Apocryphicity

Mark Goodacre, well-known in biblio-blogging circles as the voice behind the NTBlog and in Synoptic Problem circles as a vocal advocate of the Farrer-Goulder Hypothesis, forwarded to me a copy of his latest book Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas’s Familiarity with the Synoptics (Eerdmans/SPCK, 2012). Much like Goodacre’s The Synoptic Problem: A Way Through the Maze (2010), Thomas and the Gospels addresses a complex topic in an economy of space (only 226 pages) and with highly readable and lively prose. No-one but Mark Goodacre could get away with slipping a Doctor Who reference into a scholarly work (see p. 122; note also his amusing mention of the Beatles on p. 194); his appeal to pseudonymous blogger N. T. Wrong is testament also to Goodacre’s lack of pretention (p. 140). I hope readers will forgive me for the length of this review, but Goodacre's arguments demand substantial discussion (and even this review is somewhat cursory in places). To learn more about the book from Goodacre himself, watch this video trailer at NTBlog. 

Goodacre brings a different perspective to the question of Thomas’s dependence on (he prefers “familiarity with”) the Synoptics. For one, as a critic of the Two/Four Source Hypothesis, he does not believe in the existence of Q; without this other sayings gospel, Goodacre’s arguments about the genre, dating, and sources of Thomas are bound to be different. And second, though he joins North American apologetic scholars in arguing that Thomas is secondary to the Synoptics, he does not share their polemical point-of-view; indeed, he takes great pains to point out that his views on Thomas do not proceed from “a conservative or apologetic scholarly stance” (p. 4-5) and I concur with John Kloppenborg’s back-cover testimonial praising Goodacre for “taking Thomas seriously as a literary work rather than merely dismissing it as a secondary compilation.” I may not agree with Goodacre’s reasons for believing Thomas to be secondary to the Synoptics but at least he comes by his position honestly.

Goodacre’s introduction (p. 1-25) lays out and challenges the “popular-level” assertions of independence often seen in cursory treatments of the issue. These assertions include: Thomas must have been composed around the same time as the other sayings gospel Q (Goodacre sees more generic similarities in second-century works, and sees no reason to believe that sayings gospels precede narrative gospels); the order of shared material in Thomas and the Synoptics is very different (Goodacre counters that, just because the Synoptic are so similar in order, we shouldn’t expect Thomas to have the same degree of agreement; also, Thomas’s haphazard order is a result of his desire to be obscure); and if Thomas used the Synoptics then the parallel material should include, in Stephen Patterson’s words, “all of the accumulated tradition-historical baggage owned by the Synoptic text” (but Synoptic writers do not always take all of the “baggage” from their sources). Goodacre mentions also in this context Meier’s often-overlooked argument that, if independent, Thomas had available to him a wide assortment of early Christian traditions, including single, double, and triple tradition Synoptic materials and possibly the Johannine tradition. I remember making the same argument many years ago in my doctoral examinations; I was (and still am) open to the argument for the independence of Thomas but I said at the time, “He must have had one hell of a library.”

The second chapter examines verbatim agreement between Thomas and the Synoptics. Examining five logia from the Greek fragments of Thomas, Goodacre finds sufficient verbatim agreement to establish dependence. It is because of “exactly this kind of evidence,” he says, that “we know that there is a literary relationship among the Synoptic Gospels” (p. 32). But the evidence is actually very small and, not surprisingly, it is the same amount of evidence that Goodacre and other Q critics use to establish Luke’s dependence on Matthew.  Of nine sayings in Greek Thomas with Synoptic parallels, Goodacre looks only at five (neglecting log. 31|Mark 6:4-6 par; log. 32|Matt 5:14; log. 33|Matt 10:27/Luke 12:3; and log. 36|Matt 6:25-27/Luke 12:22-27); none of these have significant verbal agreement. Why would Thomas follow closely one or more of the Synoptics roughly only 50% of the time?

