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Two Coptic Christian texts to be included in the second volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (edited by me and Brent Landau) allude, perhaps, to the Ramy al-Jamarat, a ritual performed by Muslims during the Hajj pilgrimage that involves throwing stones at the devil. If indeed the writers of these Christian apocrypha are aware of the ritual, then these texts illustrate Muslim-Christian interaction in Egypt and perhaps open up questions about pre-Islamic origins of the ritual.

The longest version of the account appears in a fragmentary text sometimes referred to as the Homily on the Life of Jesus and His Love for the Apostles. Some scholars believe the lost beginning includes an attribution to Evodius, the successor of Peter as bishop of Antioch, but in Coptic Christianity he is considered the second bishop of Rome. The text has been reconstructed on the basis of three manuscripts, all dated to the tenth century and deriving from the White Monastery. Today the pages of these manuscripts are dispersed among various European collections. Timothy Pettipiece has prepared a translation for MNTA 2, the first complete translation of the text in English. The text retells certain stories from the Gospels—the multiplication of the loaves and fishes, the raising of Lazarus, and Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi—but with significant expansions. Between these stories are weaved three new episodes: an effort to make Jesus king of Judea (inspired by John 6:15), the apostles’ encounter with the devil and his demons disguised as fishermen, …

Since 2013 the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies has included a session on Christian Apocrypha. In 2014 the session became a joint presentation with the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies. This year the meeting takes place at the University of Calgary from March 27-30 (CSBS) and March 29-31 (CSPS). The joint session this year is a book review panel for the forthcoming collection New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, edited by me (Tony Burke) and Brent Landau. I am contributing also to a CSPS book review panel dedicated to Christian Oxyrhynchus: Texts, Documents, and Sources (Second through Fourth Centuries) by Lincoln Blumell and Thomas A. Wayment. The CSBS program includes also a few other Christian Apocrypha papers. The full program for CSBS is available HERE (with a link to page-proofs of the contents and introduction to MNTA); the CSPS program will soon follow. Details below.

Saturday, May 28: Gospel Studies

10:45-11:15 Emily Laflèche (University of Ottawa) ~ “Mary Magdalene: The Companion of Jesus”

The Gospel of Philip defines Mary Magdalene as Jesus’ companion (koin?nos–companion or partner) it also defines the relationship developed through the bridal chamber as joining (koinone?n–to have in common with or join with another) two people together as companions or consorts (Gos. Phil. 65.1-26). The use of the Copticized Greek verb koinone?n and its nominalization koin?nos in the Gospel of Philip shows that there may be a connection in these two descriptions of companions and the joining …

The Canadian Society of Biblical Studies, in partnership with the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies, offers a joint session at their annual meetings devoted to Christian Apocrypha. For 2016, we will be mounting two sessions: one is a book review panel, the other is an open session.

Proposed titles, an abstract of approximately 100 words, and an indication of audio-visual requirements and accessibility requirements should be submitted by 15 January 2016 by email to the CSPS programme coordinator, Anne Moore (amoore@ucalgary.ca). Please write “CSPS Proposal” in the subject line of your email. Proposals may also be sent to the CSBS programme coordinator, Zeba Crook (zeba_crook@carleton.ca).

The annual meeting will be held at the University of Calgary, May 28-30, 2016, under the auspices of Congress of the Humanities and Social Sciences

For further information on the session, contact Tim Pettipiece (tpettipi@gmail.com) or Tony Burke (tburke@yorku.ca).

This is the second in a series of profiles of the presenters at the upcoming 2015 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium to be held September 25-26 at beautiful remote York University in Toronto. Remember, if you register for the symposium, you will receive drafts of the papers in advance, thus enabling you to participate more fully in the discussions that follow. For registration information, visit the YCAS 2015 web site (HERE).

Today we focus on Brent Landau, my partner in the planning of the conference and frequent collaborator. Brent received his doctorate from Harvard Divinity School in 2008. He is currently Lecturer in Religious Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He has previously taught at the University of Oklahoma, Harvard Divinity School, and Boston University.

