Apocryphicity
A Blog Devoted to the Study of Christian Apocrypha
VIA LARRY HURTADO'S BLOG: Larry comments on the second episode of BBC's The Bible Hunters (HERE). This episode focuses on discoveries of apocryphal texts (the Nag Hammadi Library and Oxyhrynchus). I'll make some comments on it as soon as I get my (virtual) hands on a copy.
Several years ago I came across a text described in a manuscript catalog as “On the Funeral of Jesus.” I worked up an edition and translation of the text for the 2010 workshop in Winnipeg on Acta Pilati traditions. At the time, several sentences in the text were difficult to reconstruct and translate; so I put it aside, expecting someday to get back to it. The years went by, but now I have finally returned to the text and solved most of the remaining problems.
The text is an untitled, two-page excerpt found in a fourteenth/fifteenth-century Greek manuscript. It appears to derive from a sermon that draws upon the Acta Pilati traditions, particularly the Narrative of Joseph of Arimathea. The text is difficult to read, due to scribal misspellings (itacisms), abbreviations, and manuscript damage. It begins midsentence with Pilate (it seems) granting Joseph the body of Jesus. Nicodemus hears of this and asks to join Joseph in preparing the body. Then Joseph and Nicodemus speak. Joseph remarks that a “counterfeit” appeared in the burial shroud of “the stranger.” Presumably this “stranger” is Jesus, but this counterfeit (perhaps “image”) is perplexing. Joseph says that he and the stranger (a ghostly Jesus?) appeared outside of the synagogue while the priests were asking why Jesus’ relatives were not burying him. They mention also “dead (dying?) strangers” coming in to Jerusalem at Jesus’ death (perhaps a reference to the resurrected saints of Matthew 27:52-53).
Nicodemus tells Joseph not to worry and that he …
Brandon Hawk, a student working on Anglo-Saxon apocrypha at the University of Connecticut, has posted to his blog this excellent review of my book Secret Scriptures Revealed (excellent because it's so positive!). Thanks Brandon.
VIA LARRY HURTADO'S BLOG: Larry Hurtado is among the scholars interviewed for BBC's two-part series "Bible Hunters." He offers some reflections on the first episode HERE. The home page for the series at BBC includes two clips from the first episode—one of these is about the Oxyrhynchus Papyri. The second episode apparently covers discoveries of apocryphal texts, such as the Nag Hammadi. Alas, no word yet on broadcast in North America.
VIA Paleojudaica: Egypt's Mysterious Monastery Hides Ancient Secrets by Teresa Levonian Cole in Spear's Magazine (made available here via AINA. Among the many finds at Deir al-Surian (the Monastery of the Syrians) is the earliest manuscript witness to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas (purchased by the British Library; catalogued as Add. 14484). The manuscript also contains portions of the Infancy Gospel of James and the Assumption of the Virgin.
VIA LARRY HURTADO: "Jesus' Wife" Fragment: Latest Developments
Rumour has it that the ink is not modern. Of course, this won't silence those who want it to be a forgery.
As mentioned in my previous post, I will be appearing at University of Toronto on Monday as part of a series led by their Seminar for Culture and Religion in Antiquity. The title of the paper is, "What Do We Mean by ‘The Bible’? Re-imagining Canon for the Twenty-first Century." My interest in the canon has been developing over the last year through writing Secret Scriptures Revealed, reading several of Lee Martin McDonald’s books on canon (and working with Lee for last year’s York Christian Apocrypha Symposium), and in the development of the latest iteration of my class The History of the Bible.
This year the students were required to read two books on canon, McDonald’s The Origin of the Bible: A Guide for the Perplexed (London/New York: T & T Clark, 2011) and Michael J. Kruger’s Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books (Wheaton, Ill.: Crossway, 2011), and prepare a paper comparing the authors’ positions on the formation of the Bible. I wanted the students to be acquainted with two perspectives on canon formation: one historical-critical, one theological. This is a strategy I often use in my courses, so that students come away from the classes with more than just the general scholarly consensus found in their textbooks. Using Kruger also reflects my work on apologetic responses to the recent increase of interest in Christian Apocrypha (see, e.g., “Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium,” SBL Forum, 2008 and a number of Apocryphicity …
I have been invited to speak at the University of Toronto at their Seminar for Culture and Religion in Antiquity. My current research interest is the formation of the New Testament and the resulting categorization of Christian writings as either canonical or non-canonical. I will use the opportunity of the presentation to solidify some of my thoughts on the topic. For more information, visit the SRCA web site. Here is the abstract for the presentation:
Monday, February 10, 4–6pm
Tony Burke, York University
"What Do We Mean by “The Bible”? Re-imagining Canon for the Twenty-first Century"Recent discussion of the formation of the New Testament canon ranges from the liberal leanings of historical-critical scholarship—typified by the view that political and pragmatic motivations contributed to the selection of texts—and the conservative standpoints of theologians—who see the hand of the Holy Spirit at work, guiding the processes of both composition and canonization. Neither of these opposing poles fully take into account the fluidity of the NT canon. Over the centuries Christians have ignored the boundary line between canonical and non-canonical texts. And the contents of the NT varies both temporally and geographically. So, the very terms “canonical” and “non-canonical” are inadequate for categorizing Christian literature. This talk will outline the complexities involved in the study of the NT canon and considers new approaches for understanding interactions among different forms of Christian literature, throughout history and into the future.
