Description
This volume collects the contributions of a group of North American scholars who started rethinking, in 2004, the traditional category of New Testament Apocrypha, largely dominated by theological concerns, according to the new perspectives of a greater continuity not only between Second Temple Jewish and early Christian scriptural productions, but also between early Christian and late antique apocryphal literatures. This is the result of the confluence of two, so far, alternative approaches: on the one hand, the deconstruction of the customary categories, inherited from ancient heresiology, of "Jewish Christianity" and "Gnosticism," and on the other hand, the new awareness that the production of new apocryphal texts did not cease at the end of the third century but continued well into late antiquity and beyond. These papers bring together for the first time the typically North American need to reconsider "The Ways That Never Parted" and other artificially drawn "Border Lines" with the more European attention paid to the phenomenon of apocryphicity in the long term. In the twenty essays published here, different facets of this apocryphal continent are newly explored, from the Christian appropriation of Jewish stories and literary genres, with a special emphasis on the case of the late antique Pseudo-Clementines and their hypothetical Jewish Christian source, to the complex and controversial situation of the narrative roles attributed to such figures as Judas Iscariot, Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of Jesus, or Peter. These new insights are particularly relevant not only for the history of the first Jesus movement but also, and especially, for gaining a better understanding of the ways Judaism and Christianity evolved initially together, then side by side, according to a process of differentiation that took more time than previously thought.
Chapter
3. What prospects for future studies?
Tony Burke: Entering the Mainstream: Twenty-five Years of Research on the Christian Apocrypha
1. Defining “Christian Apocrypha”
2. Major studies on Christian apocryphal texts
3. Collections of Christian apocryphal texts and related series
4. Christian Apocrypha on the Internet and in other media
Ian H. Henderson: The Usefulness of Christian Apocryphal Texts in Research on the Historical Jesus
James R. Davila: Did Christians Write Old Testament Pseudepigrapha That Appear to Be Jewish?
1. Some preliminary questions
2. Christian works with only a few, easily excisable Christian signature features
2.1. A Homily by John Chrysostom
2.2. A Sermon by Augustine on Micah 6:6–8 and Psalm 72
3. Christian works with episodes that lack any Christian signature features
3.1. Ephrem the Syrian’s Commentaries on Genesis and Exodus
3.2. The early life of Moses
3.3. The Heptateuchos of Pseudo-Cyprianus
4. A probable Christian work that lacks any Christian signature features
Annette Yoshiko Reed: “Jewish-Christian” Apocrypha and the History of Jewish/ Christian Relations
1. “Jewish-Christian” apocrypha from the second and third centuries
2. “Jewish-Christian” apocrypha from the fourth and fifth centuries
3. Revisiting the problem of “Jewish Christianity”
III. From Early Christian Texts to Late Antique Apocryphal Literature
Louis Painchaud: On the (Re)Discovery of the Gospel of Judas
1. The Gospel of Judas Rediscovered
2. Re-Interpreting the Gospel of Judas
2.1. Judas makes himself guilty of human sacrifice (56.11–20)
2.2. Judas is a demon (44.15–23)
2.3. Judas is led astray by his star (45.11–19)
2.4. Although he will not go up to the place reserved for the holy, Judas will nonetheless reign (46.14–47.4)
2.5. Who enters into the luminous cloud surrounded by stars? (57.16–26)
Minna Heimola: Christians and Jews in the Gospel of Philip
3. Hebrews and Jews in the Gospel of Philip
4. The nature of the anti-Jewish polemic in the Gospel of Philip
5. Jewish symbols, new interpretations: Valentinian exegesis in the Gospel of Philip
6. Inter-faith relationships and the three Valentinian classes of humans
Theodore de Bruyn: Christian Apocryphal and Canonical Narratives in Greek Amulets and Formularies in Late Antiquity
1. Recitation of a passage
2. Re-telling of an event
4. Liturgical reiteration of narratives of power
Stephen J. Shoemaker: Mary in Early Christian Apocrypha: Virgin Territory
1. Introduction: Marian apocrypha and the apocryphal canon
2. The Dormition narratives
3. The Apocalypses of the Virgin
4. The Lives of the Virgin
6. In conclusion: expanding the apocryphal canon
Pierluigi Piovanelli: Why Mary and Peter? From the Early Christian Gospel of Mary to the Late Antique Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles
1. The diversity of early Christian apocryphal literature
2. Who is afraid of the “Gnostic” Mary of Magdala?
3. Peter’s authoritative role in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles
4. From early Christian pluralism to late antique orthodoxies, and beyond
Peter W. Dunn: Luke’s Acts or the Acts of Paul: Which Looks More Like a Second-Century Text?
