Review of Burke and Landau (eds.), New Testament Apocrypha (part 4)

BOOK REVIEW (PART FOUR):

Tony Burke and Brent Landau, New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume 1 (Eerdmans, 2016).

Part One is here.
Part Two is here.
Part Three is here.

Final Comments

This volume is a major contribution to more than one field. The texts are well chosen, the translations flow smoothly, the introductions cover the important matters and evaluate the evidence judiciously. The volume is well edited and carefully proofread. One could debate this or that conclusion or interpretation, but the positions taken by the contributors are consistently well and cautiously argued. The one or two errors I noticed were trivial (e.g., on p. 437 at n. e., "cherubim" should read "seraphim"). I can think of very little to criticize. A little more attention to questions of genre in the introductions to the individual works would be welcome. There is no specific section for genre in the outline template, although sometimes one is added. Some contributors cover the issue well, while others could have said more.

Potential readers should keep in mind that this volume is a supplement to earlier collections of New Testament Apocrypha in English, especially those by James and Elliott. The volume includes a few relatively early texts (i.e., from the third century or earlier). These are of interest to specialists in early Christianity. Most of the texts are from the fourth century and later. They are of particular interest to specialists in late-antique and medieval popular Christianity. The volume contains a vast wealth of stories, scriptural exegesis, and informal theology which entertained and informed lay audiences for many centuries. But do be aware that it belongs on the bookshelf next to Elliot’s work, not as a replacement for it.

The volume demonstrates compellingly that the composition and use of New Testament Apocrypha continued into the Middle Ages and beyond, and that some of these works were vastly popular and influential. The Dialogue of the Paralytic with Christ is not the first work a modern reader would turn to for spiritual inspiration. Nevertheless, it survives in many manuscripts and was copied into the twentieth century. The Apocalypse of the Virgin is ubiquitous in the Greek manuscript tradition and it too was copied into the twentieth century. The Tiburtine Sibyl was more influential in the West than the canonical Book of Revelation.

The texts in the volume come in the genres we know from the New Testament, but not exclusively. Several texts are “pseudo-apostolic memoirs,” a genre developed in Coptic-speaking circles in the fifth century. But even the genres we know are developed creatively. The genre of “gospel” is stretched well beyond what counts as a gospel in the New Testament. Some of the “acts” include elements of hagiography, martyrdom, and romance novel. The volume classifies The Tiburtine Sibyl as an apocalypse, but it lacks an angelic interpreter and adopts the poetic canons of pagan Sibylline oracles. The Epistle of Christ from Heaven is an ancient chain letter attributed to Jesus.

These texts also expand the range of what we might think of — at least based on the New Testament — as normal subject matter for scripture. The classic example is The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, whose boy Jesus comes across to a modern reader as frighteningly powerful and impulsive, rather like Anthony Fremont in the Twilight Zone episode “It’s a Good Life.” But the new texts provide additional examples. There is Papias’s debased story of the death of Judas. The Dialogue of the Paralytic with Christ presents an incognito Jesus who mercilessly torments a paralytic to test his faith before he heals him. And then there is that ancient chain letter again.

A number of the texts read like ancient and medieval fanfic about John the Baptist, Mary Magdalene, Simon Peter, Cornelius the Centurion, and so on. Several of the texts have women as the main characters: Mary Magdalene; Xanthippie, her sister Polyxena, and her sister’s companion Rebecca; the pagan Sibyl; and, of course, the Virgin Mary.

The high level of textual variation in the manuscripts of many, if not most, of these texts challenges the traditional scholarly understanding of what a text is. The scribes who transmitted these texts seem often to be as concerned with retelling an entertaining or edifying story as copying a fixed text. Canonical works with fixed texts are probably the exception, while the variform texts in this volume are more representative of ancient and medieval literature.

In conclusion, this volume is an excellent supplement to Elliot’s collection of New Testament Apocrypha. It makes many new texts available in translation. It expands the range of what we have thought of as New Testament Apocrypha, mainly by including texts from late antiquity and the Middle Ages. I look forward to the second volume.

I recommend this book highly. Make sure your research library has a copy. It is inexpensive enough (especially through Amazon) that your local public library should be willing to buy one as well. And if you have any interest in the subject of New Testament Apocrypha, then buy a copy for yourself.

UPDATE (15 June): Philip Tite comments here.

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T. Issachar

READING ACTS: Testament of Issachar.

