Category: SBL Christian Apocrypha Section

Looking back at my other SBL diary entries over the years, I see they usually begin with an apology about posting so late (the meeting concluded over a week ago). Well, at least I’m consistent. Some bloggers, like the prolific James McGrath, are far more swift than I (I think he posts about his own presentations while he is presenting). But what I lack in speed I (hopefully) make up for in depth. Here goes…

I arrived at San Antonio Friday evening at around 9 pm. That wouldn’t be so bad, except that I was supposed to hosting a reception at 8. Brent Landau, my co-editor for New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, and I wanted to have a little party to celebrate the launch of the book and to thank our contributors. Thankfully Brent arrived by car from Austin and was able to get everything ready in my absence. After chugging a few plastic cups of “two-buck chuck” from Trader Joes and a few slices of meat, I gave a short thank you speech and then spent much of the next two hours listening to my American colleagues vent about their future president. That was the theme of the weekend for many of us, it seems.

I typically spend most of my SBL time either in meetings and receptions or at Christian Apocrypha sessions; there is little time to attend other sessions, even those featuring CA-related papers (and there were plenty of them this year). Saturday began with …

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.

J. N. Bremmer, T. R. Karmann, and T. Nicklas, eds. The Ascension of Isaiah. Studies on Early Christian Apocrypha 11. Peeters.

Tony Burke and Brent Landau, eds. New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. Eerdmans.

April DeConick. The Gnostic New Age: How a Countercultural Spirituality Revolutionized Religion from Antiquity to Today. Columbia University Press.

J.K. Elliott, ed. A Synopsis of the Apocryphal Nativity and Infancy Narratives. 2nd ed. Brill.

Alan Mugridge. Copying Early Christian Texts: A Study of Scribal Practice. WUNT 362. Mohr Siebeck.

Michael E. Stone. Armenian Apocrypha Relating to Angels and Biblical Heroes. SBL Press.

Johannes Tromp, ed. The Life of Adam and Eve in Greek. A Critical Edition. SBL Press.

Eric Vanden Eykel. But Their Faces Were All Looking Up. The Reception of Jesus in the First Three Centuries 1. Bloomsbury.

 

The 2017 SBL International Meeting will take place August 7-11 in Berlin, Germany. The deadline for proposals is February 22, 2017.

Description: The Section fosters ongoing study of extra-canonical texts, as subjects of literary and philological investigation; as evidence for the history of religion, theology, and cult practice; and as documents of the socio-symbolic construction of traditions along lines of class and gender.

Call for papers: For the 2017 meeting, we welcome papers that address the following discussion question: “Is this a ‘text’?” In scholarly writing about the ancient world, it is still conventional to employ capitalized (and often italicized) phrases such as The Acts of John, The Apocalypse of Peter, and The Gospel of Thomas. But what are we referring to when we write that way, or when we publish “translations” and “critical editions” with those “titles” on the cover? Do these scholarly practices adequately capture the dynamic, fluid nature of ancient verbal communication, which comes to light when one compares individual manuscripts? What do we gain or lose by labeling stories about John, sayings of Jesus, or tours of Hell with what sound like “titles” of “texts”? How else might we write about verbal communication in the ancient world that would be more helpful in our quest to appreciate extant written artifacts? We invite proposals for papers that specifically address this topic, and which combine methodological reflection with detailed textual case studies (of Jewish or Christian literature). Proposals are also welcome for an additional open …

Here is a quick rundown of the sessions and papers at the 2016 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature focusing on Christian Apocrypha. I hope I found them all. See you in San Antonio.

Christian Apocrypha Section sessions:

S19-310: Christian Apocrypha
11/19/2016 4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Theme: Helmut Koester: In Memory of His Contributions to the Study of Christian Apocrypha
A panel in memory of Helmut Koester, one of the most influential scholars of the Christian Apocrypha in North America, assessing his ongoing legacy for this field.
Brent Landau, University of Texas at Austin, Presiding
Panelists: Melissa Harl Sellew (University of Minnesota-Twin Cities), Christine Thomas (University of California-Santa Barbara), Christoph Markschies (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin – Humboldt University of Berlin), Stephen Patterson (Willamette University), Ann Graham Brock, Iliff School of Theology), Cavan Concannon (University of Southern California), Robyn Walsh, University of Miami)

