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A Thanksgiving Day Apocalyptic Poem

25 Nov

From Julia Esquivel in Threatened with Resurrection: Prayers and Poems from an Exiled Guatemalan (Elgin: The Brethern Press, 1982), 79-91. I love how it uses Biblical language and themes to remind us at what price our comfort comes. I’m thinking hard this holiday season about the intersection between religion, politics, exploitation, and thankfulness. I pray that we can slow our lives down to the point that we loose our lusts of luxury.

In the third year of the massacres
by Lucas and the other coyotes
against the poor of Guatemala
I was lead by the Spirit into the desert

And on that eve
of Thanksgiving Day
I had a vision of Babylon:

The City sprang forth arrogantly
from an enormous platform
of dirty smoke produced
by motor vehicles, machinery
and contamination from smokestacks.

It was as it all the petroleum
from a violated earth
was being consumed
by the Lords of capital
and was slowly rising
obscuring the face
of the Sun of Justice
and the Ancient of Days

Each day false prophets
invited the inhabitants
of the Unchaste City
to kneel before the idols
of gluttony
money
and death
Idolaters from all nations
were being converted to the American Way of Life

The Spirit told me
in the River of death
flows the blood of many peoples
sacrificed without mercy
and removed a thousand times from their lands
the blood of Kekchis, of Panzos
of blacks from Hati of Guaranis from Paraguay
of the peoples sacrificed for “development”
in the Trans-Amazonic strip
the blood of the Indians’ ancestors
who lived on these lands, of those who
even now are kept hostage in the Great Mountain
and on the Black Hills of Dakota
by the guardians of the beast…

My soul was tortured like this
for three and a half days
and a great weariness weighted upon my breast
I felt the suffering of my people very deeply!

In tears I prostrated myself
and cried out: “Lord, what can i do?
Come to me Lord, I wish to die among my people!
Without strength, I waited for an answer.
After a long silence
and heavy obscurity
The One who sits on the throne
to JUDGE THE NATIONS
spoke in a soft whisper
in the secret recesses of my heart:

You have to denounce their idolatry
in good times and in bad
Force them to hear the truth
for what is impossible to humans
is possible for God.

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Posted in Christianity, Ethics, Gender, Personal, Philosophy, Politics, Religion, Story, Technology, apocryphal literature

Husband Scorned and Fathers Ignored – A Social Analysis of the Acts of Thomas

03 Oct

thomas I finally have posted my thesis in a series of pages:

Chapter I: Introduction to the Acts of Thomas as a Literary Work
Chapter II: Edessine Identity –Romanization and Resistance
Chapter III: Scott and Hidden Transcripts 56 Language and the Extent of Domination
Chapter IV: The Hidden Transcripts of the Acts of Thomas
Afterword
Appendix I: Outline of the Acts of Thomas
Appendix II: Transcript Diagrams
Bibliography

Abstract

The Acts of Thomas was written by a community of Christians in eastern Syria sometime in the opening decades of the third century CE. The text quickly became popular both in the region and throughout Christendom. The text displayed a considerable amount of fluidity, being adapted by local Christians to better suit their own communities. This celibate apocalyptic work encouraged its readers to completely reject the outside world in favor of its internal community.

Its composition and subsequent popularity attest to the desire of early third-century eastern Syrian Christians, and later Christians throughout the empire who adapted it, to reject the customs and power structures of Roman society.

One of the strategies by which some Christians resisted this Romanizing tendency of other Christians was the writing of Christian romances, more commonly and collectively known as the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. They rejected the ideal marriage and paterfamilial authority as the basis of society, opting for celibacy and devotion to Christ instead. These Christian romances advocated the negation of the Greco-Roman romances and, by extension, Greco-Roman society.

The Acts of Thomas, as one of these texts, rejected the world within which the authors found themselves. The writers, through the telling of Thomas’ escapades, encoded the text not only with this “cosmic no” of celibate apocalypticism, but also gave the receiving communities advice and direction of how to live out the “cosmic no” in their daily lives. Additionally, based upon their own communal experiences, or hidden transcript, as opposed to public expectation, or the public transcript, the writers offered up advice as to how one should navigate and respond to the inevitable conflicts that arise from living out their “cosmic no.”

As far as one can tell, the community consisted of adherents of all strata of society including a significant presence of women. Stories concerning either women’s conversion or conflicts that arise out of their conversion dominate the narrative. Structurally, the communities were founded and lead by wandering charismatic apostles. In their absence deacons were appointed by the apostles to shepherd the communities in the apostles’ absence. This analysis of the Thomasine community helps to unearth a picture of this Christian group which lay outside the developing proto-orthodox church. It not only helps recover the real lives of vanished people group, but also aids in understanding the varied responses to the Romanization of Christianity in the Empire in the opening decades of the third century. In addition to the social makeup of the compositional communities of the Acts of Thomas, one is also able to see how the community reacted in the face of persecution.

Update: I changed the post title to the title of my thesis.

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Posted in Christianity, Personal, Religion, apocryphal literature, history

Patristic Quote of the Day

29 Sep

Therefore we attempted to drag into the midst the whole badly decomposed body of the wretched fox and exhibit it to all.

- Irenaeus of Lyons, concerning the exposure of heresy

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Posted in Christianity, apocryphal literature

Arrested Development: Washed Away

30 Jul

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Posted in Christianity, Media, Religion, apocryphal literature

Early Christian Leaders who happened to be Women

27 May

Table of contents for Sources for Women Leadership in Early Christianity

Early Christian Leaders who happened to be Women
Epitaphs of Early Christian Leaders, who happened to be Women

One of the topics that is very dear to me is the role and function of women in early Christianity (both canon and post-canon). A few days ago, I came across a post by the warm and fussy Jim West who linked to Gary Macy’s podcast on women being ordained until the 12th Century. Edgar asked me why none of this shows up anywhere.

In this series, I’d like to highlight some of the primary sources for women being ordained in the early church. I’ll cover official church documents, Roman sources, and unofficial church documents. Today I am going to look at a letter dated in the early second century concerning a Roman governor’s report of Christian activity to the Emperor.

Source one: Pliny the Younger’s Letter to Trajan.

