New Testament Apocrypha Introduction

The New Testament Apocrypha

An orientation to the Acts, Gospels, Letters, and Jesus traditions outside the canon

Around the canonical Gospels, Acts, and Letters there grew a wide literature: further gospels of the infancy and the passion, acts of the several apostles, letters claimed for Paul and others, and visions and dialogues of the risen Lord. Some are early and valuable; some are late and legendary; some are clearly the work of particular schools of thought. Together they show how the memory and the imagination of the early communities worked upon the figures of Jesus and the apostles.

How the New Testament apocrypha are filed in this project

Texts that belong more properly to the early gospel and wisdom tradition, or to the Coptic library, are filed in those sections, to avoid duplication. Under the New Testament Apocrypha are gathered the apocryphal Acts of the apostles, the further letters, and the gospels and Jesus-traditions not filed elsewhere — the Gospel of Judas, the Bartholomew writings, the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Descent into Hell, the infancy and Joseph traditions, and the rest — together with a fragmentary index for the pieces that survive only in scraps and quotations.

Each text is weighed honestly: its age, its preservation, and its character are kept in view, and nothing late or legendary is passed off as early or apostolic.