S20-207a: Christian Apocrypha
11/20/2016 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Theme: Apocryphal Acts: New Texts and Approaches
Tony Burke, York University, Presiding
Michael Flexsenhar III, Rhodes College: Creating a Christian World: Martyrdom, Memory, and ‘Caesar’s Household’ in the Apocryphal Acts
Valentina Calzolari, University of Geneva: The Armenian Acts of Paul and Thecla
Ivan Miroshnikov, Helsingin Yliopisto – Helsingfors Universitet: Towards a New Edition of the Coptic Acts of Andrew and Philemon
Jonathan Henry, Princeton University: Thomas in Transmission: Some Noteworthy Witnesses to the Acts and Passion of Thomas
Sung Soo Hong, The University of Texas at Austin: “The Word of the Father Shall Be to Them a …

Christian Apocrypha
11/19/2016
4:00 PM to 6:30 PM
Room: Room TBD – Hotel TBD

Theme: Helmut Koester: In Memory of His Contributions to the Study of Christian Apocrypha
A panel in memory of Helmut Koester, one of the most influential scholars of the Christian Apocrypha in North America, assessing his ongoing legacy for this field.

Brent Landau, University of Texas at Austin, Presiding (5 min)
Philip Sellew, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, Panelist (15 min)
Christine Thomas, University of California-Santa Barbara, Panelist (15 min)
Christoph Markschies, Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin – Humboldt University of Berlin, Panelist (15 min)
Break (10 min)
Stephen Patterson, Willamette University, Panelist (15 min)
Ann Graham Brock, Iliff School of Theology, Panelist (15 min)
Cavan Concannon, University of Southern California, Panelist (15 min)
Robyn Walsh, University of Miami, Panelist (15 min)
Discussion (30 min)

Christian Apocrypha
11/20/2016
1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: Room TBD – Hotel TBD

Theme: Apocryphal Acts: New Texts and Approaches

Tony Burke, York University, Presiding
Michael Flexsenhar III, The University of Texas at Austin
Creating a Christian World: Martyrdom, Memory, and ‘Caesar’s Household’ in the Apocryphal Acts (20 min)
Discussion (5 min)
Valentina Calzolari, University of Geneva
The Armenian Acts of Paul and Thecla (20 min)
Discussion (5 min)
Ivan Miroshnikov, Helsingin Yliopisto – Helsingfors Universitet
Towards a New Edition of the Coptic Acts of Andrew and Philemon (20 min)
Discussion (5 min)
Break (5 min)
Jonathan Henry, Princeton University
Thomas in Transmission: Some Noteworthy Witnesses to the Acts and Passion of Thomas…

The morning of day 3 began with a meeting with some fine folks from Polebridge Press, the publishing wing of the Westar Institute. My friend and York colleague Phil Harland has recently become involved with Westar, best known (perhaps infamously) as the organization behind the Jesus Seminar. Our conversations led to discussions about the possibility of NASSCAL partnering with Polebridge for some publishing projects. Stay tuned for more on these projects, and if you haven’t joined NASSCAL yet, what’s keeping you? Sheesh.

The afternoon was spent at the third of four Christian Apocrypha sessions, this one on “‘Lived Contexts’ of Christian Apocrypha.” The session featured four papers and finished with a prepared response from me. Up first was Alexander Kocar with “Saints, Sinners, and Apostates: Moral, Salvific, and Anthropological Difference in the Shepherd of Hermas and the Apocryphon of John.” Alex’s paper looked at two early Christian texts that construct “a salvific middle ground”—with saints at the top, the damned at the bottom, and repentant sinners in the middle. The question being addressed in the texts is whether one can sin after baptism and receive redemption and, perhaps by extension, retain a position within the community. The two texts are rarely discussed together, “due in large part, “ Alex said, “to the anachronistic, artificial, and misleading divide between orthodoxy and heresy.” And both have their own particular difficulties of interpretation: Hermas is incredibly long, repetitive, and relentless, and at times its discussion of repentance is contradictory in its details, …

Day two of the 2015 SBL annual meeting began for me with the “Blogger and Online Publication” panel, a welcome change from Christian Apocrypha (mostly because I don’t have to take any notes! I can sit back and just listen). Funny enough, the first paper, by Rick Brannan, did discuss Christian Apocrypha and even gave a shout out to the More New Testament Apocrypha Project; funny enough, I missed that one. I did catch Christian Brady (aka Targuman)’s “The Life of a Blog from Cradle to Maturity.” He discussed mixing personal and professional aspects of his life on the blog, mentioning in particular the account he posted of his son’s sudden death and the comments (some very cruel) that he received about it.

