Apocryphicity

Our latest New Testament Apocrypha class took a tour of the Apocryphal Acts. We began with a look at the canonical Acts, focusing on some aspects of the text important for the discussion of orthodoxy and heresy—namely, Luke’s interest in bringing certain (not all) Christian groups into accord (note his silence on Alexandria and Syria), and the significance of James (and sometimes Peter) for Jewish-Christianity. We also read the spurious “lost ending” of Acts created in the 19^th century (you can read it HERE). This is a text rarely discussed in our field because it is a modern (or pre-modern) apocryphon, but really the only difference between this text and what we call New Testament Apocrypha (and indeed some canonical texts) is the date (well, that and ancient apocrypha are ancient texts that claim to be by ancient Christian writers, whereas Acts 29 is a modern text that claims to be by an ancient Christian writer).

The Apocryphal Acts are an excellent resource for discussing the nuances in the distinction between canonical and non-canonical literature. These texts were declared heretical by the Roman Church but the narratives and the martyrdoms were retained and transmitted in a variety of forms (individual stories, summaries), including their incorporation into collections of Lives of Saints. Many elements in the texts are cemented in Christian tradition.  

We looked at excerpts from three texts: the Acts of Peter, the Acts of John, and the Acts of Thomas. The students were asked, as usual, to look for both orthodox (i.e., fairly normal) and heretical (i.e., unexpected) elements in the texts. They were struck, as could be expected, by the radical asceticism in the texts, particularly in some of the more outlandish stories from John (or was that just me?). The doceticism in the texts is also quite surprising, and certainly brings the Acts into the orbit of Gnostic Christology (in the sense that Gnostics also saw Jesus as not human, not that the Acts are necessarily Gnostic).

It is unfortunate that the Apocryphal Acts are such lengthy and, frankly, ponderous texts. It is difficult to get students to invest their time in reading them, even in excerpts. Several years ago I used Keith Hopkins’ A World Full of Gods (1999) for a course on Greco-Roman religions; two chapters provided summaries and discussions of the Acts of Thomas and Andrew. Hopkins is an evocative and creative writer; perhaps in future I can have the students read his work as a gateway into the texts. If you haven’t read Hopkins’ book, you really should.

Last week’s New Testament Apocrypha class (yes, I’m a little behind due to some rather nasty viruses on my home computer) focused on John and his Opponents. Taking a page from Gregory Riley and Helmut Koester, we looked at the possibility that characters in John are intended to represent other Christian groups with which John’s community was in conflict. Doubting Thomas, therefore, represents the group behind the Gospel of Thomas (which too seems to “doubt” physical resurrection) and Mary Magdalene represents the group behind the Gospel of Mary (which seems to portray Mary as a visionary). I’m not entirely convinced by the Riley-Koester argument but I do think it’s worth considering (everything is “worth considering,” especially when I don’t feel compelled to take a stand).

Our orthodoxy/heresy discussion focused on two aspects of John. The first is John’s sources. As many scholars maintain, John was constructed in layers with the primary layer being a “Signs Gospel.” Like Q, this text no longer exists and is not included in the NT and therefore is non-canonical, but it is preserved in a sense through John’s use of it, which makes it canonical. Another source for John is the story of the Woman Caught in Adultery. This story is not original to the text, and even shows up in the Gospel of Luke (and, incidentally, according to a note in one manuscript of John, it ultimately derives from a “Gospel of Thomas”). Technically, this is a non-canonical story—text critics should argue for its removal from John (like Romans 16:24, which can be tricky to find in many Bibles)—but it is a treasured story so it remains canonical.

The other aspect of John related to orthodoxy and heresy deals with John’s relationship to the Synoptic Gospels. I had the students read an article by D. Moody Smith (“The Problem of John and the Synoptics”). In the article, Smith discusses the assumptions made about apocryphal gospels—they are late, derivative of canonical texts, and contain bizarre embroideries and expansions of canonical texts. By such a definition, John looks like an apocryphal gospel. Matthew and Luke seem to consider Mark “scriptural”—it is clearly an authority for them and they follow its structure and style. But John does not. Also John is not featured as prominently as the Synoptics in the Apostolic Fathers, and its esteem among non-proto-orthodox groups made orthodox writers suspicious (the Muratorian Canon features a lengthy justification for its inclusion in the list; Hippolytus wrote a defense of John against Gaius who wanted it eliminated because it disagreed with the Synoptics). In essence, Smith is saying that John is apocryphal because it does not follow Mark, but its inclusion in the NT makes it canonical. We finished our John discussion with a quick look at the late medieval apocryphon The Dialogue of the Paralytic with Christ (text available HERE) which spins out of the story in John 5:1-15.