Earlier posts in Phil Long's blog series on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha are noted here and links. In recent posts he has been surveying the Greek Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs. Cross-file under Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Watch.

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Sahidic Coptic OT online

AWOL BLOG: News from the Coptic Scriptorium: Old Testament corpus release. Cross-file under Coptic Watch.

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The afterlife in Zoroastrianism

BIBLIOGRAPHIA IRANICA: Zoroastrian afterlife beliefs and funerary practices. An article by Almut Hintze in the new (2017) Routledge Companion to Death and Dying. The article is available at Academia.edu.

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Review of Barton and Boyarin, Imagine No Religion

BRYN MAYR CLASSICAL REVIEW: Carlin A. Barton, Daniel Boyarin, Imagine No Religion. How Modern Abstractions Hide Ancient Realities. New York: Fordham University Press, 2016. Pp. 325. ISBN 9780823271207. $35.00 (pb). Reviewed by Anders Klostergaard Petersen, University of Aarhus (akp@cas.au.dk).

Barton’s and Boyarin’s monograph is related to Brent Nongbri’s Before Religion: A History of a Modern Concept (New Haven, Yale UP 2013), a volume that has justifiably attracted considerable attention in disciplines devoted to the study of the ancient Graeco-Roman world. Barton and Boyarin refer in important places to Nongbri who has also provided them with their introductory, orally-transmitted, Edwin Judge contention that one should avoid the term religion in translations of ancient texts. Barton and Boyarin follow this injunction with relentless effort, arguing that any rendering of Greek and Latin terms (notably thrēskeia and religio, but also the related terms deisidaimonia and superstitio) by the word ‘religion’ is an anachronistic distortion. The argument is cogently pursued in Tertullian and Josephus (and some additional authors) held emblematically to illustrate the problem at stake.

[...]

But do the authors overshoot their point by moving from the emic to the etic?

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The Talmud on property as gift vs. inheritance (etc.)

THIS WEEK'S DAF YOMI COLUMN BY ADAM KIRSCH IN TABLET: An Old Jew Is on His Deathbed, and Says to His Son… In this week’s ‘Daf Yomi,’ what’s right—and what’s legal—in matters of inheritance.

Over the past several weeks, Daf Yomi readers have seen how the Talmud regulates the inheritance of property, building on biblical laws to create a more complex and flexible system. According to the Torah, for example, a man is not free to bequeath his property to whomever he wishes. Rather, inheritance follows an established order, going first to his sons, then his daughters, then his brothers, and finally to more distant male relatives. But as we saw earlier in Tractate Bava Batra, later Jewish law created a workaround, allowing the testator to give his property as a gift, rather than bequeath it as an inheritance. A gift is not subject to the same strict rules.

[...]

But it raises certain complexities ...

Earlier Daf Yomi columns are noted here and links.

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Cynthia Baker's "Jew" and the Samaritans

MARGINALIA REVIEW OF BOOKS: Thinking with Samaritans and Cynthia Baker’s Jew. Matthew Chalmers on Cynthia Baker’s Jew. Marginalia's Forum on Cynthia Baker’s Jew is publishing a series of essays on the book. This is the third in the series.

As a scholar researching ancient and modern representations of Samaritans, I should confess that my first interaction with any book about Jewish identities is often to flip to the index and see whether it mentions them. Samaritans, after all, are a Torah-observant group who also trace their identity back to ancient Israel. Baker’s book does not. I suggest that exploring this omission tells us something more about what Baker’s book does, while also helping to articulate some broader ramifications for the study of Jews and beyond.

Mr. Chalmers then applies Professor Baker's methodology to the study of the Samaritans.

For past essays in the series and more information about the forum, see here and links.

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Looting arrests in the Galilee

APPREHENDED: Hiker helps stop antiquities-robbing gang in northern Israel. Caught in action after a foot chase, two out of three thieves taken to Nazareth for investigation (Amanda Borschel-Dan, Times of Israel). Well done, alert hiker. The apprehension took place near Tzippori/Sepphoris. It sounds as though there has been a lot of nefarious activity in the north lately.

There have been quite a few looting arrests in Israel and the West Bank in 2017. I have noted some, probably not all. See here and links.

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Poetry on the Gospel of Thomas

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: Alternative Scriptures: A Bit Of Bible Long Lost. The Greek fragments of the Gospel of Thomas (the one later found complete in a Coptic translation in the Nag Hammadi Library - see here) were published at the end of the nineteenth century.

