Book Note: Who Do People Say That I Am? (Vernon K. Robbins)

There is a fantastic new book just published that covers Jesus and the gospels, canonical as well as extracanonical.  Vernon Robbins, Who Do People Say I Am? Rewriting Gospel in Emerging Christianity.

Professor Robbins' book is the best there is on the market in my opinion.  I highly recommend it to you, especially if you are looking for a book to teach this subject.

Robbins sets the more commonly known representations of Jesus in the Bible alongside lesser-well-known portraits of him found in texts like the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Judas, and the Acts of John.  He does this, not simply as a rehash of general knowledge, but applying all of his years of accumulated knowledge of orality, rhetoric, cognition and the social fabric of Christianity to the material.  You are face-to-face with Robbins the veteran professor sharing generously his knowledge.

The book is very accessible in terms of style and yet very careful in terms of historical detail.  A perfect match for the non-specialist reader, and specialists from other areas of New Testament study who want to get a handle on the extracanonical material.

Book Note: The Apocryphal Gospels (Ehrman and Plese)

Bart D. Ehrman and Zlatko Plese (eds.), The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). 

This is a brand new book and an incredibly useful one at that.  A big "THANKS" to Ehrman and Plese for putting this book together!

It is a collection of apocryphal gospels (Infancy Gospels; Ministry Gospels; Sayings Gospels; Passion, Resurrection and Post-Resurrection Gospels).  The book does not include the Coptic gospels from Nag Hammadi or the Berlin Codex, with the exceptions of the Gospels of Thomas and Mary.  The editors also have included the Gospel of Judas from the Tchacos Codex, but the translation is based only on the Kasser-Wurst critical edition.  So it does not yet take into account Ohio fragments whose translation and photographs have been released by Wurst on his website HERE. So this translation (like all of them that have been published so far, including my own) needs to be corrected and updated already.

What is great about the volume?  The primary language texts are on the face pages, with translations on the opposite pages.  There are brief introductions to each text, which help orient the readers to some of the main issues for each text. 

There are very few footnotes on critical textual issues, however, so this will not replace the critical editions for researchers.  But it will be very handy to have all these primary texts in one neat handbook for quick reference and use in graduate courses. 

My main criticism is that the bibliographies are uneven and too selective.  They target certain resources, while leaving out other crucial materials on these texts.  This means that the bibliographies are so selective that they are not targeted for the public or for graduate students and researchers who appear to be the volume's targeted audience.  I wonder why the bibliographies are so selective, given that this is a volume of 611 pages, and the bibliographical pages usually take up less than half a page with lots of white space left.  Another page of bibliography on each of the gospels would have made the volume that much better and would have added very little in terms of additional pages.

Book Note: Early Christian Greek and Latin Literature: A Literary History (Claudio Moreschini and Enrico Norelli)

I came across this 2-volume set last spring and was thoroughly pleased to see such an even treatment of canonical and non-canonical material. Applause!

The volumes were published in 2005 by Hendrickson Publishers. The first volume covers early Christian literature from Paul to the Age of Constantine. The second, from the Nicea to the beginning of the Medieval period. The books generally are up-to-date on scholarship, providing tight narrative outlines of the literature followed by very brief bibliographies. The coverage is comparable to what might be found on certain subjects in the Anchor Bible Dictionary.

However, because of the overview nature of the "entries," not even a nod is made to a comprehensive treatment of the given topics. Rather, the work is written through the personal digest of Moreschini and Norelli, representing their understanding of the material. So these books are good places to go to get a quick overview of a subject, but should not be regarded as comprehensively representing the field on any given topic. This is not a criticism as much as a caution to readers.

I love the set up of volume 1 which is of most interest to me because of its coverage of the pre-Nicene period. It is set up chronologically beginning with the letters of Paul and the Pauline "pseudepigraphical" letters. The Gospels follow with Quelle, synoptics, Acts, Jewish-Christian, Egyptians, Fragmentary gospels, Thomas, Peter, John. The Apocalypses follow with John, Isaiah, and Peter. Then the Non-Pauline letters. And so forth. Fair language and even treatment of the literature is seen throughout the book.

The only sad remark I have to make, is where is the Coptic literature (besides the Gospel of Thomas which is included because it has greek fragments?)? I understand that the title of the book would have to be changed, but the missing Coptic material creates a silence, an emptiness of the Gnostic and (and later, monastic) voices.