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Beyond the Canonical and the Apocryphal Books, the Presence of a Third Category: The Books Useful for the Soul

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2012

François Bovon
François Bovon*
Affiliation:
Harvard Divinity School
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Extract

I like tennis—both to play and to watch it.1 Nothing is more pleasant than watching an exchange between Federer and Nadal. There is a similar kind of exchange that has been going on in this country in recent years. On one side, there are evangelical New Testament scholars; on the other, liberal scholars working on early Christianity. In the camp of the evangelicals, Ben Witherington,2 Craig A. Evans,3 and Darrell L. Bock4 are playing a defensive game, accusing the others of constituting a “new school,”5 one that prefers heresy over orthodoxy and promotes diversity where unity once was. In the camp of the critics, Elaine Pagels promotes the spirituality of the Gospel of Thomas; 6 Bart D. Ehrman's Lost Christianities flies in the face of his opponents;7 and Marvin Meyer considers the Gospel of Judas a valuable work that reveals in the mind of the dark apostle knowledge of the divine realm.8

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Harvard Theological Review , Volume 105 , Issue 2 , 30 March 2012 , pp. 125 - 137
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Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 2012

Introduction

I like tennis—both to play and to watch it.Footnote 1 Nothing is more pleasant than watching an exchange between Federer and Nadal. There is a similar kind of exchange that has been going on in this country in recent years. On one side, there are evangelical New Testament scholars; on the other, liberal scholars working on early Christianity. In the camp of the evangelicals, Ben Witherington,Footnote 2 Craig A. Evans,Footnote 3 and Darrell L. BockFootnote 4 are playing a defensive game, accusing the others of constituting a “new school,”Footnote 5 one that prefers heresy over orthodoxy and promotes diversity where unity once was. In the camp of the critics, Elaine Pagels promotes the spirituality of the Gospel of Thomas; Footnote 6 Bart D. Ehrman's Lost Christianities flies in the face of his opponents;Footnote 7 and Marvin Meyer considers the Gospel of Judas a valuable work that reveals in the mind of the dark apostle knowledge of the divine realm.Footnote 8

In this competition a polarization occurs on both sides, one that concerns the contrast between canonical and apocryphal texts. The danger afoot is to slip into a doctrinal dilemma, when research should remain primarily historical. Among the historiographical lacunae on the evangelical side, I see a weakness due to the Protestant origin of the partners. In their work there is a neglect of the historical dimension of late antique Christianity, a lack of familiarity with patristic literature. The real life of the second, third, and fourth centuries—the kerygmatic emphasis on faith as well as the early Christian debates—have been ignored. Reading the work of these evangelical scholars, one has the impression that early Christianity knew only the New Testament, the Gospel of Thomas, and a few Nag Hammadi codices. On the side of the critical scholars, I notice a lack of interest in the emergence of the early catholica, with its emphasis on ministry, creed, sacraments, and church organization.

More important than these limitations is the inadequate repartition into two groups. According to all competitors, books are either biblical or apocryphal, and the apocryphal can be redeemed even as the biblical can be criticized. My position, on the contrary, is that from the beginning Christian communities used more than two categories and respected several degrees of authority for their texts. In the middle of the second century, a grouping of four gospels took place, and in the second half of the same century this corpus gained the prestige of a canon of Scripture. The same occurred for a collection of Pauline epistles. This agreement was in large part the result of an ecumenical effort. But beyond this common agreement, in the early catholica there was hesitation regarding other texts, gospels, epistles, acts, and revelations.Footnote 9 Some groups liked some of them, while others ignored them or neglected them. Par gain de paix, a certain flexibility or permissiveness was accepted and several books kept their authority, albeit limited. Ancient authors call these books “disputed” () books.Footnote 10

My claim therefore is that the majority of early Christians in the catholica and in other communities divided the available books not into two but into three categories: the most authoritative were considered canonical; those deprived of any authority were rejected and called apocryphal; and those that had some authority, that is, those that were considered profitable or useful, comprised a third category. I believe that Origen was a witness to such a repartition.Footnote 11 There is no doubt that Eusebius respects it, even though he prefers to avoid it.Footnote 12 Athanasius of Alexandria explicitly affirms it even as he restricts its interpretation: the third category's destination is the catechumen!Footnote 13 In later centuries the matter becomes so clear that it appears typographically. Carl de Boer's edition of the Stichometry, attributed to Nicephorus, the Patriarch of Constantinople in the early ninth century, divides the Old and New Testaments each into three categories: a) the holy scriptures, b) the books that are disputed, and c) the apocrypha.Footnote 14 Among the disputed books of the New Testament, Nicephorus names the Apocalypse of John, i.e., the book of Revelation, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Gospel of the Hebrews. Among the apocrypha, he names the Travels (i.e., Acts) of Peter, John, and Thomas, the Gospel of Thomas, the Didache of the Apostles, the books of Clement, the works of Ignatius and Polycarp, and the Shepherd of Hermas.