This gospel became so well know that someone promptly published a poem on it. Not long after that, someone else quoted it in a textbook for school children.

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T. Judah: apocalyptic

READING ACTS: Apocalyptic in the Testament of Judah. This post discusses a messianic passage that could be read plausibly as a Jewish composition.

Earlier posts in Phil Long's blog series on the Old Testament Pseudepigrapha are noted here and here and links.

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Review of Burke and Landau (eds.), New Testament Apocrypha (part 3)

BOOK REVIEW (PART THREE):

Tony Burke and Brent Landau, New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume 1 (Eerdmans, 2016).

Part One is here.
Part Two is here.
Part Four is here.

The Remaining Texts

I discuss the remaining texts in the order that they appear in the volume.

Apocryphal Acts and Related Traditions

The Acts of Barnabas (pp. 317-336, ed. Glenn E. Snyder) was composed in Greek by the late fifth century. It survives in two Greek recensions and a Latin translation. It is a collection of stories about the ministry and travels of Barnabas and John Mark, narrated by the latter. It concludes with an account of the martyrdom of Barnabas, after which John Mark and his companions appropriate and bury Barnabas’s remains and then escape to Alexandria.

The Acts of Cornelius the Centurion (pp. 337-361, ed. Tony Burke and Witold Witakowski) was composed in Greek sometime between the fourth and tenth centuries and survives in a long and a short version. This work expands the story of the conversion of the Cornelius of Acts 10-11 and recounts his elevation to sainthood after his death. This chapter translates a Greek manuscript and an Ethiopic translation, both representing the long version.

John and the Robber (pp. 362-370, Rick Brannan) is a story told at the conclusion of a homily by Clement of Alexandria and thus dates to the late second or early third century at latest. Some later authors, including Eusebius, repeat Clement’s account. The story tells of a young protégé of John the Apostle who goes bad and takes up with a group of robbers. John finds it necessary to round him up and bring him to repentance.

The History of Simon Cephas, the Chief of the Apostles (pp. 371-394, ed. F. Stanley Jones) was composed in the second half of the fourth century. It has never before been translated from Syriac into any modern language. Mostly it summarizes material from the canonical Book of Acts and other sources to give an account of the ministry of Peter. It includes his interactions with Simon Magus and a toned-down version of the famous episode in which Christ meets Peter and tells him he has returned to be crucified again because Peter is too weak to accept martyrdom.

The Acts of Timothy (pp. 395-405, ed. Cavan W. Concannon) survive in Greek and Latin manuscripts, but the work seems to have been composed in Greek in the late fourth or (more likely) early fifth century. It is of mixed genre, combining features of acts with features of martyrdoms. It presents Timothy as the bishop of Ephesus until his martyrdom.

The Acts of Titus (pp. 406-415, ed. Richard I. Pervo) survives and was composed in Greek. Its current form seems to date from the early seventh century, but this is probably an abbreviation of a longer life of Titus composed in the late fifth century. Pervo regards this work to be more a “hagiographical biography” than an apocryphal acts. It draws on traditions about Titus in the New Testament and the Acts of Paul. It also traces Titus’ lineage to Minos, King of Crete. Showing unusual sympathy for Jews for an early Christian document, it has an influential relative of Titus protect those in Crete from any consequences arising from the Judean revolt against Rome.

The Life and Conduct of the Holy Women Xanthipple, Polyxena, and Rebecca (pp. 416-452, ed. David L. Eastman) was composed in Greek in the fifth or sixth century. It has features of apocryphal acts and hagiography, but also reads like an unlikely (ancient) romance novel aimed at female monastics and devoted to promoting sexual abstinence. Three very different women undergo various adventures, some of them harrowing, but they survive unscathed and embrace a profoundly ascetic Christianity. The Apostle Paul is a central supporting character and other New Testament figures appear from time to time.

Epistles

The Epistle of Christ from Heaven (pp. 455-463, ed. Calogero A. Miceli) survives in manuscripts in a vast number of languages, but it likely originated in Greek. The first surviving mention of it was by the bishop of Ibiza in the late sixth century. (That’s right: Ibiza!) This remarkable work amounts to a chain letter from Jesus (who has been theologically homogenized with God). It survives in countless variations, the common core of which is to promote observation of Sunday as the Lord’s Day. This volume translates a comparatively early (fifteenth century) Greek manuscript of the epistle.