One of the titles I mentioned in my SBL Diary back in November (and deserving of more attention) is Thomas A. Wayment’s The Text of the New Testament Apocrypha (100-400 CE) (London: T&T Clark, 2013). Wayment, an Associate Professor of Ancient Scripture at Brigham Young University, has assembled here a collection of the earliest Christian Apocrypha extant on papyrus and parchment from the first five centuries. Note, however, that only Greek manuscripts are featured in the volume.
Each chapter of the book focuses on a single text (e.g., the Didache, the Gospel of Mary) or a group of texts (Acts of the Apostles, Sayings Gospels) and provides a bibliography, orthographic notes, and critical editions (not merely transcriptions) of each manuscript. The back half of the volume contains photographs of each manuscript, the majority in colour. The images vary in quality—P. Bodmer V and X, for example, are clear and gorgeous to look at, but P. Oxy 840 is reproduced too small and the reverse side of each page bleeds through the papyrus, making the text difficult to read.
The full list of texts included in the volume is: Acts of the Apostles (John, Paul, Peter), the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Peter, the Infancy Gospel of James (including a complete edition of P. Bodmer 5 and two recently published manuscripts: P. Ashmolean inv. 9 and Cairo Greek Papyrus JE 85643), the Shepherd of Hermas (with …
Last night we celebrated the North American release of my new book Secret Scriptures Revealed: A New Introduction to the Christian Apocrypha with a small gathering at a local book store, Words Worth Books, in Waterloo, Ontario. I have a long history with the store; I worked there throughout grad school. I couldn't resist the idea of holding my first book launch there, and the staff were very accommodating.
Snow began to fall early in the evening and I worried that turnout would be dismal. I was pleasantly surprised, however, to see so many faces, including family, friends, and colleagues—some of whom traveled far just to celebrate with me—and a handful of new faces, there simply to find out more about the book. Also in attendance were retired professor Harold Remus, to whom I dedicated the book, and not-yet-retired professor Michel Desjardins, who served on the committee for my doctorate. Everyone listened intently as I read portions of the book, then we had a thought-provoking discussion, I signed some books, and thanked everyone profusely for coming. I think the bookstore was surprised at the turnout and happy that they sold all of their copies of the book.
Once again, an enormous thank you to everyone who came to the event, and to those who wanted to come but were unable.
As some of the readers of Apocryphicity are aware, Brent Landau (University of Texas) and I are working on assembling a new collection of Christian Apocrypha in English entitled New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. The project is a mirror of the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha volumes under preparation by Jim Davila and Richard Bauckham (University of St. Andrews). These volumes collect material that is not included in the edition of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha assembled by James Charlesworth in the 1980s. Where Charlesworth’s volumes focused on early texts of Jewish provenance, the MOTP project seeks to include also medieval and Christian works, as well as new texts and new sources for texts that have surfaced since Charlesworth’s day. The first volume of the MOTP was released just a few months ago; it is available for purchase from Eerdmans. To read more about the project, visit THIS PAGE and see this previous POST.
The MCA project (which has been initiated with Davila and Bauckham’s consent) similarly seeks to collect neglected apocryphal texts. Where MOTP is conceptualized as a supplement to Charlesworth, MCA is an enlargement of the most recent English-language CA collection (but now almost two decades old): J. K. Elliott’s The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford 1991). There is no need to duplicate Elliott’s work, nor is there utility in presenting texts that have been published in other collections (e.g., the Nag Hammadi Library) or recent editions (e.g., Abraham Terrian’s 2008 edition of the Armenian Gospel of the Infancy…
The third and fourth episodes of Bible Secrets Revealed finally saw broadcast in Canada over the weekend. I am particularly interested in these episodes as they focus their attention on non-canonical texts, including 1 Enoch, the Life of Adam and Eve, the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and a few others. Though often the discussion of CA in television documentaries leaves much to be desired, BSR deserves credit for their informative and evocative presentation of the material. Of course, it wasn’t perfect.
