2018 New Testament Apocrypha Course: Reflections on Week 4

February 1, 2018 by Tony

My course on the New Testament Apocrypha focused this week on part one of a two-part discussion of “Ministry Gospels”—i.e., texts focusing on Jesus’ adult life, between the infancy gospels and the passion narratives. For this first part we looked at agrapha and fragmentary texts, the latter group including Jewish-Christian gospels, several papyri from Oxyrhynchus, and the Secret Gospel of Mark. Our next class is dedicated to complete Ministry Gospels, namely the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip, and two fragmentary texts we ran out of time to cover: the Gospel of Peter, and the Gospel of the Savior.

We began with agrapha, the “unwritten” sayings of Jesus, though clearly they are written or we wouldn’t have them to study. More accurately, the term denotes sayings of Jesus that are not in the New Testament Gospels, appearing as variants in Gospel manuscripts, Acts, fragmentary apocryphal texts, works of the Apostolic Fathers, in Islamic texts (go HERE for a selection of some of these), and such unlikely locations as a mosque in India, which bears the inscription “Jesus, on whom be peace, said: ‘The world is a bridge. Go over it—do not settle on it!’” I discussed the methodology scholars of the agrapha use to reduce the great number of agrapha (270 by one count) to a manageable amount of “authentic” Jesus material (though I cautioned that this is not necessarily the goal of the study of this material; there are reasons enough to study any …

2018 New Testament Apocrypha Course: Reflections on Week Three

January 25, 2018 by Tony

This week’s class focused on Infancy Gospels, with particular emphasis on the Infancy Gospel of James and the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, the earliest examples of this literature. We began, however, with a discussion of the infancy narratives of Matthew and Luke. It helps considerably to have the students spend some time discussing canonical texts, in part so they can see what the noncanonical texts do with the earlier traditions and also because some students come into the course without any knowledge of Christian texts, biblical or otherwise. So we read Matthew 1-2 together and noted its similarities and differences with Luke 1-2. The differences are particularly significant as infancy gospels like Infancy James must confront these differences in the process of harmonizing the two accounts. I discussed also the reference to Jesus’ brothers and sisters (and lack of mention of Joseph) in Mark 6:3 and the anti-Christian polemic in Celsus’s True Doctrine, the Talmud, and the Toledot Yeshu (all in anticipation of our examination of Infancy James).

For Infancy James we looked first at a segment from the documentary Banned From the Bible (History Channel, 2003), which helped students recall the contents of the text and opened up conversation on some of the interpretations and implications of the text. I emphasized in our discussion that there are several features of the text that have become integral to Christian teaching about Mary, including the Doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, the Doctrine of the Perpetual Virginity, the names …

Book Note: What Did Jesus Look Like?

January 22, 2018 by Tony

Christian Apocrypha enthusiasts, particularly those interested in the Pilate Cycle, the Epistle of Lentulus, and/or the Doctrine of Addai, may want to seek out Joan E. Taylor’s new book What Did Jesus Look Like? (T & T Clark, 2018). Complete details can be found on the Bloomsbury web site. Here is the abstract:

Jesus Christ is arguably the most famous man who ever lived. His image adorns countless churches, icons, and paintings. He is the subject of millions of statues, sculptures, devotional objects and works of art. Everyone can conjure an image of Jesus: usually as a handsome, white man with flowing locks and pristine linen robes.

But what did Jesus really look like? Is our popular image of Jesus overly westernized and untrue to historical reality?

This question continues to fascinate. Leading Christian Origins scholar Joan E. Taylor surveys the historical evidence, and the prevalent image of Jesus in art and culture, to suggest an entirely different vision of this most famous of men.

He may even have had short hair.

2018 New Testament Apocrypha Course: Reflections on Week Two

January 25, 2018 by Tony

Last week I began the latest incarnation of my course “The New Testament Apocrypha” (syllabus posted on my parent site HERE). As in previous years, I am posting weekly reflections on each week’s lecture, in part to encourage pedagogical discussion on how to teach this material (and I won’t always do it well), and to provide a forum for my students to offer their thoughts on the course (and thereby gain additional participation marks).