If there was one thing the Roman’s did not get, it was supertitio such as Christianity. Christianity befuddled the Romans. Why should a group Jews [1] revere a executed Roman criminal as a God? Furthermore, why would people show such an excessive devotion to this person. As weird as the Jews were to the Romans, these Christians were even more excessive.

Viewing Christians through the eyes of the Romans helps us negate a certain bias inherent in any internal Christian writing. Quite naturally, Christians writers were/are heavily invested in painting their brand of Christianity as the correct one over and against all other brands of Christianity, including internal dissenters within their own community (Think about a Cowboys or Boston fan writing about the NFL or the NBA). Roman sources, while handicapped as mentioned above, bypass this bias.

In this letter from a Roman governor to the Emperor, Pliny asks Trajan what he should do with these darn Christians that have been rounded up. There are a couple of telling passages in this letter, both about early Christian practice and for our immediate purposes, women’s roles in the early Church:

…They asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. When this was over, it was their custom to depart and to assemble again to partake of food–but ordinary and innocent food. Even this, they affirmed, they had ceased to do after my edict by which, in accordance with your instructions, I had forbidden political associations. Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.

I therefore postponed the investigation and hastened to consult you. For the matter seemed to me to warrant consulting you, especially because of the number involved. For many persons of every age, every rank, and also of both sexes are and will be endangered. For the contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms. But it seems possible to check and cure it…

(it is worth mentioning that this is the earliest non-christian course for christian practice)

What do we see here? We see, around 110CE, a local assembly of Christians in the Bithynia-Pontus province that consisted of the complete strata of Roman society. Slaves, freed persons, rich, poor, young and old. Pliny, in his quest to find something prosecutable among their deeds, tortures two of the leaders of the community. Horrifyingly enough (for an elite Roman) the leaders of this community were two slave women.

Thus, we see in unbiased Roman sources that historically women served as deacons in the early Church and, at least in Bithynia-Pontus, they were the leaders of the community, as least as it related to outsiders.

Now, there are some things that need to be held in tension here. First, is this representative of Christianity of this period? It is only one source, after all. Secondly, how do we know that these were the leaders. All Pliny really mentions is that they are deaconesses (the female form of deacon). To be minimal in our interpretation of the letter, perhaps that there were women deacons is all we can say. But, we can say that. Additionally, it is these two and only these two that Pliny plucked out and tortured. He would have gone right to the top of the community’s hierarchy to do this. So, assuming these were the only leaders is a bit of a stretch, but, as stretching goes. It is about two miles short of the gymnastics Christian historians go through when they try to make the whole of the Bible historically accurate and consistent. So, as leaps go, it is pretty small.

Next in series

Romans saw them all as Jews [↩]

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The Ancient Novel, the AAA,Referents, and Propaganda

14 May

Table of contents for Husbands Scorned, Fathers Ignored: A Social Analysis of the Acts of Thomas

Husbands Scorned, Fathers Ignored: A Social Analysis of the Acts of Thomas
What are the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles?
The Ancient Novel, the AAA,Referents, and Propaganda

Today, the discussions continues from Sunday’s discussion of the genre of the Acts of Thomas. In my last post, I suggested that the Acts of Thomas, and the rest of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles were a derivative of the ancient Roman Romance novel. Today I briefly discuss some features of the ancient novel including their connection to the world outside the text and more importantly, their role in legitimizing traditions.

The Necessity of Referents for understanding a Text

Under Konstan’s view, there is less of a need for outside referents with fiction; “in fictions, the impulse to refer is interrupted: Daphinis and Chloe is not an imaginary version of a life outside the text.” [1] Thus, ancient novels are more independent of cultural referents than other forms of literature; instead they have more what is called “inner resonance.” [2] Inner resonance can be compared with self-referentiality, as the novel is not tied to an external cultural referent, as “[f]iction presupposes a contract… according to which the habit of reference is curbed or inhibited” with the reader. [3] Thus, outside historical, or cultural, referents are less necessary for understanding the text, even though grounding can bring clarity to the work.

Novels are clouded windows into the thought-world of the composers and as a consequence, the communities that read them.

However, this is not to say that novel’s story world is entirely self-contained, they did not require nearly as much of a working background on the part of the reader. However, Roman and Greek novels “allude to overtly referential genres in order to ground their narrative,” [4] The same is true for the AAA. They often refer to preexisting narratives within the Christian and Jewish traditions, alluding to these bodies of work. Their stock situations often draw upon the Old and New Testaments. [5] For instance, elements from the book of Jonah and the Acts of the Apostles are often used. Most of the AAA open with the sending out of the apostles; for instance, Acts of John, Acts of Thomas, Acts of Mâr Matthew and Mâr Andrew all open in this manner. Often the AAA, such as the Acts of Thomas, draw upon Jonah’s unwillingness to even carry out his missionary journey. Additionally, the Acts of Andrew. ((The Acts of Andrew is a shortened version of the Greek Acts of Matthew and Andrew and the Syrian Acts of Mâr Matthew and Mâr Andrew.)) features Andrew expressing doubt that he can reach Myrmidonia within three days necessary to save Matthias from death by cannibalization. In each case, the unwilling apostle is forced to change his mind just like Jonah; in the case of Thomas, he is sold as a slave to an Indian merchant and in the case of Andrew, he unwittingly embarks on a divinely powered sailing trip which does deliver him to his destination within the three days. [6] There are many more examples of the AAA drawing upon earlier traditions; however, these traditions are a source of inspiration and are not necessary for understanding the text as is the case for the other genres of literature.

The inner resonance of the novel produces several effects, the first of which is the ability of the novel to transcend local cultures; as a genre, it traveled due precisely to the genre’s lack of external referentiality. Konstan argues that the novel was “particularly suited” for global distribution.((Konstan, “The Invention of Fiction,” 15. This does not mean, however, that other forms of literature, such as myths, histories, epics, or poetry are not mobile, but that the novel was more apt to be adapted and circulated in different geographic locations due to a lack in emphasis on cultural referents. In this, they display more fluidity than other forms of literature. )) In the first few centuries of the Common Era Rome’s culture consisted of many regional cultures, new and old, all of which were vying for the dominant position with each other and the official Roman culture. [7] The novel as a genre developed within this cultural climate. As a result, “rather than addressing a defined and self-conscious cultural group, the novel constructed for itself a literary community of readers whose point of common reference was the novel itself.” [8] This is both a boon and a blow to the study, for at once the novel is able to cut ties with any specific culture while forging connections to new ones though both its fluidity and less of a need for cultural referents.