But even for these 50% of the cases, the argument for dependence is not very strong. In log. 3, Goodacre finds a “seven-word agreement” between Luke 17:21 and Thomas, in a single phrase at the end of an approximately 40-word passage. But this agreement relies on a reconstruction (Thomas has “and the king[dom of God] is within you”) though, admittedly, Thomas’s use of a “very rare expression” (p. 36) is noteworthy. Words are missing also in log. 4:2-3 (three from the nine-word agreement with Mark 10:31 or seven with Matt 19:30), log. 5:2 (three words missing in Goodacre’s eight-word agreement with Luke 8:17), and log. 39:3 (too little of the Greek text is extant to make a case for verbatim agreement with Matt 10:16). Goodacre’s arguments rely too heavily on the “standard and uncontroversial reconstructions” (p. 38), particularly since these undoubtedly draw upon the Synoptics or Coptic Thomas to fill in the missing text.

Goodacre relies too much also on reconstructions of the Synoptics. In log. 26, Goodacre sees a 13-word verbatim agreement with Luke 6:42, but with one of these words (ekbalein) transposed (as in Matt 7:5). Comparison with other Mss of Luke show more and less verbatim agreement than the critical text of NA27, due, it seems, to harmonization with Matt 7:5. Goodacre acknowledges this complexity in the problem, but does not consider seriously that the rare occasions of verbatim agreement between Thomas and the Synoptics could result also from harmonization. Attention should be paid also to the fact that our Greek Thomas is extant in three separate manuscripts, each of which could demonstrate differing degrees of familiarity with the Synoptics. Goodacre spends some time also looking for verbatim agreement between the Synoptics and Coptic Thomas, via the retroversion of Hans-Gebhard Bethge. Goodacre himself urges caution about making arguments based on retroversions; nevertheless, he sees in his “representative selection” of logia (14:15; 73; and 86) confirmation of “the impression made by the Oxyhrynchus fragments, that there are frequent and extended verbatim parallels between Thomas and the Synoptic Gospels” (44).Goodacre finishes the discussion of verbatim agreement with an appeal to what he calls the “plagiarist’s charter,” expressed in legal parlance as, “No plagiarist can excuse the wrong by showing how much of his work he did not pirate” (p. 55). In other words, “If there is evidence in Thomas of familiarity with one or more of the Synoptics, it is no counterargument that in many other places Thomas shows no traces of familiarity” (p. 45). Still, the case for dependence must be made on more than a few cases of minor verbal agreement (minor because they represent a small amount of words, and because some of the cases rely on reconstructed or retroverted readings). We must take care, too, not to allow preconceived conclusions determine our interpretation of the evidence; consider Goodacre’s quotation of Klyne R. Snodgrass, “I would suggest that the appearance of hapax legomena or other rare words from one of the canonical Gospels in a parallel saying in Thomas should be considered as proof of dependence on the canonical Gospels” (cited p. 34 n. 31)—actually, it can also be proof of scribal harmonization or the use of shared written sources.

Goodacre’s own methodological short-sightedness comes in his frequent statements that verbatim agreement demonstrates that Thomas’s Synoptic parallels cannot result from oral transmission and must be due instead to “direct contact between texts” (p. 32; see also p. 37, 122). But there are other possibilities, particularly when the evidence shows that Thomas, at least in the Greek fragments, more often than not disagrees with the wording of the Synoptics. As for scribal harmonization, Goodacre raises the issue with regards to the Coptic text. He demonstrates that Coptic Thomas is less prone to scribal harmonization than the Greek fragments; therefore, Coptic Thomas is not “a text that aligns itself with the harmonization theory” (p. 59). But this also may indicate that the copyists of the Greek fragments were more prone to harmonizing than the branch of the tradition behind the Coptic text; the Greek text is certainly older than the Coptic, but, in places where it shows contact with the Synoptics, it may not be more primitive.

