Category: More New Testament Apocrypha

The indices for New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures vol. 3 have just been completed and sent off to the publisher. Indexing a book of this size (650 pages) takes a month of full-time work; so all non-essential activities—research, administrative tasks, sleep—had to be put on hold. But now I can move on, happy that the final step in the publication process is complete. So what is the first thing I do with this newfound freedom? Write a blog post about it.

In part, I just want to take an opportunity to vent a little about the frustrations of indexing, but I think some might wonder how indices are prepared, particularly for a project of this size and scope. Their first question might be why I don’t pay someone else (like a graduate student) to do it. Indexing is definitely the “grunt work” of publishing, an onerous task unworthy of a senior scholar’s time and attention (sarcasm alert!), and a graduate student could certainly use the experience and compensation. But I don’t have graduate students, or money. And I also prefer to do this work myself because of its complications. Indexing gives an author/editor a chance to catch lingering errors before the book goes to press. Despite an already rigorous process of proofreading—by the authors, then me, the publisher’s copyeditor, and the authors and me again—mistakes sneak through, and every one that makes it to the printed page is a dagger to the heart. And with my high blood pressure …

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 …

New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 2 (which I edited) was released just a few weeks ago. It is a follow-up to the first volume, which appeared in 2017. My personal web site, tonyburke.ca, features pages for both volumes (vol. 1; vol. 2) providing tables of contents and previews of the introductions. For vol. 2, I have included also a link to an article on editing the volume (“Even More Christian Apocrypha”) published in the latest issue of the Bulletin for the Study of Religion.

To help promote the volume, I appeared in an interview with Shirley Paulson on her podcast The Bible and Beyond. You can hear the episode by clicking on the image to the right. Our conversation covered the Book of Bartholomew, the Acts of Thomas and His Wonderworking Skin, the Healing of Tiberius, and the Homily on the Building of the First Church of the Virgin (attributed to Basil of Caesarea).

I also sent a copy of the book to Benito Cereno and Chris Sims, who host the podcast Apocrypals, described as “A podcast where two non-believers read through the Bible but aren’t, you know, jerks about it.” They dedicated three episodes to discussing texts from the volume. They can be accessed at the links below (or wherever you go for podcasts).

Episode 66: JeSuS With Two Cool Ses (The Acts of Thomas and his Wonderworking Skin)

Episode 67: Bad Things to Call …

In January I submitted the completed manuscript of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures volume 2 to the publisher, Eerdmans. I was soon informed that the volume was too large. The first volume is around 600 pages; the second is close to 700. Eerdmans want some uniformity to the series and asked to reduce the book by 100 pages. As a consolation, they promised that the excised material could appear in a third volume. Additional volumes were always a possibility but were contingent on the success of the first two. Eerdmans seems to be confident enough in the series for it to continue.

But what texts do I cut? Some of our contributors are in the early stages of their careers; it is far more important for their work to be published sooner rather than later. Several of us with multiple texts in the volume volunteered to hold off on some of our work and a few other contributors agreed to wait for volume 3. But I don’t want people to wait long, so I spent the past few weeks working with our past contributors to put together a preliminary list of texts to fill the third volume. This is what we came up with:

The Apocryphon of Jesus’ Baptism (Ostracon Aberdeen 25)
The Acts of Andrew and Paul
The Acts of Andrew and Philemon
The Acts of John by Prochorus
The Acts of John in the City of Rome
The Acts of Mark
The Acts of Peter in the …

Years ago, way back in 2006, a group of North American Christian apocrypha scholars gathered in Ottawa to discuss, among other things, the creation of a collaborative project that would show the world that we (i.e., North Americans) had contributions to make to the field. We wanted to create something on the scale of the great European apocrypha collections, such as the two-volume Écrits apocryphes chrétiens or the highly-regarded Hennecke-Schneemelcher (now Markschies-Schröter) Neutestamentliche Apocryphen volumes. Nothing concrete came out of that discussion but it was the germ for the MNTA project that Brent Landau and I took on several years later, and the same desire to create opportunities for collaboration among North American scholars was behind the creation of the York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium Series (running from 2011 to 2015) and the creation of the North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature (NASSCAL). It struck me recently, as I finished up (most of the) work on MNTA 2, how far we have come in realizing that ambition of bringing scholars together, not only for formal, co-authored projects but also for informal, behind-the scenes consultation to make each other’s work better, to mentor students and young scholars, and to advance the study of these fascinating texts.

