Description: "What can contemporary media fandoms, like Anne Rice, Star Wars, Batman, or Sherlock Holmes, tell us about ancient Christianity? Proposing an ingenious analysis, Tom de Bruin argues that disparaging terms applied to ancient Christian derivative texts, such as fakes, forgeries or corruptions, are not sufficient to capture the production, consumption, and value of these writings. He instead suggests seeing them as analogous to contemporary fan fiction, and explores the analogies between current fan fiction and Christian pseudepigrapha, apocrypha and other secondary texts-and their limits"--
Brief description: Tom de Bruin (he/they) is Assistant Professor of New Testament and Early Judaism at Radboud University, The Netherlands.
Review Quotes:
"In the study of the New Testament and Christian origins, analyses of rewriting texts and stories and assessing their authoritative status (or lack thereof) are long established. Yet modern scholarship has an insular tendency, avoiding discussions across the broader humanities, not least in fan studies. Tom de Bruin has shown how much of a loss this has been by providing a well-informed and sophisticated comparison between fan fiction and early Christian writings. This vital contribution pushes forward key critical questions in new directions. Why did people expand inherited stories? What were their goals? How were they received? Were they perceived to be authoritative or dangerous frauds?" --James Crossley, Academic Director of CenSAMM, University of Cambridge, UK, Professor of Bible and Society, MF Oslo, Norway and Visiting Senior Research Fellow, King's College London, UK
"As an introduction of fan studies to biblical scholars and a demonstration of its usefulness, de Bruin's monograph succeeds powerfully.... I was impressed by their command of the growing field. It is rare to find a scholar of ancient religion who demonstrates such broad proficiency with an entirely distinct field of modern media studies, and I would wholeheartedly recommend the monograph to anyone interested in the intersection of these disciplines." --Esther Brownsmith, University of Dayton, USA, Bible and Critical Theory Journal "Tom de Bruin's book truly offers a pioneering interdisciplinary analysis. In a creative yet unforced way, he brings modern scholarly reflections on fanfiction into dialogue with the results of New Testament and Church history research, while clearly marking the boundaries between the genres." --Collegium Doctorum