The next three chapters (3-5) examine evidence for Synoptic (primarily Matthean and Lukan) redaction in Thomas. Much of the evidence amounts to the common use of single words, though these words are particularly meaningful—the Matthean “kingdom of the heavens” in log. 54, Luke’s dektos (accepted) in log. 31 (used only here in the entire New Testament), Matthew’s “mouth” in log. 14 (though this is hardly redactional and could be explained as a parallel effort to clarify Mark’s text), and the “eight-word agreement” (p. 83) between log. 5 and Luke (which, as noted above, relies on a lot of reconstruction). Another example, log. 57 and Matt 13:24-30, relies on Goodacre’s ability to demonstrate that Matthew’s Parable of the Wheat and Tares is a major reworking of Mark’s Parable of the Seed Growing Secretly (and thus contains Matthean redaction) rather than an independent parable known only to Matthew. Similarly, log. 63 is so different from Luke that it is difficult to believe that Thomas must have used Luke as his source. Finally, Goodacre devotes an entire chapter to log. 79 and Luke 11:27-28; 23:27-31. He says of the parallels here, “If we were looking at this degree of agreement among the Synoptics, we would incline toward literary relationship of some kind” (p. 99). But this overstates the value of the evidence—in Luke, the material occurs in two different contexts split by 12 chapters, while the two thematically-related sayings are combined in Thomas; also, the saying is only extant in Coptic, thus verbatim agreement is not measurable. Clearly this is not the same degree of agreement as we find in the Synoptics. Nevertheless, Goodacre notes some significant elements in Thomas 79 that are common in Luke’s gospel (e.g., sayings of Jesus elicited by anonymous individuals, the presence of a “crowd,” Luke’s interest in “hearing the word of the Father and truly keeping it”).

Goodacre then turns to the discussion of a new phenomenon in the argument for dependence: the missing middle. This refers to the times when “Thomas fails to narrate the middle part of a given parable or saying” (p. 109) and thereby renders the parable unintelligible. A similar phenomenon is observed three times (in parallels to Matt 5:34-37; Matt 7:15-20; and Luke 12:48) in the First Apology of Justin Martyr. But many of Goodacre’s examples from Thomas (log. 26, 63, 89) are not unintelligible at all. For those where the meaning does seems obscured (log. 36,  57, and 100), at best Thomas can be said to be sloppy with his sources, not that these sources are the Synoptic Gospels. Goodacre says the sloppiness is due to Thomas working with the texts from memory (p. 126) but his arguments on verbatim agreement depend on Thomas using written texts. Goodacre cannot have it both ways. But he does try. In his discussion of orality and literacy in ch. 8, Goodacre states that, “the relative lack of parallels in order between Thomas and the Synoptics suggests that the author was regularly accessing the Synoptic material from his memory of the texts he was using” (p. 150-151) but that he used copies of the texts to check and be sure of verbatim wording. If Thomas is so concerned about verbatim agreement, why is this phenomenon so rare? As for Justin, scholars are not certain what text or texts Justin uses for his quotations from “the gospel” or the “memoirs of the apostles”—it’s possible he drew upon a harmony, perhaps even one of his own creation. The shared tendencies between Justin and Thomas—harmonization and missing middles—demand further exploration.

In the final two chapters, Goodacre draws upon his evidence to establish a date for Thomas and to present an argument for why Thomas used the Synoptics. Thomas’s use of the Synoptics, of course, places the composition of the text after, not before, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. Goodacre adds also Hans-Martin Schenke’s argument for composition post 135 based on possible references to the Bar Kokhba revolt in log. 68 and 71, and that Thomas’s “authorial self-presentation” is a phenomenon of second-, not first-, century texts. As for why Thomas used the Synoptics, Goodacre calls it an “authenticating device,  a means by which the author can charge his newer, stranger material with an authenticity it derives by association with older, more familiar material” (p. 172).

