Category: CSBS/CSPS Christian Apocrypha

Last weekend (May 27-29) I attended the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies at Ryerson University in Toronto. For several years now I have organized an ad hoc Christian apocrypha panel—essentially, if enough papers are submitted, I cajole the program director to put them all together into one session. This year we had four papers, and these were paired with two papers that did not fit into other sessions.

The first presentation was by University of Toronto student Ian Phillip Brown: “Where Indeed was the Gospel of Thomas Written?: Thomas as a Product of Alexandrian Intellectual Culture.” Brown argued against the notion that Gos. Thom. was composed in Edessa, a position dominant in discussions of the text, indeed to the point that some scholars romanticize a “school of Thomas” situated in Syria. This idea has spilled over also to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, leading early scholars of the text to assume it too was composed in Syria, and even posit a Syriac origin to the text (a view that I have taken great pains to refute). But, as Brown said, the popularity of a text in a given area is not proof for origin, nor should later texts, in this case the Acts of Thomas, be used to date and situate earlier texts. Brown considers Alexandria a much more likely location for the writing of Thomas as it fits in well with the Jewish exegetical traditions of Genesis practiced there by Philo and others. …

For several years now I have been organizing a Christian Apocrypha panel at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, which takes place this year at Ryerson University, May 27-29. Here is the program for the session.

Monday, May 29 8:30-11:45 ~ New Testament and Apocryphal Studies

Presided by: Callie Callon (Queen’s University)

8:30-9:00 Ian Phillip Brown (University of Toronto), “Where Indeed was The Gospel of Thomas Written?: Thomas as a Product of Alexandrian Intellectual Culture”
First century Alexandria represents a significant location at which Hellenistic culture, the Roman Empire, and Jewish intellectual culture converged. Alexandria was a cosmopolitan centre wherein the pinnacle of Hellenistic cultural attainment (paideia) was manifest in rhetorical schools, philosophical schools, among its sophists, and in the writings of Philo. In my paper I argue that the Gospel of Thomas, a first or second century collection of sayings attributed to Jesus, is best understood as an example of Alexandrian Judaism that brings together the Hellenistic desire for paideia with Jewish Genesis exegesis in the form of a wisdom teacher, Jesus.

9:00-9:30 Amelia Porter (University of Toronto), “New Paideia?: The Construction of Social Identity in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas”
The concept of paideia plays a significant role in the apocryphal Infancy Gospel of Thomas. The text is constructed around three ‘teacher episodes,’ which are characterized by conflict between the child Jesus and his prospective teachers (IGT 6.1-8.2, 13.1-3, 14.1-4). The inherent connection between paideia and social identity suggests that these episodes speak to …

As mentioned in my previous post, this year’s CSBS/CSPS Christian Apocrypha session was a book review panel dedicated to New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures edited by me and Brent Landau. This report on the panel, already quite late (I am the world’s slowest biblioblogger), is divided into two parts so that the post is not overly long. When the panel was planned at last year’s annual meeting, the assumption was that the book would be available by this time. Alas, the publication is not ready, though we are going through the final edits and it will be available at SBL in November. The panelists in the meantime had to read the book in electronic form. I have to remember to reward them with proper copies when the time comes. The panel was comprised of two members from each society: John Kloppenborg (University of Toronto) and Alicia Batten (Conrad Grebel College, Waterloo) from CSBS, and Robert Kitchen and Timothy Pettipiece from CSPS. The session was chaired by Emily LaFleche, a graduate student at the University of Ottawa working on the Gospel of Philip.

Kitchen opened the session with some queries about the terms applied to the texts in the collection. Most of us in the field fuss over the modifier “New Testament” but Kitchen took more of an issue with “apocrypha” given its connotations of “‘hidden,’ ‘secret,’ and so likely heterodox,” because many of the texts in the volume are none of these things. He then remarked positively about …

The 2016 Annual Meetings of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies and the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies took place this past weekend at the University of Calgary. The two groups are small but mighty and the members are always friendly and gracious. Since 2013 I have been organizing, along with Timothy Pettipiece, a joint session for the two societies on Christian Apocrypha. This year we planned a book review panel for the forthcoming collection New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, edited by me (Tony Burke) and Brent Landau, and several members also contributed proposals for papers. Alas we did not have enough papers for a second session but it is a good sign for Christian Apocrypha Studies in Canada to get so much involvement (yes SBL has four Christian Apocrypha sessions and a multitude of other papers besides, but like I said: small but mighty). Unfortunately, I arrived in Calgary too late to catch two of the papers on the morning of day one (“Mary Magdalene: The Companion of Jesus” by Emily Laflèche, University of Ottawa, and “Hidden Words – Re-parsing What Thomas Overheard” by Bill Richards, College of Emmanuel & St Chad) and another two papers focusing on Marcion (“The Priority of Marcion? The Text of Marcion’s Gospel and the Resurrected Jesus of Luke 24” by Daniel A. Smith, Huron University College, and “Apples and Dragons: Q, Marcion and the Decontextualization of Divine Wisdom” by Glen J. Fairen, University of Alberta) that were scheduled …