Abstract
Forbidden Texts on the Western Frontier is the result of the 2013 York University Symposium on Christian Apocrypha (CA), organised by Tony Burke and Brent Landau. The collection features fifteen wide-ranging essays along with an editorial introduction from Burke and a reflective foreword by Christoph Markschies of Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. The essays can generally be categorised into three groups. First, the volume begins with three separate discussions of the various contributions of US and Canadian scholars to the study of CA (Burke; Landau; Roessli). Second, there are essays that advance the study of specific apocryphal texts, including The Infancy Gospel of Thomas 6–7 (Horn), the Pseudo-Clementines (Jones), the Tiburtine Sibyl (Shoemaker), the Acts of Paul and the Acts of Peter (Eastman) and an essay examining Paul’s conversion in the canonical Acts and the Acts of Paul (Snyder). The third group of essays deals with discipline-defining debates which continue to shape the study of CA. These include a provocative series of reflections on the interplay of confessional presuppositions, on the one hand, and academic study of the CA, on the other (Hedrick), a proposal for the fluidity of the biblical canon prior to the fourth century (McDonald), a discussion of the nature and value of late antique CA (Piovanelli), an evaluation of the contributions of CA to the study of the ‘historical Jesus’ (Patterson, with responses from Kloppenborg and Goodacre), an assessment of the definitions of, and troubled relationship between, Gnostic texts, the Nag Hammadi corpora and Christian apocrypha (Denzey Lewis) and a user-friendly guide to the contributions of digital humanities for the study of CA (Heal).
Appropriately, this volume does not provide one unified ‘North American’ position on the study of CA, but a diversity and plurality of perspectives. Yet one prominent and perhaps unifying theme shared by many of the essays is the willingness to challenge the chronological boundaries constructed by historical scholarship. Throughout the work, one finds a well-articulated critique of the prioritisation of ‘historical origins’ in study of the CA. The essays by Stephen Shoemaker and Mark Goodacre, in particular, rightly contend that the historical study of CA should to some extent be concerned with ‘apocryphicity’ more broadly rather than exclusively considering texts that relate to Christian origins or the ‘historical Jesus’. Forbidden Texts not only adeptly argues for this kind of study; it also practically models it through painstaking examination of individual apocryphal texts. As such, the monograph champions the inclusive historical study of ‘early Christian literature’ which carefully attends to the worlds opened up by these texts. In sum, this collection of essays will amply resource research and reflection on CA for many years to come.