In sum, Goodacre has worked well to amass the evidence for Thomas’s familiarity with the Synoptic gospels. He also presents some interesting theories for why Thomas would transform the Synoptic material so radically. To me, however, the case is far from settled. We still know so little about the transmission of Thomas; three pages from three different Greek manuscripts and a complete Coptic translation, all of which demonstrate significant variation, are hardly enough to determine the form and wording of the original text.  I cannot ignore the parallels where they exist, but I question whether they are enough to demonstrate dependence at the time of the text’s composition rather than at points along the path of its transmission. I still find the breadth of Thomas’s sources suspicious, and the observable second-century phenomena (such as authorial self-presentation) should be taken seriously, but the shallow depth of Thomas’s Synoptic parallels makes me pause. This is why I find April DeConick’s “rolling corpus” theory so useful, because it has the potential to account for all the evidence, allowing Thomas to be both dependent and independent at different stages of its transmission.

It is no surprise that Goodacre finds the hints of Synoptic dependence so compelling. The same level of evidence is used by critics of Q (Goodacre among them), to show Luke’s dependence on Matthew. Looked at individually, the points of evidence look rather insignificant, and defenders of Q try to account for them with appeal to scribal harmonization and other explanations; but Goodacre and like-minded scholars see the evidence, in William Farmer’s words, as a “web of minor but closely related agreements.” I suspect that, despite Goodacre’s efforts, those who argue for the independence of Thomas will have difficulty seeing a similar web in Thomas.

The final chapter of SSR is titled “Myths, Misconceptions, and Misinformation about the Christian Apocrypha.” It is a distillation of my previous work on the conflict between liberal scholarship on the Christian Apocrypha and its apologetic critics, a conflict occasioned by the publication of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and news of several subsequent discoveries of apocryphal texts (the Gospel of Judas, the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife, and the recent surge of interest in Secret Mark). But liberal scholars have propagated their own “myths, misconceptions, and misinformation,” and I spend time responding to these also. The discussion is arranged as responses to ten statements:

1. The Christian Apocrypha were all written after the texts of the New Testament, or

2. The Christian Apocrypha were all written before the texts of the New Testament.

3. The Christian Apocrypha are “forgeries,” written in the name of apostles.

4. The Christian Apocrypha were written by Gnostics.

5. The Christian Apocrypha claim that Jesus was not divine.

6. The Christian Apocrypha are bizarre and fanciful compared to the canonical gospels.

7. The Christian Apocrypha were written to undermine or replace the canonical texts.

8. The Christian Apocrypha were enormously popular before their suppression by a powerful minority in the Church.

9. The Christian Apocrypha are being used to rewrite Christian history.

10. Reading the Christian Apocrypha is harmful to one’s faith.

Many of these statements have been addressed in previous blog posts (begin HERE) from the time I was preparing my essay “Heresy Hunting in the New Millennium” (published in Studies in Religion/ Sciences Religieuses 39 [2010]: 405-420 and in a shorter form in SBL Forum, available online HERE). Essentially I try to show that all of the statements require nuanced discussion—e.g., not all Christian Apocrypha are early or late, indeed some can be both, with early portions incorporated into later texts; not all Christian Apocrypha are written by Gnostics, etc. While certainly a handful of so-called “liberal” scholars arguably have exaggerated the importance of some non-canonical texts (e.g., John Dominic Crossan on the Gospel of Peter), their arguments often are not engaged fairly in the apologetic literature. I suppose it is the nature of apologetics to simplify arguments and, alas, demonize their opponents. It is important, therefore, particularly in popular discourse where both liberal scholarship and its conservative responses are well-represented, to demonstrate that views like Crossan’s are not representative of the field (we don’t all try to date apocryphal texts early) and that dismissing Crossan’s arguments does not mean that all liberal scholarship is in error.

SPCK expressly asked me to address the issue of the effect reading the Christian Apocrypha might have on one’s faith. I struggled with this particular section. To admit that the CA could be harmful to faith means acceding that the ancient heresy hunters and the modern apologists are right, that Christianity can be damaged by these texts. But I’m uncomfortable with the idea that teaching and writing about the CA would lead my audiences to abandon Christianity. The issue, again, requires a nuanced response. I have seen in my students that one’s reaction to these texts is much like one’s reaction to biblical scholarship in general. Students from conservative Christian backgrounds, where the authorship of the gospels, or the historical veracity of traditions about Jesus are never questioned, tend to feel cheated, misled, and manipulated by their church leaders when they encounter the challenges posed by (liberal) biblical scholarship. But students from Christian communities that are more open to discussing the results of scholarly inquiry feel much less anxiety in Biblical Studies classrooms. Their beliefs and experience of Jesus are less tangled in texts and tradition and more connected to Jesus the man. From this perspective, non-canonical gospels can be considered sympathetically as additional interpretations of Jesus, though perhaps more distant from their subject in time and place than the canonical texts.