Here I insert two comments. First, I think that the solution of three categories was anticipated by the canonization of the Hebrew Bible.Footnote 15 During its fascinating history, a distinction was drawn between books that make the hands impure (the canonical books) and those that do not (the noncanonical books). But there were also perceptible hesitations between schools, so that some books were open to discussion. Even if we have to reject the hypothesis of an “Alexandrian Canon,” we should accept the hypothesis of a variety of tendencies inside Judaism, particularly in Egypt. The first Christians inherited the Greek Bible from Jewish groups who read large collections of texts.Footnote 16 When Origen, Eusebius, and Athanasius mention or presuppose a third category, they have in mind such texts as the so-called Deuterocanonicals.

Second, mutatis mutandis a similar situation occurred with Christian documents. Some were accepted by all the communities of the early orthodox Church. Others were accepted by some, but refused by others. And efforts toward the unity of the Church led to the conclusion that certain writings, such as the martyrdoms of the apostles, should not be rejected but respected as profitable. The extensive textual evidence for the Martyrdom of the Apostle Philip, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and the Metastasis of the Apostle John proves that these books were not rejected but received certain recognition. They were slowly considered not only disputed but “useful for the soul,” as some Byzantine manuscripts say ().Footnote 17 The rigid position of the Decretum Gelasianum (Gelasian Decree) was not strong enough to eradicate the notion of this third category.Footnote 18

Revealing Prefaces

I present now three prefaces from late antique writings that not only illustrate care for the third category, but also demonstrate how to rescue the best of noncanonical texts from shipwreck. I limit my overview to three prefaces, but actually I found a dozen of them; thus I can claim that there was a literary genre embedded in a sociological situation, as should be the case for any Gattung, according to Hermann Gunkel. I will call this genre “I found a book.” The genre is not a Christian production. It is embedded in the Jewish tradition and is attested as early as the discovery of the book of the Law in the temple during the time of King Josiah (2 Kgs 22:8).Footnote 19

You may recall that a theologian of Seleucia in the fifth century C.E. was devoted to Thecla. Pseudo-Basil of Seleucia wrote a work in two parts, edited in 1978 by Gilbert DagronFootnote 20 and studied recently by Scott Johnson.Footnote 21 The first part is a rewriting of the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and the second part a collection of miracle stories that occurred in connection with Thecla's sanctuary at Seleucia. In his preface the author explicitly says that he borrows from a previous, more ancient work, which he calls a “history” or “historical account” (). Then with some embarrassment he examines the relationship between this ancient book and his present literary production. He says that, on the one hand, he respects the meaning () and the chronological sequence of events () in the book, but, on the other, he changed the composition () and the vocabulary () of his source. Like all writers of such prefaces, he is torn between fidelity to the original and the value of his own contribution. Pseudo-Basil then dares to summarize his activity as an addition without betrayal!Footnote 22 For Pseudo-Basil, the ancient work he is recycling belongs definitively to the third category. It is not canonical nor is it apocryphal: it is a , a historical account (the author of the Protevangelium of James [25.1] uses the same term for the story of the birth of the Virgin Mary). And what is historical is always useful in terms of knowledge and profitable for piety.

“I found a book!”: such is also Victorinus’ claim.Footnote 23 Victorinus of Capua was a Catholic bishop in the sixth century C.E., from the region of Naples. What he discovered was nothing other than a Latin version of Tatian's Diatessaron, the second century C.E. gospel harmony. Victorinus admits, first, that he was unaware of the existence of the book. Then he expresses a reaction similar to that of Pseudo-Basil. He is hesitant, for he rejoices over having gospel material in front of him, but his joy becomes mixed with suspicion: this document does not correspond to the canonical documents. In order to overcome his hesitation and his scruples, he decides to make an inquiry. Reading Eusebius of Caesarea, he discovers the existence of gospel harmonies and decides that this one must be the one written by Tatian and not the one written by Ammonius.Footnote 24 He admires the organization of the material and respects its historical value. But he cannot offer his discovery without changes. So he decides to respect the sequence of the harmony, as modern readers can confirm through reading the famous Fulda manuscript, but he changes the wording by substituting Jesus’ sayings from the canonical gospels, particularly from Matthew, for the wording in Tatian's Diatessaron. Scholars created the word “vulgatization” for this strange phenomenon.Footnote 25

“I found a book!”: such is also Gregory of Tours's exclamation.Footnote 26 Gregory was Bishop of Tours in the center of what is now France in the second half of the sixth century C.E. He says, first, that Christians know of the apostles’ destiny through the canonical gospels and the canonical book of Acts; second, that they are aware of noncanonical passion narratives of the apostles; but, third, that this book, a life of the apostle Andrew and all his miracles, is new to him.

