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The title New Testament Apocrypha
may suggest that the books thus classified have or had a status comparable
to that of the Old Testament Apocrypha and have been recognized as
canonical. In a few instances such has been the case, but generally these
books were accepted only by individual Christian writers or by minority
heretical groups. The word apocryphal (secret) is applied to Gnostic
traditions and writings both by Gnostics and by their critics; from the
2nd century, for example, comes the Apocryphon
(secret book) of John. In
the 4th century the word referred to books not publicly read in churches.
It meant apocryphal in the modern sense (i.e.,
fictitious) only by implication, as when the church historian Eusebius
speaks of some of "the so-called secret books" as forgeries
composed by heretics.
Like the New Testament books
themselves, the New Testament apocryphal books consist of gospels, acts,
letters, and apocalypses. The apocryphal writings, however, are almost
exclusively pseudepigraphical--i.e.,
written in the name of the apostles or disciples or concerning
individual apostles. In general, they were created after and in imitation
of the New Testament books but before the time when a relatively
restricted canon, or list, of approved books was being formulated. They
arose chiefly during the 2nd century, when the lines between orthodoxy and
heresy were not absolutely fixed and when popular piety seems to have been
rather freely expressed. What these works tell about Jesus
and his disciples resembles the imaginative Midrashic (didactic
commentarial) retelling of Old Testament stories among Jewish teachers.
As the New Testament canon was
gradually given definite shape, these apocryphal books came to be
excluded, first from public reading in churches, then from private reading
as well. With the development of creeds and of systematic theologies based
on the nascent canon, the apocryphal books were neglected and suppressed.
Most of them have survived only in fragments, although a few have been
found in Greek and Coptic papyri from Egypt. They are valuable to the
historian primarily because of the light they cast on popular
semi-orthodox beliefs and on Gnostic revisions of Christianity;
occasionally, they may contain fairly early traditions about Jesus and his
disciples. In the 3rd century, Neoplatonists (followers of the philosopher
Plotinus, who advocated a system of levels of reality) joined Christians
in attacking such books as "spurious," "modern," and
"forged."
The difficulties the New Testament
apocryphal books caused at the end of the 2nd century are well illustrated
in a letter by Serapion, bishop of Antioch. He stated that he accepts
Peter and the other apostles "as Christ" but rejects what is
falsely written in their name. When some Christians showed him the Gospel of Peter, he allowed them to read it, but after further
investigation he discovered that its teaching about Christ was false, and
he had to withdraw his permission.
In the early 4th century Eusebius
himself found it difficult to create categories for the various books then
in circulation or used by earlier authors. He seems to have concluded that
the books could be called "acknowledged," "disputed,"
"spurious," and absolutely rejected. Thus, the Acts
of Paul, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Gospel
According to the Hebrews were rather well attested, and he called them
spurious but disputed. He definitely rejected books used by heretics but
not by church writers: the gospels ascribed to Peter, Thomas, and
Matthias, and the Acts of Andrew, John,
and other apostles. About a century earlier, the North African theologian
Tertullian had written about how a presbyter who wrote the Acts
of Paul had been deposed.
Without reference to the standards
of canonicity and orthodoxy gradually being worked out by the churches of
the 2nd through 4th centuries, it is evident that many of these books
reflect the kinds of rather incoherent Christian thought that church
leaders were trying to prune and shape from the 1st century onward. Often
such works represented what was later viewed as inadequate orthodoxy
because the views presented had become obsolete. All the apocrypha taken
together show the variety of expression from which the canon was a
critical selection.
This section will classify these
documents in relation to their literary forms: gospels, acts, letters, and
apocalypses.
A few papyrus fragments come from
gospels not known by name (e.g., Egerton
Papyrus 2, Oxyrhynchus Papyrus 840, Strasbourg Papyrus 5-6). There are
also the Gospel produced in the
2nd century by Marcion (a "semi-Gnostic" heretic from Asia
Minor), who removed what he regarded as interpolations from the Gospel
According to Luke; the lost Gnostic Gospel
of Perfection; and the Gospel
of Truth, published
in 1956 and perhaps identical with the book that Irenaeus (c.
185), bishop of Lyon, said was used by the followers of Valentinus, a
mid-2nd-century Gnostic teacher. The Gospel
of Truth is a mystical-homiletical treatise that is Jewish-Christian
and, possibly, Gnostic in origin. In addition, there were gospels ascribed
to the Twelve (Apostles) and to individual apostles, including the Protevangelium
of James, with
legends about the birth and infancy of Jesus; the lost Gnostic Gospel
of Judas (Iscariot); the Gospel of Peter, with
a legendary account of the resurrection; the Gospel of Philip, a Valentinian Gnostic treatise; the Gospel
of Thomas, published in 1959 and containing "the secret sayings
of Jesus" (Greek fragments in Oxyrhynchus papyri 1, 654, and 655);
and an "infancy gospel" also ascribed to Thomas. Beyond these
lie gospels ascribed to famous women, namely Eve and Mary (Magdalene), or
named after the groups that used them: Ebionites (a Jewish Christian
sect), Egyptians, Hebrews, and Nazarenes (an Ebionite sect).
The various acts, close in form
and content to the contemporary Hellenistic romances, turned the apostolic
drama into melodrama and satisfied the popular taste for stories of travel
and adventure, as well as for a kind of asceticism that was generally
rejected by Christian leaders: Andrew (including the Acts
of Andrew and Matthias Among the Cannibals), Barnabas (a companion of
St. Paul), Bartholomew, John (with semi-Gnostic traits), Paul (including
the Acts of Paul and Thecla, with
a Christian version of the story of Androcles and the lion), Peter--with
the apostle's question to the risen Lord, "Lord, where are you
going?" ("Domine, quo vadis?") and Peter's crucifixion
upside down, Philip, Thaddaeus (his conversion of a king of Edessa), and
Thomas (with the Gnostic "Hymn of the Pearl").
Among the apocryphal letters are:
a 2nd-century Epistula Apostolorum ("Epistle
of the Apostles"; actually apocalyptic and antiheretical), the Letter
of Barnabas, a lost Letter of
Paul to the Alexandrians (said to have been forged by followers of
Marcion), the late-2nd-century letter called "III Corinthians"
(part of the Acts of Paul and composed largely out of the genuine letters of
Paul), along with a letter from the Corinthians to Paul, and a Coptic
version of a letter from Peter to Philip. There is also a famous forgery
purporting to have been written by Jesus to Abgar, king of Edessa (noted
in Eusebius, Church History I.
13).
Other than the Revelation to John,
which some early Christian writers rejected, there are apocalypses
ascribed to two Jameses, the Virgin Mary, Paul, Peter, Philip, Stephen,
and Thomas. Only the Apocalypse of
Peter won any significant acceptance and is important for its vivid
description of the punishment of the wicked.
In addition, it should be noted
that there were apocryphal books with titles not so closely related to the
New Testament. Among these are: the Didache,
or Teaching of the Twelve
Apostles (and its later revisions, such as the Didascalia
Apostolorum, or the "Teaching of the Apostles," and the Apostolic Constitutions), and the Kerygma of Peter, a favourite at Alexandria, as well as various
Gnostic works, such as The Dialogue
of the Redeemer, Pistis Sophia ("Faith-Wisdom"), and the Sophia
Jesu Christi ("Wisdom of Jesus Christ"). From the 5th
century there is even a Testamentum
Domini ("Testament
of the Lord"), an expansion of the 2nd-3rd-century Roman Church
leader and theologian Hippolytus' Apostolic
Tradition.
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