1. Conditions in the Early Church
1.1 Depiction of the Church
2.3 Historical Personages
2.3 Discussion of a Historical Event: Paul’s Martyrdom
3. Summary and conclusion
Cornelia B. Horn: Depictions of Children and Young People as Literary Motifs in Canonical and Apocryphal Acts
1. Children in the Canonical Acts of the Apostles
2. Children in Apocryphal Acts
3. Conclusions: The Child-Parent Relationship
Vahan Hovhanessian: The Repose of the Blessed John in the Armenian Bible: Deconstructing the Acts of John
2. Attestation and Use in the Armenian Church
3.1. Section 106 (RBJ Arm. I and IIa)
3.2. Section 107 (RBJ Arm. IIa–III)
3.3. Section 108 (RBJ Arm. IV)
3.4. Section 109 (RBJ Arm. V)
3.5. Section 110 (RBJ Arm. VIa)
3.6. Section 111 (RBJ Arm. VIb)
3.7. Section 112 (RBJ Arm. VII)
3.8. Section 113 (RBJ Arm. VIII)
3.9. Section 115 (RBJ Arm. VIII)
4. Deconstructing the Acts of John
4.2. Textual and contextual evidence
Timothy Beech: Unraveling the Complexity of the Oracula Sibyllina: The Value of a Socio-Rhetorical Approach in the Study of the Sibylline Oracles
1. Socio-rhetorical analysis as an interpretative approach
2. The cultural and ideological significance of the process of redaction within the Sibylline Oracles
3. The relationship of the Sibylline Oracles to their contemporary literary environment
3.1. The relationship of the Sibylline Oracles to their Greco-Roman counterparts
3.2. The relation of the Sibylline Oracles to Jewish and Christian apocalyptic literature
4. The Sibylline Oracles as a blend of Judeo-Christian apocalyptic and Greco-Roman Sibylline discourses
Michael Kaler: Gnostic Irony and the Adaptation of the Apocalyptic Genre
3. Similarities between apocalyptic and gnostic texts
4. The Apocalypse of Adam
5. The Apocalypse of Paul
7. Genre manipulation in Greek and Roman poetry
Timothy Pettipiece: The Manichaean Reception of Apocryphal Traditions: The Case of the “Five Limbs”
2. The limbs of the trees: ontological function
3. The limbs of the Father: cosmogonical function
4. The limbs of salvation: soteriological function
6. The limbs of the “Living Soul”: psychological function
IV. The Pseudo-Clementines: Early Christian Traditions in Late Antique Editions
F. Stanley Jones: John the Baptist and His Disciples in the Pseudo-Clementines: A Historical Appraisal
2. On approaching the Pseudo-Clementines
3. Interpretation of the texts
3.1 A catalogue of syzygies (Rec. 3.61.2 // Hom. 2.16.7–17.2)
3.2 On Simon Magus’s background (Rec. 2.8.1 // Hom. 2.23.1–24.1)
3.3. About a debate between the Jewish schisms and the apostles (Rec. 1.53.5–54.3, 8, 60.1–4, 63.1)
Kelley Coblentz Bautch: The Pseudo-Clementine Homilies’ Use of Jewish Pseudepigrapha
1. Expansive views of revelation and revealed wisdom
2. The innocent protoplast: a shared tradition
3. The heritage of an Enochic Weltanschauung
Giovanni Battista Bazzana: Healing the World: Medical and Social Practice in the Pseudo-Clementine Novel
1. The Pseudo-Clementine missionary activity in Tripolis
2. The social practice of Greco-Roman doctors andits reception in early Christian documents
3. Peter’s speech in Tripolis and its medical content
4. The Pseudo-Clementine attitude towards Greco-Roman medicine
Dominique Côté: Rhetoric and Jewish-Christianity: The Case of the Grammarian Apion in the Pseudo-Clementine Homilies
1. Apion: the enemy of the Jews
2. Apion: the famous Alexandrian grammarian
3. The Influence of Paideia and Rhetoric on the Pseudo-Clementines
4. The Comparative Value of Greek παιδεία and Jewish εὐσέβεια
Nicole Kelley: Pseudo-Clementine Polemics against Sacrifice: A Window onto Religious Life in the Fourth Century?
1. Sacrifice in the Pseudo-Clementines
2. Opposition to sacrifice and “Jewish Christians”
4. Sacrifice and fourth-century piety
5. Julian’s sacrificial program
1. Hebrew Bible / Old Testament
3. Jewish and Christian Pseudepigrapha
6. Hermetic, Gnostic, Manichaean, and Islamic Literatures
7. Patristic and Christian Literature
Rediscovering the Apocryphal Continent
：New Perspectives on Early Christian and Late Antique Apocryphal Texts and Traditions
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