Sunday, June 03, 2018

York NT Apocrypha course

NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA WATCH: Over at his Apocryphicity Blog, Dr. Tony Burke has been posting updates on his 2018 course on the New Testament Apocrypha at York University. The ten weeks of the course are now completed. Due to circumstances he explains there, much of it was taught by video. You can watch the videos if you want to. You can also read the summary posts on each week's lecture. This is the course description from the syllabus:
The New Testament Apocrypha—or better: non-canonical early Christian literature—has had a great impact on western culture despite attempts by mainstream Christianity to suppress it. Stories and ideas from these texts appear in literature, art, church doctrine, and even modern fiction such as Dan Brown’s The DaVinci Code. This course is designed to introduce students to a wide range of non-canonical Christian texts—from gospels, to acts of individual apostles, letters, and apocalypses. The goals will be to understand each text’s place in the development of Christian thought and to observe their use in modern scholarship. Particular emphasis will be placed on the work of the so-called “new school” in New Testament Studies that claims some of these texts may predate, and therefore may have influenced, the canonical gospels.
Good stuff.

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