New Testament Apocrypha Course Class 8
Our latest New Testament Apocrypha class focused on the Life and Letters of Paul and featured a look at such texts as the Acts of Paul, Acts of Thecla, 3 Corinthians, Paul and Seneca, the Epistle to the Laodiceans, and portions of the Pseudo-Clementines. The Pauline literature is a prime example of the phenomenon of early Christian groups coalescing around certain figures and using their chosen persona to present their Christological and theological viewpoints in conflict with other groups. Indeed, we see this phenomenon already in the New Testament in the Deutero-Pauline and Pastoral Epistles.
We began with an overview of Paul’s life and letters from the NT, with emphasis on signs within these texts of intra-Christian conflict (Galatians and Acts on the Jerusalem Council, Paul’s problems with Judaizers). The pseudepigraphical Pauline literature within the NT were discussed also to make it clear that both canonical and non-canonical texts make claims for apostolic authorship, and both sets of claims are potentially authentic (though extremely unlikely for non-canonical works) and spurious (surprisingly common in canonical works). We finished off the canonical Paul by looking at how the Pastoral Epistles develop Paul’s thought in the direction of supporting the institution of the household and introducing a hierarchical organization into the church.
The Acts of Paul (particularly Paul and Thecla) were presented as an example of the parallel development of Paul’s ascetic ideas. Here I was influenced by Dennis R. MacDonald’s classic The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in Story and Canon (1983), which makes the claim that the Pastorals were written in response to the radical asceticism and proto-feminism of the Acts of Paul. We then zoomed through the remaining Pauline apocrypha, noting particularly the orthodoxy of the Epistle to the Laodiceans (composed perhaps as a rival to another composed by Marcionites?) and 3 Corinthians (used by orthodox Christians in Syria to bolster their position there over heretical groups).
Finally, the class concluded with a look at anti-Paulinism in the Pseudo-Clementines. Here Simon Magus, a thinly-veiled Paul, battles Peter in a miracle and teaching contest, with Peter characterizing Simon/Paul’s views as “a lawless and absurd doctrine of the man who is my enemy” and whose authority is based only on visions of Jesus (to which Peter responds, “can anyone be made competent to teach through a vision?”). It is interesting to see in this text the descendents of the opponents of Paul from the first century fight back against the power of the thoroughly-Pauline church of the 4/5th centuries. By this time the Jewish-Christianity of the author/community behind the Ps.-Clementines has been declared a heresy and will shortly die out completely. Only a few centuries earlier it was Gentile Christians who were the minority and Paul who faced persecution for his views. But who has the rightful claim as heir to the message and mission of Jesus?
June 5th, 2010 at 10:25 am
I’ve been reading Dan Brown’s most recent work (and also his worst, in my opinion), but there was an interesting passage involving the discussion of what “apocalypse” actually means. The context of this discussion involves one of the main characters in the book, who is a Mason, lecturing a group of Harvard students. The character says:
“The Apocalypse is literally a reveal-ation. The Book of Reveal-ation in the Bible predicts an unveiling of great truth and unimaginable wisdom … The prophecy of the Apocalypse is just one of the Bible’s beautiful messages that has been distorted” (Brown 410).
This gels with the discussion we were having in class about how after the fall of the temple, Christians became less obsessed with the Apocalypse and the literal interpretation of the earth being destroyed. Regardless, it struck me that majority of people in the world do not know the origins of the word “apocalypse” (as I didn’t until class last Wednesday) and that people like Dan Brown have entered the fabric of “educators.” It’s both scary and interesting.