Such a discovery is exciting, but at the same time dangerous. Gregory is cautious, for he has heard that some consider this book to be apocryphal. He likes the miracle stories but does not dare to republish the whole book as it is. He sees the danger of heresy in the speeches—though he never explicitly admits this—so he offers simply that the speeches are redundant. He then takes saw in hand as an instrument of salvation; that is, he cuts out the heretical speeches and simply eliminates them. Proud of his pruning he presents his Life of the Apostle Andrew as an admirable collection of miracles,Footnote 27 rescuing for us the plot of the lost major part of the Acts of Andrew.Footnote 28

Examples of Books in the Third Category

The case of 3 Corinthians is a good example of books that are members of the third category. West European scholars discovered this book in the seventeenth century, although it had been part of the Armenian canon for more than a thousand years. The discovery was made by Archbishop James Ussher in 1644, and the first English translation was the work of Lord Byron! The poet loved Venice and during his time in the City of Doges he visited the Armenian monastery of the Mechitarists, and even took Armenian lessons from Father Pasqual Aucher. Together with his instructor, he translated 3 Corinthians!Footnote 29 The discovery by Carl Schmidt of the Coptic Acts of Paul in the beginning of the twentieth century affirms the apocryphal character of this document and confirms the absence of this letter from the Western canon.Footnote 30

But hesitations remained, for it was probable that 3 Corinthians, together with the letter of the Corinthian church to the apostle, first lived an independent existence before being inserted into the Acts of Paul. That situation has been proven by the discovery of five copies of Latin versions and the Greek Bodmer Papyrus X. I cannot resist mentioning the fate of one of these Latin versions. Switzerland has an Italian-speaking State called Ticino, located on the southern slope of the Alps. In the small alpine town of Biasca, a very old manuscript was found and brought to the nearest place of safety, the Ambrosian Library in Milan. There Samuel Berger, the famous Vulgate scholar, discovered in it the first known Latin version of 3 Corinthians. He began to copy it, but, as often happens in such cases, he did not have time to finish the transcription. Politely, he asked a young scholar of the Ambrosiana if he would finish the transcription for him. Father Achille Ratti accepted the task and finished it. Any dictionary of the popes will tell you that Achille Ratti became pope under the name of Pius XI! So a future pope accepted the assignment of copying a noncanonical document.

To come to more serious matters, in the fourth century Ephrem the Syrian wrote a commentary on the Pauline epistles. As would later be the case with the Armenians, the Syrian theologian considered 3 Corinthians to be canonical, and as an exegete he considered it his duty to comment on it. One page of this commentary is relevant to our topic. Here Ephrem is arguing against the Bardesanites, whom he reproaches for their attachment to apocryphal Acts of apostles. Not only, he says, do they read apocryphal Acts of apostles (which is historically probable), but they also write apocryphal Acts (which is historically improbable).Footnote 31 There is an irony in Ephrem's attitude: the Syrian theologian finds—at one and the same time—ammunition in 3 Corinthians while condemning the reading of the apocryphal Acts of the apostles! So Ephrem uses a book belonging to what I call the third category, namely 3 Corinthians, in order to contradict opponents who use apocryphal material about the apostles.

Byzantine manuscripts reserve for us another surprise that supports the existence of this third category. Apparently some readers of the canonical book of Acts were not satisfied with their reading. They did not understand how a polemic against the Hellenist Stephen could arise, because his apologetic speech (Acts 7) does not present Jesus Christ but only summarizes Israel's history from Abraham to King Solomon. Becoming authors, these readers will explain in a narrative way that before the polemic attested in the canonical book of Acts, another controversy between the Christian Hellenists, the Pharisees, and the Sadducees had taken place. Logically, this dispute had Jesus Christ at its core.Footnote 32 Thus we have the paradoxical result: the noncanonical story of this first encounter is christologically more relevant than its canonical counterpart.

The rare books and manuscripts collection at Harvard University is located in the Houghton Library. Among its treasures is a little book perhaps five inches high and three inches wide. The book comes from France and dates from the second half of the fourteenth century.Footnote 33 There is no red ink in the book, meaning that so-called rubrics are absent. Therefore we know that this was not a liturgical book. As its small format attests, it was a book for personal devotion. Inside is recorded the Gospel of Nicodemus. Editors such as Montague Rhodes James and Wilhelm Schneemelcher would say: this is an apocryphal text.Footnote 34 I say: no, this is a book belonging to the third category. The Gospel of Nicodemus, also called the Acts of Pilate, cannot be counted as an apocryphal title since it was not condemned in Late Antiquity and in its Latin form it is found in at least four hundred manuscripts.Footnote 35

For many years scholars had been waiting for the catalogue of Greek manuscripts discovered at the monastery of Saint Catherine's at Sinai in 1975.Footnote 36 When it was finally published, readers could locate a short pieceFootnote 37 called the Prayer and Apocalypse of Paul. Footnote 38 While preparing the edition of that new document, I read the surviving forms of the Apocalypse of Paul. In Armenian alone there are four different versions,Footnote 39 and in Latin there are many forms of the text.Footnote 40 Even though it is placed from time to time on the list of apocryphal books, as in the Decretum Gelasianum, the Apocalypse of Paul never disappeared; in one form or another it has nourished Christians for centuries. Dante modestly says:

But I, why do I come there? And who allows it?

I am not Aeneas, I am not Paul;

Of this neither I nor others think me worthy.Footnote 41

He is referring to the apostle of the noncanonical Apocalypse of Paul—not to the apostle of the canonical Epistles.

