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University of Groningen the Apocryphal Acts of Paul and Thecla University of Groningen The Apocryphal Acts of Paul And Thecla Bremmer, Jan N. IMPORTANT NOTE: You are advised to consult the publisher's version (publisher's PDF) if you wish to cite from it. Please check the document version below. Document Version Publisher's PDF, also known as Version of record Publication date: 1996 Link to publication in University of Groningen/UMCG research database Citation for published version (APA): Bremmer, J. N. (1996). The Apocryphal Acts of Paul And Thecla. (2 ed.) Kok Pharos Publishers. Copyright Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download or to forward/distribute the text or part of it without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license (like Creative Commons). Take-down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. Downloaded from the University of Groningen/UMCG research database (Pure): http://www.rug.nl/research/portal. For technical reasons the number of authors shown on this cover page is limited to 10 maximum. Download date: 26-09-2021 VII. The Acts of Paul and the western text of Luke's Acts: Paul between canon and apocrypha There must have been an exciting discussion about the person and life of the apostle Paul in the Early Church. W. Bauer quotes some characteristic reflections on Paul in two groups.' On the one hand, in the Jewish Christian tradition he is designated as a pagan who converted to Judaism so that he could many the high priest's daughter. He is claimed not to have seen the Lord, and is ident- ified with Simon the magician, who was rebuked by Peter and John in Acts 8. On the other hand, Jerome argues that Paul was born in Galilee. In other sources the resurrected Jesus himself explains Paul's future role to the disciples, the apostle's name ap- pears among the twelve, and he is given the 'divine' epithet. Finally, the apocryphal Acts of Paul (AP) itself presents a tradition in which the apostle seems to have stood in high esteem.' In this study I will read the AP against the backdrop of three other documents in order to understand better how the canonical and orthodox image of the apostle is related to the apocryphal and legendary traditions about him. The first of these texts is the commentary of Ephrem Syrus on Acts. I find this collation prom- ising because Ephrem's commentary on the letters of Paul is an 1 W. Bauer, 'Das Apostelbild in der altchristlichen iiberliefemng: Nachrichten', in E. Hennecke and W. Schneemelcher (eds), Neutes- tamentliche Apokryphen I1 (Tiibingen, 1964') 1 1-4 1. 2 I intend to talk about 'popular tradition' following W. Schneemel- cher and K. Schaferdiek, 'Apostelgeschichten des 2. und 3. Jahrhunderts: Einleitung', in NeuTA 11, 11 1; see also Karasszon, this volume, Ch. 12. 108 ISWAN CZACHESZ important witness of the Corinthian correspondence of the AP.' Another text is provided by the peculiar readings of the Lukan Acts in Codex Bezae (D). Ephrem seems to have known the text of D, or at least there is a common tradition behind them. Finally, I will use the Armenian catena which contains mainly comments by Chrysostom and Ephrem on the same book.4 Since the Bezae- ~ an version of Acts differs considerably from the text in other manuscripts, I intend to regard it as a writing between the biblical canon and the apocrypha.' C.K. Barrett seems to support this view, and his essay will be dealt with in more detail later.6 First I will seek the signs of direct textual interdependence between the AP and the other sources, then the possible theolog- ical similarities will be examined, and finally I will attempt to schematize the relations between the sources. i Textual evidence Now I turn to the analysis of the textual evidence of the connect- 3 F.C. Conybeare, 'The commentary of Ephrem on Acts', in J.H. Ropes, The Text of Acts, Vol. 111 of F.J. Foakes Jackson and K. Lake (eds), The Beginnings of Christianity (London, 1926) 373-453. The com- mentary survived in an Armenian translation, which Conybeare rendered into Latin. Witness: Schneemelcher, 'Paulusakten ', in NeuTA 11, 217. 4 Trans. by Conybeare, 'The commentary'. 5 However, I will not touch most traditional problems of Codex D., e.g. the question of the priority of the Bezaean version over the 'Alexandrian ', or the ever renewed theory of a double edition of Acts by Luke. A classical survey is in B. M. Metzger, A textual commentary on the Greek New Testament (London, 1975) 259-72. For a recent summary see P.M. Head, 'Acts and the problem of its texts', in B.W. Winter and A.D. Clarke (eds), The Book of Acts in its Ancient Literary Setting (Grand Rapids and Carlisle, 1993) 415-44. 