Apocryphicity
A Blog Devoted to the Study of Christian Apocrypha
Alin Suciu has an interesting post about reconstructing a Coptic Homily on the Virgin Mary by Theophilus of Alexandria. The homily contains some apocryphal traditions about the Magi and the death of Zachariah, the latter derived from the Protevangelium of James.
The papers presented at last Spring's Symposium on Secret Mark—Ancient Gospel or Modern Forgery? The Secret Gospel of Mark in Debate—have been accepted for publication by Cascade Books. I am currently editing the papers and hope to have the manuscript to the publisher in February.
There are plans also for another York Christian Apocrypha Symposium, but not until 2013. It was unlikely that we would receive funding without some "outcome" from the first symposium, and there was some delay in securing a contract in time for funding proposal season. We do not know yet what the topic will be for 2013, but I will post information when it becomes available.
Grrr. Sorry, I don't know how to embed the video, but here is the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GkHNNPM7pJA&lr=1.
The latest issue of Biblical Archeology Review (Nov./Dec. 2011) has a feature on the Revelation of the Magi, a text published in English for the first time by Brent Landau last year. An excerpt from the story is available on-line at the BAR site.
Recently I have read two treatments of the Secret Gospel of Mark, one brief (a few pages from Robert M. Price’s Secret Scrolls: Revelations from the Lost Gospel Novels [Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 2011]) and one more detailed (Edward Reaugh Smith’s The Temple Sleep of the Rich Young Ruler: How Lazarus Became the Evangelist John [Great Barrington, Mass.: SteinerBooks, 2011]). One merely presents old and erroneous arguments for the forgery of the gospel, the other offers a thorough overview of recent developments in the study of the text.
Price’s book is a comprehensive study of novels based on the notion of the possible impact on Christianity of the discovery of a lost gospel. It is a sequel of sorts of his earlier book The Paperback Apocalypse: How the Christian Church was Left Behind (Amherst: Prometheus Books, 2007). In chapter three Price discusses J. H. Hunter’s 1940 novel The Mystery of Mar Saba, which Price and others (notably Craig Evans in his paper for the Secret Mark Symposium back in April; summarized HERE) believe gave Smith “the idea for a real live ‘lost gospel’ hoax of his own” (p. 28). Despite acknowledging the existence of photographs of the manuscript, Price remains “unconvinced” of the genuineness of the text. He postulates: “Suppose Smith found some blank pages at the end of that library book, and they spoke eloquently to him nonetheless, whispering to him of an opportunity for a rich joke. And then perhaps he got to work …
This past weekend I participated in John Marshall’s Erasure History workshop at the University of Toronto. The event featured papers by some fine scholars—including John Gager, Eldon Epp, Nicola Denzey Lewis, John Kloppenborg, and Mark Goodacre—which led to eye-opening discussion about the reception and perception of some of the ancient texts that are near and dear to our hearts.
First, what is “Erasure History”? The workshop program defines it as: “the effort to think through significant historical problems as if a crucial surviving source were instead among the lost. This endeavour of programmatically holding data in abeyance is meant to illuminate the conditions under which we actually labour and to facilitate fresh consideration of, and renewed humility before, the generative problems of Western historical scholarship. “ It may seem an odd exercise; as Mark Goodacre said in his presentation, perhaps our efforts are best put to examining the texts that we do have. But he concluded that the exercise does lead to some insights about how we approach lost, found, and rediscovered texts from antiquity.
I’m going to limit my comments to insights related to apocryphal texts (though this is due in part to missing several of the papers thanks to traffic problems; don’t get me started). The first paper to touch on the apocrypha was Mark Goodacre’s “A World Without Mark” (Mark likely will discuss the paper on his own blog within the next few days; check NT Blog). Mark approached his task in three ways: imagining that …
Spurred on by the brief review of The Apocryphal Gospels by Bart Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše (Oxford University Press, 2011) in the LA Times, I have finally gathered together my own thoughts on the collection.
