Karin Kukkonen
Literature makes you feel, and it can get you thinking too. But how do you move from signs on the page to thoughts and feelings? And why does fiction sometimes feel more real than the world around us? My name is Karin Kukkonen, and together with my colleagues from the Literature, Cognition and Emotions Project, LCE for short, we will discuss these and other questions in the coming weeks. Today's guest is Hugo Lundhaug, Professor of Biblical Reception and early Christian Literature at the University of Oslo. Hugo, thank you for joining us.
Hugo Lundhaug
Well, thank you for inviting me.
Karin Kukkonen
You work on something that's called Apocrypha?
Hugo Lundhaug
That's true.
Karin Kukkonen
Texts which deal with God, Jesus, the apostles, but which somehow didn't end up in the Bible. My first question to you what is your favorite apocryphon... Is that the singular?
Hugo Lundhaug
That is the singular, yes.
Karin Kukkonen
... Apocryphal text. And what story does it tell?
Hugo Lundhaug
Oh, it's very difficult, of course, to choose just one from such a great number of texts. But to mention just one rather amusing example, I would choose a text that we have preserved in one Coptic manuscript, deriving from Upper Egypt – that is, the south of Egypt. We know that it was produced in the year 981, and donated to a monastery of Mercurius at Edfu in Upper Egypt. And in this manuscript, we find a text which is supposed to have been written or performed by Timothy of Alexandria, who was an archbishop of Alexandria in the fifth century. And Timothy is the... He is kind of the narrator in this text. And at the beginning of the text, he is basically giving a sermon to his congregation in Alexandria. And he starts telling his congregation about... The fact that he is going to tell them about the Angel of Death, Abbaton. But, he does not go directly into this story, but he says that once he was — rather, actually, quite frequently, he went on a trip to Jerusalem on a pilgrimage, because he wanted to see all the holy sites. He wanted to see the place of the resurrection, the place of the crucifixion and all of these places. But he also wanted to visit the Library of the Apostles. So, he went to the library – he talked to the librarian, an old priest, and he asked him to see a text written by the Apostles about The Angel of Death, Abbaton, because – as he said, I want to know about his nature. What... who is he? And what kind of purpose does he serve? So the old priest, he goes and fetches this book on the investiture of the Angel of Death, Abbaton. And what we then get for the rest of this text is – basically – pseudo-Timothy reading this text to us. So he starts reading this text, and then we get, of course, another narrator who is one of the apostles, who tells us about a dialogue between Christ and the Apostles on the Mount of Olives. Where Peter the Apostle asks Christ to tell them about Abbaton, the Angel of Death. Because you have already told us about Michael – The Archangel Michael and the Archangel Gabriel, how they got their current positions. So please now also tell us about Abbaton. And Christ says, yes, I will tell you everything without hiding anything from you. So just listen. And he starts to tell about how this all hangs together. And basically, he starts with the beginning, with the creation of the human being. And it tells a story about how God wants to – well, he basically, the father and the son, God and Christ, they decide to make a human being. And in order to do that, God sends for an angel. And he sends the angel to fetch clay, with which he is going to make man, make Adam. And the angel goes to fetch clay – but when it comes to the clay, the clay refuses and says, no, no, no, you shouldn't take me, because this will only lead... only end badly, because this human being you are going to create will sin. And this will not be good. So he returns – the angel returns to God – and says, I can't do it. So God sends another angel and the same happens. So he sends another angel and another angel until the seventh angel, which is the angel Muriel. He has no pity with the clay and takes the clay anyway, and gives this to the father and the son. And they make Adam. So, later this angel gets the role of the Angel of Death, since he had no mercy, showed no mercy to the clay at all. So therefore he becomes the king of all humanity, and basically collects all the souls of people when they die.
Karin Kukkonen
And this is in addition to the story of the fall, which also, I guess, explains why we have to die.
Hugo Lundhaug
Yes. So you get the story of the fall too, in this text, and also the story of the fall of the devil. The devil falls because he refuses to worship Adam, because the devil was already created – because the angels, the archangels were created before Adam. And when God orders all of the angels to worship Adam, then the devil and his angels, those who follow the devil, they refuse. And as a result, the devil is thrown out of heaven. So this is a story we find in many of these Coptic Apocrypha, in fact. Not least in a very long and interesting text called The Investiture of the Archangel Michael, which is then also referred to in the investiture of the Angel of Death, Abbaton.
Karin Kukkonen
And all of this you find in the Library of the Apostles?