The Epistle of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite to Timothy concerning the Deaths of the Apostles Peter and Paul (pp. 464-480, ed. David L. Eastman) survives in versions in multiple languages. The lost Greek original was probably composed in the late sixth or early seventh century. Dionysius the Areopagite is mentioned in Acts 17:34 and is best known as the pseudonym of a fifth-sixth-century writer whose philosophical-theological works laid the foundation for subsequent Christian mysticism. This epistle is unrelated. It gives a fictional eyewitness account of the martyrdoms of Peter and Paul.

Apocalypses

The (Latin) Revelation of John about Antichrist (pp. 483-491, ed. Charles D. Wright) survives in two Latin recensions as well as in medieval English and Irish versions. It was composed in Latin, probably in the mid-twelfth century. In it, Christ reveals information to John about the Antichrist and other eschatological matters.

The Apocalypse of the Virgin (pp. 492-509, Charles D. Wright) was composed in Greek between the sixth and ninth centuries, probably earlier rather than later in that range. Hundreds of manuscripts survive with an enormous amount of textual variation. It tells the story of the visit of Mary to various parts of Hell, after which she enlists all the angels and saints to badger God into providing the damned Christian sinners with an annual period of respite from the lake of fire. It was a vastly popular work in Eastern Christianity.

The Tiburtine Sibyl (pp. 510-525, Stephen J. Shoemaker) was composed in Greek in the fourth century. This Greek version is lost, but is preserved substantially in a Latin translation. The surviving Greek text is of an expanded recension produced in the early sixth century. Shoemaker translates the Latin version. The work is an apocalyse set in the mouth of an early pagan Roman prophetess and is a late example of a Jewish and Christian tradition of writing oracles in the names of various Sibyls. We published a translation of the Greek version by Rieuwerd Buitenwerf in MOTP1, pp. 176-188. That translation includes detailed notes on the historical allusions in the work. It is unclear to Shoemaker why we regarded it as an Old Testament pseudepigraphon. (MNTA1, p. 512 n. 9), presumably because the oracles refer to events in the Christian era. But as he also noted (p. 515), the Sibylline literature has traditionally been included among Jewish and Christian apocryphal literature. The pagan Sibyls, like Ahiqar and Zoroaster, were adopted into the biblical tradition as prophets or sages. But they traditionally lived in the Old Testament period and so, at least in the case of the Sibyls and Ahiqar, have been treated as Old Testament pseudepigrapha in past collections. We continued that tradition (cf. MOTP1, xxviii) but have no objection to classing the Tiburtine Sibyl as a New Testament apocryphon as well. It is good to have the complementary translations in both volumes.

The Investiture of Abbaton, the Angel of Death (pp. 526-554, Alin Suciu with Ibrahim Saweros) is another example of the genre pseudo-apostolic memoir. It survives in a single tenth-century Sahidic Coptic manuscript, but it was probably composed in the fifth or sixth century. This work is a book within a book: the (probably pseudonymous) author Timothy of Alexandria describes how he obtained a revelatory book from an old man in Jerusalem and then transcribes the supposed content of the book. It narrates how the angel Muriel was transformed into Abatton (i.e., Abaddon, Hebrew for “destruction”) the Angel of Death. This work may be based on a Muslim source, but it is also possible that the Investiture and parallel Islamic traditions draw on an earlier common source. An Arabic Christian source offers a refutation of the story of Abatton and this chapter translates the relevant passage in an appendix.

In the next post I will give an overall evaluation of MNTA1 and make some general comments about it. Spoiler: I like it.

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Schiffman on the Magdala Stone

PROFESSOR LAWRENCE H. SCHIFFMAN: The Magdala Stone. A reprint of his article in Ami Magazine. The Magdala Stone is a first-century CE artifact that appears to depict the Second Temple in Jerusalem. It is currently on display in the Vatican Menorah Exhibition in Rome.

Professor Schiffman notes in particular, some potential implications of the Stone for the function of the synagogue in the first century.

Background on the Magdala Stone is here and follow the many links.

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T. Judah: women, money, and wars

READING ACTS: Women and Money in the Testament of Judah (Phil Long).

The Book of Jubilees also relates Judah's battles with the Amorites (chap. 34) and with the sons of Esau (chapters 37-38).

A medieval work called Midrash Vayissa‘u also tells versions of the same two stories and seems to be based on Second Temple era sources in Greek. Martha Himmelfarb has translated Midrash Vayissa‘u in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (ed. Bauckham, Davila, and Panayotov; Eerdmans 2013), 1:143-159.