Our discussions of Thomas and Mary were fairly standard fare (overview of sources, theories of origin, etc.). We focused more on the use of the characters of Mary and Thomas and possible parallels between the texts and John than on each text’s particular theology or christology (we discuss those issues in the Gnosticism course). I like to spend time on both liberal and conservative arguments for the value and utility of these texts. This time we looked at Nicholas Perrin’s argument for Syriac composition of the Gospel of Thomas (in Thomas and Tatian. Atlanta 2002). Another scholar, Craig Evans, relies on Perrin’s arguments in his book Fabricating Jesus and mentions also signs of Lukan redaction in Thomas. For more on his position read my post about Evans’ book HERE.

I have added two texts to my More Christian Apocrypha page: the History of the Thirty Pieces of Silver (based on the edition and translation made by myself and Slavomir Ceplo), and the Dialogue of the Paralytic with Christ (my English translation of Bernard Outtier's French translation).

The 2010 réunion annuelle de l’Association pour l’étude de la literature apocryphe chrétienne (AELAC) takes place June 24-26th. Here are the papers to be presented:

Jane Baun, “The Apocalypse of the Theotokos: Some Avenues of Approach.”

Christoph Markschies, "Das Evangelium der 12 Apostel. Beobachtungen im Rahmen der Arbeit am neuen Hennecke zu diesem und zuanderen apokryph gewordenen Texten.”

Alessandro Bausi, “Les listes des apôtres et disciples en éthiopien.”

Nicole Volmering, “The Seven Heavens in the Old English Tradition.”

Caitríona Ó Dochartaigh, “The Relationship between the Tenga Bithnua and the Irish Seven Heavens Texts.”

Charlotte Touati, “Les sept cieux de l'ascète. Témoignages égyptiens du IIIe s. ap. J.-C.”

Christophe Guignard, “Les listes grecques d’apôtres et de disciples”

André Gagné, “Jésus, la lumière et le Père vivant (EvTh 15; 50; 77). Existe-t-il des traces d'une christologie modaliste dans l’Évangile selon Thomas?”

Sever Voicu, “A popos de la tradition latine des Paidika Iesou.”

Valentina Calzolari, “Les Actes de Thècle arméniens.”

The latest class for my New Testament Apocrypha course focused on Matthew and Luke and related apocrypha—namely, Jewish-Christian gospels and infancy gospels.

The Jewish-Christian gospels are important texts, not least because their very Jewishness suggests that they may be early—Jesus was Jewish, his followers were Jewish; so, perhaps these texts record Jesus’ teachings and mission more faithfully than the more Gentile gospels of the NT. Except for the Gospel of the Ebionites, that is, which shows clear evidence of harmonization of the Synoptic gospels. I pointed out to the students the different dates assigned to the remaining two Jewish-Christian gospels (Hebrews and Nazareans) by the authors of the two textbooks we use. Bart Ehrman dates the two to the late first century, while Klauck to the early or middle of the second century. There seems to be no reason for Klauck’s late dating other than a need to keep the canonical gospels primary—i.e., no non-canonical gospel can be earlier (and therefore “better”) than the NT gospels. But it is a real possibility that these gospels are indeed early, and we should remain open to that possibility.