The first class mostly comprised housekeeping: going over the syllabus, providing some background on the New Testament for the benefit of students who have never taken a course in Christianity, and running over some basic concepts (“apocrypha,” “canon,” etc.). The second class, which took place last night, had more substance, so I start this reflections series at week two.

This second class covered two topics: canon formation and the categories of orthodoxy and heresy. The readings entailed an assortment of canon lists from our primary text collection (Bart Ehrman’s Lost Scriptures) a few chapters from our course textbook (my Secret Scriptures Revealed), and a chapter from Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity.

The class began with reading the Muratorian Fragment as a group. I like to start each class with a discussion of one of the assigned texts; it gets people talking early in the night rather than at the end, when they are starting to get tired (this is a three-hour evening class after all). We went through this …

Update on More New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 2

January 10, 2018 by Tony

The first volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (co-edited with Brent Landau) was published just over a year ago. Even before the book went to press, we were planning the contents of volume 2, and included a preliminary list of its contents at the end of the introduction. There have been some changes to that list, even some changes to the names given to the texts, and I present the (hopefully) finalized table of contents below. All of the contributors are making a final push at submitting their work over the next few months and we are on track for sending the manuscript to the publisher at the end of the summer. There are 38 texts in total, at least four never before published, about ten translated for the first time in a modern language, and many of the remainder appearing in English for the first time. Of particular interest are a group of texts relating to the birth and martyrdom of John the Baptist and a selection of apocryphal apocalypses of John.

Pseudo-Eusebius of Caesarea, On the Star by Brent Landau

The Adoration of the Magi by Adam McCollum

The Rebellion of Dimas by Mark Glenn Bilby

The Hospitality and Perfume of the Bandit by Mark Glenn Bilby

A Homily on the Life of Jesus by Timothy Pettipiece

Severian of Gabala, An Encomium on the Apostles by Alin Suciu

The Book of the Rooster by Pierluigi Piovanelli

Pseudo-Evodius, On the Passion and Resurrection, by Dylan M. …

2018 Conference for the North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocrypha (NASSCAL)

December 22, 2017 by Tony

CONFERENCE ANNOUNCEMENT AND CALL FOR PAPERS

North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature

The Material of Christian Apocrypha

University of Virginia

November 2018

Confirmed speakers: Mary Cunningham (Nottingham), Maria Evangelatou (University of Southern California), Derek Krueger (UNC Greensboro), and Robin Jensen (Notre Dame)

We invite abstracts for a conference on the “Material of Christian Apocrypha,” hosted by the University of Virginia’s Department of Religious Studies and McIntire Department of Art, under the auspices of the North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature. We hope to assemble a group of participants who will address two interrelated yet distinct topics: 1) the physicality of our apocryphal texts (i.e. various aspects of the manuscripts or papyri themselves), and 2) the representation of apocryphal narratives in other forms of material culture (e.g. frescos, mosaics, sculptures, icons, pilgrimage objects, reliquaries, etc.). By drawing our collective attention to the material aspects of the literary and the literary aspects of the material, we hope to spark a fruitful and enduring exchange between scholars and students rooted in both areas. Questions to be posed include: What do the physical aspects of manuscripts and papyri tell us about the use and value of the apocryphal texts they contain? Which apocryphal traditions attain such a level of scriptural authority that they appear in art, iconography, church decoration, and biblical manuscript illuminations? What do discussions of images within apocryphal texts, such as the portrait of John the Apostle described in the Acts of John, …

2017 SBL Diary: Day Three

November 29, 2017 by Tony

The third and (for me) final day of the annual meeting began with a breakfast with the NASSCAL executive. The annual meeting presents an opportunity for the executive to meet informally, with a loose gathering of whoever happens to be at SBL—which is usually most of us. I presented the group with an update of our various projects, including the e-Clavis (now at 64 texts completed and another 26 in progress), the Early Christian Apocrypha series (with Brandon Hawk’s Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew translation at the press and Lily Vuong’s Protevangelium of James near completion), the Studies in Christian Apocrypha series (with one title in progress, one in the proposal stage, and another two possibilities discussed), and the first NASSCAL conference (planned for the University of Virginia in September of October 2018). NASSCAL is now two-and-a-half years old and looking back, we have accomplished an awful lot in that short time.