Hugo Lundhaug
All of these are supposedly found in the Library of the Apostles. But only some of these texts actually have this elaborate frame narrative. So while this text on Abbaton has this narrative, this frame, the investiture of Michael does not. But they're the same type of texts, and they clearly overlap and they circulate in the same milieus.
Karin Kukkonen
Can you say a little more about these milieus? I mean, where... Who comes up with the idea to supplement the Bible? And who would be interested in reading about that and hearing about it?
Hugo Lundhaug
So, a very, very good question. And of course, now I have to say that the apocrypha – that I am concentrating on – are Coptic Apocrypha. That is Apocrypha written in Coptic, which is the final phase of the Egyptian language, when they started to use Greek letters in order to write Egyptian. Which means that I have texts and manuscripts from the fourth century, basically, after Christ, until the 13th century. So it's basically in this time period that I am working. And in this time period in Egypt, it is quite clear that if you look at the manuscripts, the manuscripts were produced and used by monks. Almost all of these manuscripts, we can be quite sure, were produced by monks. And we actually have no clear cases where these manuscripts were not produced by monks. So the monks were certainly copying and reading these texts. Who actually authored the original stories – the original works – is a different question, of course. And in many cases, especially with the early ones, they were authored in Greek, and then translated into Coptic. So then, we don't really know when. Some of them probably derives from the second century and the third century and fourth century. But then of course, later you also get a lot of text authored in... a greater percentage of texts authored in Coptic directly, when you get to the sixth and seventh and eighth centuries.
Karin Kukkonen
So the period that you describe... I mean, in Europe, that would be the Middle Ages? Is that a period category that works for Coptic as well?
Hugo Lundhaug
Not really. You can talk about late antiquity and the Byzantine time period, and into the early Islamic period in Egypt – since Egypt was conquered by the Arabs in the seventh century, mid seventh century – and after that the early Islamic period.
Karin Kukkonen
And these Apocrypha are particularly Coptic phenomena?
Hugo Lundhaug
No, you also have Apocrypha in many, many other languages. But myself, in my research, I have focused on Coptic Apocrypha. But when we look at, of course – why did they actually compose these kind of things? I think we can draw the comparison with modern fan fiction, actually. That they are basically... There's an impulse for people to want to know more about the characters and events from the biblical story world – what they have read about in the Bible, basically, and the canonical texts. And people start to elaborate upon these characters and events, and tell additional stories – quite similarly to how people today write new stories based on story worlds like the ones from Harry Potter, The Lord of the Rings, the Marvel Universe, or Star Wars, for instance.
Karin Kukkonen
That's interesting. So what... Is Apocrypha meant to be read alongside the Bible?
Hugo Lundhaug
Or to replace them?
Karin Kukkonen
Well, I mean, what is the dynamic between... Yeah, I guess, at that period there was already a sort of canonical set of four evangelists, or...? I don't actually know.
Hugo Lundhaug
Yes. Basically, the canonization process started relatively early. And we have a major part of that process in the fourth century. When we look at these texts, a majority of the Coptic Apocrypha were certainly intended to be read alongside the biblical texts, and not intended to replace them. But there is a question, concerning some of them, whether there was an intention or an aspiration for authority – on the par with the canonical texts like, for instance, with the Gospel of Thomas or, for instance, The Secret Book of John, which are among the earlier Apocrypha that we that we have in Coptic.
Karin Kukkonen
And is that something about a community wanting their own apostle, or is it... I mean, as far as I understand it, in fan fiction, quite often the impulse is that you don't like the ending...
Hugo Lundhaug
Mm hmm.
Karin Kukkonen
... So you write a new one, or – you're somehow dissatisfied with the way in which the story goes. It shouldn't end like that.
Hugo Lundhaug
Yeah, that is, to some extent, what you find in some of these texts too, especially in many of the earlier texts. We have texts that argue that the material world was not created by the supreme deity, by God, but by a lesser creator-God. So that's basically a reinterpretation of what you find in the canonical texts. Basically turning a lot on its head.
Karin Kukkonen
Why would one do that...?
Hugo Lundhaug
If one, for instance, wanted to explain why the world is not a perfect place. How could you reconcile the idea of a perfect Heavenly Father, a perfect God, and the less perfect – even bad – material world? You can postulate, basically, a lesser creator-God, and...
Karin Kukkonen
...Blame it on someone else?
Hugo Lundhaug
... Blame it on on that figure instead.
Karin Kukkonen
So, what you describe here sounds like an incredibly fascinating, but also incredibly complex body of texts, that sort of dances around the canonical set up?