The goal of the collection, in the editors’ words, is to provide “everything that a graduate student or scholar working on the apocryphal Gospels would need or want access to” (p. viii). And, to some extent, they succeed. This is the first ever collection of primary texts in their original languages with facing English translations (though Andrew Bernhard’s Other Early Christian Gospels, used on occasion here, contains a number of texts). And it is undeniably an excellent all-in-one source for the material, drawing in texts from Tischendorf’s Evangelia Apocrypha, several CCSA (Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum) editions, a variety of century-old journal articles, the Nag Hammadi Library, and others. On Tischendorf, the editors comment that his 150-year-old editions are “inadequate for the needs of scholars today” and that “many texts have been uncovered since Tischendorf’s day, some of them relatively difficult to access” (p. viii). Nevertheless, they liberally draw upon Tischendorf’s work, primarily in the absence of new editions of certain texts—a deficiency the editors point out on several occasions, …
I will be participating next week in a conference at the University of Toronto entitled Erasure History:Approaching the Missing Sources of Antiquity (see HERE for more information). I will be responding to James Corke-Webster's paper "History without the Historian: Removing Eusebius’ Ecclesiastical History from the Archive." I'd better brush up on my Bauer.
Alin Suciu has two recent posts on new Coptic manuscripts relating to the Encomium on the Twelve Apostles and the Dormition of the Virgin.
Brent Landau passed on to me a few notes regarding the find:
"Cool things I learned at Dirk Obbink's lecture in Oklahoma City this evening" (Tuesday, September 13, 2011)
1) The new "unknown gospel" from the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (mentioned in THIS news report) that was mentioned in press releases in connection with the ancientlives.org project has Jesus performing an exorcism on the Gerasene demoniac…BUT, there's no herd of swine! The demons just go away. No pigs were harmed in the performing of this miracle.
2) On the other side of the "unknown gospel" fragment are several sayings of Jesus about acknowledging him as Lord that resemble (but are not identical to) logia found in the Synoptics and Thomas. So apparently this gospel alternates between narrative and sayings, but with less of the transitional material found in the Synoptics.
3) The "unknown gospel" will be published in vol. 77 of the Oxyrhynchus Papyri.
4) A new fragment of the beginning of the Gospel of Mark has been identified, which was probably enclosed in an amulet and likely dates to the third century. Like several other important witnesses, it lacks the phrase "Son of God" after "The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ." But, unlike any other manuscript, it
Allan Pantuck has contributed another article (HERE) to the ongoing discussion on Secret Mark at the Biblical Archeology Review page. The article is a response to the handwriting analysis of Agamemnon Tselikas. Tselikas has, in turn, added a (rather weak) response to Pantuck (HERE).
And James McGrath has entered into a discussion with Craig Evans about his recent post on Secret Mark on the Bible and Interpretation blog. McGrath’s response can be found on Exploring Our Matrix, and Evans has, in turn, responded on Near Emmaus. And McGrath again back on Exploring Our Matrix.
Craig Evans has a post on Secret Mark at the Bible and Interpretation. He mentions his involvement in the York Christian Apocrypha Symposium and summarizes several of the points of his paper (via Paleojudaica).
Roger Viklund and David Blocker have posted an article suggesting an interesting link between the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew incorporated in Even Bohan and the Secret Gospel of Mark.
Larry Hurtado has an interesting post on his blog entitled "Hoaxes From the Past (That Keep on Re-appearing)." He discusses briefly (essentially presenting an overview of the contents of Edgar J. Goodspeed's Famous Biblical Hoaxes, or, Modern Apocrypha) a number of modern apocryphal texts, including The Aquarian Gospel of Christ (see this previous post on a handy source for such texts). The overview raises for me an issue over the appropriate use of the term "hoax." What is it that divides these modern apocryphal texts from ancient apocrypha? Or, in some cases, from pseudepigraphical canonical texts? The writer of the introduction to the Apocalypse of Paul, for example, claimed to have found this text hidden away beneath his house in the fourth-century. Clearly Paul did not write the text and it was likely written in the fourth-century by the text's "discoverer." A similar "discovery" in the nineteenth-century, such as The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ, is not much different, is it?
I understand the hostility some may feel toward modern apocrypha, but I don't feel the same way about ancient apocrypha. Is the difference solely of time and distance? Or is there something else that is different about the origins of these texts? Are modern apocrypha just as valid an area of study for 19th and 20th century developments in Christianity as ancient apocrypha for medieval Christianity?