Rediscovering the Apocryphal Continent: New Perspectives on Early Christian and Late Antique Apocryphal Texts and Traditions

This volume collects the contributions of a group of scholars who started rethinking, in 2004, the traditional category of New Testament Apocrypha according to the new perspectives of a greater continuity not only between early Jewish and Christian scriptural productions, but also between early Christian and late antique apocryphal literatures. This is the result of the confluence of two, so far, alternative approaches: on the one hand, the deconstruction of the customary categories of """"Jewish Christianity"""" and """"Gnosticism,"""" and on the other, the new awareness that the production of new apocryphal texts went on well into late antiquity and beyond. In the twenty essays published here, different facets of this apocryphal continent are newly explored, from the Christian appropriation of Jewish stories and literary genres, with a special emphasis on the case of the late antique Pseudo-Clementines, to the complex and controversial situation of the narrative roles attributed to suc h figures as Judas Iscariot, Mary of Magdala, Mary the mother of Jesus, or Peter. Contributors:Kelley Coblentz Bautch, Giovanni Battista Bazzana, Timothy Beech, Tony Burke, Dominique Côté, James R. Davila, Theodore de Bruyn, Peter W. Dunn, Minna Heimola, Ian H. Henderson, Cornelia B. Horn, Vahan Hovhanessian, F. Stanley Jones, Michael Kaler, Nicole Kelley, Louis Painchaud, Timothy Pettipiece, Pierluigi Piovanelli, Annette Yoshiko Reed, Stephen J. Shoemaker