Brady was followed by a three-member panel—with Bart Ehrman, Wil Gafney, and Lawrence Schiffman—on the benefits and challenges, rewards and hardships, of academic blogging. Ehrman is a reluctant blogger; he doesn’t particularly like blogging but does it for charity—he raised $100,000 last year alone. His output is quite striking: he writes a 1000-word post three or four days a week and, because he is a fast writer, manages to whip out a post in twenty minutes (though in that time I think James McGrath can do three posts and one or two song parodies). Schiffman has a different approach: essentially, he writes a paper and then gets his daughter, a social media expert, to carve from it a series of posts. All three of the speakers …

[This account is a little late, but as a Canadian without a U.S. data plan, and given the poor Wifi capability in the conference hotels, it’s been difficult to do much of anything online over the past several days.]

I flew into Atlanta via Buffalo Friday afternoon. I have a habit of arriving at airports with little time to spare to get on my flight; so it was a bit touch-and-go whether I would make the plane. But one mad dash through the airport later, I was on my way. Upon arrival, I grabbed some dinner and met up with some members of the NASSCAL board (Brent Landau, Bradley Rice, Janet Spittler, and Stanley Jones) for an informal get-together.

The proper first day of the conference began Saturday morning with the joint session put together by Christian Apocrypha and Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds. There was much anticipation for this session, as the subject of the first paper, by Geoff Smith, had been featured in a New York Times article the previous day. Smith’s paper, “Preliminary Report on the ‘Willoughby Papyrus’ of the Gospel of John and an Unidentified Christian Text,” discussed a 3rd/4th-century papyrus fragment that appeared on eBay last year. Smith contacted the seller and urged him to hold on to it; Smith also convinced the owner to let him work on the text. It contains a portion of John on one side, and on the other an unknown Christian text, written upside down. The evidence indicates that …

In no particular order:
Vernon K. Robbins and Jonathan M. Potter (editors). Jesus and Mary Reimagined in Early Christian Literature. Atlanta: Scholars Press, 2015. Excerpt.

Lincoln H. Blumell and Thomas A. Wayment (editors). Christian Oxyrhynchus: Texts, Documents, and Sources. Baylor University Press, 2015.

David E. Wilhite. The Gospel according to Heretics. Discovering Orthodoxy through Early Christological Conflicts. Baker Publishing Group, 2015.

Paul Hartog (editor). Orthodoxy and Heresy in Early Christian Contexts: Reconsidering the Bauer Thesis. Wipf & Stock, 2015.

Richard Pervo. The Acts of John. Early Christian Apocrypha 6. Polebridge Press, 2015.

Tony Burke (editor). Forbidden Texts on the Western Frontier: The Christian Apocrypha in North American Perspectives. Wipf & Stock, 2015.

Pierluigi Piovanelli and Tony Burke (editors). Rediscovering the Apocryphal Continent: New Perspectives on Early Christian and Late Antique Apocryphal Texts and Traditions. WUNT 349. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2015.

Philip Jenkins. The Many Faces of Christ: The Thousand Year Story of the Survival and Influence of the Lost Gospels.  Basic Books, 2015.

Geoffrey S. Smith. Guilt by Association: Heresy Catalogues in Early Christianity. Oxford University Press, 2015.

Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett (editors). The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Apocrypha. Oxford University Press, 2015.

And don’t forget to drop by the Eerdmans booth to get a preview of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 1.

Here is a quick rundown of the sessions and papers at the 2015 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature focusing on Christian Apocrypha. I hope I found them all. See you in Atlanta.