Characteristics of the Third Category

The example of the Apocalypse of Paul allows me to present some characteristics of the third category as compared to the apocryphal and canonical books. In terms of fate, or destiny, we have to admit that most of the time apocryphal literature was destroyed. It no longer exists—with fragile exceptions preserved in a jar in the sands of Egypt, or in the corner of a neglected monastic library. With respect to canonical evidence, every New Testament scholar knows that no two manuscripts of the New Testament display exactly the same text.Footnote 42 Nevertheless, the text of the Gospels and the Epistles is relatively stable, making possible the compilation of a critical edition. The destiny of books in the third category, by way of contrast, was very different. Their text is so flexible that it is often impossible to publish a single critical edition. Multiple forms of the text—each having different titles and being recorded in a wide variety of manuscripts—orient one's attention to evidence of a situation where each scribe achieved an individual performance. In addition to the four Armenian versions of the Apocalypse of Paul we find many forms of the Latin text, as the readers of Theodore Silverstein and Anthony Hilhorst know well.Footnote 43 The newly discovered Prayer and Apocalypse of Paul has, for example, no real equivalent.Footnote 44

Another characteristic of the third category concerns the function of the text. The canonical gospels and the canonical epistles were read in church; they were considered holy words for salvation and sacred material for sermons. The texts of the apocrypha, on the contrary, should not reach the ears of the people of God. Such was the opinion of Eusebius in the East and Augustine in the West.Footnote 45 But the text of books in the third category, having their own destiny, was to be preserved, copied, and adapted to serve for the soul's benefit. In the Middle Ages, noble women, for example, on the occasion of their wedding received books of prayer that included writings from the third category. In addition to benefitting an individual, there was, and still is today, the collective usage of these books in a monastic setting. An Athonite manuscript tells us that the Acts of Philip should be read not in church, for they do not belong to the holy scriptures, but in the dining room of the monastery, at the .Footnote 46

Beyond private piety and monastic edification there remains the most mysterious function of all: were these texts or some of these texts readings for the perfection of Christians? Can we speak of esoteric teachings in the early catholica as we speak of arcane discipline with respect to the sacraments? Long ago Jean Daniélou claimed that the early catholica developed such an esoteric doctrine.Footnote 47 The canonical gospel of Mark seems indeed to allude to a certain type of conversation between Jesus and his disciples after the crowd had been dismissed. And the apostle Paul, after refusing any form of wisdom disconnected from the cross of Christ, claims to offer particular knowledge to the perfect.Footnote 48 According to certain Christians, to read well-known, public texts is good, but to walk on a path that leads to higher knowledge is better still.Footnote 49 Such a claim was not the appanage of the so-called Gnostics. In northern Italy, a high place for the Apocrypha in Late Antiquity, Philastrius of Brescia says that certain Christians read such texts in order to add an esoteric dimension to the canonical books.Footnote 50 According to his adversaries—Philastrius says—these books were not apocryphal in a negative sense; on the contrary they had the positive value of leading a Christian to reach secret perfection. The same can be said of Spain and Portugal during the time of Priscillian.Footnote 51 Bishop Turibius of Astorga, an adversary of the future martyr, tells us that Priscillian and his disciples used texts belonging to the third category as literature for the perfect.Footnote 52 And when Athanasius of Alexandria admits the third category but limits its usage to the catechumens, he may have been in a polemical position. He may have been arguing against Alexandrian Christians, who read such books not as protreptic wisdom but as the pinnacle of religious knowledge.Footnote 53

Theological Perspective

Brought up as a Protestant theologian at the feet of Karl Barth, I received the doctrine of Sola Scriptura. Many years later I considered Sola Scriptura as a canon within the canon (to use theological jargon). As Jaroslav Pelikan and Christoph Wolff demonstrated during the exhibition The Bible of the Reformation and the Reformation of the Bible,Footnote 54 the Lutheran tradition never imposed the Bible without incorporating another tool: music, as in the famous chorales; or literature, that is, texts of the third category. At the end of the sixteenth century, there was a Lutheran theologian named Praetorius, who was fond of noncanonical literature. He liked the Letter to the Laodiceans, and he even suggested that it should be used in class to drill divinity students in ancient languages!Footnote 55

The Orthodox, Roman Catholic, and EpiscopalianFootnote 56 traditions share with other churches an interest for the books “useful for the soul,” but an aversion towards the Christian apocrypha. We read in the Apophthegmata Patrum (Sayings of the Desert Fathers) that Abba Sopatros gave the following command: “No woman should enter your cell and do not read the apocrypha … !” ( …).Footnote 57 In the footsteps of Augustine, Roman Catholics are suspicious when they hear the term “apocryphal.” Today indeed the success in France of apocryphal literature in the collection of the PléiadeFootnote 58 depends probably on the extensive secularization and decline of Roman Catholic influence in that country.

