Christian apocryphal literature: An overview

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Gounelle gives an overview of main research strands in the field of Christian apocryphal literature. Central to his perception of Christian apocryphal literature is its character as a literature that refers to the foundation of Christianity and serves to preserve the memory of this foundation and the people linked to it. Apocryphal writings are often expressions of spiritual and theological realities, presented in a narrative framework. Even if they reflect the beliefs and practices of the ‘ordinary people’, they can hardly be considered as ‘popular literature’in the sense of originating from a ‘poorly educated’ group of society, as examples taken from the Acts of John and the Acts of Andrew demonstrate. Another general impression of apocryphal literature is nuanced and corrected by Gounelle, viz. the understanding of apocryphal writings as forming a kind of counter-canon to the New Testament. The concept of “New Testament apocrypha” is abandoned in favour of a more open approach to Christian apocryphal literature, allowing a greater variety of texts and interpretations. The same openness asks for a new chronological frame of interpretation. Gounelle presents a classification of apocryphal writings based on their time of origin. This approach opens the way to a longue duree of the apocryphal literatures, passing the borders of the formation of the biblical canon or early Christianity, to mention only two examples of chronological boundaries set in traditional approaches.

The lives of the apostles after Pentecost are described in the books of the New Testament only in part. Details of their missionary wanderings to the remote corners of the world are found in writings not included in the biblical canon, known as the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. In the early Middle Ages these originally Greek writings were translated and rewritten in Latin and circulated under the title Virtutes apostolorum. These texts became immensely popular. They were copied in numerous manuscripts, both as a comprehensive collection with a chapter for each apostle and as individual texts, echoing the needs of monastic and other religious communities that used these texts to celebrate the apostles as saints.

The First International Summer School on Christian Apocryphal Literature (Strasbourg, 2012) concentrated on the transmission of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in the Latin world. This volume also highlights the use of the Bible in the apocryphal Acts, the imagination of the apostles in early Christian art and poetry, and the apocryphal Acts in early medieval print. Other contributions concern the study of Christian apocryphal literature in general and in the context of the Strasbourg Summer School in particular.