To add to the introductions to the texts provided by Ehrman and Klauck I discussed two lesser-known witnesses to Jewish-Christian traditions. The first is Ahmad ibn Abd al-Jabbar’s Confirmation of the Proofs of Prophethood of Our Master Mohammed which Shlomo Pines (“The Jewish Christians of the Early Centuries of Christianity according to a New Source,” 1968) claimed drew upon an anti-Christian polemic composed in Syriac by Jewish-Christians around the fourth to sixth century. The text criticizes Gentile Christians for failing to obey the Mosaic law and for giving up Hebrew (Hebrew was Christ’s language and the language of the original and true Christian gospel). Paul is criticized for denying the validity of all of the Mosaic laws, and is killed by Nero for encouraging the Romans to practice a religion opposed to the true religion of Jesus. Pines’ argument was countered by S. M. Stern (“Abd al-Jabbar’s Account of How Christ’s Religion Was Falsified by the Adoption of Roman Customs,” 1960), and the exchange between the two scholars grew heated. Now some decades later, perhaps it is time to revisit the evidence. The other lesser-known witness is the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew found in Even Bohan, a fourteenth-century Jewish treatise written by Shem-Tob Ibn Shaprut of Aragon. George Howard (Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, 1995) claims it is a version of Matthew preserved in Jewish rabbinical circles that predates the Greek version of Matthew in the NT. I first read about the text in James Tabor’s The Jesus Dynasty (2006)—he considers it a valuable source for the early decades of Christianity. Howard’s book was brutally critiqued by William Petersen in 1998 (available HERE); Howard countered the review a year later (available HERE). The distinction between orthodoxy and heresy again crept into our discussion. The Gospel of the Hebrews apparently contained a version of the woman caught in adultery from John 7:53-8:12. Though it cannot be determined that Hebrews was the original source of the story, certainly the story was not original to the Gospel of John. In a sense, the story is non-canonical—it should not be in the Bible; yet it remains. Childhood stories of Jesus also straddle the canonical/non-canonical divide as images from them appeared regularly in medieval art and iconography. And the Protevangelium of James was virtually canonical in the Greek East; some of its traditions (e.g., the names of Mary’s parents, the perpetual virginity of Mary) even became accepted teaching in the West.

To take this discussion a little further, some early CA scholars identified the texts studied in this course as “orthodox apocrypha” (Gnostic apocrypha, which had not yet been discovered, presumably would have been considered “heretical apocrypha”). All of these texts continued to be copied over the centuries and influenced art and literature. Since the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library and other Gnostic texts, the orthodox apocrypha have been somewhat neglected. Yet they form a compelling corpus of texts that is situated on the spectrum of Christian literature just lower in esteem than the Apostolic Fathers.

The class came full circle with a few comments on Jean-Daniel Kaestli’s claim that a class of late Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew manuscripts contain material from the Gospel of Nazareans (“Recherches nouvelles sur les ‘Évangiles latins de l’enfance’ de M. R. James et sur un récit apocryphe mal connu de la naissance de Jésus.” Études Théologiques et Religeuses 72 [1997]: 219-233). Similar claims of earlier sources have been made for the Protevangelium of James and of the Latin version of Infancy Gospel of Thomas. Such claims attract attention to the infancy gospels; as in the search for sources for the historical Jesus, the earlier the text or tradition the better. But these texts deserve to be studied in their own right as examples of popular Christian piety on the periphery of the New Testament

My course on the New Testament Apocrypha focused yesterday on “Mark and Related Apocrypha,” including fragmentary gospels (PEgerton, POxy 840, Gospel  of Peter, Secret Mark) and agrapha. The bulk of the class was taken up by a discussion of Secret Mark. I told the class that this is a particularly interesting text because the scholars (and non-scholars) who work on it are deeply invested in the issue of its authenticity, thus leading to some fiery debate. We looked at Stephen Carlson’s evidence for forgery (he prefers “hoax”) and the various responses to that evidence by Scott Brown, Allan Pantuck, Roger Viklund, and others.

I’ll use this space here to point the students to a number of resources mentioned in class that can deepen our discussion of the text.

1. Stephen Carlson’s blog Hypotyposeis. Carlson discusses Secret Mark very little these days, but there are some archival posts here about his book and reactions to it.

2. Scott Brown’s review of Peter Jeffery’s book, The Secret Gospel of Mark Unveiled, and Jeffery’s response to the review.

3. Timo Paananen's Salainan evankelista blog, featuring chapter’s from his thesis on Secret Mark.

4. My summary of the Secret Mark panel at the 2008 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.

5. Roger Viklund’s article on the so-called “forger’s tremor” of the Secret Mark manuscript. And look HERE for some comments from an anonymous commentator on the photo debate (he mentions a correspondence between himself and a scholar who says Carlson thinks there is something fishy about the colour photographs Viklund uses for his article).

