This volume brings together the contributions of a group of scientists who began in 2004 to reconsider the traditional category of New Testament apocrypha concerning new perspectives on greater continuity towards; a continuity not only between early Jewish and Christian documents, but also between early Christian and Late Antique apocryphal literature. 

This is the result of the encounter of two (so far) alternative approaches: on the one hand, the deconstruction of the usual categories of "Jewish Christianity" and "Gnosticism", on the other hand, the realization that the production of new apocryphal texts went well into the Late Antiquity and beyond , In the twenty published papers various facets of this apocryphal continent newly explored by Christian associating themselves Jewish stories and literary genre, with emphasis on the Late Antique Clementine literature, to complex and controversial situation of literary role, such figures as Judas Iscariot Mary Magdalene, Mary the mother of Jesus or Peter is attributed. 

Contents I. Introduction Pierluigi Piovanelli: The Christian Apocryphal text at the Society of Biblical Literature International Meetings (2004-2006) and the Ottawa International Workshop (2006): Retrospect and Prospects II. General Perspectives Tony Burke: Entering the Mainstream: Twenty-Five Years of Research on the Christian Apocrypha - Ian H. Henderson: The Usefulness of Christian Apocryphal Texts in Research on the Historical Jesus - James R. Davila: Did Christians Write Old Testament Pseudepigrapha That Appear to Be Jewish? - Annette Yoshiko Reed: "Jewish-Christian" Apocrypha and the History of Jewish / Christian Relations III. From Early Christian text to Late Antique Apocryphal Literature Louis Painchaud: With Regard to the (re) discovery of the Gospel of Judas - Minna Heimola: Christians and Jews in the Gospel of Philip - Theodore de Bruyn: Christian Apocryphal and Canonical Narratives in Greek Amulets and formularies in Late Antiquity - Stephen J. Shoemaker: Mary in Early Christian Apocrypha: Virgin Territory - Pierluigi Piovanelli: Why Mary and Peter? From the Early Christian Gospel of Mary to the Late Antique Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles - Peter W. Dunn: Luke's Acts or the Acts of Paul: Which Looks More Like a Second-Century Text? - Cornelia Horn: Depictions of Children and Young People as Literary Motifs in Canonical and Apocryphal Acts - Vahan Hovhanessian: The Repose of the Blessed John in the Armenian Bible: Deconstructing the Acts of John - Timothy Beech: Unraveling the Complexity of the Oracula Sibyllina: The Value of a Socio-Rhetorical Approach in the Study of the Sibylline Oracles - Michael Kaler: Gnostic Irony and the adaptation of the Apocalyptic Genre - Timothy Pettipiece: The Manichaean Reception of Apocryphal Traditions: The Case of the "Five Limbs" IV. The Pseudo-Clementines: Early Christian Traditions in Late Antique Editions F. Stanley Jones: John the Baptist and His Disciples in the pseudo-Clementines: A Historical Appraisal - Kelley Coblentz Bautch: The Pseudo-Clementine Homilies' Use of Jewish Pseudepigrapha - Giovanni Battista Bazzana: Healing the World: Medical and Social Practice in the pseudo- Clementine Novel - Dominique Côté: Rhetoric and Jewish-Christianity: The Case of the Grammarian Apion in the Clementine Homilies pseudo - Nicole Kelley: Pseudo-Clementine polemics against Sacrifice: A Window Onto Religious Life in the Fourth Century?