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Early Christian Apocrypha

Yale Shaffer Lectures 3 of 3 – Christ Against the Jews

Here is the third of my Shaffer Lectures delivered almost exactly ten years ago. This final one has to do with textual variants and apocryphal texts that show evidence of Christian anti-Judaism. I call this one: Christ Against the Jews. It is a topic that I continue to be interested in, and on which I plan to write a book for a general audience, at some time in the next few years (not about textual variants, but about the rise of Christian opposition to Jews and Judaism.) Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition. Quality is lacking since this is a VHS to 720p uprez:

BDEhrman2017-12-14T15:50:14-05:00September 21st, 2014|Christian Apocrypha, New Testament Manuscripts, Public Forum, Video Media|

Yale Shaffer Lectures 2 of 3 – Christ The Divine Man

As I indicated in a post last week, on October 12-14, 2004 I gave the three Shaffer lectures at Yale University, on "Christ in the Early Christian Tradition: Texts Disputed and Apocryphal." This is the second of those lectures, dealing with Christ as a Divine man. (Again, the quality is not as high as we have come to expect over the past couple of years, because it was recorded originally on VHS. But it's been worked over to make it still pretty decent. Enjoy!) Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition.

BDEhrman2017-12-14T22:37:55-05:00September 8th, 2014|Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum, Video Media|

Yale Shaffer Lectures 1 of 3 – Christ Come in the Flesh

Ten years ago now -- October 12-14, 2004 -- I delivered the Shaffer lectures at Yale University Divinity School. The central theme of the series was "Christ in the Early Christian Tradition: Texts Disputed and Apocryphal." Among other things, I tried to show how early Christian groups tried to restrict readings of their sacred texts to suit their own purposes. This first lecture is entitled on "Christ Come in the Flesh." (The video quality will not be up to what we all have come to expect, as it was recorded on VHS.) Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition.

BDEhrman2017-12-14T22:40:12-05:00August 31st, 2014|Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum, Video Media|

The Other Gospels: The Trade Book Version

The edition of the non-canonical Gospels that I’ve been discussing in previous posts (The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations), which I published with my colleague Zlatko Plese, was meant for academics – professors of New Testament and early Christianity and their graduate students. Most other people, of course, have no need or desire to see the original Greek, Latin, or Coptic of a text along with a translation. People generally just want an English translation. But having a facing-page translation is a great thing for scholars and budding scholars. The only way really to understand a foreign language text in its many nuances is to read it in its own language. And since these are texts that deserve to be studied carefully, minutely, with full attention to all the fullness of their meaning, they really need to be read in the Greek, Latin, and Coptic languages in which that they have come down to us. For some scholars, the book would be useful because it provides the original language text for all these writings, and [...]

BDEhrman2020-11-24T19:25:52-05:00August 26th, 2014|Book Discussions, Christian Apocrypha|

Apocryphal Gospels: The Scholarly Version

In my last couple of posts I began to describe how my edition of the Apocryphal Gospels came about. After having done the Apostolic Fathers in two volumes for the Loeb, I had decided never to do another translation project again. Too hard! But then, forgetting my decision, I thought it would be useful to have a Greek/Latin – English version of the early Christian non-canonical Gospels. And at the urging of the editor at Harvard, submitted a proposal also for the Loeb Classical Library. But the editorial board decided that they did not want to start publishing new editions of Christian texts in the series, since that would detract from its typical focus on Greek and Roman classics. And so I was now interested in a project without a publisher. I should say – this may not be widely known – that most of the time a scholar writes a book, s/he does not know who will be publishing it, or even if *anyone* will be. This can be a source of real anxiety, [...]

BDEhrman2020-11-24T19:28:13-05:00August 25th, 2014|Book Discussions, Christian Apocrypha|

How I Decided to Publish the Apocryphal Gospels

My previous two posts were meant to be a kind of lead-up to this one; this thread started by my talking about the times I have published both a scholarly work and a trade book for popular audiences on the same topic. The third and most recent time had to do with an edition of the Apocryphal Gospels. I’ve now given some of the backstory: I had done a translation project creating a new bi-lingual edition of the Apostolic Fathers for the Loeb Classical Library, and had vowed I would never do something like that again. But I broke my vow. It all began innocently enough. I had a scholar from England as a houseguest back in 1999 or so. David Parker is the premier New Testament textual critic in the U.K. these days, or in the English-speaking world for that matter. He is a real, hard-core manuscript guy. At that point of my career – fifteen years ago now – I too was actively involved in that field. Some of our interests and writings [...]