Brent’s chief interests within the field of Christian Apocrypha are: infancy gospels, papyri fragments of noncanonical writings, apocryphal texts preserved in Syriac, and the reception history of the Christian Apocrypha, particularly in the contemporary world. His dissertation was a critical edition of and introduction to the Revelation of the Magi, which purports to be the Magi’s first-person testimony about the coming of Christ. He is revising and enlarging this study for publication in Brepol’s Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum. In addition, his article on the use of the Revelation of the Magi by contemporary New Age groups and UFO enthusiasts will appear in the first issue of GNOSIS: Journal of Gnostic Studies, a new peer-reviewed journal published by Brill.…

Fakes, Forgeries, and Fictions: Writing Ancient and Modern Christian Apocrypha

The 2015 York University Christian Apocrypha Symposium will take place September 24-26 at Vanier College, York University. The specific objectives for the 2015 Symposium are: 1. to examine the possible motivations behind the production of Christian Apocrypha from antiquity until the present day, 2. to integrate medieval and modern apocrypha (composed in the 19th to 21st centuries) into the wider study of apocryphal literature, and 3. to reflect on what the reactions to the recently-published Gospel of Jesus’ Wife can tell us about the creation, transmission, and reception of apocryphal Christian literature.

The highlight of this year’s event is a keynote address by Bart Ehrman, author of Forgery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (2012), and most recently How Jesus Became God (2014).

The event is organized by Tony Burke (York University) in consultation with Brent Landau (University of Texas at Austin). It brings together 20 Canadian and U.S. scholars to share their work and discuss present and future collaborative projects.

The symposium is open to scholars, students, and interested members of the public; all may register for the event and take part in discussions. One of the goals of the symposium is to make the work of North American scholars on the Christian Apocrypha more widely known, not only to scholars in cognate disciplines (such as New Testament Studies or Medieval Studies) but also to students, who will be the future scholars in the …

The Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies will take place May 30 to June 1, 2015 at the University of Ottawa. For the past four years I have been leading a session at the CSBS on Christian Apocrypha. Last year we began a partnership with the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies for a joint session and once again this year the two societies have assembled a wide-ranging (and multi-lingual) group of papers for the session. Also of interest to scholars and readers of Christian Apocrypha is the session entitled “Later Christianity,” which includes several additional papers on Christian Apocrypha. For further information on the annual meeting visit the CSBS web site.

Saturday 8:30-11:45 Later Christianity
Presiding: Tony Burke (York)

8:30-9:00 Hélène Dallaire (Denver Seminary)
Evidence of Jewish Christianity in Church History: Textual Evidence
The presence of a believing Jewish community has, for the most part, passed unnoticed in much of the literature on church history. While the New Testament clearly places the birth of Christianity in a Jewish context and in the synagogue of the 1st century, the events that led to the separation of Jews and Gentiles pushed Jewish believers into the shadows of both the church and the rabbinic world for centuries. Christian and Jewish literature of the last two millennia, including that of the Church Fathers, Rabbinic literature, medieval Jewish writings, and the works of the Reformers, provides glimpses of a continued Messianic Jewish presence throughout the history of the Church.

9:00-9:30 Matthew …

On Monday (November 10) I will be giving a talk at York University on so-called Modern Apocrypha. The presentation is based on a paper I will be presenting as part of the 2015 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium, “Fakes, Fictions, Forgeries: Writing Ancient and Modern Christian Apocrypha.”  Here is the abstract:

In the late 19th century, the excitement that was stirred by the discovery of apocryphal Christian texts in monastic libraries in the East inspired the creation of new apocryphal texts. Some of these were published as works of scholarship—such as H. C. Greene and C. Mendés’s edition of The Gospel of the Childhood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and G. J. Stevenson’s The Long Lost Chapter of the Acts of the Apostles—but they were quickly dismissed as modern forgeries. Little attention has been paid to these “scholarly apocrypha,” the goals behind their invention, and their reception. But this neglected sub-genre of Christian Apocrypha offers much for understanding the accusations of forgery for such texts as the Secret Gospel of Mark and, more recently, the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife.

