Current administration: Tony Burke (chair), Jae Hahn, Julia Lindenlaub, Jacob Lollar, Janet Spittler, Lily Vuong.
2025 Call for Papers
For the 2025 Annual Meeting, the Christian Apocrypha program unit will begin a three-year invited session on the adaptation (and creation) of apocryphal traditions by the tenth-century writer Symeon Metaphrastes. The plan is to assemble a group of translators for the texts (which have not yet appeared in English translation), present their contents at SBL 2025, 2026 and 2027, and then publish the translations in a collected edition. We will also hold a joint session with the Religious World of Late Antiquity program unit. We invite papers that consider the influence of apocryphal literature on the development of local cult in late antiquity. Topics might include the role of apocryphal narratives in popularizing and legitimizing local cults, the use of apocryphal literature in the construction of devotional landscapes and pilgrimage traditions, and the ritual contexts in which people engaged with stories from apocryphal literature. In addition, we welcome proposals on any topic related to apocryphal texts, but particularly encourage papers discussing paratexts (titles, prefaces, marginalia, illustrations, corrections) in manuscripts (or editions and translations) of apocryphal texts or paratexts in canonical texts that relate to apocryphal traditions (including prologues and catenae).