One of the difficulties of working with apocryphal texts is that the texts come in numerous forms, in multiple languages. We are all trained in at least one ancient language (typically Greek), many of us two (add Latin, Coptic, or Syriac), …

This past Spring I sat on a panel for students at the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies annual meeting entitled “Review, Respond, Reflect.” I was asked to discuss my experiences editing the work of other scholars. I included some tales (many of which were cautionary) from my experience editing the two MNTA volumes, as well as from my other editing projects: the three York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium collections, and Rediscovering the Apocryphal Continent (co-edited with Pierluigi Piovanelli).I thought it might be useful to include the advice I gave to the students and young scholars in this short series of posts on editing MNTA vol. 2. My comments were somewhat candid, so I won’t repeat them all here (and even so I’m a little worried that what I do say could offend some).

1. To edit or not to edit

When my colleagues ask me what I’m working on and I tell them about editing projects, they respond with pity and some statement along the lines of “better you than me.” Edited volumes are universally (throughout the scholarly world, not just in Religious Studies and related disciplines) considered unpleasant and extremely frustrating experiences that come with little reward, because most universities don’t count assign them much weight in their calculations for tenure and promotion. I contend, however, that they do have value.

For grad students or junior scholars the first exposure to editing likely would come from working with an advisor or colleague on indexing a volume. This is considered …

Yesterday I sent off the last chapter of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures vol. 2 (=MNTA 2) to its authors for revisions. The project is not over by a longshot, but it is the end of a major stage in the process of getting this volume, now over three years in the making, to publication.  Of the 36 texts included in the volume, 29 are complete, four are in the authors’ hands waiting for final revisions, and the last three are contributions by the editors (Brent Landau and I)—these always get delayed until the very end. This seems to me a good time to pause and look back at how the project came together.

The planning for this volume began when  we submitted the manuscript of vol. 1 to the publisher back in January 2015 (yes, that long ago). The introduction included a provisional list of texts to be included in vol. 2. As you can see below, that list was provisional indeed.

Why so many changes? Well, some are not that dramatic at all and are merely changes in titles. But some texts are absent from the final contents because these projects were just too big and our contributors simply realized at some point that they could not finish it in time for our deadline. This was certainly the case for the Infancy of the Savior and the Vision of Theophilus (both of which I promised to contribute), and the other major work was the Pseudo-Clementines, …

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. …

I was very happy to receive in the mail today (on my birthday) a box full of copies of my volume New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures Vol. 1, co-edited with Brent Landau. It was a long process seeing this project from conception to birth. Brent and I began soliciting contributions for it at the 2010 SBL. Brent and I will be doing some promotion for it over the next month, including a reception for contributors next week in San Antonio and a video interview for our publisher, Eerdmans. My thanks once again to everyone who worked on the volume and for putting their faith in a couple of junior scholars to see this thing through to publication.

Testimonials from the Book Jacket:

“This fine collection brings together thirty recently published or long known but often neglected Christian texts, variously inspired by or responding to characters or events presented in the books of the New Testament, together with one Jewish parody of the Life of Jesus. Editors and contributors alike are to be congratulated on their achievement, which paves the way for a wider appreciation and understanding of these varied, fascinating, and sometimes surprising texts, some of which may at times have been more popular than their biblical counterparts.” ~ Andrew Gregory, University College, Oxford

“In this masterful volume we find that greatest of rarities—a collection of ancient texts scarcely known (let alone studied) by scholars of Christian antiquity. With these fresh translations of some thirty apocryphal works, each with …

