New Testament Apocrypha
More Noncanonical Scriptures Volume 2 ed Tony Burke Eerdmans 2020 Hb, 655pp, £60.99, ISBN 9780802872906 Most people think of the Apocrypha as the handful of books that are in Catholic Bibles but not Protestant Bibles: Judith, Tobit, the Wisdom of Solomon and others. Since The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail and then The Da Vinci Code, many have become aware of another group of apocryphal books, often called gnostic gospels. Large collections of texts from the century or so before and after the time of Jesus were found in the last century, including the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Nag Hammadi Library.
But there are many more. This is the second collection of obscure Christian texts edited by Tony Burke; some are early, some as late as the 12th century, most of them are rare and many of them never before available in English translation. It’s a scholarly book, with detailed introductions and notes to each of the translated texts. Some are complete “books”; others are episodes slipped into some versions of longer texts.
One is an account of a young lad, Dimas, who lets Joseph, Mary and the baby Jesus escape Herod’s search. His father disowns him, and he embarks on a life of banditry, ending up on a cross next to Jesus; he confesses to him and they go into glory together.
Another is the delightfully-titled but gruesome “Acts of Thomas and his Wonderworking Skin”. The apostle Thomas is sold by a post-Resurrection Jesus to a new master in India. While the master is away Thomas converts his wife who, when the master returns, won’t have sex with him on Sunday. Enraged, the master has Thomas flayed. The wife hurls herself off the roof of the house and dies; Thomas takes his flayed skin and lays it over her, and she comes back from the dead – at which point the master converts as well. After similar adventures Jesus reappears, glues Thomas’s flayed skin back on his body, and they go off on a cloud.
Then there’s the complex “Legend of the Holy Rood Tree”, in which twigs from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden end up becoming the cross that Jesus is crucified on.
There’s a “Life of Mary Magdalene” that has her going to Marseille. There are two versions of a “Life of Judas” which have him, Oedipus-like, killing his father and marrying his mother before following and then betraying Jesus. There are gospels, acts, apocalypses and more – 29 texts in all, a fascinating insight into how Christians have expanded and embroidered their mythology over the centuries.
Jay Vickers
★★★★