News

Brent Landau Talks Revelation of the Magi on Talk Gnosis and in Vice Magazine

‘Tis the season, after all, and what better way to celebrate than to learn about apocryphal infancy traditions? NASSCAL Communications Officer Brent Landau, author of The Revelation of the Magi: The Lost Tale of the Wise Men’s Journey to Bethlehem (Harper, 201), was interviewed by Talk Gnosis about the text’s apparent references to the ritual consumption of hallucinogens (“Christmas on Drugs“) and by Vice magazine about apocryphal infancy traditions more generally in an article by Rick Paulus entitled “What’s Up with Our Obsession with the Baby Jesus?“

Christian Apocrypha Books, Conferences, and Other Projects

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].

For books, please include a complete bibliographical entry, a small image of the cover, an abstract, and a link to a catalog entry.

For other projects, please send along any promotional material you have, including web site addresses, e-flyers, etc.

Bradley Rice discusses Jesus in India on Talk Gnosis

Bradley Rice, the Student Member on the NASSCAL board, was interviewed on the Talk Gnosis podcast about Nicolas Notovitch’s Life of Issa, a late nineteenth-century apocryphon depicting Jesus’ teenage years in India. Brad presented a paper at the 2015 York Christian Apocrypha Symposium on the text. To give you a flavor of what Brad has to say on the podcast, here is the abstract for the paper:

“The Apocryphal Tale of Jesus? A Journey to India: Nicolas Notovitch and the Life of Saint Issa Revisited.”
When published in 1894, Nicolas Notovitch’s The Unknown Life of Jesus Christ surprised the public with an unknown scroll—the Life of Saint Issa—which described how Jesus spent his adolescence in India, learning the teachings of Hindus and Buddhists before beginning his public ministry in Galilee. The Life of Saint Issa was, of course, soon exposed as a fake written by none other than Notovitch himself. But while often dismissed as a forgery, the Life of Saint Issa may also be understood as part of a broader tradition of apocryphal infancy narratives and, in its own way, as a kind of modern “infancy gospel.” Notovitch’s Life of Saint Issa will thus serve as the springboard for a larger discussion of medieval and modern apocrypha which tell of Jesus’ journey to India, in which I will illustrate the continuity of ancient and modern apocrypha and explore how they might be studied in comparable ways.

New Book Series: Inventing Christianity

Of interest to NASSCAL members:

Logo for Inventing Christianity

Penn State University Press is pleased to announce Inventing Christianity, a new book series edited by L. Stephanie Cobb and David L. Eastman. All books in the series will focus on the second and third centuries, a time when insiders and outsiders alike were grappling with what it meant to be Christian. This period saw shifting notions of clerical and textual authority, group boundaries, interpretive strategies, and ritual practices. The series will examine the numerous ways in which early Christianity was “invented” by different authors in different times to different ends.

The series editors seek innovative work that examines the broad theme of “inventing”—i.e., how early Christianity developed and how it was perceived to have developed—and contributes to the study of second- and third-century Christianity in its multiple forms and cultural interactions. In addition to studies of Christian texts, communities, and issues, the editors invite books that cross religious boundaries and chronological periods. How, for instance, is Christianity “invented” by non-Christians? How is early Christianity “invented” in later eras? The editors welcome original work from a variety of disciplines and scholarly perspectives.

Questions or submissions should be directed to Penn State University Press:
Kathryn B. Yahner, Acquisitions Editor
[email protected]

or to the series editors:
L. Stephanie Cobb
[email protected]

David L. Eastman
[email protected]

Initial inquiries should take the form of a 3–5 page proposal outlining the intent of the project, its scope, its relation to other work on the topic, and the audience(s) you have in mind. Please include a current CV and 1-2 sample chapters, if available.

A series postcard is available here.

NASSCAL Member Publication: Philip Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ

Philip Jenkins, The Many Faces of Christ: The Thousand Year Story of the Survival and Influence of the Lost Gospels. New York: Basic Books, 2015.

Jenkins-The-ManyThe standard account of early Christianity tells us that the first centuries after Jesus’ death witnessed an efflorescence of Christian sects, each with its own gospel. We are taught that these alternative scriptures, which represented intoxicating, daring, and often bizarre ideas, were suppressed in the fourth and fifth centuries, when the Church canonized the gospels we know today: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The rest were lost, destroyed, or hidden.

In The Many Faces of Christ, the renowned religious historian Philip Jenkins thoroughly refutes our most basic assumptions about the Lost Gospels. He reveals that dozens of alternative gospels not only survived the canonization process but in many cases remained influential texts within the official Church. Whole new gospels continued to be written and accepted. For a thousand years, these strange stories about the life and death of Jesus were freely admitted onto church premises, approved for liturgical reading, read by ordinary laypeople for instruction and pleasure, and cited as authoritative by scholars and theologians.

The Lost Gospels spread far and wide, crossing geographic and religious borders. The ancient Gospel of Nicodemus penetrated into Southern and Central Asia, while both Muslims and Jews wrote and propagated gospels of their own. In Europe, meanwhile, it was not until the Reformation and Counter-Reformation that the Lost Gospels were effectively driven from churches. But still, many survived, and some continue to shape Christian practice and belief in our own day.

Offering a revelatory new perspective on the formation of the biblical canon, the nature of the early Church, and the evolution of Christianity, The Many Faces of Christ restores these Lost Gospels to their central place in Christian history.

NASSCAL Membership Reaches 100

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.

NASSCAL Member Publication: Richard Pervo, Acts of John

Richard Pervo, The Acts of John. Early Christian Apocrypha 6. Salem, OR: Polebridge Press, 2015.

When and where was the Acts of John composed, by whom, for whom, and why? Using his vibrant Scholars Version translation, Pervo introduces the text of the Acts of John, identifies its sources, investigates early witnesses, and illuminates the motivations of its author. Includes the text, notes, and cross-references.

The Early Christian Apocrypha series features fresh new translations of major apocryphal texts that survive from the early period of the Christian church. These non-canonical writings are crucial for determining the complex history of Christian origins. Each translation is accompanied by appendices, textual notes, translation notes, cross references and index. An extensive introduction also sets out the challenge of recovering and reconstructing the original text.