Apocryphicity
A Blog Devoted to the Study of Christian Apocrypha
Scripta de Divinis is a new blog by Tim Brookins, an M. Div. student and Latin teacher from North Carolina, devoted in part to the Christian Apocrypha.
The Green Bay Press Gazette has an article reviewing recent books on the Gospel of Judas.
Novelist Jeffrey Archer is writing a book inspired by the Gospel of Judas. Read an article on it from the Times On-line. Read an AP article here.
Jim Davila at Paleojudaica excerpts a Los Angeles Times article on the gospel (you must register at the LA Times to read the entire text).
Vision reports on a lecture on The Gospel of Judas delivered by Marvin Meyer.
Apocryphicity has been on hiatus over the holidays. It's time now to catch up on a variety of material on the CA posted on the internet over the past few weeks.
For those of you who missed the CNN documentary After Jesus: The First Christians can read the transcript available on-line. See also Stephen Carlson’s critique on his blog Hypotyposeis.
A pre-Christmas article from USA Weekend inspired by the film The Nativity Story discusses the various portrayals of Joseph in canonical and non-canonical gospels. You can read Mark Goodacre’s review of the film at the SBL Forum.
Jim Davila at Paleojudaica excerpts a report linking singer Kylie Minogue and Juliette Binoche with a play called “Gnosis” which is reportedly “loosely inspired by the same apocrypha as The Da Vinci Code.”
The Times Online presents a discussion of the apocryphal texts covered in Channel 4’s Christmas Documentary “The Secret Family of Jesus.” Jim Davila discusses the article at Paleojudaica.
Sigh. ‘Tis the season for TV specials on Jesus and now Fox has joined the fray with “The Birth of Jesus” to be broadcast Saturday December 23 at 3pm and December 25 at 11 am. According to the press release, the special features discussion of some apocryphal material:
For 2000 years, the world has celebrated the miraculous birth of Jesus Christ, inspiring people's lives, art, music and literature.But few actually know that the narratives — as told in the Gospels by Luke and Mathew — present significant questions for Biblical scholars, historians, archaeologists and the faithful. Host Jon Scott sets out to find the answers, taking viewers on a tour of New Testament sites including Bethlehem, where Jesus was born, and Nazareth, where he was raised. Along the way, this FNC special will examine life in the 1st century and archaeological "finds and fakes" from the world of Jesus. We'll also take a look at early Christian writings that were "banned" from the Bible, including the Apocryphal stories about Jesus' youth (in which he is portrayed as a "divine brat") and the Gnostic Gospels, used by Dan Brown as the basis for his best-selling book "The Da Vinci Code" — a book many consider an assault on Christianity.
The National Geographic Channel’s “Secret Lives of Jesus” will be re-broadcast December 21 at 9pm. The NGC web site now has a page devoted to the show (see it HERE) with a clip showing a re-enactment of two episodes from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.
Allan Boyle, the Science Editor for MSNBC, discussed the show on his BLOG December 15 (read it HERE), providing a decent summary. His article prompted considerable feedback from both liberal and conservative readers. You can read their comments and Boyle’s response HERE.
Also, Tom Jennings, writer and producer of the show, posted on his own BLOG some comments about making the show (read it HERE). Appended are more of the same kind of comments from viewers.
Special guest Pierluigi Piovanelli of the University of Ottawa offers the following discussion on the publishing of the Gospel of Judas:
TCHACOS LIBRE!
These days I am completing a collective review of the first publications on the Gospel of Judas, i.e., (1) Herbert Krosney’s The Lost Gospel, (2) The Gospel of Judas from Codex Tchacos translated and explained by Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer and Gregor Wurst, and (3) James Robinson’s The Secret of Judas. This is probably the case of many other colleagues around the world with one small but significant difference. In my case, working in a bilingual institution (the University of Ottawa) and writing the review for a bilingual journal (Studies in Religion / Sciences Religieuses), I was lucky enough to have at my disposal both the original American editions (published on April 6 and 7, 2006) and their translations in French (released two months later, in June). What was my surprise when I realized that there are some substantial differences between the two editions!
This is especially true for the French versions of Kasser’s chapter on “The Story of Codex Tchacos and the Gospel of Judas” and the final chapter of Robinsons’s book. The polemic between the Swiss scholar and his American colleague, already present in the English texts, reaches peaks of unsuspected intensity in the French publications. Apparently, old misunderstandings that go back to the controversy about the edition of the Nag Hammadi Codices, in …
Interested in presenting a paper for the Christian Apocrypha Section of the Society of Biblical Literature? The call for papers for the 2007 Annual Meeting in San Diego November 17-20, 2007 has been posted. Here are the details:
Call For Papers: This Section pursues the latest research on aspects of the Passion/Resurrection narratives in extracanonical texts as, e.g., the Gospel of Peter, the Acta Pilati (Gospel of Nicodemus), or the Gospel of the Savior. This focus includes interest in the genesis and development of passion traditions or themes, the communities that produced them, and their place on the map of Christian origins. Another session is open to all issues pertaining to the apocrypha and encourages submissions for the Seminar Papers.