Entertaining Stories or Arbiters of Tradition?

Just like these cats are arguing that the Muppet Show is horrible drivel, the Ancient Novel, and their Christian analogs, the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles argued for particular traditions over and against all others.

The novel, and its Christian analog, the AAA, while mobile, often argued for the prevalence of certain traditions over and against rival ones. Edwards, in a study of Chariton’s Chaereas and Callirhoe, asserts that Chariton in his novel sought to define their relation within the Roman ‘web of power.’ [9] Caught among the old and young traditions which were constantly contending for position and hegemony, [10] Chaereas and Callirhoe sought to enhance Chariton’s native city Aphrodisias’ power by projecting the “religious, political, and social dimensions” of Aphrodite, the city’s patron deity. [11]

Christian [12] versions of the ancient novel also served to legitimize and delegitimize traditions. For instance, in the Acts of Matthew and Andrew, (9This is the Greek version of the Acts of Mâr Matthew and Mâr Andrew.)) a city of cannibals [13] is tamed by means of many miracles. After a devastating city-wide flood, the escape from which was prevented by a hedge of fire around the city, the city repents and Andrew gives the city its laws, designs a church, and resurrects all that died. [14] This is obviously a case of a text arguing for the legitimacy of the Christian tradition. Similarly, the Acts of John has John purging Satan himself from the city of Carthage and converting it.

The Acts of Thomas displays a similar legitimizing narrative sequence. In chapters 19-21 of the Acts of Thomas, Thomas spends money intended for a king’s palace on the poor of the area. This leads to Thomas’ arrest and the conversion of the king and his brother via a modified version of Luke’s parable of the rich man and Lazarus. [15] After their conversion they are baptized and their kingdom becomes Christianized. All of these accounts point to the ancient novel and their Christianized versions being much more than a series of entertaining and bizarre stories. They served ends much greater than this. They sought to legitimize or delegitimize traditions in the minds of their readers.

In the next post in this chapter, I will discuss the use of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in crafting and legitimizing theology by means of narrative.

Previous in series

Ibid., 7 [↩]
On this subject, Riffaterre says: “In everyday language, words appear to refer vertically to the objects they represent, but in literature, in which the meaningful unit is the entire text and not the isolated word, lexical elements lose their vertical semantic force and act upon each other contextually, producing a new effect of meaning, significance.” Ibid., 6 citing T.G. Pavel, Fictional Worlds (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 118. [↩]
Ibid., 7 [↩]
Ibid., 11 [↩]
Since I am referring to Christian interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, I refer to it as the Old Testament. When referring to its reference by Jewish interpreters, I will use the term Hebrew Bible. [↩]
Elliott and James, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation, 286. [↩]
Ibid. [↩]
Ibid. [↩]
Edwards, “Pleasurable Reading or Symbols of Power? Religious Themes and Social Context in Chariton,” 33 [↩]
Konstan, “The Invention of Fiction,” 15. [↩]
Douglas R. Edwards, “Defining the Web of Power in Asia Minor: The Novelist Chariton and His City Aphrodisias,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 62, no. 3 (Autumn 1994): 699-718. [↩]
The term Christian throughout refers to anything which features the deeds, teachings or resulting traditions of Jesus or describes itself as such. It implies no judgment on the orthodoxy of the work being discussed. [↩]
In Syrian manuscripts the city in question is referred to as `Irka, see William Wright, trans., Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles (Amsterdam: Philo Press, 1968). However, in the Latin and some of the Greek manuscripts, the city is referred to as Myrmidonia. See Elliott and James, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation, 283 note 1. [↩]
Acts of Andrew and Matthias 29-32, Ibid., 297-298 [↩]
The Acts of Thomas does heavily modify the rich man and Lazarus parable. For starters, it is presented as narrative instead of a parable. Additionally, the king’s brother is allowed to return to life and convinces his brother to follow Thomas. Despite these modifications, the text still draws off of the parable for this allusion. [↩]

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What are the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles?

10 May

Table of contents for Husbands Scorned, Fathers Ignored: A Social Analysis of the Acts of Thomas

Husbands Scorned, Fathers Ignored: A Social Analysis of the Acts of Thomas
What are the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles?
The Ancient Novel, the AAA,Referents, and Propaganda

The rest of the first chapter, or post series focuses upon the Acts of Thomas, as a literary work. The Acts of Thomas is an early 3rd century Syrian text which belongs to a set of writings collectively known as the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. This post briefly discusses what the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles were and tries to differentiate ancient fiction (or the ancient novel) from other types of ancient literature.

The major apocryphal Acts are the Acts of Andrew, the Acts of John, the Acts of Paul, the Acts of Peter, and the Acts of Thomas. As is the case with the Acts of Thomas, these texts show a considerable fluidity. For the sake of geographical proximity, I will often refer to both a Syriac collection of these Acts and Greek versions of these Acts. The Syrian collection is translated in William Wright, Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles [1] . This collection contains the Acts of Thecla the Acts of Thomas, the Acts of Mâr Matthew and Mâr Andrew, the Acts of John and its extension An Account of the Decease of Saint John, and the Acts of Philip. The Greek collection is translated in J. K. Elliott and M. R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation [2] . From here on out, the terms Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, AAA, and Apocryphal Acts will be synonymous with one another. Because they are a specific collection of works, I will capitalize the collection while not italicizing the collection.

This naming of the collection of literature has obviously been done in retrospect by peoples far removed from the original communities of composition, both temporally and geographically because of their similarity with the canonical Acts of the Apostles and their location outside the orthodox canon. These writings were those Acts of the Apostles that did not make their way into the orthodox canon. These Apocryphal Acts are Christian adaptations of the Greco-Roman romance or adventure novel. In addition to being gripping and entertaining stories, encoded in both the Greco-Roman Novels and the Apocryphal Acts are the composing community’s values, ethics, and outlook. Accordingly, one can read such accounts for the purpose of building up a “thicker” description of such communities. Because these are works of fiction and not autobiography, one will need to tread lightly, for literary devices can easily be misunderstood as social practice or convention. What is apparent is that the Apocryphal Acts argue for a reversal of worldview and ethics found within the Greco-Roman novels. The rest of this post series will explore the features of such works and situate the Acts of Thomas historically and geographically.