But the large number of Byzantine and Latin manuscripts attests to the continued presence and permanence of the third category. Hagiographical and liturgical collections became the cradle where the books of the third category could find their rest.Footnote 59 These books became part of the wider Christian tradition, even if they do not technically belong to Tradition, as the sixteenth-century Council of Trent defined it when speaking against the Sola Scriptura of the Protestants.Footnote 60 The Catholic bishops distinguished at that time two categories of Tradition: the apostolic tradition received by all; and the ecclesiastical tradition received only by local churches. Neither of these types accommodated the third category, for the apostolic as well as the ecclesiastical form of Tradition is subject to the magisterium of the Church. The third category, on the contrary, is the free expression of the people of God, at times in agreement—but most of the time in disagreement—with ecclesiastical authorities. This is made poignantly clear in the case of the Ascension of Isaiah, a writing that expresses the desolation of early Christian prophets at the hands of historical victors—who were powerful bishops.

In 1599, Elias Hutter presented a polyglot Bible in twelve languages that offered a fascinating solution to the perplexing problem of how to preserve an epistle that, on one hand, was not considered to be canonical, but, on the other, was so valued that it could not be rejected as apocryphal. On page 525 of the second volume of his Bible, Hutter reaches the end of the Epistle to the Colossians and leaves page 526 blank, in order to begin the next letter on the right page.Footnote 61 But—to our surprise—when he begins the next text, we find that he abandons for a while the regular canon of the New Testament, and what follows is not 1 Thessalonians, as we would expect, but the Epistle to the Laodiceans. Hutter knew that this letter was so beloved in the Middle Ages that it was copied in many manuscripts of the Vulgate. He therefore decided to publish it in his Bible as well, and here it is side by side with the other Pauline epistles in twelve languages. But because he knew that this letter was not really canonical, he did not dare give those pages a number. Only after Laodiceans, when he takes up 1 Thessalonians, does Hutter begin to number the pages again—and he begins with page 527. Between pages 526 and 527 we therefore read seven pages without numbers that contain the Epistle to the Laodiceans, a document that appears at the same time “canonical” and “apocryphal”! What better proof could I have of the third category!Footnote 62

References

1 This paper was presented as the Presidential Address at the 2011 New England and Eastern Canada Regional Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature. I would like to thank Linda Grant who improved this essay in particular by revising its English.

2 Ben Witherington, The Gospel Code: Novel Claims about Jesus, Mary Magdalene, and Da Vinci (Downers, Ill.: InterVarsity, 2004); idem, What Have They Done With Jesus? Between Strange Theories and Bad History: Why We Can Trust the Bible (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006).

3 Craig A. Evans, Fabricating Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels (Downers Grove, Ill.: IVP Books, 2006); Exploring the Origins of the Bible: Canon Formation in Historical, Literary, and Theological Perspective (ed. idem and Emmanuel Tov; Acadia Studies in Bible and Theology; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008).

4 Darrell L. Bock, The Missing Gospels: Unearthing the Truth behind Alternative Christianities (Nashville, Tenn.: Nelson, 2006); idem and Daniel B. Wallace, Dethroning Jesus: Exposing Popular Culture's Quest to Unseat the Biblical Christ (Nashville, Tenn.: Nelson, 2007).

5 Bock, Missing Gospels, 32.

6 Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Random House, 2005); eadem and Karen L. King, Reading Judas: The Gospel of Judas and the Shaping of Christianity (New York: Viking, 2007).

7 Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); idem, Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003).

8 Rodolphe Kasser, Marvin Meyer, and Gregor Wurst, The Gospel of Judas from the Codex Tchacos (Washington D.C.: National Geographic, 2006); see Marvin Meyer, The Gospel of Thomas: The Hidden Sayings of Jesus (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 1992).

9 See the neglected book by Hans Urner, Die außerbiblische Lesung im christlichen Gottesdienst. Ihre Vorgeschichte und Geschichte bis zur Zeit Augustins (Veröffentlichungen der evangelischen Gesellschaft für Liturgieforschung 6; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck und Ruprecht, 1952).

10 Eusebius of Caesarea, referring to Clement of Alexandria, uses the term in Hist. eccl. 6.13.6 and 6.14.1. A little further down Eusebius quotes Origen in the fifth book of his Comm. Joh. and this one uses the verb , ibid. 6.25.8. While the author of the Synopsis Athanasii (PG 28.432) is on the whole opposed to these documents, he is aware of the orthodox extraction of some parts of them. Léon Vouaux (Les Actes de Pierre. Introduction, textes, traduction et commentaire [Les Apocryphes du Nouveau Testament; Paris: Letouzey, 1922] 191) translates in the following way: “Certains fragments de ces écrits, plus vrais et respirant le souffle divin, ont été détachés et séparés pour la lecture.”

11 Origen's nuanced position is accessible in Eusebius's presentation, see Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.25; see Jean Ruwet, “Les ‘antilegomena’ dans les œuvres d’Origène,” Bib 23 (1942) 18–42 and 24 (1943) 18–58; idem, “Les apocryphes dans les œuvres d’Origène,” Bib 25 (1944) 143–66 and 311–34.

12 Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.25.1–7; Éric Junod, “La formation et la composition de l’Ancien Testament dans l’Église grecque des quatre premiers siècles,” in Le Canon de l’Ancien Testament. Sa formation et son histoire (ed. Jean-Daniel Kaestli and Otto Wermelinger; Le Monde de la Bible; Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1984) 105–34, particularly 120–23.

