Ipotestualità, riscrittura, format narrativi: sulla nozione di ‘apocrifo’ e sul suo uso critico

This article aims at exploring the possibility of a scientific, critical and non-confessional use of the notion of ‘apocrypha’. In dialogue with the most up-to-date bibliography on the topic, the dialectic between ‘canonical’ and ‘apocryphal’ becomes an opportunity to rethink the origins of proto-Christian scriptural production. Specifically, we recognize a principle of literary dependence of the apocryphal tradition(s) on a horizon of texts identified as authoritative and normative, even before the firm definition of a New Testament canon. At the same time, the apocryphal, as a logic of alteration of the origin, therefore as an incessant and unstable relaunch of Jesus’ revelation, is highlighted as a genetic and original element of the entire Christian phenomenon