The Genre of the Acts of Thomas

Now we will turn our discussion to the implicit purpose of the Acts of Thomas. The best avenue for discerning the author’s purpose is by analyzing the genre that the author selected to tell his or her story. [3] Accordingly, in this section I explore the function of the text, but more importantly, I explore by what means the text functioned. Then the text is compared with both romance novels of the same period and other Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. Analyzing how the author both used and deviated from literary patterns yields insight into both the author’s purposes and his or her intended effects on the community to whom he or she was writing, for “form, content, and function are determinative for any specific genre.” [4]

The Acts of Thomas is often grouped with a collection of literature named the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. The majority of these works were written in the late second to early third century. [5] As first glance they seem to be tales written for entertainment’s sake. [6] They themselves are variations of the ancient novel. [7] According to Konstan, the ancient novels are the earliest example of fiction that we have. [8] He differentiates fiction from history, epics, and poetry of the same and earlier periods by distinguishing them by their textual referents. [9] A textual referent is “a relation between an extraliguistic state of affairs and a linguistic expression,” [10] something in the text which refers to something outside it. For Konstan, the events and characters to which myth, history, and epics refer are always found in the cultural record; in fact, such historical, or cultural, referents are necessary for understanding the text. [11]

In the next post, I will talk more about the idea of referentiality as it pertains to the classification of ancient western literature and the fluidity of a given text.

Previous in series Next in series

Philo Press, 1968 [↩]
Clarendon Press, 1993 [↩]
Genre should not be considered an end in itself, but a “heuristic tool that is used in order to make sense of a text through a comparison with other writings of a similar nature.” Patrick J. Hartin, “The Role and Significance of the Character of the Thomas in the "Acts of Thomas",” in Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity (Boston: Brill Leiden, 2006), 239 [↩]
Ibid., 240. [↩]
Elliott and James, The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation, 231. [↩]
See Douglas R Edwards, “Pleasurable Reading or Symbols of Power? Religious Themes and Social Context in Chariton,” in Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative, ed. J. Bradley Chance Ronald F. Hock and Judith Perkins (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 31 His discussion also applies to the AAA. [↩]
This is not a universal view. Several scholars have questioned this, such as Thomas, who argues that because of the close proximity in composition between the Greek novels and the AAA, the novels AAA could not have been directly modeled after the ancient novels. Bowersock, arguing along the same vein of thought, suggests that the gospel literature, along with similar polytheist works of imagination masquerading as history provided the impetus for the development of the novels as a genre of literature.” See Christine M. Thomas, “Stories without Texts and Without Authors: The Problem of Fluidity in Ancient Novelistic Texts and Early Christian Literature,” in Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative, ed. Ronald Hock, J. Bradley Chance Chance, and Judith Perkins (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 277. We can bypass the question of influence by framing the comparison in terms of similarities. This will allow us to compare without having to make definite statements of succession. [↩]
David Konstan, “The Invention of Fiction,” in Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative, ed. J. Bradley Chance Ronald F. Hock and Judith Perkins (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 3. From here on out, the terms fiction and novel are synonymous with one another. Additionally, I lack expertise in the area of Greek and Roman literature and am therefore at the mercy of the experts I quote in their appraisals of the subject matter at hand. [↩]
Ibid., 4-9 [↩]
Ibid., 6 citing Ronen, Possible Worlds in Literary Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge Univerity Press, 1994), 36. [↩]
Konstan describes this idea using the Trojan War as an example. “Whether it did or did not occur, however, the status of the Trojan War as an event to be written about depends not on the current state of historical investigation but on the existence of a cultural record. The Iliad refers to the Trojan War as a culturally acknowledged phenomenon, just as Herodotus’ history refers to the Persian War, whatever the degree of accuracy his account may have achieved… There are presumed to be sources of knowledge of the subject independent of the description proffered by the text itself. If the Trojan War is described as myth, then myth, like historical events, constitutes a ground of reference. Like history, mythical narratives depend upon a shared awareness of a tradition with a given cultural community.” See Ibid., 11. [↩]

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Posted in Christianity, Religion, apocryphal literature

Turned it in dot com

26 Apr

I tuned my thesis in tonight at midnight. Now all I need to do before the sixteenth of May is defend the thesis, grade 270 papers, write a twenty-five page paper comparing the reforms of Augustus with those of Julian “the Apostate,” and a twenty-five page paper comparing the rhetorical styles of Julian the Apostate to his detractors, such as Gregory. Then I will be done.

But at least I get to move a week before all ofhat happens! I am not freaking out or anything.

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Posted in Personal, Religion, apocryphal literature, history

A Modern example of Actualizable Apocalypticism

22 Apr

From”Fishing 4 Religion” by Arrested Development:

Grab the hook, grab the line
Grab the bait, grab the box and wait
Tackle and shackle the topic the faculty has chosen
Chosen by many, chosen by plenty, chosen by any
man or woman who can’t understand
the topic that’s known and
[Go by the dock] flock and clock the topic
as I drop my hook and get a bite

The reason I’m fishin’ 4 a new religion
is my church makes me fall asleep
They’re praising a God that watches you weep
and doesn’t want you to do a damn thing about it
When they want change the preacher says "shout it"
Does shout bring about change ? I doubt it
All shout does is make you lose your voice
So on the dock I sit in silence
staring at a sea that’s full of violence
Scared to put my line in that water
coz it seems like there’s no religion in there

Naively so I give it another go
Sitting in church hearing legitimate woes
Pastor tells the lady it’ll be alright
Just pray so you can see the pearly gates so white
The lady prays and prays and prays and prays
and prays and prays and prays and prays…it’s everlasting

There’s nothing wrong with praying, it’s what she’s asking
She’s asking the Lord to let her cope
so one day she can see the golden ropes
What you pray for God will give
to be able to cope in this world we live
The word "cope" and the word "change"
is directly opposite, not the same
She should have been praying to change her woes
but pastor said "Pray to cope with those"

The government is happy with most baptist churches
coz they don’t do a damn thing to try to nurture
brothers and sisters on a revolution
Baptist teaches dying is the only solution
Passiveness causes others to pass us by
I throw my line until I’ve made my decision
until then, I’m still fishin’ 4 religion

Damn. I hope to look at this closer sometime in the middle of May.

