New Books on Christian Apocrypha

November 13, 2017 by Tony

This is the first of two posts reporting on the sessions on the Christian Apocrypha from the 2012 SBL Annual Meeting. Before I get to the papers, however, I just want to mention several books on the CA that I picked up at the conference.

David L. Eastman. Paul the Martyr: The Cult of the Apostle in the Latin West (SBL 2011). David is one of the contributors to the More Christian Apocrypha volumes. I have yet to look at the book closely, but it draws upon apocryphal Pauline texts, including some of the lesser known late "acts" literature (e.g., the Acts of Paul and Peter).

François Bovon and Christopher R. Matthews. The Acts of Philip: A New Translation (Baylor 2012). This first complete English translation of the Acts of Philip is long overdue. Bovon provides a brief introduction, discussing the new manuscripts used for the edition (published as CCSA 11), and the two contribute the translation. There are few notes and no commentary.

Christoph Markschies and Jens Schröter. Antike christliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung (Mohr Siebeck, 2012). I was very happy to be able to pick this up from SBL (rather than ordering it online) and at a pretty decent price ($102 US for the two-part first

Secret Gospel of Mark in Debate

November 16, 2012 by Tony

Here is the cover image for the published proceedings of last year's York Christian Apocrypha Symposium. We are now at the indexing stage, so the book should be out very soon.

Christian Apocrypha at the 2012 SBL

November 13, 2017 by Tony

The 2012 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature is only days away; so, it is about time that I got around to posting the schedule for the Christian Apocrypha sessions. I will be attending all of the sessions and will post a summary when I return.

Saturday Nov. 17

(S17-108) 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM

Room: N138 – McCormick Place

Theme: New Manuscripts, Texts, and Translations

Brent Landau, University of Oklahoma, Presiding

Richard I. Pervo, St. Paul, MN : “Thecla Wove This Web Or Some Things I Learned from Attempting to Write a Commentary on the Acts of Paul” (20 min) Discussion (10 min)

Susan E. Hylen, Vanderbilt University: "The Orthodox Thecla: Characterization of Thecla in the LIfe and Miracles of Saint Thecla" (20 min) Discussion (10 min)

Antti Marjanen, University of Helsinki: "Two New Coptic Fragments of the Apocalypse of Paul (Visio Pauli)" (20 min) Discussion (10 min)

Gesine Schenke Robinson, Episcopal Theological School at Claremont: "The Coptic Testament of Job and its Reception in the Early Christian Period" (20 min) Discussion (10 min)”

(S17-211) 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM

Room: E261 – McCormick Place

Theme: The infancy roots of Mary's first biographies

Pierluigi Piovanelli, Université d'Ottawa – University of Ottawa, Presiding

M. David Litwa, University of Virginia: "Jesus, Hermes and Dionysus: The Divine Child in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas" (20 min) Discussion (10 min)

James Waddell, University of Toledo: "Recontextualizing the Infancy Gospel of Thomas – A Proposal" (20 min) …

More Christian Apocrypha

November 13, 2017 by Tony

The latest issue of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion (41.3) features my article on the More Christian Apocrypha Project. The abstract for the article provides some details about the project:

Scholars interested in the Christian Apocrypha (CA) typically appeal to CA collections when in need of primary sources. But many of these collections limit themselves to material believed to have been written within the first to fourth centuries CE. As a result a large amount of non-canonical Christian texts important for the study of ancient and medieval Christianity have been neglected. The More Christian Apocrypha Project will address this neglect by providing a collection of new editions (some for the first time) of these texts for English readers. The project is inspired by the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project headed by Richard Bauckham and Jim Davila from the University of Edinburgh. Like the MOTP, the MCAP is envisioned as a supplement to an earlier collection of texts—in this case J. K. Elliott’s The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford 1991), the most recent English-language CA collection (but now almost two decades old). The texts to be included are either absent in Elliott or require significant revision. Many of the texts have scarcely been examined in over a century and are in dire need of new examination. One of the goals of the project is to spotlight the abilities and achievements of English (i.e., British and North American) scholars of the CA, so that English readers have access to material that