BDEhrman2020-11-24T19:29:22-05:00August 22nd, 2014|Book Discussions, Christian Apocrypha|

Thomasine “Gnostics” and Others

In this thread of posts I have been reproducing my comments on Gnosticism from the 2nd edition of my anthology, After the New Testament, to be released in the fall. In addition to the Sethians and the Valentinians, scholars talk about the school of Thomas and about yet other Gnostic groups that are not easy to identify with any of the other three or to group together in any meaningful way. Gnosticism was a messy group of religions! Here is what I say in the Introductions to the Thomasines and the Other Gnostic groups in the book. ***************************************************************** Thomasines A number of books from the early Christian tradition are connected with a figure known as Didymus Judas Thomas. The word “Didymus” means “twin” in Greek; so too the name “Thomas” means “twin” in Aramaic. And so this person is Judas, or Jude, the twin. But the twin of whom? In our earliest surviving Gospel, Jesus himself is said to have a brother who is named Jude (for example, Mark 6). And in later traditions, especially [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T16:55:22-04:00May 30th, 2014|Book Discussions, Christian Apocrypha, Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE)|

More on Jesus’ Wife!

So here’s a topic I haven’t addressed for nearly a year and a half! The Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. New developments happened about six weeks ago. I meant to post on them, other things got in the way, I put it off, so now I’m way behind the times. But in case you haven’t kept up with the story from other venues, I thought I should say something about it. It’s all extremely interesting. I won’t review everything I’ve said about the fragment already, but will give just a three-sentence summation of where the discussion stood last time I talked about it on the blog. In 2012 Karen King, a superb scholar of early Christianity at the Harvard Divinity School (and a colleague and friend), announced that she had been given by an anonymous collector the little fragment scrap of a Gospel written in Coptic. It was smaller than a credit card and contained eight partial lines of text that cited some words of Jesus, including a reference to “my wife.” Prof. King planned to [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-14T23:16:21-05:00May 24th, 2014|Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum|

Jesus Kissing Mary Magdalene

QUESTION: I know that the “Gospel of Philip does not have much if any real historical veracity to it about Jesus’ life, but does the references about Jesus and Mary Magdalene being lovers and the holes in the papyrus ‘kissing’ verse (verses 32 and 55 in your “Lost Scriptures” book), help support the view that this most likely Gnostic Christian sect truly believed and taught that Jesus and Mary M were married? RESPONSE: Yes, this is one of those questions I get asked about on occasion. I have a reasonably full discussion of the relevant issues in my book Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene. In the book I put the discussion in the context of – yes, you guessed it -- Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code, the one source many people turn to for the Gospel of Philip. (!) Here’s what I say there: ************************************************************** Some of the historical claims about the non-canonical Gospels in the Da Vinci Code have struck scholars as outrageous, or at least outrageously funny. The book claims, for example, that [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-30T12:51:02-04:00February 4th, 2014|Book Discussions, Christian Apocrypha, Historical Jesus, Reader’s Questions, Sex and Sexuality in the Bible, Women in Early Christianity|

Video: Illuminated Manuscripts and Legends about Jesus

I was asked to speak at the Getty Museum, in the Harold M. Williams Auditorium in Los Angeles, California on Thursday, September 22, 2011 during the exhibition "In the Beginning Was the Word: Medieval Gospel Illumination." Illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages are significant for the literary texts they preserve. But they are also important, historically and culturally, for their illustrations of the life of Jesus and other figures associated with him. These artistic representations tell tales of their own, and the visual stories are not always found in the corresponding texts. A careful examination of these images shows clearly and convincingly that medieval artists were familiar not only with the stories of the canonical Gospels but also with many noncanonical apocryphal tales of Jesus. The apocryphal stories, in some instances, were understood to be "Gospel truth" on par with accounts found in Scripture. In any event, here is the lecture that I gave: Please adjust gear icon for 720p High-Definition: Details on the "In the Beginning Was the Word: Medieval Gospel Illumination" 2011 [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-25T12:37:57-05:00February 3rd, 2014|Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum, Video Media|

Ramtha Again: The Question-Answer Session

Here is the second part of my talk at the Ramtha School of Enlightenment. It is a question-answer session that I had with the attendees, and for my money, it was the best, most interesting part of the evening. Since we had abundant time -- well over an hour -- I was able to give the questions full, drawn out answers, virtually mini-lectures in themselves, on an enormous range of issues that came up. The questions dealt with intriguing topics on the whole. Many of my answers are not what the questioner wanted to hear. And it is interesting to see what the crowd reaction to my answers was (usually very positive -- effusive at times; but it is clear that I am the odd-person-out in this group as, well, you would surely expect!). At some points I get very personal and talk not just about my scholarship but about my beliefs and understandings of the world. In any event, I hope you enjoy listening to this as much as I enjoyed participating in [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-25T12:40:09-05:00January 22nd, 2014|Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum, Video Media|

