Church History (Vol.1-3). J. H. Kurtz

      1 The numerous Apocryphal Histories and Legends of the Apostles were partly of heretical, and partly of Catholic, origin. While the former have in view the establishing of their heretical doctrines and peculiar forms of worship, constitution and life by representing them as Apostolic institutions, the latter arose mostly out of a local patriotic intention to secure to particular churches the glory of being founded by an Apostle. Those inspired by Gnostic influences far exceed in importance and number not only the Ebionitic but also the genuinely Catholic. The Manichæans especially produced many and succeeded in circulating them widely. The more their historico-romantic contents pandered to the taste of that age for fantastic tales of miracles and visions the surer were they to find access among Catholic circles.—A collection of such histories under the title of Περίοδοι τῶν ἀποστόλων was received as canonical by Gnostics and Manichæans, and even by many of the Church Fathers. Augustine first named as its supposed author one Leucius. We find this name some decades later in Epiphanius as that of a pupil of John and opponent of the Ebionite Christology, and also in Pacianus of Barcelona as that of one falsely claimed as an authority by the Montanists. According to Photius this collection embraced the Acts of Peter, John, Andrew, Thomas and Paul, and the author’s full name was Leucius Carinus, who also appears in the second part of the Acta Pilati, but in quite other circumstances and surroundings. That all the five books were composed by one author is not probable; perhaps originally only the Acts of John bore the name of Leucius, which was subsequently transferred to the whole. Zahn’s view, on the other hand, is, that the Περίοδοι τῶν ἀποστόλων, especially the Acts of John, was written under the falsely assumed name of John’s pupil Leucius, about A.D. 130, at a time when the Gnostics had not yet been separated from the Church as a heretical sect, was even at a later period accepted as genuine by the Catholic church teachers notwithstanding the objectionable character of much of its contents, its modal docetic Christology and encratite Ethics with contempt of marriage, rejection of animal food and the use of wine and the demand of voluntary poverty, and held in high esteem as a source of the second rank for the Apostolic history. Lipsius considers that it was composed in the interests of the vulgar Gnosticism (§ 27) in the second half of the 2nd, or first half of the 3rd cent., and proves that from Eusebius down to Photius, who brands it as πασῆς αἱρέσεως πηγὴν καὶ μητέρα, the Catholic church teachers without exception speak of it as heretical and godless, and that the frequent patristic references to the Historiæ ecclesiasticiæ do not apply to it but to Catholic modifications of it, which were regarded as the genuine and generally credible original writing of Leucius which were wickedly falsified by the Manichæans.—Catholic modifications of particular Gnostic Περίοδοι, as well as independent Catholic writings of this sort in Greek are still preserved in MS. in great numbers and have for the most part been printed. The Hist. certaminis apostolici in ten books, which the supposed pupil of the Apostles Abdias, first bishop of Babylon, wrote in Hebrew, was translated by his pupil Eutropius into Greek and by Julius Africanus into Latin.87—They are all useless for determining the history of the Apostolic Age, although abundantly so used in the Catholic church tradition. For the history of doctrines and sects, the history of the canon, worship, ecclesiastical customs and modes of thought during the 2nd-4th cents., they are of the utmost importance.

      1 The Greek Acta Petri et Pauli. These describe the journeys of Paul to Rome, the disputation of the two Apostles at Rome with Simon Magus, and the Roman martyrdom of both, and constitute the source of the traditions regarding Peter and Paul which are at the present day regarded in the Roman Catholic Church as historical. These Acts, however, as Lipsius has shown, are not an original work, but date from about A.D. 160, and consist of a Catholic reproduction of Ebionite or Anti-Pauline, Acts of Peter, with additions from Gentile-Christian traditions of Paul. The Acts of Peter take up the story where the Pseudo-Clementines end, as may be seen even from their Catholic reproduction, for they make Simon Magus, followed everywhere and overcome by the Apostle Peter, at last seek refuge in Rome, where, again unmasked by Peter, he met a miserable end (§ 25, 2). As the Κηρύγματα Πέτρου which formed the basis of the Pseudo-Clementine writings combats the specifically Pauline doctrines as derived from Simon Magus (§ 28, 4), so the Acts of Peter identify him even personally with Paul, for they maliciously and spitefully assign well-known facts from the Apostle’s life to Simon Magus, which are bona fide in the Catholic reproduction assumed to be genuine works of Simon.—The Gnostic Acts of Peter and Acts of Paul had wrought up the current Ebionite and Catholic traditions about the doings and martyr deaths of the two Apostles with fanciful adornments and embellishments after the style and in the interests of Gnosticism. A considerable fragment of these, purified indeed by Catholic hands, is preserved to us in the Passio Petri et Pauli, to which is attached the name of Linus, the pretended successor of Peter. The fortunes of the two Apostles are related quite independently of one another: Paul makes his appearance at Rome only after the death of Peter. Of the non-heretical Acts of Paul which according to Eusebius were in earlier times received in many churches as holy scripture (§ 36, 8), no trace has as yet been discovered.

      2 Among the Greek Acts of John, the remnants of the Leucian Περίοδοι Ἰωάννου preserved in their original form deserve to be first mentioned. According to Zahn, they are one of the earliest witnesses for the genuineness of the Gospel of John, and give the deathblow to the theory that with and after the Apostle John, there was in Ephesus another John the Presbyter distinct from him (§ 16, 2). Lipsius, on the other hand, places their composition in the second half of the 2nd cent., and deprives them of that significance for the life of the Apostle, but admits their great value for a knowledge of doctrines, principles and forms of worship of the vulgar Gnosticism then widely spread. The Πράξεις Ἰωάννου, greatly esteemed in the Greek church, and often translated into other languages, written in the 5th cent. by a Catholic hand and ascribed to Prochoros [Prochorus] the deacon of Jerusalem (Acts vi. 5), is a poetic romance with numerous raisings from the dead, exorcisms, etc., almost wholly the creation of the writer’s own imagination, without a trace of any encratite tendency like the Leucian Περίοδοι and without any particular doctrinal significance.

      3 To the same age and the same Gnostic party as the Leucian Acts of John, belong the Acts of Andrew preserved in many fragments and circulated in various Catholic reproductions. Of these latter the most esteemed were the Acts of Andrew and Matthew in the city of the cannibals.

      4 d. The Catholic reproductions in Greek and Syriac that have come down to us of the Leucian Acts of Thomas are of special value because of the many Gnostic elements which, particularly in the Greek, have been allowed to remain unchanged in the very imperfectly purified text. The scene of the Apostle’s activity is said to be India. The central point in his preaching to sinners is the doctrine that only by complete abstinence from marriage and concubinage can we become at last the partner of the heavenly bridegroom (§ 27, 4). A highly poetical hymn on the marriage of Sophia (Achamoth) is left in the Greek text unaltered, while the Syriac text puts the church in place of Sophia. Then we have two poetical consecration prayers for baptism and the eucharist, in which the Syriac substituted Christ for Achamoth. But besides, even in the Syriac text, a grandly swelling hymn, which is wanting in the Greek text, romances about the fortunes of the soul, which, sent from heaven to earth to fetch a pearl watched by the serpent forgets its heavenly origin and calling, and only remembers this after repeated reminders from heaven, etc. Gutschmied has shown it to be probable that the