Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles

What Has Apocrypha to Do with Hagiographa? A Reconsideration of the “Editing” of Apocryphal Acts

January 3, 2022 by Tony

The following paper was presented at the 2021 Annual Meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature.

Every year in my New Testament Apocrypha course at York University I tell the students about the five so-called Great Apocryphal Acts (Peter, Paul, Thomas, Andrew, and John). I give the usual “facts”: they were composed in the late second and early third century, and were declared heretical due to their promotion of encratism (specifically the refusal to marry) and gnostic-adjacent speeches, but some aspects of the texts remained valuable to the orthodox, so they were trimmed down, sometimes retaining only the martyrdoms, and in these forms they were passed along in hagiographical compendia. As I work through the texts for my forthcoming introduction to Christian Apocrypha for the Anchor Yale Bible Reference series (shameless plug), I am struck by the problems of this simplistic summary. It is influenced by the efforts still somewhat entrenched in our field to establish the original forms of apocryphal texts, and by ancient and Byzantine writers who mention the texts, often in unsympathetic ways.

Photius (Cod. 114), in the ninth century, for example, read all five as a collective work attributed to Leucius Charinos. He did not like what he read and characterized them as containing Gnostic dualism, docetism, substitution, encratism, and “childish” stories of resurrection and of oxen and cattle. Other writers associate them with Manicheans (and it does seem that they did value the texts), as well as groups described as Encratites, Origenists, and Priscillianists. …

“Canonical Apocrypha” in the Menologion of Symeon Metaphrastes

November 1, 2021 by Tony

Maurice Geerard’s indispensable Clavis apocryphorum Novi Testamenti (CANT) includes mention of a number of works that are each described only as a “commentarius” (from the Greek hypomnema; on genres in hagiographical literature see Hinterberger 2014) by Symeon Metaphrastes. Little bibliographical information is provided for them—amounting, for the most part, to a reference from Migne’s Patrologia Graeca. The reason for this is simple: very little work has been done on the texts, many don’t even have proper critical editions, and only a few of them have been translated into a modern language. What are these texts? And what are their value for the study of Christian apocrypha?

Symeon Metaphrastes was a hagiographer of the late tenth century who was appointed by the emperor Basil II (976–1025) to construct a new, official menologion—that is, a collection of saints’ lives to be read on their designated feast days. Previous menologia existed but they varied from one another significantly, both in scope and selection of texts. But in Symeon’s time there was a movement toward standardization, begun a few centuries earlier with the creation of the Byzantine calendar of feast days and the subsequent destruction of all rival calendars. Some early scholars of hagiography accused Symeon of destroying earlier texts, but Symeon’s process was rather conservative. He took earlier texts, made stylistic improvements (a process called metaphrasis), and arranged them according to the new calendar date. Most of these earlier texts still exist and indeed, by comparing them to …

Apocryphal Acts in Syriac Manuscripts

May 7, 2021 by Tony

I would like to thank Jacob Lollar, J. Edward Walters, and Slavomir Céplö for looking over a draft of this post and making suggestions for improvement.

In my last post, back in December, I provided an overview of sources for the “Egyptian” collection of the apocryphal acts of the apostles—manuscripts in Coptic, Arabic, and Ge‘ez. A follow-up was promised, and I will get to that soon, but for now I am taking a detour with a discussion of apocryphal acts in Syriac. Both posts derive from ongoing work on my next major project: an introduction to Christian apocrypha for the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library.

The number of texts and manuscripts for the Syriac apocryphal acts is significantly smaller than for the Egyptian corpus. The path of transmission is somewhat simpler also: the Egyptian collection began in Coptic and after the decline of Coptic in Upper Egypt, the texts were translated into Arabic, then Ethiopic. Syriac apocrypha follows a simpler path, with Syriac remaining the liturgical language (and for a small group, the spoken language) of the East and West Syriac churches, and some translation occurring into Arabic, Armenian, Georgian, and Tamil. Apocryphal texts have been transmitted in Syriac throughout the history of Syriac Christianity and appear in manuscripts created as recently as the twentieth century.

But the apocryphal acts appear with less frequency than some other apocrypha, such as texts about the Virgin Mary. Of the Five Great Apocryphal Acts, only the Acts of Thomas is represented in …

The “Egyptian” Collection of Apocryphal Acts, Part 1: Coptic, Arabic, and Ge‘ez Sources

October 18, 2023 by Tony

This is the first of two posts based on work in preparation for my forthcoming volume on Christian apocrypha for the Anchor Yale Bible Reference Library. I would like to thank Ivan Miroshnikov and Jacob Lollar for looking over the draft and making suggestions for improvement.