Hugo Lundhaug
Yes.
Karin Kukkonen
How does a cognitive approach help you to make sense of these texts – and exactly the relationship to the canonical Bible?
Hugo Lundhaug
A cognitive approach can basically help us to use what we know about how the mind works – of course, in the modern times – and use what we know about the workings of the human mind, in order to more easily interpret or analyze our ancient texts, and come up with plausible interpretations of those texts. That is, we can experiment with different contexts for the text, different reading groups, what we know about them. And then, basically, interpret the texts using cognitive theories of interpretation, in order to help us look at what interpretive possibilities – what meaning potential – resides in the texts. So in order to do that, I have, for instance, used blending theory, or conceptual blending theory. Which was a theory that linguist Gilles Fauconnier and literary professor Mark Turner came up with in order to basically understand how people connect mental spaces –mentally – in order to come up with something new. So basically, it's a method with which you can analyze the way in which metaphors work, but you can also analyze the way in which metonymy works. But also, as I've shown, you can use it as a framework for analyzing intertextuality. How, when you read a text and there's an allusion to a different text....
Karin Kukkonen
Can you give an example?
Hugo Lundhaug
... Then you have two mental spaces that basically overlap and create something new. So, yeah, well... basically texts that, for instance, talk about the crucifixion. There we have, for instance, Coptic Apocrypha dealing with this, and they only, of course, make certain allusive remarks, sometimes, to what we know from having read the canonical texts. And basically, they presuppose a knowledge of those texts. And what happens when you read – and you get a mental space of what you read – you easily then blend that with... connect it to mental spaces of what you already remember, from having read about the same event in the canonical texts. And connecting these things, you come up with something – often something very new.
Karin Kukkonen
Yeah. So you make new links between what you know and what is new, and you fill the gaps. But I guess you also throw new light on...?
Hugo Lundhaug
Then you can throw new light, especially on the old text too. You can then, for instance, then read again the canonical texts, and see what those texts might have meant. Things that you didn't already think about. For instance, that before the creation of Adam, seven Angels had already been sent to gather the clay, as I mentioned from that one text – or the fact that Adam may not have been created by God, the Father himself, but by lesser angels or by a creator-God.
Karin Kukkonen
And that, of course, allows you then to go back and read the Bible.
Hugo Lundhaug
Reread the Bible and understand the canonical biblical texts in a new way. So basically you can say, that what the Apocrypha do is that they present the reader with additional building blocks, additional blueprints, for the for the biblical story world. And that is also what is another, of course, cognitive perspective that you can use on this material – to use cognitive narratology, and use the concept of a story world, and how that works on the basis of multiple narratives. So, a trans-narrative story world, a trans-authorial, trans-narrative story world, that is, a story world that is created in the mind of the reader, on the basis of more than one narrative – and narratives basically composed by more than one author.
Karin Kukkonen
And where everyone can meet...
Hugo Lundhaug
Yes.
Karin Kukkonen
... everyone else – and God has a little brother.
Hugo Lundhaug
Yeah – yeah, yeah, yeah.
Karin Kukkonen
And these story worlds, where this blending and this interaction takes place, were never the less written – as you said earlier on – and copied in monasteries. Would they also play part in, say, monastic life? Or is that... This idea, that there is a library of the Apostles, and if you go to Jerusalem, you can ask... The librarian will pull you a copy of this and that story... So, there seems to be a link between this obviously transcendential story world and the real world?
Hugo Lundhaug
Oh, yes, definitely, there are definitely links. Both, of course, historical links and links with the real world. I mean, these stories are – when they are set in the real world, you have lots of dialogues between Christ and the Apostles, for instance, set on the Mount of Olives. You have the Library of the Apostles in Jerusalem, and things like that. Although, of course, sometimes these texts are quite confused. So, in one of the texts – called The Wisdom of Jesus Christ – you have a reference to the Mount of Olives in Galilee, which is, of course, wrong. But it's what you find....
Karin Kukkonen
Maybe another Mount of Olives...?
Hugo Lundhaug
But I mean, the connection between the real world and this imaginary world – the story world – is, of course, very important, also for the use of these texts in monasteries. Because they were used in religious festivals, for instance. So in the festival of Michael, they would read the investiture of Michael to the other monks, and probably also to visiting laypeople, who visited the monasteries during these feasts. Which is interesting, because in these texts you also often get references to the exact dates, on which events in the biblical story world took place – for instance, on what day was the devil thrown out of heaven?