The harm, then, is not so much to Christianity as to Christian orthodoxy—i.e., to Christianity that propagates a very narrow definition of “truth” and encourages the eradication, or at least the repression, of contrary viewpoints. Christian faith can be built on both canonical and non-canonical traditions. Indeed, it has been throughout the history of Christianity, where stories and images from both categories of texts met regularly in homilies, popular literature, art, drama, and iconography.

The publication of Secret Scriptures Revealed is only a few months away now. I hope that it is a fair representation of the field (difficult to achieve in such a short book!) and that it informs and entertains readers as much as the texts themselves have informed and entertained me over the years.

Satirical web site Cracked.com recently posted an article on "Five Miracles Deleted From the Bible for Being Too Awesome" (HERE). Included in the list are the story of the bed bugs from the Acts of John, the talking cross from the Gospel of Peter, and, surprisingly, Jesus as a talking star from the Revelation of the Magi.

My popular-audience introduction to the Christian Apocrypha is listed in the new SPCK catalog (see above) for release in June. For more on the project see the series of posts HERE (1) HERE (2) and HERE (3).

Ancient Gospel or Modern Forgery? The Secret Gospel of Mark in Debate is now available on Amazon in the US and Canada. Canadians should be cautioned that ordering the book directly from the publisher (Cascade) will incur high postage charges. Amazon or other Canadian distributors are recommended.

Timo Paananen, administrator of the Salainen evankelista blog, has provided an overview of research on Secret Mark for the journal Currents in Biblical Research (see HERE for an abstract of the article). It is an excellent overview of recent research on the text (with a little on early currents also). What Paananen does best here is bring attention to the deplorable way that scholars of Secret Mark have engaged with one another over the text. However, he seems unable to resist poking a little fun at proponents of the forgery hypotheses by associating them with fringe scholarship. He says,

Scholars are, to my mind, all too willing to accept the notion that Clement’s Letter to Theodore is full of obscure ‘hidden clues’, illuminating the path to the solution of an ingenious textual puzzle. The old philosophical adage, ‘no difference without distinction’, is not firmly held here. It is perfectly understandable if biblical scholars are largely unaware of the
Shadow Academia, a category under which all sorts of pseudoscientific, pseudohistorical and fringe scholarship in the (paranoid) style of conspiracy theorizing is produced. Proponents of the hoax hypothesis should aim to argue why the particular clues Carlson and Watson have unearthedshould be taken any more seriously than similar clues by fringe scholars,
disclosing true identities of this and that author. Specifically, this would mean differentiating the hoax hypothesis from Barbara Thiering’s Jesus the Man (1992), Joseph Atwill’s satirical reading of the Gospels, Lena Einhorn’s theories that Jesus was also Paul, the various textual cluespointing to someone else as the true author of Shakespeare’s works, and even the claims that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by alook-alike, a notion that derives from various ‘hidden clues’ in Beatles’ album covers and song lyrics.

I happen to agree with Paananen on this point. Panaanen also does an excellent job of presenting Scott Brown's and Allan Pantuck's responses to Peter Jeffery's and Stephen Carlson's monographs. He notes that Brown's and Pantuck's critiques have not been given the attention that they deserve. And it is because of this oversight that survey articles like Paananen's (and like my own in the Ancient Gospel or Modern Forgery collection) are still required. Scholars rushed to declare Carlson had proven Secret Mark was a forgery, and now I think they are reluctant to accept arguments to the contrary.

Paananen blogged on the article back in October and the post includes links to some responses. Keep in mind, that the article was written almost two years ago and does not include subsequent discussions on the, including the York Symposium.