The presentation takes place from 4-5:30pm in Room 0101, Vanier College. For those interested in reading more about the texts, here is the material featured on the handout that accompanies the presentation:

Studies of Modern Christian Apocrypha

Beskow, Per. Strange Tales about Jesus: A Survey of Unfamiliar Gospels. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1983.

Beskow, Per. “Modern Mystifications of Jesus.” Pages 458-74 in The Blackwell Companion to the New Testament.…

Nicola Denzey Lewis, Visiting Associate Professor at Brown University, answers the question “How many gospels were “excluded” from the Bibles as we know them today? And why?” on the Bible Odyssey web site (HERE).

The “Ancient Jewish and Christian Apocalypses: Transfer of Knowledge and Genre Definition” conference takes place at Freie Universtät in Berlin November 14-15, 2014. Presenters include Martha Himmelfarb and John J. Collins. For more information, download the program HERE.

Kelley Coblentz Bautch passed along to me some information about two recent books on Fallen Angels traditions that may be of interest to readers of Christian Apocrypha:

Available only since September, Fallen Angels Traditions: Second Temple Developments and Reception History (ed. A. K. Harkins, K. Coblentz Bautch and J. Endres; CBQMS 53) is a collection of essays that takes up new areas of research in fallen angels traditions. Essays in this volume treat traditions of the rebellious angels in the Hodayot, Book of Jubilees, Book of Revelation, and Apocryphon of John. The fallen angels motif is explored also in the work of Mani, Origen and Justin, as well as in Muslim traditions and Medieval Scholastic theology. Contributors include James VanderKam, Pheme Perkins, John C. Reeve, Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, Todd Hanneken, and Franklin Harkins.

The second, published this Spring, is The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions (ed. A. K. Harkins; K. Coblentz Bautch and J. Endres; Fortress). This sourcebook systematically examines fallen angels traditions for non-specialists and students. Essays examine watchers traditions in Mesopotamian contexts, biblical texts, the Dead Sea Scrolls, pseudepigraphical literature, and Patristic and Rabbinic literature. Contributors include: Ida Fröhlich, John Endres, S.J., Randall Chesnutt, Anathea Portier-Young, Scott M. Lewis, S.J., Jeremy Corley, Eric Mason, Karina Hogan, Samuel Thomas, Leslie Baynes, Chris Seeman, Silviu Bunta, Kevin Sullivan and Joshua Burns.

For the past three years I have been organizing a session of Christian Apocrypha at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies. Last year we began a partnership with the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies to create a joint session. Normally there is no particular theme to the session, but this year we are looking for papers that tie in to the theme of the York Christian Apocrypha Symposium to be held in September 2015. Papers on other topics are also welcome.

CALL FOR PAPERS: JOINT SESSION ON “CHRISTIAN APOCRYPHA”
The theme for the session this year is Re-write, Re-use and Recycle: Transformations in the Writing of Christian Apocrypha. We are looking for papers that examine the transformation of Christian and non-Christian texts and traditions into apocryphal Christian texts – such as the Christianization of Jewish Pseudepigrapha, the Gnosticization of Jewish and Greco-Roman texts into gnostic Christian texts, elaborations and harmonizations of canonical Christian texts, and other possibilities. We welcome also papers that do not fit this theme. The session will be mounted if there are sufficient proposals (at least five). For further information on the session, contact Tim Pettipiece (tpettipi@gmail.com) or Tony Burke (tburke@yorku.ca).

