Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-dsjbd Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T20:42:16.974Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

8 - The Apocryphal Jesus

from Part II - The Diversity of Reception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 November 2024

By
Jacob A. Rodriguez
Edited by
Markus Bockmuehl
Markus Bockmuehl
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
Get access

Summary

In exploring ancient apocryphal traditions, we uncover a tapestry of Jesus’s portrayals both converging and contrasting with canonical gospels. These “Jesus books” – infancy, ministry, passion, and dialogue gospels – showcase early Christianity’s narrative dynamism. Apocryphal texts reveal Jesus as a wise or petulant child, challenging Jewish norms or Torah-observant, literate, philosophical, mythological, hell-conquering, and anti-apostolic. These diverse depictions, addressing sociocultural and theological questions of the era, provide alternative or supplementary perspectives on Jesus’s identity and teachings, significantly contributing to our understanding of early Christian diversity and doctrinal development.

Keywords

apocryphaJesusGospelsGnostics
Type
Chapter
Information
The New Cambridge Companion to Jesus , pp. 121 - 136
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2024

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Further Reading

Bockmuehl, Markus. 2017. Ancient Apocryphal Gospels. Louisville: Westminster John Knox.Google Scholar
Burke, Tony and Landau, Brent, eds. 2016–2023. New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures. 3 vols. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.Google Scholar
Ehrman, Bart D. and Pleše, Zlatko. 2011. The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Gathercole, Simon. 2021. The Apocryphal Gospels. New York: Penguin.Google Scholar
Gathercole, Simon. 2022. The Gospel and the Gospels: Christian Proclamation and Early Jesus Books. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.Google Scholar
Rodriguez, Jacob A. 2023. Combining Gospels in Early Christianity: The One, the Many, and the Fourfold. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schröter, Jens, Nicklas, Tobias, and Verheyden, Joseph, eds. 2019. Gospels and Gospel Reception in the Second Century: Experiments in Reception. Berlin: De Gruyter.Google Scholar
Watson, Francis. 2022. What Is a Gospel? Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.Google Scholar
Watson, Francis and Parkhouse, Sarah. 2018. Connecting Gospels: Beyond the Canonical/Noncanonical Divide. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×