Christian Apocrypha Section sessions:

S21-114 Christian Apocrypha; Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds
Joint Session With: Papyrology and Early Christian Backgrounds, Christian Apocrypha
11/21/2015 ~ 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Room: International 4 (International Level) – Marriott
Theme: Papyrus Fragments of Apocryphal Writings: How Were They Used?
Malcolm Choat, Macquarie University, Presiding
Geoff S. Smith, University of Texas at Austin: “Preliminary Report on the ‘Willoughby Papyrus’ of the Gospel of John and an Unidentified Christian Text”
Kelley Coblentz Bautch, St. Edward’s University: “The Textual History of the Greek Book of the Watchers: Contextual Clues from Translation and the Value of Variant Readings”
Ross P. Ponder, “University of Texas at Austin: A New Transcription of P. Oxy. 5072: Observations from a Recent Autopsy Analysis”
Thomas A. Wayment, Brigham Young University: “The Interaction between Apocrypha and Canon: A Case Study of Oxyrhynchus”
AnneMarie Luijendijk, Princeton University, Respondent

S23-211 Christian Apocrypha
11/23/2015 ~ 1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Room: 313 (Level 3) – Hilton
Theme: “Lived Contexts” of Christian Apocrypha
Eric Vanden Eykel, Ferrum College, Presiding
Alexander Kocar, Princeton University: “Saints, Sinners, and Apostates: Moral, Salvific, and Anthropological Difference in the Shepherd of Hermas and the Apocryphon of John”
Meghan Henning, University of Dayton: “Substitutes in Hell: Schemes of Atonement in the Ezra Apocalypses”
Andrew Mark Henry, Boston University: …

Day 3: November 24

The last of four Christian Apocrypha sessions began at 9 am. This was another “open” session, without any particular guiding theme, though we gave it the title “The Cultural Context(s) of the Christian Apocrypha.”

The first paper was read by Petri Luomanen (University of Helsinki): “Judaism and anti-Judaism in the Protoevangelium of James, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew.” As often happens, Luomanen’s paper was somewhat changed from his proposal: he eliminated Infancy Thomas from his study. He contrasted the overall positive portrayal of Jewish people and culture in Prot. Jas. (e.g., Salome the midwife doubts the virgin birth but she is instrumental for its proof; the “two people” of Mary’s vision in 17:2 are believers and non-believers) with its parallel material in Ps.-Matt. 11-16, where Judaism is seen negatively or simply removed from the narrative (e.g., the “two people” are Jews and Christians). Overall, Luomanen’s paper did not add much to the discussion of Judaism in Prot. Jas., a connection which is becoming increasingly acknowledged by scholars of the text.

The second paper was presented by Eugenia Constantinou (University of San Diego): “Holy of Holies! The Amazing and Impossible Life of Mary as told in the Apocrypha of the Christian East.” To the surprise of several of us in the room, Constantinou came across as somewhat hostile to apocryphal literature. Her aim was to show that the elements from Prot. Jas. incorporated into the Greek Orthodox liturgy, hymns, and iconography …

(With apologies for the protracted delay in posting. End-of-term marking and meetings are really cramping my style.)

Day 2: November 23

The second day of the annual meeting was somewhat lighter for me than the first. I began the day with a session on the Gospel of Luke held in memory of François Bovon. It was a joint session of the Gospel of Luke Section and Christian Apocrypha with the aim of looking at Bovon’s two principle scholarly passions. The session began with David Warren’s (Faulkner University) “A Biographical Sketch of François Bovon,” a candid and affectionate look back at Bovon’s personal and professional life. This was followed by Brent Landau (University of Texas at Austin), who was a student of Bovon’s at Harvard. His paper, “Blurred Lines: Apocryphal Additions to New Testament Manuscripts,” examined several interesting readings in gospel manuscripts often overlooked in CA collections. These readings include the well-known Freer Logion (Mark 16:14 in Codex Washingtonianus), Luke 6:5 in Codex Bezae, and a few variants to Matthew from the so-called “Zion Gospel Edition.” Lesser known, however, are several variants found in Latin manuscripts: Mark 16:3 in the fourth-century Codex Bobbiensis (“But suddenly at the third hour of the day there was darkness over the whole circle of the earth, and angels descended from the heavens, and as he was rising in glory of the living God, at the same time they ascended with him, and immediately it was light”) and some variants to Luke 23:1-5 in Old Latin …

I realize the internet and blogging is all about immediacy, but intermittent Wifi access at the SBL sites, my own desire to extend my trip to San Diego, and end-of-term teaching obligations has meant a lengthy delay in posting anything about my conference activities at SBL this year. Hopefully you’ll agree that reading this account late is better than not at all.