Proposed titles, an abstract of approximately 100 words, and an indication of audio-visual requirements and accessibility requirements should be submitted by 31 January 2015 by email to the CSPS programme coordinator, Theodore de Bruyn (tdebruyn@uottawa.ca). Please write “CSPS Proposal” in the subject line of your email. Proposals may also be sent to …

NEW IN PRINT: Els Rose, ed., The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in Latin Christianity: Proceedings of the First International Summer School on Christian Apocryphal Literature (ISCAL), Strasbourg, 24-27 June 2012 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2014). Visit http://brepols.metapress.com/content/x282t7/ for a list of contents and instant online access (some sections are open access). From the press:

The lives of the apostles after Pentecost are described in the books of the New Testament only in part. Details of their missionary wanderings to the remote corners of the world are found in writings not included in the biblical canon, known as the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. In the early Middle Ages these originally Greek writings were translated and rewritten in Latin and circulated under the title Virtutes apostolorum. These texts became immensely popular. They were copied in numerous manuscripts, both as a comprehensive collection with a chapter for each apostle and as individual texts, echoing the needs of monastic and other religious communities that used these texts to celebrate the apostles as saints.

The First International Summer School on Christian Apocryphal Literature (Strasbourg, 2012) concentrated on the transmission of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in the Latin world. This volume also highlights the use of the Bible in the apocryphal Acts, the imagination of the apostles in early Christian art and poetry, and the apocryphal Acts in early medieval print. Other contributions concern the study of Christian apocryphal literature in general and in the context of the Strasbourg Summer School in particular.

For a few years now I have been organizing an informal session at the annual meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies on Christian Apocrypha. This year's session is in partnership with the Canadian Society of Patristic Studies. The annual meetings for both societies take place May 24 to 26 at Brock University in St. Catherines, Ontario. Here are the details:

Sunday 8:30-11:45 (Rm 211)
APOCRYPHA – A Co-Sponsored Session with the Canadian Society of Patristics
Presided by: Timothy Pettipiece (Carleton University)

8:30-9:00 Anna Cwikla (University of Toronto) “The Dialogue of the Saviour and the Synoptic Gospels”
Other than the Gospel of Thomas, Nag Hammadi texts are rarely considered in scholarship concerning the literary relationship to the Synoptic Gospels. The initial work on the Dialogue of the Saviour in the 1970s argued that it shows no certain dependence on any NT writings. Although this thesis has slowly fallen out of favour, the initial literary outline proposed by Helmut Koester and Elaine Pagels continues to obscure more in-depth source criticism. By shifting away from these artificially imposed gridlines, previously unexplored parallels to the Synoptic Gospels become evident, thus making the case that DialSav should receive more attention in this discourse.

9:00-9:30 Callie Callon (University of Toronto) “Physiognomy as a component of characterization in the Acts of Peter”
Ancient physiognomic thought held that the body and soul were intrinsically related, and that observation of a subject’s physical appearance provided insight into his or her character. Beyond being a diagnostic tool, …

If you have ever needed a fast and handy source for an early Christian text, chances are you have come across Peter Kirby’s popular site Early Christian Writings. To celebrate ECW’s recent expansion, I asked Kirby some questions about the origins of the site and the challenges it has posed for him over the years.

Early Christian Writings describes itself as “the most complete collection of Christian texts before the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD.” At last count, the site features 226 entries, arranged in chronological order from the hypothetical Passion Narrative in 30-60 to the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies in 320-380. Included are all New Testament texts and some of their hypothetical sources (e.g., the Signs Gospel, Q), a large variety of Christian Apocrypha (as well as Christian-authored Old Testament Apocrypha, such as the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs), Gnostic Apocrypha (newly added in January 2014), and significant non-Christian authors writing on Christianity (such as Josephus and Pliny the Younger). The entry for each text features at least one English translation (the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, for example, has five), links to online resources, a short bibliography of print scholarship, and a brief introduction.

Kirby created the site almost 15 years ago when he was in college working on a Computer Science degree. In his spare time he participated in New Testament-themed listserv discussions, such as Internet Infidels and Crosstalk. To hold his own in such discussions, Kirby produced an online crib sheet of the relevant early …

The 2014 réunion de l'AELAC will take place August 29-31 at the Centre culturel Saint Thomas in Strasbourg. Traditionally (indeed for over 25 years) the réunion has taken place at Mont Roland in Dole. But the centre has closed its doors, so AELAC has found a new home for their annual gathering. Visit the AELAC site for news on the programme as it develops (www.aelac.org).