Last night I reached Toronto, where the York Christian Apocrypha Symposium is bing held, and met with Scott Brown and Timo Paananen for dinner. Both have written important studies of the so-called Secret Gospel of Mark, and Timo also contributed in a significant way to the discussions about the Gospel of Jesus' Wife by writing an article which I hosted on my blog. Tomorrow's session will include a significant amount about the role of blogging in the unfolding study and discussion of that text. After that, we had a reception at which I got to catch up with people I knew, like Bart Ehrman and Mark Goodacre, as well as meet a number of people that I had not previously. These smaller symposia are always delightful – this one in particular, where talking about the Gospel of Jesus' Wife, Secret Mark, Clement of Alexandria, the Pseudo-Clementines, and the Mandaeans comes naturally. But there are also great opportunities to talk about working as educators and teaching as scholars who work on texts which are literally and metaphorically esoteric, and which may not be the focus of our classes in the way they are in our research.
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