Category: News

An announcement from Jean-Michel Roessli:

Dear friends and colleagues,

I am pleased to announce the publication of The Ever-New Tongue. The Text in the Book of Lismore, translated by John Carey (Apocryphes 15; Turnhout, Brepols, 2018):

http://www.brepols.net/Pages/ShowProduct.aspx?prod_id=IS-9782503579290-1

The Ever-New Tongue (In Tenga Bithnúa) is a medieval Irish account of the mysteries of the universe, remarkable for its exotic background and for the fiery exuberance of its style. This translation, based on the definitive edition of the text, renders this remarkable work available to a wider readership.​

Composed in Ireland in the ninth or tenth century, The Ever-New Tongue purports to reveal the mysteries of the creation, of the cosmos, and of the end of the world, as related by the soul of the apostle Philip speaking in the language of the angels. Drawing on a multitude of sources, both mainstream and heterodox, it reflects the richness of early Irish learning as well as the vitality of its author’s imagination. Two apocryphal texts appear to have inspired its original composition: a lost Egyptian apocalyptic discourse, and one of the segments of the Acts of Philip (a work otherwise unknown in Latin Christendom).

Based on the critical edition of The Ever-New Tongue in the Corpus Christianorum, Series Apocryphorum, this book presents an English translation of the oldest (and most conservative) version of the text, preserved in the Book of Lismore, together with a fully updated introduction.

John Carey is Professor of Early and Medieval Irish at University College Cork, Ireland; a member of the Apocrypha Hiberniae project; and general editor of the Temenos Academy Review. His publications include King of Mysteries: Early Irish Religious Writings (1998, 2000) and A Single Ray of the Sun: Religious Speculation in Early Ireland (1999, 2011). With Emma Nic Cárthaigh and Caitríona Ó Dochartaigh, he edited the two-volume collection The End and Beyond: Medieval Irish Eschatology (2014).

If someone versed in Irish apocryphal literature is interested in reviewing this nice volume for Memini, the journal of the Quebec Society for​ Medieval Studies (Société d’études médiévales du Québec, SEMQ), s/he is invited to get in touch with me and I’ll ask the secretary of the journal to send her/him​ a copy of it.

With all best wishes to everyone,

​Jean-Michel Roessli,
coordinator of the Apocryphes series
Email: [email protected]

The SBL Christian Apocrypha program unit’s Call for Papers for the 2016 Annual Meetings in San Antonio has been posted on the SBL website:

The Christian Apocrypha program unit will run four sessions at the 2016 Annual Meetings. The first is a book review panel dedicated to Philip Jenkins’s The Many Faces of Christ: The Thousand-Year Story of the Survival and Influence of the Lost Gospels; panelists are invited. The second session is a joint session with the Digital Humanities in Biblical, Early Jewish, and Christian Studies program unit, pertaining to the ways in which digital humanities is impacting the study of the Christian Apocrypha; although some presenters will be invited, we strongly encourage scholars interested in participating to contact the program unit chair and/or submit an abstract. The third session will tentatively focus on violence in the Christian Apocrypha; submissions of abstracts on this theme are welcome. The fourth and final session will be open to submission of any abstracts pertaining to the study of the Christian Apocrypha, broadly conceived; members of the steering committee, however, are particularly interested in papers exploring healing in the Christian Apocrypha, the artistic/iconographic representation of apocryphal narratives, or discussions of Christian Apocrypha found in patristic sources.

Please consider submitting a paper proposal, especially if you haven’t presented in Christian Apocrypha previously! For informal inquiries, please contact the Program Unit Chair, Brent Landau, at [email protected].

 

One of the goals of NASSCAL is to promote and support the work of our members.  To that end, we want to use the “News” page of the NASSCAL web site to inform readers of our members’ new books, collaborative projects, conferences, etc. The content of the News page also gets disseminated to all members via email.

If there is something you think NASSCAL members would like to know about, please send the information to our Communications Officer Brent Landau at [email protected].

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Only a week or so after the official announcement of NASSCAL’s existence, our membership has now reached 100. Too bad we don’t have a prize. Thank you to everyone who answered the call to join the group.

The blog for the Bulletin for the Study of Religion has graciously posted an announcement about the creation of NASSCAL. You can read it HERE.