Apocryphicity

Apocryphicity has suffered from considerable neglect lately. There are several reasons for this. For one, I am under review for Tenure, and the file preparation has taken some of my time. Also, I have a heavy course load this semester. And, there has been an illness (and subsequent death) in the family, leading to the abandonment of my SBL paper (see further below) and a curtailing of other projects.

Nevertheless, it’s probably time to put some work into my languishing Blog. I thought I’d begin with some updates on a variety of projects.

1.  I look forward very soon to seeing the proofs for my critical edition of the Greek tradition of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas.  The edition is based on my 2001 doctoral dissertation (available HERE) and is to be published in the Corpus Christianorum Series Apocryphorum. The editing process has taken a considerable amount of time, but the end product will be much superior to the dissertation. We should see the edition some time in 2010 (hopefully by the l’AELAC Réunion in June).

2. I am following up my Greek edition of IGT with work on the Syriac tradition of the text (for more information see HERE). This was the focus of two presentations last year (at the l’AELAC Réunion and at SBL). The first of these, focusing specifically on the Ms Vat. Syr. 159, is currently under revision. I am supplementing the paper with readings from a second, similar Ms (Mingana 105).

3. This past summer Slavomir Ceplo and I presented a paper on the Syriac tradition of the Legend of the Thirty Silver Pieces (for more, see HERE). We will revise the paper for publication once we finally obtain the last remaining Ms of the text.

4. My paper on Christian Apocrypha in Ancient Libraries (mentioned HERE) for this year’s SBL Annual Meeting has been canceled (due to illness/death in the family). I will continue work on the topic, perhaps resubmitting the paper for next year’s meeting.

5. Much of my time over the summer was spent translating a well-known text from the OT pseudepigrapha from Syriac into English for a top-secret publication that should appear in the Spring or Summer of 2010. It is a lengthy text, and it has never been translated into English (or any modern language) before, so it was a big challenge that strained by still-developing skills in Syriac.

So, you see I am not dead, merely busy and distracted. But I promise that Apocryphicity will be more active for the foreseeable future.

I will be attending the 2009 SBL Annual Meeting in New Orleans in November. Francois Bovon has graciously agreed to respond to my paper. Here is the abstract:

Christian Apocrypha in Ancient Libraries

Several of the most prominent literary discoveries of the past century have been the contents of ancient libraries—i.e., collection of texts, rather than single texts or single codices. Many of these libraries include Christian apocryphal literature. The Oxyrhynchus site, for example, includes material that may have derived from a Christian scriptorum or that was borrowed/copied from the library of Alexandria. Among the texts found at the site are fragments of the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Mary, the Acts of Paul, the Acts of Peter, the Acts of John, the Gospel of Mary, and two unidentified apocrypha. The Bodmer Papyri (aka the Dishna Papers), which may have belonged to a monastery library, include the Infancy Gospel of James and 3 Corinthians. And, the most well-known collection of Christian apocrypha, the Nag Hammadi Library, which may have originated at a nearby Pachomian monastery, features numerous apocryphal texts including the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip. This paper reviews the manuscript evidence of the apocryphal texts from these libraries to get a sense of how the texts were regarded by those who collected them. Do they exhibit any of the features typically found in manuscripts that derive from ancient libraries? Are the apocryphal texts treated any differently than any other texts in the collections? Given the place of the apocryphal texts in each collection, what can be said of the interests of the person or group that used them? The paper includes also a discussion of allusions in early Christian literature to other ancient Christian libraries that contained apocryphal texts.