Scholars interested in the Christian Apocrypha (CA) typically appeal to CA collections when in need of primary sources. But many of these collections limit themselves to material believed to have been written within the first to fourth centuries CE. As a result a large amount of non-canonical Christian texts important for the study of ancient and medieval Christianity have been neglected. The More Christian Apocrypha Project will address this neglect by providing a collection of new editions (some for the first time) of these texts for English readers. The project is inspired by the More Old Testament Pseudepigrapha Project headed by Richard Bauckham and Jim Davila from the University of Edinburgh. Like the MOTP, the MCAP is envisioned as a supplement to an earlier collection of texts—in this case J. K. Elliott’s The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford 1991), the most recent English-language CA collection (but now almost two decades old). The texts to be included are either absent in Elliott or require significant revision. Many of the texts have scarcely been examined in over a century and are in dire need of new examination. One of the goals of the project is to spotlight the abilities and achievements of English (i.e., British and North American) scholars of the CA, so that English readers have access to material that has achieved some exposure in French, German, and Italian collections.

New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, edited by Tony Burke and Brent Landau, was published in 2017. It is the first in a series of volumes of apocryphal Christian texts in English translation. This article offers some reflections on the reception of the volume—with a summary of and response to reviews in journals and two panel discussions—and on the process of assembling a second volume to be published in 2020. The article describes the contents of the second volume with particular emphasis on several Johannine apocrypha related to er?tapokriseis (or “question-and-answer” literature) and two texts that may reflect Chistian-Muslim interaction in late antique Egypt. The article concludes with a preliminary list of the texts to be included in a third volume to follow in 2022.

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The apocryphal infancy gospels (such as the Infancy Gospel of Thomas and the Protoevangelium of James) seem at first look to be ideal sources for the study of children and childhood in Early Christianity. They all feature depictions of Jesus as an infant and/or a child; some tell similar tales of other eminent Christian figures, such as Mary of Nazareth and John the Baptist. Few of these texts, however, can be considered “early” texts (i.e., 2nd–3rd centuries) and even those we can confidently date to this period are of limited value for the study of children. One text remains useful for this endeavor: the Infancy Gospel of Thomas. And in recent years, several scholars have looked seriously at the gospel for what it can tell us about the experiences of children in antiquity. Yet, even this text must be approached with caution for it has more to say about how adults of the time wanted children to be than what they truly were. Les évangiles de l’enfance apocryphes (comme l’Évangile de l’enfance selon Thomas et le Protévangile de Jacques) semblent à première vue comme des sources idéales pour l’étude des enfants et l’enfance au début du christianisme. Ils ont tous des représentations de Jésus comme un bébé et / ou un enfant, certains racontent des histoires similaires des autres éminentes figures chrétiennes, comme Marie de Nazareth et Jean le Baptiste. Peu de ces textes, cependant, peuvent être considérés tôt (par exemple, 2–3e siècles) et même ceux que nous pouvons en toute confiance dater à cette période sont d’une valeur limitée pour l’étude des enfants. Un texte reste utile pour cette tâche : l’Évangile de l’enfance selon Thomas. Et ces dernières années, plusieurs chercheurs se sont penchés sérieusement sur l’évangile pour ce qu’il peut nous dire au sujet des expériences des enfants dans l’antiquité. Pourtant, même ce texte doit être abordé avec prudence car il a plus à dire sur les attentes des adultes de l’époque aux enfants que ce qu’ils étaient vraiment.

The popularity of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code has led to a surge of attacks on Christian Apocryphal literature by conservative New Testament scholars (e.g., Ben Witherington III, Craig Evans, Darrell L. Bock). The work of these scholars is transparently polemical—for example, Evans states that his book, Fabricating Jesus, was written “to defend the original witnesses to the life, death and resurrection of Jesus” (p. 17). And their methods are not new; indeed they use the same rhetorical strategies employed by such early heresiologists as Irenaeus, including the use of sarcasm and invective to describe their opponents, the intentional misrepresentation of the heretics’/scholars’ views and the content of the primary texts, the excerpting of material from the texts in order to expose their absurdities, and the demonization of their opponents by associating them with the powers of darkness. This article illustrates the parallels between modern critics and the ancient heresy hunters but focuses particularly on how the two groups use and abuse the apocryphal texts. Perhaps we can learn from the contemporary debate something about the reception of the Christian Apocrypha in antiquity.