For another recent survey of Secret Mark scholarship, see Robert Connor's online essay HERE.

My copies of Ancient Gospel or Modern Forgery? The Secret Gospel of Mark in Debate arrived in the mail yesterday. These are the papers presented at the first York Christian Apocrypha Symposium in 2011. The book can be ordered from Wipf & Stock customer service now, from Wipf & Stock online in 2 weeks, and Amazon in 6-8 weeks. The price is $42. The catalog entry can be found HERE.

The book has received some glowing endorsements. John Kloppenborg says of it, "Ancient Gospel or Modern Forgery? brings together most of the key supporters and detractors of the authenticity of the Secret Gospel of Mark in a balanced, probing, and illuminating book…Although this book, carefully crafted by Burke, cannot be said to have brought closure on the issue, it has laid to rest many of the specious and illogical claims that have littered the discussion until now. We can only hope that the ground has now been cleared for a more balanced and scientific discussion of the Mar Saba manuscript." And Bart Ehrman says, "The debate over the Secret Gospel of Mark rages on. Did Morton Smith discover this text, or did he forge it? This terrific collection of essays presents leading voices from both sides of the controversy, stating their views, marshaling the evidence, and allowing readers to pass their own verdicts."

This is a good opportunity, too, to remind everyone of the second York Christian Apocrypha Symposium that will take place (if funding comes through) May 8-10, 2013. A more formal announcement will come as soon as everything is set in place.

The Association pour l’étude de la littérature apocryphe chrétienne and the Institut romand des sciences bibliques at Université de Lausanne are partnering for an international colloquium on "The Life of Adam and Eve and Adamic Traditions." The colloquium will take place January 7-10, 2014. To participate, see HERE for the official call for papers.

This is the third in a series of reflections on the writing of my latest project, Secret Scriptures Revealed: A New Introduction to the Christian Apocrypha. The book, to be published later this year by SPCK, is intended for a popular readership. To read the two previous posts see HERE and HERE.

Chapters three to five of Secret Scriptures Revealed contain summaries of a wide variety of texts from the Christian Apocrypha. I intentionally wanted to broaden the scope of texts from what are typically found in surveys of the literature. These surveys normally focus on gospels, and primarily gospels dated to the first three centuries. My views of the field have been influenced by recent attempts at redefining “Christian Apocrypha” that call for abandoning the terminology “New Testament Apocrypha,” terminology which narrows the scope of inquiry to texts composed before the formation of the western canon and that are similar in form to New Testament texts. My survey, then, aims to include as broad a range of texts as possible, in particular to bring some attention to texts that have received little attention in the past.

This is easier said than done. Restricted to 55,000 words, I have little space for that kind of breadth. I need to keep my discussion to three chapters of 10,000 words each. But how do I divide the literature? By genre—gospels, acts/letters, and apocalypses? By theology—orthodox, Jewish-Christian, and gnostic? The first option again follows New Testament categories, and the second is problematic because of the difficulties of defining the categories and assigning texts to those categories. I have opted instead to work through the materials chronologically, from texts on the birth of Jesus, through his ministry, his passion and resurrection, and finally to the activities of the church after Jesus’ death.

Chapter one opens with infancy gospels, then follows agrapha, ministry gospels, and finally letters. The infancy gospels section focuses on James and Thomas, but includes brief mentions of the Revelation of the Magi and infancy gospel compilations (primarily Pseudo-Matthew and the Arabic Infancy Gospel). Within ministry gospels I include fragmentary texts like the Egerton Gospel, the Gospel of Peter, Secret Mark, and the Gospel of the Savior, as well as Jewish-Christian gospels, and two complete texts: the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Philip (though Philip is included only to discuss the sayings of Jesus that it contains). For letters, I discuss only the Abgar Correspondence and the Letter of Lentulus. One of the challenges of the chapter was keeping the discussion to only 10,000 words. Many texts had to be omitted, including On the Priesthood of Jesus, the Legend of Aphroditianus, and the Vision of Theophilus, all of which were in my much-longer first draft.