After breakfast Brent Landau and I headed over to the review session for our book New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. It featured an all-star panel: David Brakke (Ohio State University), Philip Jenkins (Baylor University), Valentina Calzolari Bouvier (University of Geneva), Julia Snyder (Universität Regensburg), Judith Hartenstein (Universität Koblenz – Landau), Christoph Markschies (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin – Humboldt University of Berlin), and for a student perspective, J. Gregory Given (Harvard University). Two of the respondents have already posted their comments online (Jenkins and Brakke). All of the reviewers were effusive in their compliments about the volume: Calzolari …

Guest Post: David Brakke “The abundant, never-ending Christian apocrypha, which no list can contain”

November 28, 2017 by Tony

David Brakke appeared on the 2017 SBL review panel for New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. I really enjoyed his paper and asked him to allow me to publish it here.

Since many have undertaken to set down an orderly account of the events that have been fulfilled among us, just as they were handed on to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and servants of the word, I have decided, after investigating everything carefully from the first, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent Theophilus, so that you may know the truth concerning the things about which you have been instructed.

So the author of the Gospel of Luke explained his decision to write a story that many had already written. His account would be carefully investigated and orderly and so give the truth.

1900 years later José Saramago placed these words as the epitaph to his novel, The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, and so signaled his own audacity and anxiety about telling a story that had been told countless times before. Saramago’s specific challenge of rewriting what has already been written about Jesus becomes in the novel emblematic both of any human being’s inability to rewrite the story that has been written for him or her and also of the Western novelist’s predicament at the end of modernity: How can one write when so many words have gone before, or tell a new story when all the great stories have been …

2017 SBL Diary: Day Two

November 28, 2017 by Tony

My second day at the 2017 SBL began with my first Journal of Biblical Literature Editorial Board meeting. I was surprised to see so many people around the table (and so many people that I know). The large number of submissions to the journal means that a large number of manuscript referees are needed, especially if they want to process them in a reasonable amount of time. Apparently there are two Christian Apocrypha (or “other”) editors: me and Pierluigi Piovanelli. I’ve joked that I took this position because it’s the only way I’ll get my name in JBL; John Marshall (University of Toronto) pointed out that it will be in every issue for the next few years!

After the meeting, I went to my first session of the day: Corpus Hellenisticum Novi Testamenti’s presentation of papers from the new Richard Pervo festschrift Delightful Acts. The session included a paper by NASSCAL Vice-President Janet Spittler (University of Virginia) entitled “Joking and Play in the Acts of John.” She opened with statement by John Chrysostom (Hom. Heb. xv) that Jesus never laughed. That may be true for the Jesus of the New Testament but he laughs plenty in apocryphal texts. Spittler looked at three case studies of Christian humor from the Acts of John: when John jokes with Lycomedes about John’s portrait (26–29), the obedient bed bugs (called by the writer “a certain comic act,” 60–61), and the episode when John sees Jesus in many forms, including …

2017 SBL Diary: Day One

November 23, 2017 by Tony

Every year after the SBL Annual Meeting I take some time to compile a summary of my activities—the sessions I attended and/or participated in, meetings I had with scholars and publishers, books I purchased, and receptions I crashed. I do this for those interested in Christian Apocrypha who could not attend the meeting and also in lieu of tweets because Wi-fi access tends to be somewhat spotty. Since I write at a snail’s pace, this summary will be split into three separate posts that will appear over the next few days.