Day 1: November 22

When I left Toronto Friday night, the temperature was around -5 C, up from -15 the day before. For the entire week in San Diego the weather was fabulous: sunny and 20-26 C. My wife Laura kept remarking “Can you believe this?!” I had trouble getting her to board the flight home. I vote to have SBL at San Diego every year (or at least somewhere on equal latitude). We stayed at the Marriott Marquis & Marina, and looked out at a panoramic view of the San Diego Bay (Laura: “Can you believe this view?!”). The last time I was in San Diego, for SBL 2007, I shared a room with three other guys. My fortunes have certainly improved over the years.

I rose early to chair the first of our four Christian Apocrypha sessions: “‘Canonical/Apocryphal’ and Other Troublesome Binaries.” The first paper was delivered by Matthew Crawford (University of Durham): “The Diatessaron, Canonical or Non-canonical? Rereading the Dura Fragment.” Crawford, who has written previously on the Diatessaron (e.g., “Diatessaron: A Misnomer? The Evidence of Ephrem’s Commentary,” Early Christianity 4.3 [2013]: 362-85), advocates …

Here is a quick rundown of the sessions and papers at the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature focusing on Christian Apocrypha. I hope I found them all. See you in San Diego.

Christian Apocrypha Section sessions:

S22-118: Christian Apocrypha
11/22/2014 ~ 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Theme: “Canonical/Apocryphal” and Other Troublesome Binaries
Tony Burke, York University, Presiding
Matthew R Crawford, University of Durham: “The Diatessaron, Canonical or Non-canonical? Rereading the Dura Fragment”
Cornelia Horn, Catholic University of America: “Christian Apocrypha in Georgian on Jesus and Mary: Questions of Canonicity, Liturgical Usage, and Social Settings”
Richard I. Pervo, Saint Paul, Minnesota: “Canonical Apocrypha”
Shaily Shashikant Patel, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: “Magical Miracles and Miraculous Magic: Discourse of the Supernatural in the Acts of Peter”
Brad F. King, University of Texas at Austin: “Reframing the Apocryphon of John: ‘Christianizing’ Revisions in the Long Recension”

S22-210: Christian Apocrypha
11/22/2014 ~1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Theme: Presenting the Christian Apocrypha to Non-Scholarly Audiences
Brent Landau, University of Texas at Austin, Presiding
Panelists:
Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Author of Lost Christianities and The Other Gospels
Nicola Denzey, Brown University, Author of Introduction to ‘Gnosticism’: Ancient Voices, Christian Worlds
Robert Cargill, University of Iowa, Consulting Producer on History Channel’s Bible Secrets Revealed
Roger Freet, HarperOne, Panelist, Executive Editor at HarperOneBreak
Hal Taussig, Union Theological Seminary in the City of New York, Editor of A New New Testament
Tony Burke, York University, Author of Secret …

The program for the 2014 Annual Meeting of the SBL is now available. This year the Christian Apocrypha Section is offering four sessions (up from one last year!). One of these is a panel on presenting Christian Apocrypha to popular audiences, and another is a joint session with the Gospel of Luke Section honoring François Bovon. We had a large number of proposals this year and, while we would like to accept every paper, alas we cannot. Our thanks to all those who sent in proposals. We hope to see you in San Diego.

S22-118: Christian Apocrypha
11/22/2014 ~ 9:00 AM to 11:30 AM
Theme: "Canonical/Apocryphal" and Other Troublesome Binaries
Tony Burke, York University, Presiding
Matthew R Crawford, University of Durham: "The Diatessaron, Canonical or Non-canonical? Rereading the Dura Fragment"
Cornelia Horn, Catholic University of America: "Christian Apocrypha in Georgian on Jesus and Mary: Questions of Canonicity, Liturgical Usage, and Social Settings"
Richard I. Pervo, Saint Paul, Minnesota: "Canonical Apocrypha" 
Shaily Shashikant Patel, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: "Magical Miracles and Miraculous Magic: Discourse of the Supernatural in the Acts of Peter"
Brad F. King, University of Texas at Austin: "Reframing the Apocryphon of John: 'Christianizing' Revisions in the Long Recension"

S22-210: Christian Apocrypha
11/22/2014 ~1:00 PM to 3:30 PM
Theme: Presenting the Christian Apocrypha to Non-Scholarly Audiences
Brent Landau, University of Texas at Austin, Presiding
Panelists:
Bart Ehrman, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Author of Lost Christianities and The Other Gospels
Nicola Denzey, Brown University, …