Karin Kukkonen
We know that?
Hugo Lundhaug
Yeah, that's described. And on what date was Michael the Archangel invested in his current position – put on his throne and given his crown and his staff and everything. It was on the 12th of Hatûr, which is an Egyptian month. And on that date of course, was also the festival of the Archangel Michael.
Karin Kukkonen
Which would be celebrated every year? So it's part of a ritual and, I guess... I mean, one of the things that you write about, in an article that I've read by you, is this question also of memory, and the way in which these apocryphal texts in the monasteries built – I guess? I don't know what the word was, that you would use – built memory?
Hugo Lundhaug
Yeah, it's very interesting, because we know from several of the earliest monastic communities in Egypt – the Pachomian monastic community, which started in the fourth century, and also the famous community of the Archimandrite Shenoute in the late fourth and early fifth century. We have preserved a lot of monastic rules by the monastic leaders of these communities. And it is quite clear that there was a quite strict educational program for the monks. For instance, they had to memorize a lot of the Bible, large parts of the New Testament, including the Gospels, The Letters of Paul, and also psalms. They needed to memorize the whole thing. So of course, with all the monks having read and memorized all of these these narratives...
Karin Kukkonen
It becomes really part of their...?
Hugo Lundhaug
It becomes part of their whole mental world – embodied, in a way also – and distributed, also, across the community with... The community sharing the same memory. Which again helps us understand how and why they could understand really complicated, allusive theological writings in that community. Like some of these more complicated apocrypha. And of course, equally, it really shows us why the control of what the monks were reading also was very important. So it's kind of – it's an aspect of thought control, censorship and, in a way, brainwashing too.
Karin Kukkonen
So, who was in control?
Hugo Lundhaug
So in control, you had the abbots – or the monasteries were in control. And we know from Shenoute's monasteries, for instance, that they had a rule saying, that you are not allowed to bring into or take out of the monastery any writings without the abbot clearing that writing, because there were certain things that the monks were not supposed to read.
Karin Kukkonen
That were not part of their story world?
Hugo Lundhaug
Yeah – this would for instance include certain apocryphal texts, that some of these monasteries would rather want to keep the of the collective memory of the monks.
Karin Kukkonen
So were there... I mean, from my understanding, there are many monasteries in the area that you're studying. Would you say that each of them has their own, yeah, I don't know... version of the biblical story world then?
Hugo Lundhaug
Yeah, that's one of the interesting things, that... they would have their different versions of the biblical story world, based on the corpus of texts that the monks could read and were reading. And we know that they would be reading different things in different monasteries. And of course, one of the reasons why a monastic leader like Shenoute, for instance, was a really harsh and authoritative – authoritarian, even – figure: It was important for him to control what the monks were reading, because it would be much more difficult for him to use his very elusive rhetoric based on the canonical biblical texts – and also to teach and uphold Christian dogma, in the way that it did, if the monks were allowed to read a whole bunch of additional texts, that would basically come up with different versions of some of these key tenets. Like, for instance, it would be difficult for Shenoute... And he writes that – in an anti-heretical text that we have preserved from him – that he was not very much for texts, that argue that there were several, different worlds existing and not just one, for instance, or that the world was made by someone else. So he was very much against that kind of apocryphal text, as we find in, for instance, the Secret Book of John.
Karin Kukkonen
So there are – even in those communities that seem to be built on Apocrypha – there was still the thought that there is something like heresy, if you use a wrong kind of apocryphal text?
Hugo Lundhaug
Yes. And you can see that... Well, many of these texts would have been heretical in certain communities, but not in others. So we have to assume that the rules were different in different monasteries. We also see that the nature of Apocrypha changes over time. So, you can say see that the later Apocrypha are usually closer aligned with what we would regard as orthodoxy today, than what many of the earlier texts were. Which does not mean that they are not still strange, but they are closely aligned with some of the main basic theological dogmas.
Karin Kukkonen
So...
Hugo Lundhaug
So for instance, you have a text called The Mistress of John, where John the Apostle is taken up to heaven by a cherub and shown things answering John's questions. In that text, for instance, we are told that in the beginning Adam and Eve were all clad in nails. What you have on your...
Karin Kukkonen
In nails?
Hugo Lundhaug
...On your fingernails – your fingernails or toenails.
Karin Kukkonen
Alright, nails!
Hugo Lundhaug
But that was basically the body they had before the fall. So that body was removed, taken from them, when they fell from grace. And all we have left of that original body is our fingernails and our toenails. But at the same time, that's a text that basically keeps to all the important Christian tenets.