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Posted in Christianity, Media, Religion, apocryphal literature

Lake of Fire Frozen Over, I like a Colbert Clip

13 Apr

I go back and forth on this. On the one hand, part of Ehrman’s message needs to be reflected upon. However, Colbert does a helluva job placing the criticisms in a larger context. In terms of the clip itself, Ehrman gets his butt handed to to him. Also, one of the worst puns ever attempted is found in this video.

The Colbert Report

Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Bart Ehrman

colbertnation.com

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

NASA Name Contest

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Posted in Christianity, Religion, apocryphal literature, history

Comic Book Jesus – A “Manly” Christ

11 Apr

Table of contents for Sunday's Coming... Thoughts on the Death and Life of Christ for 2009

It’s Friday. . .
Its Saturday. . .
Comic Book Jesus – A “Manly” Christ

As we are mired in the Saturday between the murder of Jesus by the Romans and his victory on Sunday, it is good to reflect on the nature of Jesus’ personality and sacrifice. The following is from the Avengelyne/Glory 02 – The Godyssey.

In it, one of the protagonists has a vision, one where the Olympian Gods [1] show up at Jesus’ crucifixion and mock him because of his undue affection for [hu]mankind. During his berating, Jesus wakes up from the dead, and is puh-issed.

Zeus then proceeds to send god after god at Him because of his hubris. Jesus proceeds to make short work of the gods. The vision ends with Zeus and Jesus rushing forward for one final battle.

Jesus could have taken the world by storm. He could have fought his Roman attackers and been victorious, but he did not. I feel as though the above is what a “manly” Jesus would have done. Instead of participating in the violence of the day (and of the fall), Jesus submitted and showcased true love – he laid down his life for his friends. This passivity was the very opposite of masculine virtues of the day (and of today) which demand aggression be met with aggression and that one must be active and never passive.

What humans intended for evil, God transformed into good.

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I would have liked them to have Rome’s gods show up, perhaps the Capitoline Triad or something [↩]

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Posted in Christianity, Humor, Religion, apocryphal literature, history

Pictures of Thesis

31 Mar

Here is a graphic representation of the top 500 words of the 30 thousand or so words in my thesis so far.

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Posted in Personal, apocryphal literature

The Thomasine Community didn’t like Kids

30 Mar

[Jesus teaching a young couple on their wedding eve]

And if you have children, for their sakes you will become oppressors and robbers and smiters of orphans and wrongers of widows, and you will be grievously tortured for their injuries. For the greatest part of children are the cause of many pains; for either the king fall upon them, or a demon lays hold of them, or paralysis befalls them. And if they be healthy, they come to ill either by adultery or theft, or fornication, or covetousness, or vain-glory; and through their wickedness you will be tortured by them.

Dang. Basically, Thomasine Jesus of the 3rd century CE Edessa is saying that having kids will make you oppress others to feed them. And beyond that, you will be grieved when they die young. If they are, by chance, healthy, then they will likely be degenerates whose evil will wretch your soul. Thanks Apocryphal Jesus. Thank you very much. I’ll stick with Canon Jesus, who loves the little children.

(Pictured: Picard off’ing Wesley Crusher for getting a 98% on his Astromadeup Physics exam.)

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Posted in Christianity, Ethics, Humor, Philosophy, Religion, apocryphal literature, history

Current Writing Subject – Women in the Acts of Thomas

24 Mar

Spoken of; Spoken for – Women in the Thomasine community. While women, their needs, and their concerns feature prominently in the narrative, they are almost always written about from the male point of view.

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Posted in Christianity, Ethics, Religion, apocryphal literature

My Problem with the Reformation*

22 Mar

Besides all of the untrue anti-Catholic rhetoric, I dislike the undue authority given to the writings of the time period in current Christian interpretation. I sometimes get the sense that current pastors, theologians, and laity use this set of 16th century interpretations as the baseline for biblical interpretations. Given how much more we know in terms of archeology, language, etc of the biblical period, this seems foolish to me. Now, don’t get me wrong, I think these writings, along with much of the previous 2000 years of Christian interpretation is useful and should be included when we go about interpreting the Bible, but we should not use their creative thinking as a substitute for our own.

* Its not really a problem with the reformation, just our use of it today.

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Posted in Christianity, Humor, Personal, Philosophy, Religion, apocryphal literature

Thomasine Saying of the Day

17 Mar

And Judas went with him laughing and said to him: “If men loved God as they love their fellows, all that they asked of Him He would give them and there would be nothing which would not obey them.”

- Acts of Thomas, Chapter 128 [1]

Yes, this is a quote outside of my canon, but there is wisdom there to be had. [↩]

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Posted in Christianity, Philosophy, apocryphal literature

Updated Reading List and Ouch

13 Mar

I knew a couple of books were missing from my summer reading list. I remembered what they were today after reading this blog post, both The Shack and Finding God in the Shack. In the circles I run, the first book has caused much discussion and dissention. I want to enter these conversations, but since I have not read it, I can only piggyback on what others are saying about it, which is irresponsible conversing. AND… it would also get some of that fiction stuff people keep telling me about.

Oh yeah, the ouch:

James Duck and Roll

A) It’s an awesome picture. B) Flop or not, that had to of hurt. Whyfors: LeBron James, after being fouled in last night’s Phoenix/Cleveland game, which the Cav’s won 119-111. James had 34 points, 13 assists, 10 rebounds, 3 steals, and 3 blocked shots. As much as I love Wade, holy smokes!

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Posted in Christianity, Personal, Reading Reviews, Religion, apocryphal literature

Locked in a Room

28 Feb

As I reach the end of my thesis, I am locking myself in a room this weekend down at my in-laws to crank out that last chapter and rework the other ones. Much to my surprise, I was able to get everything into two bags and a box:

But in those bags I was able to stuff quite a bit of collected knowledge:

Here is a bibliography of the books I was able to cram in those bags:

Ando, Clifford. Imperial Ideology and Provincial Loyalty in the Roman Empire. 1st ed. University of California Press, 2000.

Asgeirsson, Jon Ma, April D. Deconick, and Risto Uro. Thomasine Traditions in Antiquity: The Social And Cultural World of the Gospel of Thomas. Brill Academic Publishers, 2006.

