The Acts of Andrew (), is the earliest testimony of the acts and miracles of the

Apostle Andrew Andrew the Apostle ( grc-koi, Ἀνδρέᾱς, Andréās ; la, Andrēās ; , syc, ܐܰܢܕ݁ܪܶܐܘܳܣ, ʾAnd’reʾwās), also called Saint Andrew, was an apostle of Jesus according to the New Testament. He is the brother of Simon Peter ...

. The surviving version is alluded to in a 3rd-century work, the

Coptic Coptic may refer to: Afro-Asia * Copts, an ethnoreligious group mainly in the area of modern Egypt but also in Sudan and Libya * Coptic language, a Northern Afro-Asiatic language spoken in Egypt until at least the 17th century * Coptic alphabet ...

Manichaean Psalter The ''Manichaean Psalter'' is a Manichaean text written in Coptic. It is believed to have been compiled in the late 3rd century or the mid-4th century. The ''Psalter'' is believed to contain remnants of some of the earliest extant Manichaean liter ...

'', providing a , according to its editors,

M. R. James Montague Rhodes James (1 August 1862 – 12 June 1936) was an English author, medievalist scholar and provost of King's College, Cambridge (1905–1918), and of Eton College (1918–1936). He was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cambrid ...

(1924) and Jean-Marc Prieur in ''The Anchor Bible Dictionary'' (vol. 1, p. 246), but it shows several signs of a mid-2nd-century origin. Prieur stated that "The distinctive

christology In Christianity, Christology (from the Ancient Greek, Greek grc, Χριστός, Khristós, label=none and grc, wiktionary:-λογία, -λογία, wiktionary:-logia, -logia, label=none), translated literally from Greek as "the study of Chr ...

of the text" and its lack of mention of church organisation,

liturgy Liturgy is the customary public ritual of worship performed by a religious group. ''Liturgy'' can also be used to refer specifically to public worship by Christians. As a religious phenomenon, liturgy represents a communal response to and partic ...

, and ecclesiastical rites, lead one to "militate for an early dating". By the 4th century, the were relegated to the

New Testament apocrypha The New Testament apocrypha (singular apocryphon) are a number of writings by early Christians that give accounts of Jesus and his teachings, the nature of God, or the teachings of his apostles and of their lives. Some of these writings were cit ...

. Prieur also stated that its "serene tone" and innocence of any polemic or disputes concerning its ideas or awareness of

heterodox In religion, heterodoxy (from Ancient Greek: , "other, another, different" + , "popular belief") means "any opinions or doctrines at variance with an official or orthodox position". Under this definition, heterodoxy is similar to unorthodoxy, w ...

y, particularly in the area of christology, show that "it derived from a period when the christology of the Great Church had not yet taken firm shape". The episodic narratives in which Andrew figures survive incompletely in two manuscript traditions, aside from citations and fragments that are assumed to have come from lost sections. One is an early

manuscript of part of one of the narratives, conserved at Utrecht University Library; The other is embodied in the Greek ''Martyrium'', supplemented by manuscripts that bring it to 65 chapters. Traditionally the text is said to have been based on the

Acts of John The ''Acts of John'' refers to a collection of stories about John the Apostle that began circulating in written form as early as the 2nd-century AD. Translations of the ''Acts of John'' in modern languages have been reconstructed by scholars from ...

and the

Acts of Peter The Acts of Peter is one of the earliest of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in Christianity, dating to the late 2nd century AD. The majority of the text has survived only in the Latin translation of the Codex Vercellensis, under the title ...

, and even to have had the same author, the "

Leucius Charinus Leucius, called Leucius Charinus by Photios I of Constantinople in the ninth century, is the name applied to a cycle of what M. R. James termed " Apostolic romances" that seems to have had wide currency long before a selection was read aloud at th ...

" who is credited with all the 2nd-century romances. Like these works, the Acts of Andrew describes the supposed travels of the title character, the miracles he performed during them, and finally a description of his martyrdom. In a separate text known by the name of the Acts of Andrew and Matthias, which was edited by Max Bonnet in 1898 and translated by M.R. James, Matthias is portrayed as a captive in a country of ''anthropophagi'' (literally 'man-eaters', i.e.

cannibals Cannibalism is the act of consuming another individual of the same species as food. Cannibalism is a common ecological interaction in the animal kingdom and has been recorded in more than 1,500 species. Human cannibalism is well documented, bo ...

