Apocryphicity

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.