Trying Again: More on Ramtha

SORRY 'BOUT THIS. MY ORIGINAL POST FOR MEMBERS ONLY ON "MORE ON RAMTHA" WAS NOT SHOWING UP (FOR SOME WEIRD REASON) AS A POST YOU COULD ACCESS. SO HERE IT IS A SECOND TIME. I’m a little surprised (OK, really surprised) that when I posted the video of my lecture on the Gospel of Judas Iscariot two days ago it didn’t generate more (a lot more) discussion on the blog. Not because of the lecture, but because of where I gave it, the Ramtha School of Enlightenment. I expected that to spark a lively response. It didn’t. And the most common response that I did receive (on the blog or privately) was some surprise that I would lend my name to such an institution to give them greater credibility. So I should say something about that. To start: a number of people asked me if I would have given the talk if had known that it was not the American School of Gnosticism but was, what it was, the Ramtha School of Enlightenment. I think [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T17:34:15-04:00January 19th, 2014|Christian Apocrypha, Reflections and Ruminations, Video Media|

Jesus Writes A Letter!

QUESTION: I only recently bought Eusebius’ “Ecclesiastical History” and have flipped through it. I was shocked to see in Book 1, Chapter 13, a supposed letter from Jesus to King Agbarus! I knew I had to everything Eusebius wrote with a grain of salt, but after this, it made me realise that a grain won’t be enough. No one actually takes this letter seriously, do they? And if not, how much confidence can we place in his other testimonies of letters and documents that we no longer have access to beyond his book? RESPONSE: Yes indeed, this is the famous correspondence between Jesus and King Abgar of Edessa in Syria (well, famous among scholars of early Christianity at least). I have translated it anew for my book The Other Gospels. Here is what I say there about the letters (the one from Abgar to Jesus, then his response); at the end of the post I give my new translations of the two letters. ****************************************************************************************************** Jesus’ Correspondence with Abgar The apocryphal correspondence between Jesus and Abgar [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T17:34:31-04:00January 17th, 2014|Christian Apocrypha, Reader’s Questions|

Video: The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot Part 1

This past November I flew to Yelm, Washington, outside of Seattle, to deliver a lecture on the Gospel of Judas Iscariot at the Ramtha School of Enlightenment. When I had been invited to give the talk the year before, I frankly had never heard of the Ramtha School of Enlightenment. In fact, when I was invited, I was told that the school was called The Gnostic School of America -- and so I naturally thought that it was some kind of college made up of west-coast-modern-day-Gnostics who saw themselves standing in line with the ancient Gnostics. Such people do exist! But that is not what this school is. The School of Enlightenment was founded by a woman named JZ Knight, and it is named, obviously, after Ramtha. In case you don't remember who that was, let me tell you. Ramtha was a philosopher-warrior who lived 35,000 years ago, who, with his 2.5 million soldier army, conquered most of the known world at the time, including the island of Atlantis. JZ channels him. (In one of [...]

BDEhrman2017-12-25T12:40:54-05:00January 16th, 2014|Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum, Video Media|

Infancy Gospel of Thomas: The Technical vs. the Interesting

A couple of days ago, in my post on my talks at the Smithsonian, I indicated that my first lecture included a discussion of the Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and that in that kind of setting I have to choose carefully what I talk about. What I said in the post was: There are all sorts of things about this book that scholars are interested in that I won’t be going into, principally because they are things that non-scholars, frankly, are *not* all that interested in, and it’s impossible, in my view, to *make* them interested in them because, well, the issues are detailed and scholarly and not at all sexy…. A couple of readers indicated that they’d like to know what sorts of things those might be. So the following is what I say about this Gospel in my Introduction to the text in the scholarly version, Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations that I wrote, edited, and translated with my colleague Zlatko Plese. Some of you will be interested in this kind of detail; [...]

