The New Testament Apocrypha course is now winding down (the whimper subsequent to its initial bang). One more class is to come but it will be spent viewing some apocryphal traditions in films—including the Passion of the Christ, the Nativity, the Da Vinci Code, and a film I picked up at SBL called “Letters of Faith,” a documentary relating to the Abgar Correspondence (I have yet to view this but will post on it after Wednesday).

Our last official lecture took place last week. We focused on “anti-gospels,” specifically the Toledoth Yeshu (and related Jewish anti-Christian material from the Talmud) and the Gospel of Barnabas (a 14th-century Muslim text). These texts are rarely discussed in the context of Christian Apocrypha, though the Toledoth Yeshu, at least, was featured in some of the earliest CA collections before other discoveries edged it out. Both texts are discussed in Klauck’s Apocryphal Gospels (the textbook for the course), which inspired me to discuss them in class. And there is merit in doing so. For one, the polemics we find in the Talmud and Toledoth Yeshu are valuable for discussion of Jewish and Christian conflict, conflict that is evident in some of the standard CA texts (including Gospel of Nicodemus). And a discussion of the Gospel of Barnabas allows us to break out of the typical temporal constraints placed on the study of the CA (fourth century) and brings in apocryphal traditions found in Muslim literature including the Koran).

One of the more interesting aspects of these two texts is the value accorded therein to the story of the Animation of the Birds (known primarily from Infancy Thomas ch. 2). This story is found in the Toledoth Yeshu and in the Koran. Its presence in the Toledoth Yeshu testifies to its popularity—if the TY seeks to lampoon the Jesus biography, then this story must have been considered cherished by Christians in the author’s orbit. The same can be said of the Christians known to Muhammad. Incidentally, in the Koran we see non-canonical traditions of Jesus and Mary becoming canonical for another religion. All of these points are further evidence for the fallacy of the canonical/non-canonical dichotomy.

The students of the course are working feverishly on their major paper for the course. The description is as follows:

Choose an apocryphal text that we have not examined in class from the following list: Acts of Andrew, Acts of Barnabas, Acts of Mar Mari, Acts of Philip, Acts of Xanthippe and Polyxena, Apocalypse of Thomas, Apocalypse of the Virgin, Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, Book of the Cock, Epistle of Christ from Heaven, Epistle of Lentulus, Gospel of Nicodemus, and Revelation of Stephen. Prepare a paper on the text featuring the following: a brief description of its contents, an overview of previous scholarship, a summary of its manuscript sources, and a case for why the text is important for the study of the Christian Apocrypha and/or the history of Christian Literature.

When I created the syllabus this assignment sounded like a really good idea. It makes them look at a text we haven’t examined in the course, but particularly a text that does not receive enough attention from scholars (mostly because they are considered “late”). But the assignment has caused the students a great deal of stress. The problem is that the bulk of the scholarship on these texts (and there’s not much of a “bulk” there) is in French or German. So the students are very limited as to what resources they can use to write their papers. Ah well, a lesson learned for next time.