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The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife

September 19, 2012 by Tony

I seem to be arriving late to the discussion on the fragmentary Coptic manuscript that has been dubbed the Gospel of Jesus' Wife. Since I am not a Coptologist, I have little to add to what has been said so far (Jim Davila and Mark Goodacre offer useful introductions and roundups of media and blog posts), except to say that I share Jim's skepticism. The manuscript also doesn't look "right"–it is fragmentary yet is carefully cut, the script and penmanship is more crude than anything I have ever seen (though, again, I'm no Coptologist). I am eager to hear what Alin Suciu will say on his blog–he has already stated on facebook that he thinks it is a fake.

New blog: Michael J. Kruger’s “Canon Fodder”

September 8, 2012 by Tony

The list of biblio-bloggers has a new entry: Canon Fodder by Michael J. Kruger, co-author of the The Heresy of Orthodoxy (discussed HERE) and, most recently, Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books.

Readers of the Christian Apocrypha may find interesting Kruger's series of posts on "10 Misconceptions on the New Testament Canon" and his most recent post "Apocryphal Gospels and the Mainstream Media."

New Study of the Epistle to the Laodiceans

August 29, 2012 by Tony

Philip Tite's study of the Epistle to the Laodiceans, published by Brill, will soon be available. The book is now up on googlebooks with a limited preview. It can be accessed HERE.

Secret Scriptures Revealed! Thoughts on Writing for Non-specialists, part 2

August 29, 2012 by Tony

This is the second in a series of posts on my efforts to write a book on the Christian Apocrypha for non-specialists. The book is entitled Secret Scriptures Revealed: A New Introduction to the Christian Apocrypha and will be published by SPCK some time in the near future (I have to finish writing the thing first!). I welcome any feedback you might have on the writing process and what is essential to include in a book of this kind.

The second chapter of Secret Scriptures Revealed covers additional introductory matter intended to form the basis for contextualizing the discussions of individual Christian Apocrypha texts that follow. The challenge here was to determine what new readers of these texts need to know to fully understand the texts, but again to do so in an economy of words. I considered what was confusing to me when I began my interest in the texts. Some of the scholarship on the CA assumes readers are knowledgeable in certain areas (the content of biblical texts, the lives of various Christian figures and writers, etc.), but that is not always the case. And since this is a book for non-specialists, I can assume nothing about their background. So I begin the chapter with a description of the various languages of the texts (focusing on Greek, Latin, Syriac, Coptic, Georgian, Ethiopic, Armenian, and Slavonic) and how these languages relate to one another. With this information readers can understand how a text can move from, say, Greek …

Manuscript Images of Gospel of Peter/Apocalypse of Peter Online

August 27, 2012 by Tony

Jim Davila provided a link on his blog Paleojudaica to images from the 6-9th century Greek manuscript containing fragments of the Gospel of Peter and Apocalypse of Peter. The images can be viewed HERE.

2013 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium

August 25, 2012 by Tony

The second in the York Christian Apocrypha Symposium Series will take place May 8-10, 2013 at (of course) York University in Toronto. The programme is still being finalized but confirmed presenters include Stephen Patterson, Nicola Denzey, Lee Martin McDonald, Cornelia Horn, Stephen Shoemaker, F. Stanley Jones, and Annette Yoshiko Reed. The theme this year is the study of the Christian Apocrypha in North America.

The first Christian Apocrypha Symposium took place in 2011 and focused on the Secret Gospel of Mark. The proceedings from the event will be published some time this year by Cascade. The 2013 Symposium will be a little more ambitious than the first, with more presenters spread out over two days. And there will be more danishes.

Look for a more formal announcement in the next few weeks.

New Article on Depictions of Children in Apocryphal Infancy Gospels

August 24, 2012 by Tony

A special issue of the journal Studies in Religion/ Sciences Religieuses focused on children in early Christianity includes my brief article “Depictions of Children in the Apocryphal Infancy Gospels” (p. 388-400). The abstract is below.

