First Glance

It is a pleasure to welcome our newest columnist, the Reverend N.T. Wright, who is dean of Lichfield Cathedral in Straffordshire, England, although that in itself would not be a qualification for a columnist in BR. Tom Wright is also a major New Testament scholar, and that is what attracts us to him. He is an articulate, elegant writer with uncommon insights into the New Testament text, as our readers will soon learn, if they don’t already know. His initial column appears in this issue (see “Good News for a Pagan World”).

Lost, hidden, secret—these misleading words are frequently applied to the gospels, epistles and acts of apostles that make up the Christian Apocrypha. Excluded from the New Testament, the texts—which recount events in the lives of Jesus and the apostles that are never mentioned in the Bible—are read infrequently today. Nonetheless, many Christians are acquainted with these apocryphal stories—not through the printed page, but through art. Countless stained glass windows, manuscript illuminations and painted altarpieces record details mentioned only in the Apocrypha, writes David R. Cartlidge in “The Christian Apocrypha—Preserved in Art.”

The Ralph W. Beeson Professor of Religion at Maryville College, in Tennessee, Cartlidge has served as his department’s chair for more than 20 years. He is the author, along with D.L. Dungan, of Documents for the Study of the Gospels (Fortress/Augsburg, 1994). An amateur photographer and musician, he plays flute and piccolo.