Call For Papers Opens: 11/15/2006
Call For Papers Closes: 3/1/2007
Program Unit Chair:Ann Graham Brock (annbrock@aol.com).
Stephen Carlson, author of the The Gospel Hoax: Morton Smith’s Invention of Secret Mark, has posted a review of Peter Jeffery’s The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled: Imagined Rituals of Sex, Death, and Madness in a Biblical Forgery.
The US News and World Report recently published an extensive article on the CA titled: “The Gospel Truth: Why some old books are stirring up a new debate about the meaning of Jesus.” You can read it here. The article offers nothing new on the subject but it works well at balancing views held by the liberal scholars (e.g., Pagels, Robinson, and Meyer) and their conservative critics (e.g., Wright, Johnson, and Jenkins).
Bruce Chilton contributed a length article to The New York Sun back in October focusing on the controversy over Secret Mark. The title is “Unmasking a False Gospel.” Here is an excerpt from the conclusion to the article:
No literature has suffered more from this problem than that of the second century of Christianity. In the case of "the Secret Gospel," a modern researcher ( Morton Smith himself, or someone whose forgery duped Smith) has made up a Gnostic document up in the attempt to manipulate scholarly discussion and public perception. The fact that this attempt succeeded for so long stands as an indictment of American scholarship, which prides itself on skepticism in regard to the canonical Gospels, but then turns credulous, and even neo-Gnostic, when non-canonical texts are concerned.
Catholic On-line (www.catholic.org) offers a brief review of the National Geographic Channel’s special “The Secret Lives of Jesus” to be aired December 7. Read the review here.
Did anyone in the UK catch the program The Lost Gospels aired on BBC4 December 4? I have been trying in vain to find official information on the show but have only managed to find blog entries. Read one here criticizing the show.
UPDATE: Jason Shim passed on this link with additional reviews of the show. It will be re-broadcast December 20 at 8pm.
The National Geographic Channel will air a special on December 17 at 9 PM (Eastern) titled “The Secret Lives of Jesus”. A press release describes it as follows:
More than 1,500 years ago, ancient writings were buried that offered alternative narratives about Jesus of Nazareth. There were many of these alternative gospels that rendered very different versions of the story and were considered scandalous and deemed heretical. Rediscovered within the last century, these texts offer more questions than answers. Secret Lives of Jesus examines these mysterious lost stories of Christ, exploring the fundamental questions surrounding the texts. Who wrote them and why? How do they compare to the accepted New Testament gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John? And why were the stories forgotten for so long? Secret Lives of Jesus deconstructs the forces at play during this time of radical religious ideals — and offers a tantalizing glimpse inside the logic behind some of the most bizarre stories ever told about Jesus Christ.
I heard about the special last month when a producer contacted me looking for images related to the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. I sent her some manuscript images, including an illumination from a fifteenth-century Ambrosian manuscript (L58) of the Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (several images from the manuscript are featured in Elliott and Cartlidge’s Art and the Christian Apocrypha book). The channel will also air an encore presentation of their special on the Gospel of Judas December 18.
Back in September Pope Benedict XVI delivered a speech in which he stated that Thomas evangelized Syria and Persia, and then went on to western India, "from where Christianity also reached southern India."The statement angered Christians of southern India who claim Thomas evangelized the south himself. The Pope attempted to make peace with the group by issuing a corrected statement that cites the Acts of Thomas: "Lastly, let us remember that an ancient tradition claims that Thomas first evangelized Syria and Persia (mentioned by Origen, according to Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History 3, 1) then went on to Western India (cf. Acts of Thomas 1-2 and 17ff.), from where also he finally reached Southern India." Pope Benedict's original talk acknowledged the validity of the apocryphal book as a source of knowledge. The Acts of Thomas and Gospel of Thomas are apocryphal books, he said, but "in any case important for the study of Christian origins." For more on the story visit here and here.
Craig Evans of Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia is quoted in a recent article on the Gospel of Judas on the CBC web site. Evans here claims that the text was misinterprted by National Geographic’s editing and translation team. John Turner is quoted in support of Evans’ position:
Judas did an evil deed by betraying Jesus to his enemies, Turner said.
"The decision was made that this is a truly shocking, revolutionary document that throws into question all of the traditional Christian claims about the figure of Judas, and the document simply doesn't support that," he said.
Terry Garcia, leader of the society's Judas project, dismisses the criticism, saying those who say the translation is incorrect are a minority
Evans may have been influenced by a paper presented at September’s Christian Apocrypha Workshop by Louis Painchaud. Painchaud’s team is working on a new translation of the text which, in their opinion, corrects erroneous views advanced by recent scholars that the text portrays Judas as Jesus’ most loyal follower. Here is the abstract of the paper:
…À PROPOS DE LA (RE)DÉCOUVERTE DE L’ÉVANGILE DE JUDAS
Since its publication by the National Geographic Society last April, the Gospel of Judas has been interpreted and presented by the scholars in charge of its edition and translation as rehabilitating the figure of the apostle, who would be the true disciple of Jesus, the only one who understood his mission, to whom the spiritual Saviour would have asked to deliver him