Such a complicated textual tradition is not altogether rare among apocryphal literature. In this sense, the Life of Judas is not idiosyncratic for its variant, fluid, and multilingual transmission history but representative of the types of issues encountered with many apocrypha, including some of those translated in the MNTA volumes. This case presents one intriguing example of a work that likely moved from Western Europe into Near Eastern contexts (rather than the reverse, as scholars often expect), but the afterlives of many apocrypha follow similarly complex cross-cultural paths.This is the second installment of a series on volume 2 of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (MNTA 2). I noted the first essay here.
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