Bremmer, J.N. The Apocryphal Acts of Thomas. Peeters Publishers, 2002.

Brown, Peter. The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity; Twentieth Anniversary Edition with a New Introduction. 2nd ed. Columbia University Press, 2008.

Crossan, John Dominic. The Birth of Christianity : Discovering What Happened in the Years Immediately After the Execution of Jesus. 1st ed. HarperOne, 1999.

Davies, Stevan L. The Revolt of the Widows: The Social World of the Apocryphal Acts. 1st ed. Southern Illinois University, 1980.

Drijvers, H. J. W. History and Religion in Late Antique Syria. Variorum, 1994.

Ehrman, Bart D. Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew. Oxford University Press, USA, 2005.

Foucault, Michel. The Foucault Reader. Pantheon, 1984.

Horsley, and R.A. Oral Performance, Popular Tradition, and Hidden Transcript in Q. BRILL, 2007.

Horsley, Richard A. Hidden Transcripts and the Arts of Resistance: Applying the Work of James C. Scott to Jesus and Paul (SBL: Semeia Studies, 48). Brill Academic Pub, 2005.

Irvin, Dale T., and Scott W. Sunquist. History of the World Christian Movement: Earliest Christianity to 1453. Orbis Books, 2001.

King, Karen L. What Is Gnosticism? Belknap Press, 2005.

Klijn, A.F.J. Text and Testimony. Uitgeversmaatschappij J.H. Kok, 1994.

Klijn, Albertus Frederik Johannes. The Acts of Thomas: Introduction, Text, and Commentary. 2nd ed. Brill Academic Publishers, 2003.

Liddell, H. G., and Robert Scott. An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon: Founded upon the 7th ed. of Liddell and Scott’s Greek-English Lexicon. 1889. 7th ed. Oxford University Press, USA, 1945.

Ludemann, Gerd. Primitive Christianity: A Survey of Recent Studies and Some New Proposals. T. & T. Clark Publishers, 2004.

Mahoney, Anne, J. B. Greenough, G.L. Kittredge, A. A. Howard, Benj. L. D’Ooge, and J.H. Allen. Allen and Greenough’s New Latin Grammar. Bilingual. Focus Publishing/R. Pullins Company, 2001.

McCullough, William Stewart. Short History of Syriac Christianity to the Rise of Islam. Scholars Pr, 1982.

Mitchell, Stephen. A History of the Later Roman Empire, AD 284-641: The Transformation of the Ancient World. Illustrated edition. Wiley-Blackwell, 2006.

Nye, Malory. Religion: The Basics. 1st ed. Taylor & Francis, 2007.

Perkins, Judith. Ancient Fiction and Early Christian Narrative. Society of Biblical Literature, 1998.

Reardon, B. P. Collected Ancient Greek Novels. 2nd ed. University of California Press, 2008.

Ross, Steven K. Roman Edessa: Politics and Culture on the Eastern Fringes of the Roman Empire. 1st ed. Routledge, 2001.

Schneemelcher, Wilhelm. New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. 2: Writings Relating to the Apostles Apocalypses and Related Subjects. Revised. Westminster John Knox Press, 2003.

Scott, James C. Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. Yale University Press, 1992.

Segal, J. B. Edessa: The Blessed City. Gorgias Press, 2005.

Smyth, Herbert Weir. Greek Grammar. Revised. Harvard University Press, 1956.

Wells, Colin. The Roman Empire: Second Edition. Harvard University Press, 1995.

Wilkinson, John. Egeria’s Travels. 3rd ed. Aris & Phillips, 1999.

Wilson, Wilhelm Schneemelcher; R. McL. New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. 1: Gospels and Related Writings Revised Edition. Rev Sub. Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.

Wilson, Wilhelm Schneemelcher; R. McL. New Testament Apocrypha, Vol. 2: Writings Relating to the Apostles; Apocalypses and Related Subjects. Revised Edition. Rev Sub. Westminster John Knox Press, 2006.

Woolf, Greg. Becoming Roman: The Origins of Provincial Civilization in Gaul. Cambridge University Press, 2000.

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Posted in Personal, Reading Reviews, Religion, apocryphal literature

The Athens of the South

01 Feb

Ah, behold the great temple of Artemis in Ephesus, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, shown here in a computer rendering:

Here is a photograph of the outside of the temple of Artemis and of the image of the Goddess inside:

Amazing how they have held up, no? Actually, no. Those are from the reconstruction of the temple in… Nashville, Tennessee, the Athens of the South. Below is the remains of the actual Great Temple of Artemis in Ephesus:

(Yup, its just those two columns in the middle of the swamp, they are thinking of reconstructing it… this time a little closer to home)

Tennessee and Nashville, are you even trying to make sense anymore?

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Posted in Christianity, Philosophy, Religion, apocryphal literature, history

unSacred Texts – Early Xian Canons

17 Oct

The following is a general outline of the lecture I gave over canon lists last month for the Intro to Religion. It was the first lecture I have given beyond teaching section. I was quite nervous in front of 150+ undergrads, so don’t be too hard on me.

Let me begin by asking you all what makes a text sacred? While different groups have defined “sacred texts” in different ways, for our purposes, we are going to use the following definition:

“a sacred text is a text set apart by a religious community for the purposes of instruction or exhortation.”

Ok, that is a nice working definition. Let me ask you all another question. How do we go about figuring out what a given religious community used as sacred texts? [Field answers] A good way to get a feel for a community’s set of religious texts is to look at what they call their “canon.” C-A-N-O-N, with one N, not two N’s, like the weapon. What do we mean by “canon”? [Field answers]. The term is not easy to define. If you look it up, you’ll find several definitions, most of which sound similar to “any officially recognized set of sacred books,” which isn’t very helpful for nailing down what a sacred text is. Well, formal definitions aside, there is one fundamental property of canon that I want to highlight.

“a canon is that which defines the boundaries of a given system”

It establishes what is in and what is out. Any of you all read comic books? Or better yet, anyone read the Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings? Have you seen the corresponding movies? For those of you that have, what do you do with the differences between the two sets of materials? Which one is official and which one is unofficial? Which one is canon and which one is not? [Field Answers] For most people, the books are the official version and the movies are interpretations. The same thing is going on here with religious texts and canon.