6 C.K. Barrett, 'Is there a theological tendency in Codex Bezae? ', in E. Best and R.McL. Wilson (eds), Text and Interpretation (Cambridge, 1979) 15-27. Also Head, 'Acts', 438 writes: 'the western text might stand part-way along the road to the non-canonical Acts.' PAUL BETWEEN CANON AND APOCRYPHA 109 ion between the AP and the other three sources. I will follow the conduct of the story as reconstructed by W. Schneemelcher, and seek textual parallels with the peculiar readings of either Ephrem, the catena, or D. A. Paul's conversion The story of Paul's conversion seems a key feature of his biogra- phy in the canonical Acts. As is superfluous to say, the episode is narrated in detail three times within the book, which is unparal- leled in the Bible. The entire passage is not preserved either in D or in the AP. But we do have some fragments of the latter, on which basis C. Schmidt has reconstructed the scene, and ample material in Ephrem, which allow us to make some observations. First, we learn from the AP is that Paul received a command after his conversion to go to Damascus and Jerusalem. Acts 9:6 indeed is a command: 'but rise and enter the city, and you will be told what you must do'. But neither is the command preceded by Paul's conversion, nor is a specific place like Damascus or Jerusalem mentioned. The problem is partially solved if we look at the two other accounts in Acts 22 and 26. In Acts 22.10 Paul is sent into Damascus - which is also obvious from the context -, and in 26.16-8 he is commissioned to 'open the eyes of the nations'. The commentary of Ephrem combines and amplifies these pas- sages resourcefully, setting up a lengthy conversation between Paul and Jesus: Jesus asks: 'Why do you persecute me?' Paul faints in his mind, and thinks: 'I for the sake of the heavens persecute, can it be that I persecute him whose dwelling is in the heavens?' He says: 'Who are you, my Lord, who in the heavens from per- secution suffer? For I persecute Jesus, who is among the dead, along with his disciples.' The Lord answers: 'I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting.' Then Ephrem minutely describes Saul's fear that he would receive great punishment. Finally he says: 'What do you want me to do? For whatever I have done until now, I did ignorantly. Therefore, I have accepted your messenger together with the message, so that I pay the penalty for my persecution, 110 ISWAN CZACHESZ which my persecution accumulated for me.' Paul's last sentence sounds quite obscure. Nevertheless there are three main emphases in the dialogue: (1) Paul acted out of ignorance; (2) He confessed his sins; (3) He accepted Jesus' message, and perhaps the task of proclaiming it. Whether the last sentence contains the act of commissioning, cannot be decided with certainty here. I will discuss this issue later. Then Ephrem argues that the reason why Paul was not healed on the spot was that all Damascus might gather and see 'the threatening sign which was put on him, because he dared to persecute the perfect and immaculate body of the Church.' He also explains why the other men did not see the light and were not blinded: (1) Because God had mercy on them; (2) Because it was Saul, who had asked for the letter of the priests; (3) Because it was he that was elected for the preaching and the apostleship. So far we can conclude that in Ephrem's text the events on the Damascus road contain Paul's confession, atonement, and apostolic calling. This process is accomplished, and there is no need for the mediation of Ananias. In Ephrem, Ananias is men- tioned briefly as the 'physician'. In its basic ideas Ephrem's ac- count corresponds to the brief summary Schmidt reconstructed in the AP. In other words, Ephrem offers an expanded version of the latter. Earlier I pondered over the meaning of Paul's obscure words in Ephrem about the 'messenger' and the 'message' which he accepted in his confession. Paul's account of his conversion in the appendix of the AP provides an interesting solution to the problem. There the apostle talks about the Spirit, which fell upon him and preached to him the Gospel of his Son. This episode may explain what Paul meant in Ephrem: the 'messenger' is no one else than the Spirit, and the 'message' is the Gospel of God's Son. More- over, in the Coptic papyrus the word 'Gospel' is expressed by the infinitive ~\iayy~hf<atv,'which corresponds to the words praeco- num and praeconiatio in the Latin translation of Ephrem.
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