13 Athanasius, Epistula festalis XXXIX (PG 26.1435–1440); see David Brakke, “Canon Formation and Social Setting in Fourth-Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria's Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter,” HTR 87 (1994) 395–419; Éric Junod, “Quand l’évêque Athanase se prend pour l’évangéliste Luc (Lettre festale XXXIX sur le canon des Écritures),” in Early Christian Voices in Texts, Traditions and Symbols: Essays in Honor of François Bovon (ed. David Warren, Ann Graham Brock and David W. Pao; Biblical Interpretation Series 66; Boston: Brill, 2003) 197–208; David Brakke, “A New Fragment of Athanasius's Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter: Heresy, Apocrypha, and the Canon,” HTR 103 (2010) 47–66.

14 Nicephori archiepiscopi Constantinopolitani opuscula historica (ed. Carl de Boor; Leipzig: Teubner, 1880) 132–35. It is not certain that Nicephorus, the early ninth-century Patriarch of Constantinople, is the author of this Stichometry.

15 See Dominique Barthélemy, “L’état de la Bible juive depuis le début de notre ère jusqu’à la deuxième révolte contre Rome (131–35),” in Kaestli and Wermelinger, Le canon de l’Ancien Testament, 9–45.

16 See ibid., 40–42.

17 For example, Vaticanus graecus 455, at f. 290v. See also John of Thessalonika's clause in his homily De Dormitione 1 (see below n. 28: ).

18 See Ernst von Dobschütz, Das Decretum Gelasianum de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis in kritischem Text herausgegeben und untersucht (Leipzig: Hinrichs, 1912).

19 The book of Daniel is presented not as a new revelation but as the rediscovery of an ancient collection of visions; see Barthélemy, “L’état de la Bible juive,” 23 on Dan 9:24.

20 Gilbert Dagron, Vie et miracles de sainte Thècle. Texte grec, traduction et commentaire (Subsidia hagiographica 62; Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1978).

21 Scott Fitzgerald Johnson, The Life and Miracles of Thekla: A Literary Study (Washington D.C.: Center for Hellenic Studies, 2006). This author has prepared an English translation of the second part of that work: idem and Alice-Mary Talbot, Miracle Tales from Byzantium (Dumbarton Oaks Medieval Library; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012).

22 To exculpate himself, he compares his intentions with Luke's programmatic statements in the preface to his gospel, see Luke 1:1–4.

23 See Codex diplomaticus Fuldensis (ed. Ernst Friedrich Johann Dronke; 1850; repr., Aalen: Zeller, 1962).

24 Curiously, although building on the Latin version of Eusebius's Hist. eccl., Victorinus does not call Tatian's harmony Diatessaron, but Diapente! This means that Tatian used a fifth source in addition to the four gospels, perhaps Q, the Gospel of Thomas, or a Jewish-Christian gospel.

25 On the Diatessaron, its vulgatization in ancient times, and its study in modern times, see William L. Petersen, Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and History in Scholarship (Supplements to Vigiliae Christianae 25; Leiden: Brill, 1994).

26 Gregory of Tours, Liber de miraculis beati Andreae apostoli. Edited in 1885 by Maximilien Bonnet, it has been reprinted and translated into French by Jean-Marc Prieur, Acta Andreae. Textus (CCSA 6; Turnhout: Brepols, 1989) 551–651.

27 “Nam repperi librum de virtutibus sancti Andreae apostoli, qui propter nimiam verbositatem a nonnullis apocrifus dicebatur; de quo placuit, ut, retractis enucleatisque tantum virtutibus, praetermissis his quae fastidium generabant, uno tamen parvo volumine admiranda miracula clauderentur, quod et legentibus praestaret gratiam et detrahentium auferret invidiam, quia inviolatam fidem non exegit multitudo verbositatis, sed integritas rationis et puritas mentis.” Gregory of Tours, The Life of Andrew, lines 5–13 of the edition by Prieur, Acta Andreae, 569.