The first volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, edited by me and Brent Landau is listed in the Eerdmans catalog  with a release date of August, 2016. The cover, pictured here, is probably still preliminary, but features an image of P. Oxy. 5072, edited and translated for the collection by Ross P. Ponder. The full list of texts featured in the volume are as follows:

 

 

 

1. Gospels and Related Traditions of New Testament Figures
The Legend of Aphroditianus (Katharina Heyden)
The Revelation of the Magi (Brent Landau)
The Hospitality of Dysmas (Mark Bilby)
The Infancy Gospel of Thomas (Syriac) (Tony Burke
On the Priesthood of Jesus (Bill Adler)
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 210 (Brent Landau
Papyrus Oxyrhynchus 5072 (Ross P. Ponder
The Dialogue of the Paralytic with Christ (Bradley N. Rice)
The Toledot Yeshu(Stanley Jones)
The Berlin-Strasbourg Apocryphon (Alin Suciu)
The Discourse of the Savior and the Dance of the Savior (Paul C. Dilley)
An Encomium on Mary Magdalene (Christine Luckritz Marquis)
An Encomium on John the Baptist (Philip L. Tite)
The Life of John the Baptist by Serapion (Slavomír Céplö)
Life and Martyrdom of John the Baptist (Andrew Bernhard)
The Legend of the Thirty Silver Pieces (Tony Burke and Slavomír Céplö)
The Death of Judas according to Papias (Geoffrey S. Smith)

2. Apocryphal Acts and Related Traditions
The Acts of Barnabas (Glenn E. Snyder)
The Acts of Cornelius the Centurion (Tony Burke and Witold Witakowski)
John and the Robber (Rick Brannan)
The History of …

[This is the latest in a series of posts on texts to be featured in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures edited by Brent Landau and I. The material here is incorporated also into the information on the texts provided on my More Christian Apocrypha page].

The Acts of Timothy recounts Timothy’s tenure as bishop of Ephesus. The Latin version of the text attributes its authorship to a certain presbyter named Polycrates. Timothy is said to have been born to a Greek father and a Jewish mother in Lystra. He was converted by Paul and traveled with him until he settled in Ephesus. After Paul’s martyrdom under Nero, the apostle John, equated here with John of Patmos, arrives in Ephesus. Followers of the disciples bring to John various traditions about Jesus on loose sheets of paper, which he organizes into three gospels and assigns to them their traditional names. Then he composes his own to fill in details missing in the other three. John is then exiled to the island of Patmos by Domitian. Timothy, who is still ruling as bishop, publicly attacks a local pagan festival called the Katagogia. In response, the revelers use their clubs and stones to kill Timothy. The local Christians take the bishop and bury him outside of the city in a place called Pion. Some Greek manuscripts add that his body was later removed to Constantinople. Under the reign of Nerva John returns from exile and becomes bishop in Ephesus until the reign of …

[This is the latest in a series of posts on texts to be featured in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures edited by Brent Landau and I. The material here is incorporated also into the information on the texts provided on my More Christian Apocrypha page].

The Life of John the Baptist is told through the voice of Serapion, an Egyptian bishop of the fourth century, on the occasion of an unspecified feast day for John. It begins with a harmony of details about John’s birth taken from the Gospel of Luke and the Infancy Gospel of James, finishing with the death of Zechariah and Elizabeth fleeing from Herod’s soldiers into the desert. After five years, when John is seven years and six months old, Elizabeth dies, portentously on the same day as Herod the Great. Jesus, “whose eyes sees heaven and earth” (7:3), sees John grieving and spirits himself and Mary to the desert on a cloud. They bury Elizabeth and then Jesus and Mary remain with John for seven days, teaching him how to live in the desert. Then Mary and Jesus return to Nazareth, leaving John under the protection of Gabriel and watched by the souls of his parents. The text then shifts to John’s adult career and the story of Herod Antipas and his affair with Philip’s wife Herodias. The gospel account is expanded with a prologue to the story of John’s death revealing that Herodias and Herod worked together to obtain Philip’s land and …