BDEhrman2020-11-24T19:01:25-05:00December 9th, 2013|Christian Apocrypha|

Taking Jesus the Wunderkind Seriously

I had a great time giving my lectures at the Smithsonian yesterday. Terrific crowd, very attentive, highly intelligent, great questions. And a completely exhausting day. Four lectures back to back is tough. So I came back to my room and did football, pizza, and beer all night, which was just what the doctor ordered. (I am a Dr., after all) The first lecture, as I indicated in my previous post, was on the Infancy Gospels, or at least on two of them, the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Proto-Gospel of James (Protevangelium Jacobi). I have already summarized some of the stories of the Infancy Gospel, and have pointed out the obvious, that on a casual reading Jesus certainly seems to be a bit of a brat. Or at least a miracle-working son of God who as an immature boy does not seem to have his powers under control and behaves with a real mischievous streak. But I also indicated that there are scholars who call that understanding of the text into question. I’m not [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T17:40:14-04:00December 8th, 2013|Christian Apocrypha|

Jesus: L’enfant terrible?

I just (now) flew into Washington D.C., to give four lectures tomorrow (count them, four) on “The Other Gospels” at the Smithsonian. Each lecture is about an hour, followed by 15 minutes of Q & A. It’ll be a grueling day. I do these Smithsonian things once or twice a year on average. They’re great – 160 adults who have paid good money and devoted an entire day to hearing lectures on a topic important to them. It’s a terrific audience, wide-ranging, highly intelligent, educated, and curious -- real a shift from teaching 19-year old college kids. I enjoy both kinds of audience very much – but (some) more things can be assumed in this setting and, well, the humor has to change. :-) I normally do these Smithsonian talks when a new book has come out, and so this is to be about the new edition of The Other Gospels that just appeared. I’ve decided that my lectures will be on four different Gospels/types of Gospels, and maybe I’ll blog a bit about them. [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T17:40:26-04:00December 6th, 2013|Christian Apocrypha|

The Gospel of Peter in a Papyrus Fragment?

Yesterday I gave a lecture at the Biblical Archeology Society FEST here in Baltimore. Even though I'm (obviously) not an archaeologist, a lot of my work is connected with archaeology, especially the discovery of ancient manuscripts. In 1886 archaeologists digging in Akhmim Egypt were working through a cemetery and uncovered a tomb, from about the 8th century, they thought, that had, along with a skeleton, a 66 page parchment book. The book was written in Greek, and had four texts in it (all incomplete), including, on the first ten pages, a copy of what was identified as the Gospel of Peter. If you’ve ever read the surviving Gospel of Peter, this is the text (or the translation of it!) that you have read. I can blog more about it at some point later. For now: this is an alternative account of the trial, death, and resurrection of Jesus, which is most famous for the resurrection scene, in which the narrator describes what actually happened when Jesus came out of the grave. It’s spectacular. Jesus is [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T17:43:28-04:00November 23rd, 2013|Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum|

My SBL Conference

There are two happy events affecting my life today. The first is that I just now have received an author’s copy of my new book, co-edited with my colleague, Zlatko Plese, The Other Gospels: Accounts of Jesus from Outside the New Testament (Oxford University Press). As I’ve earlier indicated, this book is an English-only edition of our Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations, which included the original Greek, Latin, and Coptic along with the English translations. For this new lay-reader edition, we have simplified the introductions, making them more accessible to the non-scholar, and gotten rid of the ancient languages. The other happy event is that I am off, now, to my annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature meeting. This is the professional meeting for all scholars and professors of Biblical literature. It is a highlight of my year. Papers are read by scholars on topics of everything you can imagine by scholars who are presenting the results of their research to other scholars. Papers are short – usually 20-25 minutes in length – [...]

BDEhrman2020-04-03T17:43:36-04:00November 22nd, 2013|Christian Apocrypha, Public Forum, Reflections and Ruminations|

Upcoming Lectures at the Smithsonian

Now that the government is back in business, the Smithsonian Associates has resumed its work; they sponsor lectures and lecture series in Washington D.C., every week, all the time, and I usually do a day long series of lectures for them once or twice a year, based on a book I have coming out. I’m scheduled for the Spring 2014 in conjunction with my book How Jesus Became God. But I’ll also be doing one this December for the English-only version of the apocryphal Gospels that is to be published by then (edited from the original-language + English version that came out last year; this new one, like the old one, was written, edited, and translated with my colleague at UNC, Zlatko Plese). This first event is scheduled for Saturday Dec. 7; there will be four lectures, two in the morning and two in the afternoon. It’s a killer of a day (for me at least). But anyone in the area should consider attending. You can get further information at their website: http://smithsonianassociates.org/ticketing/index.aspx The following [...]

BDEhrman2018-01-14T22:57:13-05:00October 25th, 2013|Book Discussions, Christian Apocrypha, Historical Jesus|

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