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Dead Sea Scrolls found in the first millennium?

THE ANXIOUS BENCH: Alternative Scriptures: Finding the First Scrolls (Philip Jenkins). A cache of Dead Sea Scrolls seems to have been found around 800 CE. It is possible that someone copied the fragments of the Damascus Document in the Cairo Geniza from one of those scrolls. Professor Jenkins doesn't mention this, but it's also possible that someone copied the Cairo Geniza fragments of Aramaic Levi from material that came from that discovery. We don't know: both suggestions are speculative but plausible.

For more on that discovery as related by the Patriarch Timonty in a Syriac letter, see this essay by John Reeves for my Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Course back in 1997: REFLECTIONS ON JEWISH APOCRYPHAL AND PSEUDEPIGRAPHICAL SURVIVALS IN MEDIEVAL NEAR EASTERN RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS. I also talk about Timothy's letter in an introductory page for my 2005 course on the Dead Sea Scrolls: Introduction to the Scrolls from the Judean Desert. As I note there, the (heretical but vastly learned) church father Origen knew of scrolls discovered "near Jericho" around 200 CE.

Earlier posts in Professor Jenkins's series on "alternative scriptures" are noted here and links.

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Review of "Rabbi Akiva"

BOOK REVIEW: Bringing A Talmudic Sage Back To Life (Burton L. Visotzky, The Forward).

RABBI AKIVA: SAGE OF THE TALMUD
By Barry W. Holtz
Yale University Press, 248 pages, $25

Excerpt:

Enter Barry W. Holtz, Baumritter Professor Of Jewish Education at JTS. In his new portrait of his hero, Rabbi Akiva “the teacher par excellence,” Holtz takes careful account of the scholarship about and challenges to writing rabbinic biography in recent decades. He looks at individual stories about Rabbi Akiva and treats each of them through a literary critical lens. His scholarly acumen is such that he accounts for current historians’ pronouncements on the forces that shaped the late first and second centuries. He treats the often multiple versions of these stories to understand their development and, most important, their religious meaning for readers then and now.

Past posts on the book are here and links.

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JGRChJ

AWOL BLOG: Open Access Journal: Journal of Greco-Roman Judaism and Christianity (JGRChJ). I thought I had mentioned this journal fairly recently, but the last post I can find on it is from 2006. So it's high time to mention it again. Lots of interesting articles on early Christianity and ancient Judaism.

As the articles included in previous volumes indicate, the scope of this journal remains broad, with articles welcome on many areas of relevance to the journal’s aims. Nevertheless, the approach of the journal is also specific—to publish only the highest quality articles that examine the ways in which the Greco-Roman world was the world of the New Testament and early Judaism. The emphasis in the journal is thus on a range of possible approaches and bodies of material, including historical, linguistic, papyrological, epigraphical and synthetic studies of the kind that are often lacking in other journals. In fact, we encourage contributors to attempt to draw various areas of related knowledge together in their submissions.

UPDATE (12 June): A reader has pointed out that the correct title of the journal is Journal of Greco-Roman Christianity and Judaism.

Hurtado on the language of history

LARRY HURTADO: How We See Historical Changes. Beware of metaphors that covertly import evolutionary assumptions into the flow of ancient events.

Review of Jones, Philosophy of Mysticism

H-JUDAIC: Miller on Jones, 'Philosophy of Mysticism: Raids on the Ineffable.' Author: Richard H. Jones Reviewer: Michael Miller

Richard H. Jones. Philosophy of Mysticism: Raids on the Ineffable. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2016. 438 pp. $95.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-1-4384-6119-9; $31.95 (paper), ISBN 978-1-4384-6118-2.

The book is about mysticism and gives some attention to Jewish mysticism. The reviewer thinks it could have given more.

Pregill on Cynthia Baker's "Jew"

MARGINALIA REVIEW OF BOOKS: Between Jew and Muslim. Observations on Cynthia Baker’s Jew from the Perspective of Islamic Studies (Michael Pregill). Marginalia's Forum on Cynthia Baker’s Jew is publishing a series of essays on the book. This is the third published, although it is listed as fourth in the series.

For past essays in the series and more information about the forum, see here and here.

Christian Apocrypha at the 2017 CSBS meeting

APOCRYPHICITY: 2017 CSBS Christian Apocrypha Session Report (Tony Burke). Dr. Burke reports on the papers presented at the Annual Meeting of the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies in the last weekend in May.