A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Third Heaven: Reading the Secret Book of James (NHC I,2) with a Parodic Imagination

Abstract: From its appearance of the risen Lord to its heavenly ascent the Secret Book of James (NHC I,2; Ap. Jas .) is imitative of other early Christian revelatory literature. Scholarship has attended to these points of similarity to situate this text in relation to others and has found it to be the product of an educationally elite community. Its imitation, however, is marked with critical twists that point to essential difference as well as similarity. Parody, an intertextual mode marked by this type of imitation with critical difference, was well known in literary circles of the first several centuries. The works of Lucian in particular demonstrate how parody could be used as a vehicle for displays of educational bravado as well as social commentary, both of which might also characterize Ap. Jas . Reading through a lens of parody, or with a parodic imagination, brings into focus new interpretive possibilities for Ap. Jas ., along with its elite author and audience, and their posture toward the diverse landscape of early Christianity around them. Correspondingly, it stands to expand our historical imagination concerning the means and modes of discourse accessible to early Christian groups carving out identities for themselves within that landscape.