Twelve begins with an account of the nativity, ministry, and resurrection of Jesus (harmonized from the New Testament Gospels), but then, after a commissioning narrative, presents three visions (apocalypses) revealed to John, James, and Peter.

One could argue that some texts in the volume are not really apocrypha at all. The Dream of the Rood is a poem about the passion but features few apocryphal traditions; still, it has interesting thematic connections with the Legend of the Holy Rood Tree featured in MNTA 2, as well as several “talking cross” texts, including the Gospel of Peter and the Berlin-Strasbourg Apocryphon. The Story of John and Cerinthus—like the Story of John and the Robber (from MNTA 2) and the Death of Judas (from MNTA 1)—is a tale passed along by an orthodox writer: in this case Irenaeus (though copied by several later writers). Does this make it historical rather than apocryphal? Consider too the Memorial of John, which is an introduction to the Gospel of John found attached to the text in numerous manuscripts. It is of interest to us because it features traditions taken from the Acts of John and Prochorus. And it may seem strange to see epistles of Ignatius in an apocrypha collection, but these four short pieces derive from the so-called Long Recension of the Ignatian corpus and though they were considered genuine for centuries, were declared “spurious” and have been neglected in scholarship ever since. So these are apocryphal Ignatian letters and also biblical apocrypha because they claim to be correspondence with New Testament characters (John and the Virgin Mary).

The jewel of the crown in volume 3, for me at least, is the Acts of John by Prochorus. This text is less well known to scholars than the early Acts of John available today only in fragmentary form. But Prochorus is so much more widespread, with around 150 manuscripts in Greek alone, as well as translations into Coptic, Arabic, Ethiopic, Armenian, and Old French. Stories from the text also appear in iconography, including a series of paintings in the Monastery of John on Patmos (where much of the action in the text takes place). The Greek text was published by Theodor Zahn in 1880 but the only modern translations, so far, are one in Spanish and a little-seen, self-published English translation made from the transcription of a single manuscript. Janet Spittler’s translation of Zahn’s edition for MNTA 3 is a significant contribution to the study of this text. It also makes a fine companion to Janet’s translation of the Acts of John in Rome, which is frequently transmitted in a version intertwined with Prochorus.

I am happy that the new volume continues the series’ efforts to include participation from graduate students. I partnered with my student Sarah Veale (on the Martyrdom of Zechariah) and guided James Toma (now at the University of Toronto) through his translation and introduction to the Gospel of the Twelve (and he worked with me a little on the Epistles of Longinus, Augustus, Ursinus, and Patrophilus). Nathan Hardy (University of Chicago) contributed the Story of the Image of Edessa, Chance Bonar (Harvard University) worked with Slavomír Céplö on the Dialogue of Jesus and the Devil, Alexander D’Alisera (Boston College) partnered with independent scholar Samuel Osborn on the Dream of the Rood, and Bradley Rice (McGill University) with James Walters and Brent Landau on the Epistle of Quadratus. These and other collaborations between colleagues made it possible to cover traditions in multiple languages, including Church Slavic and Armenian.

The future of the MNTA series is uncertain. Again, we were guaranteed two volumes from Eerdmans and this grew to three only because, as my English mother would say, “me eyes are bigger than me belly.” There are still plenty of texts on my wish list that need translation and further study. But if there is no volume 4 (or 5, or more), there are still plenty of avenues for material to be published, including NASSCAL’s Early Christian Apocrypha series and perhaps a MNTA Supplement Series with texts both in translation and in their original languages. For now, I’m happy to take some time away from editing and try to get some work of my own completed. I love collaborating and it is a dream come true to have worked on a series of books that can share shelf-space with my “heroes” (Schneemelcher and Elliott) and highly-regarded peers (Markschies-Schröter, Ehrman, Kaestli-Bovon-Poupon, and others). And I’ve made a lot of friends putting these books together (and lost some too, I’m sure). They are certainly the highlight of my career (my Moving Pictures, for the Rush fans out there) and I hope they will prove useful for current and future generations of Christian apocrypha scholars.