The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, like many apocryphal gospels, has been much transformed over the course of its transmission. Though composed in Greek in the second century, the gospel is extant in a number of other languages and a myriad of forms. The most well-known form is a 19-chapter version in Greek based on late manuscripts (none earlier than…[Read more]

Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott offer a sustained argument for the monastic provenance of the Nag Hammadi Codices. They examine the arguments for and against a monastic Sitz im Leben and defend the view that the Codices were produced and read by Christian monks, most likely Pachomians, in the fourth- and fifth-century monasteries of Upper Egypt.…[Read more]

This is a study about the Protevangelium of James (PJ), an “infancy gospel” that recounts the birth and childhood of Mary, the mother of Jesus. It is also a study about authors, readers, texts, meaning, and how they are interrelated. In it I aim to take seriously the insights of “intertextuality,” not as a matter of source criticism but as an…[Read more]

Fakes, Forgeries, and Fictions examines the possible motivations behind the production of apocryphal Christian texts. Did the authors of Christian apocrypha intend to deceive others about the true origins of their writings? Did they do so in a way that is distinctly different from New Testament scriptural writings? What would phrases like…[Read more]

“Forbidden Texts on the Western Frontier: The Christian Apocrypha from North American Perspectives” features papers presented at the second York Christian Apocrypha Symposium held in September 2013 at York University in Toronto, Canada. The papers focus on what makes North American Christian Apocrypha scholarship unique, on what has come to def…[Read more]

This anthology of ancient nonbiblical Christian literature presents informed introductions to and readable translations of a wide range of little-known apocryphal texts, most of which have never before been translated into any modern language. An introduction to the volume as a whole addresses the most significant features of the writings included…[Read more]

In 1958, American historian of religion Morton Smith made an astounding discovery in the Mar Saba monastery in Jerusalem. Copied into the back of a seventeenth-century book was a lost letter attributed to Clement of Alexandria (ca. 150-215 CE) that contained excerpts from a longer version of the Gospel of Mark written by Mark himself and…[Read more]