6. Scott Brown and Allan Pantuck’s discussion of Carlson’s handwriting expert.

7. The results of the handwriting analysis conducted by Biblical Archeological Review (and comments on this analysis from Salainan evankelista, HERE and HERE).

8. And the video shown in class of Lee Strobel commenting on the text (and see HERE for Roger Viklund’s response to Strobel and Evans’ book).

The first complete lecture for the NT Apocrypha course took place last night (May 5). We began with a discussion of canon formation and the concepts of orthodoxy and heresy. I assigned readings on canon lists and the first chapter of Walter Bauer’s Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. In all of my reading of conservative, anti-Apocrypha apologetic, I have found that, while some take issue with Bauer and his successors (Koester, Ehrman, etc.), no-one denies the fundamental accuracy of his chapter on Edessa.

For those who have not read Bauer, it is the author’s claim that, despite the legend reported by Eusebius that Christianity came to Edessa in the first century as the result of a correspondence between a certain King Abgar and Jesus, the earliest form of Christianity in Edessa was Marcionite (followed soon by Bar Daisan who championed the use of Tatian’s Diatessaron over Marcion’s gospel). (BTW, Mark Goodacre has posted links to new photographs of the Greek fragment of the Diatessaron. You can see them HERE). Orthodoxy was slow to take root in Edessa, leading to the orthodox group being christened “Palutians” after the name of their bishop Palut—the title of “Christianity” was given to the region’s first Christians: the Marcionites. Helmut Koester, in a 1965 article, augmented Bauer’s theory in light of the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Library. Koester claimed the first form of Christianity in Edessa was that of the “Thomas group” reflected in the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Thomas, and the Acts of Thomas. Regardless of which heretical group was there first, “orthodox” Christianity was not normative in Edessa until at least the fourth century.

Bauer’s work is helpful for making the point that the labels of “orthodoxy” and “heresy” depend on one’s perspective. The acrobatics that Bauer must perform to make this point are impressive; he must examine several sources for Christianity in the area and determine that many of them have been invented (including the Abgar correspondence, the Doctrina Addai, and 3 Corinthians) or interpolated (sections of the Edessene Chronicle) by later orthodox Christians (the production of Apocrypha is not limited to so-called heretics). If accurate, Bauer shows that orthodox Christians are quite effective at rewriting history to buttress their claim that in all places Christianity began as orthodoxy and was later corrupted by heretics. Though they accede that Bauer is correct about Edessa, conservative writers do not want to accede that Christianity could have developed similarly in other places. Certainly we should be careful not to make arguments from silence, but it is possible that the evidence is simply lost to us. Bauer also illustrates the need to treat orthodox claims about their origins with suspicion; as he states regarding the orthodoxy portrayal of Christian history: “I do not mean to say that this point of view must be false, but neither can I regard it as self-evident, or even as demonstrated and clearly established” (p. xxiv).

Bauer’s statement is a manifesto that can be (and should be) applied universally—i.e., throughout one’s university education and beyond. If students learn nothing else from this course but that one sentence, I’ll be happy.

My Spring course on the New Testament Apocrypha began last night. As is typical, much of the first night was taken up with discussing the course syllabus. The other half of the time comprised a short introduction to the course material.

It struck me while planning my talk how the NTA have dropped out of public consciousness recently. When I first mounted the course in 2007, it was hot on the heels of the Da Vinci Code phenomenon and the discovery of the Gospel of Judas. We need someone to discover something new real soon or I may start losing prospective students.

There are a few new things that I will try to integrate into the course this time out, including my recent work on the History of the Thirty Pieces of Silver (a brief apocryphon on the price of Judas’ betrayal) and some other lesser-known apocrypha such as the Dialogue of the Paralytic with Christ. I am very interested in broadening the scope of what constitutes Christian Apocrypha (see my page on More New Testament Apocrypha); to this end, I am asking the students to do a major paper on the more obscure texts. It should make for some interesting reading.

Tomorrow is the beginning of the Spring semester at York University and, as is my usual habit, I will be teaching one course. This year it is my course on the Christian Apocrypha (or The New Testament Apocrypha as the calendar lists it). You can see the syllabus HERE. I am asking the students to read Apocryphicity and offer comments on the blog postings. Which means I had better start posting more regularly. Look for my twice-weekly musings as we work through the course material.