28 Other cases of orthodox rewritings of apocryphal material according to prefaces include the following. Rufinus in his letter to Gaudentius, serving as a preface to his Latin translation of the Clementine Recognitions; see Die Pseudoklementinen, II, Rekognitionen in Rufins Übersetzung (ed. Bernhard Rehm and Georg Strecker; GCS; 2d ed.; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1994) 3–5. The anonymous translator of one form of the Latin Acts of Thomas: “Nam legisse me memini quendam libellum in quo iter eius vel miracula quae in India gessit explanabantur. De quo libello, quod a quibusdam non recipitur, verbositate praetermissa pauca de miraculis libuit memorare, quod et legentibus gratum fieret et ecclesiam roboraret;” see Klaus Zelzer, Die alten Lateinischen Thomasakten (TU 122; Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1977) 45. The author of a Latin translation of the Protevangelium of James, see Jean-Daniel Kaestli, “Le Protévangile de Jacques en latin. État de la question et perspectives nouvelles,” Revue d'histoire des textes 26 (1996) 41–102, particularly 55–61. The author of the Libellus de nativitate sanctae Mariae P 1.2: “Nam hoc quod a me nunc cano capite exposcis, adolescentulum me in quodam libello qui in manus meas incidit legisse noris, et certe tanti temporis intercessu et aliarum non leuium rerum interuentu facile aliqua memoriae elabi potuerunt”; see Libri De Nativitate Mariae (ed. Rita Beyers; CCSA 10; Turnhout: Brepols, 1997) 269–71. The beginning of the long Latin version of the Apocalypse of Paul 1–2; see Konstantin Tischendorf, Apocalypses apocryphae (1866; repr., Hildesheim: Olms, 1966) 34–35. John of Thessalonika, De Dormitione 1–2; see Homélies mariales byzantines. Textes grecs édités et traduits en latin, II (ed. and trans. Martin Jugie; PO 19; Paris: Firmin-Didot, 1926) 375–78; and Simon Mimouni, Dormition et assomption de Marie. Histoire des traditions anciennes (Bibliothèque historique 98; Paris: Beauchesne, 1995) 135–48. Jean Gerson, Monotessaron. Prooemium in concordantias evangelistarum. Prologus. Prooemium super unum de quatuor: cujus titulus esse potest Tetramonum, vel Monotessaron; see Jean Gerson, Opera omnia (ed. Louis Ellis Du Pin; 5 vols.; 1706; repr., Hildesheim: Olms, 1987) 4: 83–92; Marc Vial, “Zur Funktion des Monotessaron des Johannes Gerson,” in Evangelienharmonien des Mittelalters (ed. Christoph Burger, August den Hollander, and Ulrich Schmid; Assen: Royal van Gorcum, 2004) 40–72, esp. 62–63.

29 Probably under Western influence the letter would be removed from the Armenian canon. The 1805 critical edition of the Armenian Bible prints it in an appendix.

30 See Carl Schmid, Acta Pauli aus der Heidelberger koptischen Papyrushandschrift Nr. 1 (Veröffentlichungen aus der Heidelberger Papyrus-Sammlung 2; 2d enlarged ed., 1905; repr., Hildesheim: Olms, 1965).

31 See Éric Junod and Jean-Daniel Kaestli, L'histoire des Actes apocryphes des apôtres du IIIeau IXesiècle: le cas des Actes de Jean (Cahiers de la Revue de théologie et de philosophie 7; Lausanne: Revue de théologie et de philosophie, 1982) 43–47.

32 See François Bovon and Bertrand Bouvier, “Étienne le premier martyr: du livre canonique au récit apocryphe,” in Die Apostelgeschichte und die hellenistische Geschichtsschreibung. Festschrift für Eckhard Plümacher (ed. Cilliers Breytenbach and Jens Schröter; Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity 57; Leiden: Brill, 2004) 309–31. The article includes the edition of the Greek text of the story (BHG 1649c) according to the Vaticanus graecus 679.

33 This is the Houghton Library Ms. Lat. 117. Beverly Kienzle drew my attention to the volume. I am grateful to her.

34 See The Apocryphal New Testament Being the Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses (ed. and trans. Montague Rhodes James; corr. ed.; Oxford: Clarendon, 1969); Neutestamentliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung (ed. Wilhelm Schneemelcher; 2 vols.; 5. Auflage der von Edgar Hennecke begründeten Sammlung; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1987–1989).

35 See Zbigniew S. Izydorczyk, Manuscripts of the Evangelium Nicodemi: A Census (Subsidia mediaevalia 21; Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1993); The Medieval Gospel of Nicodemus: Texts, Intertexts, and Contexts in Western Europe (ed. Zbigniew S. Izydorczyk; Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies 158; Tempe, Ariz: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1997) particularly 12–13.

36 See (ed. P. G. Nicolo-poulos; Athens: , 1998) 239.

37 It was Rémi Gounelle who first drew my attention to that document.

38 See François Bovon and Bertrand Bouvier, “Prière et Apocalypse de Paul. Un fragment grec inédit conservé au Sinaï. Introduction, texte, traduction et notes,” Apocrypha 15 (2004) 9–30.

39 See Louis Leloir, Écrits apocryphes sur les apôtres. Traduction de l’édition arménienne de Venise, I, Pierre, Paul, André, Jacques, Jean (CCSA 3; Turnhout: Brepols, 1986) 87–172.

40 See below, p. 10.

41 “Ma io, perché venirvi? o chi 'l concede? / Io non Enëa, io non Paulo sono; / me degno a ciò né io né altri 'l crede,” Dante Alighieri, Divina Commedia. Inferno, 2.31–33, see also 2.28–30. The Italian text and English translation are taken from The Divine Comedy (trans. and commentary by Charles S. Singleton; 3 vols.; Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1973).

42 See Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993).

43 See Theodore Silverstein, Visio Sancti Pauli: The History of the Apocalypse in Latin, Together with Nine Texts (London: Christophers, 1935); Apocalypse of Paul: A New Critical Edition of Three Long Versions (ed. Theodore Silverstein and Anthony Hilhorst; Cahiers d’Orientalisme 21; Geneva: Cramer, 1997).