) and is rescued by Andrew and Jesus; it is no longer considered to be a portion of the text of . Like those in the two books of Acts on which it appears based, the miracles are extremely supernatural, and highly extravagant. For example, aside from the usual miracles of raising the dead, healing the blind, and so forth, he survives being placed amongst fierce animals, calms storms, and defeats armies simply by crossing himself. There is also a great deal of moralising - Andrew causes an

embryo An embryo is an initial stage of development of a multicellular organism. In organisms that reproduce sexually, embryonic development is the part of the life cycle that begins just after fertilization of the female egg cell by the male spe ...

which was

illegitimate Legitimacy, in traditional Western common law, is the status of a child born to parents who are legally married to each other, and of a child conceived before the parents obtain a legal divorce. Conversely, ''illegitimacy'', also known as ''b ...

to die, and also rescues a boy from his

incest Incest ( ) is human sexual activity between family members or close relatives. This typically includes sexual activity between people in consanguinity (blood relations), and sometimes those related by affinity (marriage or stepfamily), adoption ...

uous mother, an act resulting in her laying false charges against them, requiring God to send an

earthquake An earthquake (also known as a quake, tremor or temblor) is the shaking of the surface of the Earth resulting from a sudden release of energy in the Earth's lithosphere that creates seismic waves. Earthquakes can range in intensity, from ...

to free Andrew and the boy. So much does the text venture into the realm of extreme supernatural events, that, while being crucified, Andrew is still able to give sermons for three days.

Eusebius of Caesarea Eusebius of Caesarea (; grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος ; 260/265 – 30 May 339), also known as Eusebius Pamphilus (from the grc-gre, Εὐσέβιος τοῦ Παμφίλου), was a Greek historian of Christianity, exegete, and Christia ...

knew the work, which he dismissed as the production of a

heretic Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, in particular the accepted beliefs of a church or religious organization. The term is usually used in reference to violations of important religi ...

and absurd.

Gregory of Tours Gregory of Tours (30 November 538 – 17 November 594 AD) was a Gallo-Roman historian and Bishop of Tours, which made him a leading prelate of the area that had been previously referred to as Gaul by the Romans. He was born Georgius Florenti ...

was delighted to find a copy and wrote a drastically reduced recension of it about 593, leaving out the parts for "which, because of its excessive verbosity, twas called by some apocryphal", for which he felt it had been condemned. His free version expunges the detail that the apostle's ascetic preaching induced the proconsul's wife to leave her husband—socially and morally unacceptable to a

Merovingian The Merovingian dynasty () was the ruling family of the Franks from the middle of the 5th century until 751. They first appear as "Kings of the Franks" in the Roman army of northern Gaul. By 509 they had united all the Franks and northern Gauli ...

audience— brings the narrative into conformity with catholic orthodoxy of his time, then adds new material. The Acts of Andrew was often classed as a

gnostic Gnosticism (from grc, γνωστικός, gnōstikós, , 'having knowledge') is a collection of religious ideas and systems which coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized pe ...

work before the library of Nag Hammadi clarified modern understanding of Gnosticism. In his book, ''Christianizing Homer: The Odyssey, Plato, and the Acts of Andrew,'' Dennis MacDonald posits the theory that the non-canonical Acts of Andrew was a Christian retelling of Homer's Odyssey.Christianizing Homer
Accessed 1/12/09

Notes

References

External links

* ttp://www.gnosis.org/library/actandy.htm ''The Acts of Andrew'' ''The Acts and Martyrdom of Andrew'' and ''The Acts of Andrew and Matthew'' br>Geoff Trowbridge, ''The "Whole" Bible''
{{DEFAULTSORT:Acts Of Andrew

Andrew Andrew is the English form of a given name common in many countries. In the 1990s, it was among the top ten most popular names given to boys in List of countries where English is an official language, English-speaking countries. "Andrew" is freq ...

Andrew the Apostle 2nd-century Christian texts