Chapter two comprises Passion and Resurrection gospels. A large portion of the chapter is taken up by the Pilate Cycle, but included also are the little-known Book of the Cock, the Coptic Revelation of Peter (which deals with the crucifixion) and the Gospel of Judas (which is set during the Last Supper). Notably absent is the Gospel of Peter, which is typically categorized as a Passion Gospel, but this is because only the Passion and resurrection portions of the text have survived. It seems more appropriate to me to consider it a fragmentary ministry gospel. The chapter continues with a look at the Descent to Hell traditions (Acts of Pilate B, the Questions of Bartholomew, and the Book of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ by Bartholomew the Apostle). The chapter concludes with a range of post-resurrection texts, including the Apocryphon of John, the Gospel of Mary, the Epistle of the Apostles, and a few tour-of-Hell apocalypses like the Greek/Ethiopic Apocalypse of Peter. This is an unconventional grouping, but I think it useful for avoiding the issue of defining the precise theology of the texts, though I certainly can’t avoid discussing gnostic thought, particularly when covering the Apocryphon of John. It also allows for a better discussion of texts like the Epistle of the Apostles, which is situated well as a post-resurrection dialogue but one that is directed against gnostics, who often make use of the same genre. Inevitably, some texts had to be left out of the chapter, including a number of texts from the Pilate Cycle, several of the Nag Hammadi dialogues, and a few apocalypses.

Finally, chapter five is entitled “After Jesus: Legends of the Early Church.” It features several acts of the apostles (only John, Peter, and Paul made the cut, along with mentions of Paul’s apocryphal letters and the Pseudo-Clementine Romance), two texts about Judas (the Life of Judas and the Legend of the Thirty Silver Pieces), the Dormition of Mary, the Life of Joseph the Carpenter, the Life of John the Baptist, and two texts on Mary Magdalene (the Life of Mary Magdalene and the Encomium). The difficulty of the chapter was, once again, keeping it brief, so numerous early and late apocryphal acts could not be included. This may be to the reader’s benefit, however, as the texts can be tedious, even to experts. Still, I regret having to cut the story of Andrew and the cannibals, as well as the Acts of Thomas and the little-studied Acts of Philip. Also eliminated were a few additional texts on John the Baptist.

In the end I think I achieved a good balance of well-known and little-known texts. I am curious what readers think of how I arranged the material. As for the content of my discussions on the texts, I tried to focus on issues that would be of most interest to my audience (the relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, re-interpretations of the crucifixion and resurrection, and a variety of peculiar happenings, such as the flying head of John the Baptist), but also needed to show what is important about them for the history of Christian thought and practice. To my surprise, my editor has not asked me to reduce the references to the intricacies of reconstructing the texts from the available manuscripts, an aspect of the study of these texts that I really wanted to highlight. And I managed to do it all this with a healthy dose of whimsy to keep people reading. At least I hope so.

Next, the final chapter: Myths, Misconceptions, and Misinformation.

Interpreter: A Journal of Mormon Scripture features an article by John Gee on "The Apocryphal Acts of Jesus." The abstract reads,

Numerous noncanonical accounts of Jesus’s deeds exist. While some Latter-day Saints would like to find plain and precious things in the apocryphal accounts, few are to be found. Three types of accounts deal with Jesus as a child, his mortal ministry, or after his resurrection. The Jesus of the infancy gospels does not act like the Jesus of the real gospels. The apocryphal accounts of Jesus’s ministry usually push a particular theological agenda. The accounts of Jesus’s post-resurrection teaching often contain intriguing but bizarre information. On the whole, apocryphal accounts of Jesus’s ministry probably contain less useful information for Latter-day Saints than they might expect.

Be warned: this is a theological/polemical discussion of the texts. And, no surprise, the texts are not treated with proper scholarly rigor. From the conclusion: "Like cream-puffs, most apocryphal accounts of Jesus, though they look enticing, have little nourishment and are usually are not as good nor even as sweet as they look, being dusty pastry filled with imitation cream."