I flew into town Friday around 2:30 pm—far earlier than normal—and thought I could spend the rest of the afternoon leisurely wandering around the book display. That way I wouldn’t have to squeeze the tour in between papers or skip a session. Unfortunately, the display was not yet open, so I had to find something else to do (and who am I kidding? it’s not like I would only go once anyway). So I went back to my room to iron my balled-up suit and do a little work before meeting up with Brent Landau. Over dinner we discussed, among other things, the progress on the second volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, which has been a bit sluggish due to some contributors having to withdraw because of other commitments or changes in their careers. The first volume contains a provisional list of texts to be included in vol. 2, and that list is looking less …

Christian Apocrypha Books to Look for at SBL 2017

November 13, 2017 by Tony

One of the highlights of the SBL Annual Meeting is the publishers exhibition. As you make your way from one booth to another, keep an eye out for these new books.

Baylor

Dirk Rohmann. Christianity, Book-Burning and Censorship in Late Antiquity: Studies in Text Transmission.

Bloomsbury

Alessandro Falcetta. A Biography of James Rendel Harris 1852-1941. The Daily Discovers of a Bible Scholar and Manuscript Hunter.

Lee Martin McDonald. The Formation of the Biblical Canon. 2 vols.

Brill

Robert W. Thomson. Ners?s of Lambron: Commentary on the Dormition of Saint John. Armenian Text and Annotated Translation. ARTS 1.

De Gruyter

Liv Ingeborg Lied and Hugo Lundhaug, eds. Snapshots of Evolving Traditions: Jewish and Christian Manuscript Culture, Textual Fluidity, and New Philology. TUGAL 175.

Gorgias Press

János M. Bak. Introduction to Working with Manuscripts for Medievalists.

Tony Burke. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas in the Syriac Tradition: A Critical Edition and English Translation. Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 48.

Amir Harrack, ed. and trans. The Chronicle of Zuqnin: Parts I and II. From the Creation to the Year 506/7 AD.

Mohr Siebeck

Jan N. Bremmer. Maidens, Magic and Martyrs in Early Christianity. Collected Essays I. WUNT 379.

David Creech. The Use of Scripture in the Apocryphon of John. A Diachronic Analysis of the Variant Versions. WUNT II/447.

Patricia A. Duncan. Novel Hermeneutics in the Greek Pseudo-Clementine Romance. WUNT.

Jörg Frey et al., eds. Between Canonical and Apocryphal Texts: Processes of Reception, Rewriting, and Interpretation in Early Judaism and Early Christianity…

Christian Apocrypha and Pilgrimage, Part 3

November 9, 2017 by Tony

In the first post in this series I discussed the visits of pilgrims to locations mentioned only in apocryphal texts, in the second I provided an overview of the texts that expand on the Flight to Egypt to create a fictional pilgrimage map for those who want to follow in the Holy Family’s footsteps, now I turn to some aspects of the intersection of apocrypha pilgrimage that remain largely unexplored by scholars.

The first of these is the connection between the production of apocryphal texts and the pilgrimage locations associated with them. Egeria mentions reading copies of the works of Thomas at the apostle’s tomb in Edessa (Itin. Eger. 19.2) and while in the city she received a copy of the Abgar Correspondence (Itin. Eger. 19.19). When visiting the martyrium of Thecla in Isaurian Seleucia, Egeria read tales of the saint (Itin. Eger. 23.5), likely from the Life and Miracles of Thecla—a retelling of Thecla’s story from the Acts of Paul along with an account of the end of her life in Seleucia followed by a series of posthumous miracles performed on behalf of pilgrims at the site. The account of Thecla’s final days in Seleucia includes a trip to and from Daphne, which functioned as an itinerary for fifth-century pilgrims on their way to Thecla’s sanctuary.

Several late antique apocryphal acts also establish a connection between characters in the narratives and particular shrines. The Acts of Barnabas, for example, documents the travels of Barnabas …

Christian Apocrypha and Pilgrimage, Part 2

November 7, 2017 by Tony

The earliest Christian pilgrimage itineraries, discussed in the part 1 of this series post, say little about sites in Egypt, despite the fact that the canonical Gospel of Matthew (2:13–15, 19–21) narrates a visit to Egypt by the Holy Family early in Jesus’ life. Matthew does not say what happened to the Holy Family in Egypt nor how long they resided there, but other Christian writers filled the gap with tales of the family visiting various locations in Egypt, each one a site of miraculous proofs of Jesus’ divinity and superiority over native deities. As time went on, these flight narratives became more and more elaborate, with the most detailed accounts serving as pilgrimage maps for those who want to follow Jesus’ footsteps and visit the sites where Jesus performed his wonders, either in person or vicariously through reading the texts.

