Janet E. Spittler

Christian apocrypha has suffered neglect. Living just outside the Christian canon, apocryphal Christian works have been judged deficient, secret, and even heretical. In Reading Christian Apocrypha, Tobias Nicklas, Jens Schr ter, and Janet Spittler lavish attention upon these extracanonical texts to demonstrate that, far from being superfluous or fringe, Christian apocrypha plays a crucial role in the history of Christianity. Apocryphal works function as important witnesses for the reception of Jesus, Paul, and other apostolic figures. Beyond the reception of canonical figures, however, they provide foundational stories that fill in the Christian landscape of memories, supplying local and regional Christian communities with narratives that tie their own environment, traditions, and practices to the activities of the apostles and apostolic figures. Reading Christian Apocrypha also explores how apocryphal works adopt and adapt Jewish and Greco-Roman views on the origin of the world, its history, and the world to come, creating new spaces of interpretation around biblical texts and traditions. The apocryphal writings reveal that Christianity, from the very beginning, developed a wide variety of theological perspectives within diverse linguistic traditions and geographical areas. Ultimately, Reading Christian Apocrypha demonstrates that the distinction between canonical and apocryphal tradition is far blurrier than often assumed.

Animals play prominent, often peculiar, roles in the highly entertaining five major apocryphal acts of the apostles, the Acts of Andrew, Acts of John, Acts of Peter, Acts of Paul and Acts of Thomas. Lions, bears, dogs, bedbugs, asses and even seals appear in these narratives - some friendly, some vicious, some with the capacity for human speech. Janet E. Spittler argues that these animal episodes have a greater, more complex significance than has previously been recognized, reading these texts within the broad context of Greco-Roman literature and presenting new interpretations of each animal-related episode. The natural characteristics of these animals - known to ancient authors and audiences through natural historical compendia, historiography and biography, current philosophical debates, fables, and novelistic literature - are intentionally and cleverly evoked by the authors of the apocryphal acts, often serving to underscore key themes of the works. Janet E. Spittler contends that the often very positive presentation of animals in these texts offers a counterbalance to the often negative depiction of animals in other early Christian literature, thus her book has broad implications for contemporary understandings of early Christian attitudes towards animals and the natural world.