Karin Kukkonen
So – I mean, from the way in which you describe it... On the one hand, you also talk about fan cultures, and the story worlds of Marvel or Harry Potter or something like that. It seems quite familiar that there is a certain set of texts that, I mean, also for fan culture we describe as the canon?
Hugo Lundhaug
Yeah.
Karin Kukkonen
And then there are these extensions to it. So, on the one hand, these biblical storyworlds seem to be very close to what – I think – many of us are familiar with. On the other hand... these bodies are covered in fingernails. And also, this idea of heresy strikes me as something that is still foreign, I think, to our way of thinking about these things.
Hugo Lundhaug
I think it's not that different necessarily, because you also have that in several fan communities – of course, you have strong discussions of canonicity. Which texts could actually constitute canon, which texts do not constitute canon, and what additions are good enough or fit well enough into the main story world, so as to to become widely used? So you do find certain pieces of fanfiction gaining fanonical status, in a way.
Karin Kukkonen
... Fanonical?
Hugo Lundhaug
Fanonical, yes. Kind of almost canonical – so, fanonical status. And you can see that also, in a way, happening with the Coptic Apocrypha: With the Investiture of the Archangel Michael, for instance, seeming to have gained fanonical status, because that seems to have been very popular and have had a wide distribution.
Karin Kukkonen
He's a very popular saint, I guess.
Hugo Lundhaug
Yeah, that too. Very popular and important in Egypt. So we have many, many texts dealing with Michael.
Karin Kukkonen
So given these similarities or shared – I guess – storytelling desires, or whatever you want to call it... Where do you see challenges in applying cognitive approaches to text that, after all, I mean, are a thousand years old or even older than that... Yeah, are there challenges? And how can one meet these challenges? I mean, how can one navigate that historical distance?
Hugo Lundhaug
Yeah, of course there are challenges, but in using cognitive perspectives, I see more opportunities, actually, than problems – because, I mean, our human cognitive apparatus has not changed much in the last 2000 years. Evolution does not work that quickly, basically. So I think – because of that, as I also said earlier – I think we can use those insights from modern studies, on how the human mind works, and apply those to the ancient materials. Because we can use them to fill in – those perspectives, those frameworks to fill in – some of the gaps that otherwise haunt us when we look at these often quite strange – to us – narratives.
Karin Kukkonen
Strange yet fascinating.
Hugo Lundhaug
Strange and fascinating. Yes, that's for sure.
Karin Kukkonen
I mean, It makes me want to read Apocrypha now. So I would like to invite you – for our listeners – to give us some reading recommendations.
Hugo Lundhaug
Yes, it depends what you want recommendations of, of course. If you are looking at theory, I would certainly recommend that people read some of the Cognitive Narratology of David Herman, for instance his Storytelling and the Sciences of Mind, published on the MIT Press in 2013. I think it is a very useful book. Also Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner's book, The Way We Think, on Blending Theory. Mary-Laure Ryan, for instance, too, is a very important scholar that I would warmly recommend. Mark Wolf's on Building Imaginary Worlds. And then also, of course, if you want to go out and read the Apocrypha, there are a couple of very good... There are many very good anthologies of Apocrypha published. You can read, for instance, The Nag Hammadi Library in English – for one specific corpus of texts discovered from the fourth century in Upper Egypt. Or you can also read more recent anthologies that also include much later compositions, called More New Testament Apocrypha, edited by Tony Burke. So, so far two volumes of More New Testament Apocrypha. But also, soon there will appear a third one in that series.
Karin Kukkonen
So the world of the Biblical Apocrypha knows no end?
Hugo Lundhaug
No, it's very, very rich. And of course, people still produce additional biblical apocrypha to this day, I mean, including modern movies like Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ or other biblical filmatic versions of the biblical story world – of course, many of which quite clearly incorporate apocryphal textual materials too, but which also, without doing that explicitly, are also part of an apocryphal building and elaboration of the story world.
Karin Kukkonen
So it still goes on?
Hugo Lundhaug
It still goes on.
Karin Kukkonen
But our podcast, unfortunately, is coming to an end. Thank you so much for an excellent conversation on Apocrypha and biblical story worlds – and blending and the way in which, yeah, through cognitive approaches we can gain a bit more insight into these fascinating Coptic story worlds. Thank you.
Hugo Lundhaug
Thank you. It was fun.
Karin Kukkonen
And thanks to everyone listening to the LCE podcast.