The apocryphal flight narratives range in origin from East to West and from roughly the fifth to eighth centuries, with further expansion in the manuscript tradition and in other literature inspired by these tales for centuries thereafter. The earliest developed narrative of the flight story is likely the tales collected in the Gospel of the Infancy, extant today in Syriac and Arabic (for more information visit the e-Clavis pages for the Arabic Infancy Gospel and the East Syriac History of the Virgin). The flight narrative comprises the middle portion of this text (corresponding to Arab. Gos. Inf. 10–24). The section begins with a retelling of Matthew 2:13–15 …

Christian Apocrypha and Pilgrimage, Part 1

October 31, 2017 by Tony

I have been asked to contribute an essay to the T&T Clark Handbook to Children and Childhood in the Biblical World, edited by Sharon Betsworth and Julie Faith Parker. Initially the editors asked me to write something on the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, given my previous work, but I feel that I have said everything I have to say (at least for the time being) on that text and its relationship to real or imagined children in antiquity. Instead I proposed a piece on “Travelling with Children: Flight Stories and Pilgrimage Routes in the Apocryphal Infancy Gospels.” I finished up the paper last week and thought I would share a portion of it here.

Scholars of Christian apocrypha have only begun to examine the intersection of pilgrimage and apocrypha. Tobias Nicklas’s recent essay (that fortuitously arrived just as I was writing this paper) “Beyond ‘Canon’: Christian Apocrypha and Pilgrimage” (pages 23–38 in The Other Side: Apocryphal Perspectives on Ancient Christian “Orthodoxies,” ed. Tobias Nicklas et al. [NTOA 117; Göttingen: Vandenhoek & Ruprecht, 2017) is the first wideranging look at the apocryphal traditions that appear in the early pilgrimage itineraries. These itineraries, composed between the fourth and the seventh centuries, all focus on Palestine, though a few of the pilgrims travel further afield to Sinai and Egypt. References in them to locations from noncanonical texts and traditions include the Piacenza Pilgrim’s mention of a synagogue in Nazareth where he saw “the book in which the Lord wrote his ABC” (an …

Christian Apocrypha at SBL 2017

November 13, 2017 by Tony

The program for the 2017 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature is now available. Here, as usual, is my rundown of presentations focusing on Christian Apocrypha. Among the highlights this year are the book review panel for New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, and the mysterious new text being announced by Brent Landau and Geoffrey Smith in the Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism session. See you in Boston.

Christian Apocrypha Section sessions:

S18-118 Christian Apocrypha (9:00 AM to 11:30 AM)
Theme: Apocryphal Letters, Legends, and Sayings
Brent Landau, University of Texas at Austin, Presiding
Kimberly Bauser, Boston College: “Put on Your James Face: Pseudonymous Prosopopoeia and Epistolary Fiction in the Apocryphon of James”
Phillip Fackler, University of Pennsylvania: “Survival of the Most Banal: Paul’s Letter to the Laodiceans and the Correspondence with Seneca”
David P. Griffin, University of Virginia: “Psalm-Quotations in the Epistle of the Apostles and the state of Christian Psalmody in the Second Century”
Adam Carter McCollum, Notre Dame: “East of the Magi: An Old Uyghur (Turkic) Text on their Visit to the Young Jesus”
Jeremiah Bailey, Baylor University: “Male Angels, Resurrection Marriage, and Manly Mary: A Possible Connection Between GTh114 and the Synoptics”
Rick Brannan, Faithlife: “Sounding Biblical: The Use of Stock Phrases in Christian Apocrypha”

S19-330 Nag Hammadi and Gnosticism; Christian Apocrypha (Joint Session; 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM)
Theme: Coptic Apocrypha at Nag Hammadi and Beyond
Adeline Harrington, University of Texas at Austin, Presiding
Sarah Parkhouse, University of Durham: “Why …