In the years following the death of Jesus of Nazareth, a variety of traditions developed around the figure in a community context. Usually they slowly took shape, moving from oral traditions to written ones. These written texts were circulated and gradually became accepted and used by larger and larger groups of people. As different groups grew, they had to find ways to define their borders of what was acceptable practice. They first few centuries of Christianity were marked by very diverse groups, all of which were competing with one another for the dominant position in Christianity. One of the ways in which Christian groups could separate themselves from the pack was by making canon lists, or lists of works that were inspired by God for the teaching of humans.

Big and Little O Orthodoxy

Before I go on about canon lists, I need to mention is what I mean by “orthodox.” What I don’t mean is the “Big O” Orthodox Church, which refers to the one of branches of Christianity that resulted from the “Great Schism of 1054CE and is referred to day by the terms Greek Orthodox, Russian Orthodox, or Eastern Orthodox. Instead, I mean the “Little O” orthodox, which refers to the traditions that beat out the other competing traditions and became the dominant form of Christianity and the heir of most of the forms of Christianity we see today. Orthodox Christianity before they achieved this dominant position is referred to as “proto-orthodox Christianity.” Those people that defined themselves as “orthodox” defined everyone else as “heretical” Today, when I am talking about orthodox and heretical I am not talking about an objective stance on their theological systems, I am only referring to the historical winners and losers. What is the best way to refer to the heretics? – Call them by the names they used themselves. This goes back to one of Dr Flanagan’s points on how to do the study of religion in a public university – Self-Description. Because of this, no matter how disparate their social practices or theological systems, if they describe themselves as Christians, that is how we categorize them.

To recap:

“’little o’ orthodox refers to the tradition of Christianity that became dominant in the Roman empire”

“proto-orthodoxy refers to the orthodox Christian traditions before they achieved dominant status.

Some Canon Lists

On your hand handout you will find three of such lists. The first one is the list of books that the Marcionites, an early Christian group. The Marcionites were followers of Marcion, a Christian dualist. Marcion was a fascinating character who we only know about through the writings of his opponents. We know that he was excommunicated from the Church in Rome because he threatened to cause a rift in the Church by seeking to expunge all Jewish features of Christianity. Take a couple of minutes to look at the canon lists that I gave you. What interesting features do you notice in comparing the Marcionite canon with the canon we use today?

The Marcion Canon¹
(Aprox 150 CE)

One Narrative

The Evangelion ( a pared down version of Luke)

Ten Pauline epistles, the Apostolikon.

Galatians
1st Corinthians
2nd Corinthians
Romans
1st Thessalonians
2nd Thessalonians
Laodiceans
Colossians
Philippians
Philemon

Features to highlight:

It was composed of two “books,” the Evangelion Greek for the Gospel or good news, and Apostolikon, Greek for the Apostle.
Only used one gospel and a pared down version at that.
Only used the “letters of Paul”
Nothing outside of Paul, no Johns, nor Peters, no Hebrews, no Apocalypse of John.
Marcion’s canon lacks the more Jewish NT Texts, such as the Gospel of Matthew, the Letter to the Hebrews, the book of James, etc…
Another interesting note, Marcion edited his copy of Luke’s Gospel, taking out all Jewish references to Jews, especially all prophecies concerning him which the text claimed were fulfillments of Jewish prophecies found in the Old Testament.
There is also the curious letter to the Laodiceans – does anyone know what this letter contained? No? Don’t worry, no one knows. The only mention of this letter is found in Tertullian’s work entitled “Against Marcion.”

By examining Marcion’s canon list, we can see how Marcion and his followers adopted Pauling theology and rejected any sort of Jewish-Christian theology. He edited out all references to Old Testament prophecies out of Luke and rejected wholesale any book that gave a stamp of approval of the Jewish God. What was the reason for this? Marcion, along with scores of early Christians, looked and Jesus’ teachings and the Old Testament Narrative. They saw in the former a God of love and peace and in the latter a God of hate and war. The reconciled this by equating Yahweh with Yaldabaoth, a gnostic demiurge.

The Euseubian Canon²

(Aprox 320 CE)

The next canon list on the sheet is the Eusubian Canon. It is taken from the Early Church historian, Eusebius of Caesarea, in his work History of the Church. It dates around 320 CE. This is a fascinating list because of all the categories Eusubius draws out. Again, take a couple of minutes to look at it. What do you notice?

Undisputed Works

Five Narratives:

Matthew
Mark
Luke
John
Acts of the Apostles

Fourteen Epistles of Paul:

1st Corinthians
2nd Corinthians
Ephesians
Philippians
Colossians
Galatians
1st Thessalonians
2nd Thessalonians
Romans
Philemon
Titus
1st Timothy
2nd Timothy
Hebrews

Two Other Epistles

1st John
1st Peter

Disputed Works

Works which some Christians accept and some reject

James
Jude
2nd Peter
2nd John
3rd John
The Apocalypse of John

Explicitly Rejected Works

Works that are considered by all “orthodox” Christians to be uninspired.

Acts of Paul
The Apocalypse of Peter
The Epistle of Barnabas
The Didache
The Gospel according to the Hebrews
Gospel of the Shepherd of Hermas

Spurious Works

Works that are “so very far from the true orthodoxy … [that they] ought therefore not even to be ordered among the illegitimate [books], but shunned as altogether improper and irreligious.”

The Gospel of Peter
The Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Matthias
The Acts of Andrew
The Acts of John

Points to highlight:

We see four gospels here and the Acts of the Apostles instead of Marcion’s heavily edited one gospel.
We also see four more letters assigned to Paul, the letter to the Laodiceans is missing and the two letters to Timothy, a letter to Titus, and the Letter to the Hebrews has been added.
Also, there are the letters of John on the list.
Look in the 2nd column. What do you notice here? Yeah, he lists several other categories, the first of which is a list of disputed works, ones which some Christians accept and some don’t. Here we find
1. Epistle of James
2. Epistle of Jude
3. Epistle of 2nd Peter
4. Epistle of 2nd and 3rd John
5. The Apocalypse of John(the Book of Revelation)
Next we have a list of rejected works. Here we find such works as the Acts of Paul, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Didache (an early instructional work that gave advice on traveling Christian preachers, and the liturgy, among other things). We also find two rejected Gospels, the gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Shepherd of Hermas. These are lost works, just like the Marcion’s letter to the Laodiceans.
We see an acceptance of both Pauline and Jewish Christian texts, in contrast to the Marcionite Canon.