Readers interested in the apocryphal exploits of the apostles gravitate first, naturally, to the earliest examples of the genre, the so-called Five Great Apocryphal Acts: Peter, Paul, John, Andrew, and Thomas. The pull of these texts is so great that they leave neglected an assortment of “later” acts that, arguably, had a far deeper impact on Christian piety, not only because the plentiful manuscript evidence testifies to their popularity, but also because a large number of them circulated as a collection intended for liturgical use in Coptic and Ethiopic churches. The collection includes a core of 28 texts (with some additions, omissions, and substitutions), arranged largely in pairs: the preaching of the apostle and then his martyrdom. All twelve of the apostles are represented (with Matthias replacing Judas) along with Paul, James the Righteous, Mark, and Luke. Stories from the texts also appear in the Arabo-Coptic and Ethiopic Synaxaria, testifying, again, to their importance in northeastern African Christianity. The lack of attention paid to these apocryphal acts is due, in part if not in whole, to their remoteness linguistically, geographically, and temporally from the Greek and Latin centres that are the focus of most biblical scholars’ work (and training). But lately they have attracted …

“Acts” of John and Philip in the Miracle of St. Michael the Archangel at Chonae

September 6, 2019 by Tony

The Archangel Michael is one of the most important of the Christian saints—second only to the Virgin Mary in prominence in late antique and medieval Christianity, both in the East and the West. Holy sites dedicated to the saint are spread out all over the Christian world; one of the most prominent is the island of Mont St. Michel in Normandy, built in the eighth century. Pilgrims would come to these sites for healing, typically from contact with a spring or fountain—given that the saint was incorporeal, contact with relics was not an option. Such veneration of Michael is surprising given that the New Testament forbids angel worship (Col 2:18; Rev 22:8-9).

Michael rarely appears in canonical texts (see Dan 10:13, 21 and 12:1; Jude 9; Rev 12:7-9) but he is prominent in apocryphal texts, particularly tour-of-hell apocalypses, where he is depicted as interceding with God on behalf of humans. The most lengthy of the Michael apocrypha is the Coptic Investiture of the Archangel Michael, in which the risen Jesus tells his apostles about the creation of the angels and the fall of humanity, and the Encomium on the Archangel Michael, in which Prochorus, the disciple of John, relates Michael’s explaination to him about how he annually rescues sinners from damnation. Similar material is related in a Greek text known as the Homily of John Chrysostom on How Archangel Michael Defeated Satanail. But there is another Michael text that does not get included in discussions of apocrypha, …

Cursing in the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles

March 16, 2017 by Tony

I will be presenting a paper at the Spring 2017 meeting of the Westar Institute next week (March 22-25) in sunny Santa Rosa, California (further information HERE). The paper, “Cursing and the Apostle: The Fight for Authority in Early Christianity,” will be read during the Christianity Seminar (papers available online HERE). It features a lengthy introduction on cursing in the ancient world, including the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. The final section covers cursing in the canonical Acts and Paul’s letters and then turns to the apocryphal acts. For those interested in Christian Apocrypha (and why else would you be here?), I have excerpted here, with some changes, the portion of the paper focusing on Acts and apocryphal acts.

The canonical book of Acts is a treasure trove of curse stories. Several of these are perpetrated by God: the fatal punishment of Judas (Acts 1:15–20), the death of Herod Agrippa (12:20–23; cf. Josephus, Ant. 19.8.2, where Agrippa’s death is also seen as divine retribution), and the blinding of Paul (9:3–9). In two other curse stories, an apostle is given an active role. The first of these is the story of Ananias and Sapphira (5:1–11; influenced perhaps by the story of Achan who misappropriated what had been dedicated to God and was killed along with his family; see Josh 7:1–26). As the story goes, the community in Jerusalem shares its resources so that “no one claimed private ownership of any possessions, but everything they owned was held in …

Summer School on CA in Strasbourg

February 1, 2012 by Tony

Gabriella Aragione and Rémi Gounelle are hosting a summer course at the Université de Strasbourg in June on the The Latin Collection of the Acts of Apostles (Pseudo-Abdias) (see HERE).Strasbourg is a little far away for me, but I am glad to see some attention paid to this text, which, unless I am mistaken, still has not been translated into English.