44 See n. 38, above.

45 See Ferdinand Piontek, Die katholische Kirche und die häretischen Apostelgeschichten bis zum Ausgang des 6. Jahrhunderts. Ein Beitrag zur Literaturgeschichte (Breslau: Nischkowsky, 1907) 15–16 and 26–33. I admit that my third category works particularly well when the fronts of orthodoxy and heresy have been clearly established.

46 See the prescription in the manuscript Athos, Xenophontos 32, f. 29v. This note says also that the Martyrdom of Philip, considered hagiographic material, was to be read in the church at the early morning service.

47 Jean Daniélou, “Les traditions secrètes des apôtres,” Eranos-Jahrbuch 31 (1962) 199–215.

48 See 1 Cor 2:2 and 6–16.

49 This attitude has an antecedent in Jewish literature: 4 Ezra 14 betrays an attitude opposed to the closed canon of Jewish Scriptures established by the Pharisees and claims a higher status for the apocalyptic books reserved for the elite of the wise: “Le texte proclamerait la supériorité des 70 livres apocalyptiques, reservés à l'usage des sages, sur les écrits ordinaires, destinés à la masse du peuple,” wrote Jean-Daniel Kaestli, “Le récit de IV Esdras 14 et sa valeur pour l'histoire du canon de l’Ancien Testament,” in Kaestli and Wermelinger, Le Canon de l’Ancien Testament, 95.

50 Philastrius of Brescia, Diversarum hereseon liber. See Piontek, Die katholische Kirche und die häretischen Apostelgeschichten, 39; Junod and Kaestli, L'histoire des Actes de Jean, 59–62.

51 See Ernest Ch. Babut, Priscillien et le priscillianisme (Paris: Champion, 1909) 120–31 and 218–40; Junod and Kaestli, L'histoire des Actes de Jean, 87–90. There has been new interest in Priscillian in recent years, see Sylvain Jean Gabriel Sanchez, Priscillien. Un chrétien non conformiste. Doctrine et pratique du priscillianisme du IVe au VIe siècle (Théologie historique 120; Paris: Beauchesne, 2009) 269–90 on the apocrypha. Priscillian of Avila, The Complete Works (ed. Marco Conti; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010) 82–99 (ed. and trans. of the third treatise, Liber de fide et de Apocryphis).

52 Turibius of Astorga, Epistula ad Idacium et Ceponium 5 (PL 54.694). See Piontek, Die katholische Kirche und die häretischen Apostelgeschichten, 46–47; Junod and Kaestli, L'histoire des Actes de Jean, 70–72 and 96–98.

53 If this is so, I would have to introduce a distinction among the several books of the third category: I would have to distinguish between those books that have less authority than the canonical books and those that have more authority.

54 See Jaroslav Pelikan, The Reformation of the Bible and the Bible of the Reformation (catalog of the exhibition by Valerie R. Hotchkiss and David Price; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1996).

55 See Irena Backus, “Praetorius’ Anthology of New Testament Apocrypha (1595),” Apocrypha 12 (2001) 211–36.

56 See article VI “Of the Sufficiency of the Holy Scriptures for Salvation,” in The Book of Common Prayer and Administration of the Sacraments and Other Rites and Ceremonies of the Church According to the Use of the Church of England (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, n.d.) 613–14: “And the other Books (as Hierome saith) the Church doth read for example of life and instruction of manners; but yet doth it not apply them to establish any doctrine.” There follows a list of the Deuterocanonical Books of the Old Testament. I thank John T. Townsend for this reference.

57 Apophtegmata Patrum 14.16; see Jean-Claude Guy, ed., Les Apophtegmes des Pères. Collection systématique, chapitres X–XVI (SC 474; Paris: Cerf, 2003) 264–65. I am grateful to John Duffy, who drew my attention to this passage.

58 Écrits apocryphes chrétiens (ed. François Bovon, Pierre Geoltrain, and Jean-Daniel Kaestli; 2 vols.; La Pléiade 442 and 516; Paris: Gallimard, 1997–2005).

59 See François Bovon, “Editing the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles,” in The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles: Harvard Divinity School Studies (ed. François Bovon, Ann Graham Brock and Christopher R. Matthews; Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999) 1–35.

60 See Albert Maichle, Der Kanon der biblischen Bücher und das Konzil von Trient. Eine quellenmässige Darstellung (Freiburger Theologische Studien 33; Freiburg im Breisgau: Herder, 1929).

61 Elias Hutter, Novum Testamentum DNI NRI: Iesu Christi, Syriace, Ebraice, Graece, Latine, Germanice, Bohemice, Italice, Hispanice, Gallice, Anglice, Danice, Polonice (2 vols.; Nuremberg, 1599) 2: between p. 526 and p. 527.

62 It seems that in the first edition of his German translation of the Bible Luther also refused to give a page number to some books of the Bible that he considered to be christologically less relevant, for example the letter of James. See Maichle, Der Kanon der biblischen Bücher und das Konzil von Trient, 6–7. I owe this information to my colleague Helmut Koester, in a conversation.