There is a final list here, a list of “Spurious Works” ones that were considered “so very far from the true orthodoxy … [that they] ought therefore not even to be ordered among the illegitimate [books], but shunned as altogether improper and irreligious.” In this category we have several more Gospels (Peter, Thomas, and Matthias) and Acts (of Andrew and John).

Now that we have glanced over the features of the Eusubian canon, I want to spend a few minutes talking about the implications of Eusubius’s canon list. We could spend some time talking about what made it into his canon, but I think it is far more interesting to talk about what was excluded from the canon! What’s this canon saying about the illegitimate and spurious books? [Field answers] That’s right; it is saying that these are the things that people should stay away from. And if people in power are telling people out of power what they should not be doing, guess what that means? Yup, it means that the people were doing these things. So, if a Eusubius, a bishop, is telling people not to read something – it’s because they were reading it – and enough of them were reading it to make it a threat and warranted a prohibition.

Standardization of Christian Literature and Christian Thought

When the proto-orthodox bishops began to standardize church teaching and practice, they did the best they could to eradicate those works they deemed illegitimate and spurious. They were tremendously effective. Remember how we don’t have copies of the Letter to the Laodiceans, the Gospel of the Hebrews, or the Gospel of the Shepherd of Hermas? It is because they were systematically eradicated or edited. Some of the texts were whitewashed with orthodox theology or all the copies that they could find were burned. ∴ We are very lucky to have some of the noncanonical texts that we have today.

Now, given the fact that no one today uses these noncanonical texts and that they were rejected by the “official” church, is there any use of studying these texts? Well, we do know that people were using these texts, and that these people were not among the powerful, the official church, but they were used on a more popular level. And there is often a difference between the official religion of a people and the popular religion of a people.

The Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles

Studying these texts will give us a window into the lives and religions of the popular people and leaders of the other, non-proto-orthodox movements. I want to spend the rest of the time talking about a particular group of ancient Christian literature called the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. There were a variety of types of early Christian literatures, but we only have time to look at one. This is group of books were all written around 150CE – 250CE all around the Mediterranean coast.

All of them center around the same theme – one of the twelve apostles is sent to a particular region for the purpose of converting that region. They are not histories as we think of history. They are fantastic adventures. For instance, the Acts of Matthias and Andrew finds Matthew being sent by Jesus to the “City of the Dogs” which is inhabited by cannibals. Matthias is captured and drugged as soon as he approached the city. Andrew is sent to the city to rescue him 27 days later.

[5 Min Narration of the Contents of the Book, highlighting

Killing the guards
Opening the Jail Cell
Disarming more guards (numb hands and melting weapons)
After capture, the prayer and escape from prison
The flooding Statue
The wall of fire that prevented the escape of the cannibals and the swallowing up of the cannibals by the earth
The sudden conversion of the whole city
The giving of laws and the resurrection of all of those that were killed]

The other Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles contain similar stories. For instance, in the Acts of Philip, a new Jewish convert is killed by a jealous Jewish community. They bury him to hide their deed. However, God has the earth move the body of Hananya to the bay where Philip was hanging out on his boat. A dolphin then gets the body from the shelf of the bay and brings it to Philip.

Now, these are obviously fantastical stories, very similar to our fantasy novels that we have today. Now, given the fact that there is next to zero historical value of the narrative itself, is there anything these texts can tell us – besides the fact that the popular Christians liked to read religious novels?

Legitimizing certain traditions

There are three very important things that these texts can tell us about the early Christians that read them. First, the texts sought to legitimize or delegitimize certain traditions. Notice that the Acts of Matthias and Andrew end with the giving of laws by Andrew. They are tying the validity of the law with the divine power of Jesus. ∴ The underlying argument is that if one accepts the power of Jesus then they should also accept the laws of this particular city. Compare this with the giving of the LAW to Moses in the Old Testament. Same thing is going on here.

Communal Relationships

Secondly, they tell us about the relations between different communities where these texts were written. Remember how the Jews killed a new Jewish convert? The rest of the story centers around Philip exposing the murder to the Roman governor and the divine punishment of the Jewish leaders by an Angel of the Lord. What do you think the relationship was between the Christian community and the Jewish community there? Think of all the anti-soviet propaganda during the cold war or perhaps anti-jihadist media since 2001. We can compare this with the way Jews are depicted in the Acts of Thomas. Often the Jews are the first persons to either convert or get what Thomas was saying. Interestingly enough we are able to trace the Acts of Thomas back to the city of Edessa. We also know through other sources that the Jews and the Christians there enjoyed a peaceful and tolerant relationship there. This is substantially different from what we see in the Acts of Philip.

Early Christian Practice

Lastly, we can piece together snippets of Christian practice. We often come across hymns, baptism rites, and doctrinal statements. When taken together, we are able to get a glimpse into early Christian liturgical practice. In the Acts of Thomas we find all three of these present. The ones I want to mention are the “Hymn of the Daughter of Light,” the “Baptism of the King and His Brother,” and the “Monologue of the Youth.” You can find excerpts of these on your handouts. We could spend all day analyzing what is going on here – but for the sake of time, we will just point to their existence in these texts.

If we take all of these things together, the liturgical elements, the legitimizing and delegitimizing of traditions, and statements of the relationship the various communities a much

more robust picture emerges of these early Christians outside the “official story” of the early Church fathers.

Conclusion

Today I have touched on several topics. What I want to stress as I end my time are three things.

1. There were many more sacred texts and traditions than the brand of Christianity that won out over the second through fourth centuries

2. One of the methods Christian groups used to define themselves was the use of canon lists which told them what was acceptable sacred texts and what was not and therefore helped to create their sense of identity.

3. Even though they are not histories in the modern sense of the word, the study of excluded texts can tell us a great many things about the lives and religion of “heretics” and laypersons

Footnotes:

Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.27.2 and Tertullian, Against Marcion Books 4 and 5. While we are only looking at New Testament canons, it is worthwhile to note that Marcion rejected the Old Testament in its entirety. [↩]
Eusebius, History of the Church 3.25.1-7 [↩]