Episode three, “Forbidden Texts” (a summary from Robert Cargill available HERE), concentrates on two interrelated themes: the political motivation for the selection of texts for the canon (both HB/OT and NT), and the suppression of feminine imagery and figures in early Christianity and Second Temple Judaism. The show opens with mention of the variety of canons (e.g., the 81 books of the Ethiopic church, the expanded OT of Orthodox and Roman Catholic Christianity); this is a favourite topic of mine and I am pleased to see it discussed. However, there was some imprecision in the delineation of “Apocrypha” (as the term for the Deutero-canonical texts but the narration and accompanying images roughly seguéd into Christian Apocrypha), and the repeated statement that texts were “removed” from the Bible, rather than not selected, was misleading (though perhaps the topic is even more nuanced than that—if a group valued …
In a post on the Secret Gospel of Mark (HERE), Nashua librarian Loren Rosson III, administrator of The Busybody blog, offers some comments on Ancient Gospel or Modern Forgery?, the collection of papers from the 2011 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium. I appreciate the attention paid to the book and, though I try to resist responding to reviews (I don't want to be perceived as having thin skin), I wanted to correct a few misstatements in the post.
Rosson obviously supports the theory that Secret Mark is a forgery perpetrated by Morton Smith, the scholar who discovered the manuscript of the text in the Mar Saba monastery. To support his position, Rosson repeats many of the arguments offered by previous scholars–including, the text's apparent "seal of authenticity"; it promotes a "gay Jesus," which reflects Smith's own (unconfirmed) homosexuality; it supports theories Smith had about Jesus before the text's discovery; the so-called "Morton Salt Company" clue; and the connections between Smith's discovery and the James Hunter's 1940 novel, The Mystery of Mar Saba. Given the weight of these arguments, Rosson is surprised that people remain "fooled" by Smith's hoax; indeed, he concludes this section of the post with the comment, "only fools and the willfully obtuse maintain Smith's innocence."
Rosson then turns to his discussion of Ancient Gospel or Modern Forgery? He focuses most of his attention on Scott Brown's and Allan Pantuck's response to Craig Evans's overview of the theory of forgery, and picks out two rather …
Now that the teaching for this semester is dying down, I have some time, at last, to throw together some reflections on my activities at this year’s Annual Meeting of the SBL. Without further ado…
Day One (November 22):
Arrival in Baltimore via plane, train, and automobile—driving from home in Kitchener to the airport in Buffalo (cheaper than a flight from Toronto) with a transfer in Detroit (that’s right, Detroit) and touchdown in Baltimore, then LTR to my hotel. Nighttime in Baltimore is a little scary. I disembarked the LTR in a part of town that was mostly boarded up and the people on the street looked a bit desperate. My hotel (the Quality Inn) was actually quite nice, but the miniscule size of their sign made it difficult to find. I capped off the evening with a drink and a meal with my York University colleague and SBL roomie Tony Michael.
Day Two
I began my Annual Meeting experience as many of us do with a visit to the registration desk (for name tag) and then a spin around the book display. I had a lunch meeting lined up with Jim Davila, co-editor of Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, and had to grab a copy of the book, now finally available after much delay. I also put my name down for the display copy of Roelof van den Broek’s Pseudo-Cyril of Jerusalem, On The Life and the Passion of Christ: A Coptic Apocryphon (discussed previously HERE…
The North American edition of Secret Scriptures Revealed: A New Introduction to the Christian Apocrypha was released just a few weeks ago by Eerdmans. As part of their marketing strategy, I was asked to contribute a guest post to their blog Eerdwords. So I did two (HERE and HERE). Readers of my own blog may notice that they are somewhat recycled from a series of posts on Apocryphicity about Writing for Non-Specialists (part 3 HERE with links to previous posts). While you are visiting Eerdwords, check out Jim Davila's post (HERE) on his newly-released volume Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Sciptures. It is really gratifying to read the testimonials included on the back cover and opening pages of Eerdmans' SSR. Thank you to Bart Ehrman, Brent Landau, Stephen Shoemaker, Charlie Hedrick, and Nicola Denzey Lewis for all of your support. The testimonials can be read in the catalogue entry for the book; here is what Bart Ehrman had to say:
"Tony Burke has long established himself as a master of the Christian apocrypha, writings that did not make it into the New Testament. With Secret Scriptures Revealed he has made his massive knowledge of the field available to a broad general audience in a readable, informed, and enjoyable overview that will be long cherished by both beginners and devotees."
Nice.