In this volume, based on his 2013 Laval University dissertation, Alin Suciu supplies a detailed critical edition and translation of the fragmentary remains of the Coptic Berlin-Strasbourg Apocryphon. The text is an apostolic memoir or dialogue with the Savior composed in a post-Chalcedonian Egyptian Christian milieu, most likely monastic, to confirm the community's status as the true heir of the Christian orthodox tradition. Chapters include a fascinating review of previous research on the text, an account and analysis of the three surviving manuscripts (P. Berol. 22220, Strasbourg Copte 5–7, and the Qasr el-Wizz Codex), a discussion of the contents and relationship between the manuscripts, and an analysis of the genre of Coptic apostolic memoirs and the Berlin-Strasbourg Apocryphon's place within it (the core of the volume), followed by the critical Coptic texts and English translations. A bibliography and series of detailed indices (Greek and Coptic words, sources, names, and general topics) completes the book.

The Berlin-Strasbourg Apocryphon presents a dialogue between Jesus and his apostles. Its fragmentary nature limits its available content and makes a fluent reading of the text impossible. The beginning is lost. The fragments that follow include, in sequence: a question from Andrew followed by the Savior's response, which includes a reference to the harrowing of hell; an account of the Savior's anticipation of his passion; a gathering on a mountain—presumably the Mount of Olives—from which the Savior ascends to the seventh heaven; the concurrent witness of the event by the apostles through a mystical vision; the Savior's entry into the throne room of his Father, with whom he discusses his impending sacrifice on the cross; vestiges of an anaphora of the wood of the cross; a dialogue on the resurrected body of Christ; and a hymn addressed by Jesus to the cross. The author incorporates numerous biblical quotations and allusions in the construction of the dialogue. The final Hymn on the Cross, extant in fragmentary condition in the two manuscripts of the Berlin-Strasbourg Apocryphon, survives in an abbreviated form in a revelation dialogue, the Discourse of the Savior, found in the Qasr el-Wizz Codex.

What strikes one in reading the volume as a whole, however, reaches beyond the quality of the critical edition of this Coptic text and its content. Seen against the history of research reviewed in the opening chapter, Suciu's well documented and firm placement of the dialogue in the creative era of post-Chalcedonian Coptic literary activity, building as he does on a 2010 article by Joost Hagen (“Ein anderer Kontext für die Berliner und Strassburger ‘Evangelien-fragmente.’ Das ‘Evangelium des Erlösers' und andere ‘Apostelevangelien’ in der koptischen Literatur,” in Jesus in apokryphen Evangelienüberlieferung. Beiträge zu ausserkanonischen Jesusüberlieferungen aus verschiedenen Sprach- und Kultur-traditionen, ed. Jörg Frey and Jens Schröter [Mohr Siebeck, 2010], 339–371), lays bare the impact of the quest for origins in the western tradition. The first acknowledgment of the text (P. Berol. 22220) by Charles Hedrick in 1995 suggested that it preserved an unknown ancient Christian Gospel (“A Newly Discovered Gospel (Berlin MSS P22220) and the Early Christian Tradition,” in American Academy of Religion/Society of Biblical Literature Abstracts [Scholars, 1998], 381–382). The editio princeps, published by Hedrick and Paul Mirecki in 1999, titled the text the Gospel of the Savior (Polebridge Press, 1999), dated it from the fourth to seventh century, and proposed its dependence on a lost Greek original dating to the second century. While an article by Peter Nagel (“‘Gespräche Jesu mit seinen Jüngern von der Auferstehung’—Zur Herkunft und Datierung des ‘Unbekannten Berliner Evangeliums,’” Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenchaft 94 [2003]: 215–257) suggesting that it was composed in Coptic appeared in 2003, and Hagen subsequently linked it to the Coptic apostolic memoirs genre, the gates had been opened on the notion of it as an early Gospel. The created title, the Gospel of the Savior, spread in the media. The text gained a place in lists of early Christian apocrypha, was added to the Nag Hammadi bibliography, entered into discussions of early Christian diversity, Jewish apocalyptic traditions, and possible Syrian connections, and was postulated as a lost section of the Gospel of Peter (10–20). The pull of an “early” text builds on itself. While different from the case of forged fragments, like the Gospel of Jesus's Wife, the unspoken power of the western quest for origins seems to have led the texts' interpreters down the same errant path.

The present volume confirms Hagen's conclusion, undergirding it with copious, detailed, and convincing arguments. While it decisively dispenses with the theory of the text as a lost early Christian gospel, it reveals an enduring aspect of Christian literary production in the first half-century of the religion's existence. The construction of apostolic memoirs—dialogues between Jesus and his apostles—among Copts in post-Chalcedonian Egypt illustrates the continuing creative use of the genre, broadly understood, to undergird a community's particular understanding of the faith through the anachronistic projection of distinct theological themes back into the formative period of the religion's existence. From the canonical Gospels to numerous later apocryphal examples, from dialogues situated in Jesus's earthly ministry to those fixed in a post-resurrection setting, and from those embraced by the emerging orthodox church to those ultimately culled out as heretical, early Christians produced words of Jesus, creatively fashioned into speeches and dialogues, to support and further their own particular religious orientation. The author behind the Berlin-Strasbourg Apocryphon was, in this regard, part of a long tradition. He was simply doing for his community what so many earlier Christian authors did for theirs. Each resourcefully employed the words of the Savior, which they generated as needed, to vindicate their faith.

While research libraries and scholars of the Coptic tradition form the most obvious market for this learned edition, a careful read uncovers fascinating details that reach beyond its narrower focus. The studious detail, Coptic text, and English translation are, as one has come to expect from Alin Suciu, superb. The extensive indices make the volume and its content readily accessible. It is a fine addition to the field.