The apocryphal infancy gospels (such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Protoevangelium of James) seem at first look to be ideal sources for the study of children and childhood in early Christianity. They all feature depictions of Jesus as an infant and/or a child; some tell similar tales of other eminent Christian figures, such as Mary of Nazareth and John the Baptist. Few of these texts, however, can be considered “early” texts (i.e., 2-3^rd centuries) and even those texts we can confidently date to this period are of limited value for the study of children. One text remains useful for this endeavour: the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. And in recent years, several scholars have looked seriously at this gospel for what it can tell us about the experiences of children in antiquity. Yet, even this text must be approached with caution for it has more to say about how adults of the time wanted children to be than what they truly were.

Secret Scriptures Revealed! Thoughts on Writing for Non-Specialists, part 1

July 24, 2012 by Tony

I have been asked by SPCK Publishing to write a book for non-specialists on the Christian Apocrypha. After some deliberation, we settled on the title, Secret Scriptures Revealed: A New Introduction to the Christian Apocrypha. I think it has some flash, but avoids sensationalism (apocrypha, by definition are “secret” books, after all), and pulls away from the term “New Testament Apocrypha,” which places too many limits on the material (temporally and generically). The manuscript is due in September and I am relatively close to completion. I thought I would post an entry on the blog as I finish each chapter, offering some thoughts about the pains and pleasures involved in the writing process. I welcome any feedback.

First, because the book is aimed at a wide audience, it is relatively small (a limit of 55,000 words—around 200 pages, I think) and very inexpensive ($20). Unfortunately, this does not allow me a lot of space to discuss the texts. Other brief introductions to the CA limit themselves to gospels; but I wanted to discuss also letters, acts, apocalypses, and other types of literature. I also have a soft spot for texts that have been neglected in CA collections. So, if I want to cover a large number of texts, the introductory matter must be concise.

The first chapter sets the tone of the book with a whimsical interaction with Athanasius and his views on apocryphal texts (he says, “There should be no mention at all of apocryphal books created by …

More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Coming Soon

July 11, 2012 by Tony

The first volume of Jim Davila and Richard Bauckham's Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Non-canonical Scriptures now has a release date (September 2012). For more, click HERE.

A New Library for St. Catherine’s Monastery

June 1, 2012 by Tony

St. Catherine's Monastery is getting a new library and working to digitize its entire collection. Read about it HERE. My favourite part of the article:

“You wait so long you want to see some action,” says Father Justin, who can’t wait for the new library to be up and running. He hopes to blog about the construction.

“These days everyone has a blog,” he says.

2012 Réunion de l’AELAC

June 1, 2012 by Tony

Reposted from Alin Suciu's blog (simply because he got to it first and saves me from retyping it):

The Association pour l’étude de la littérature apocryphe chrétienne (AELAC) has announced on its website the programme for the 2012 meeting, which will take place June 28-30 in Dole, France. Here are the titles of the papers which will be presented this year:

Janet E. SPITTLER, Μανθ?νεις πρ?ς τ?νας ε?ρηται τ? ε?ρημ?να: Metalepsis in the Acts of Andrew.

Pierre-Yves LAMBERT, Histoire évangélique en irlandais.

Cornelia B. HORN, Apocrypha and Isra’iliyyat. The Life of Jesus in some early islamic authors.

Jean-Michel ROESSLI, La réception des Oracles sibyllins chez quelques auteurs anglais des XVII^e et XVIII^e siècles.

Alin SUCIU, Preliminary Report on Some New Coptic Apocryphal Fragments.

Xavier LEQUEUX, Origine et développements de la BHG ou la quête du document hagiographique.

Enrico NORELLI, Les premières traditions sur la Dormition de Marie comme catalyseurs de formes très anciennes de réflexion théologique et christologique.

Lydie LANSARD, L’Èvangile de Gamaliel.

More information about the Réunion de l’AELAC HERE.