New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, Vol. 2

NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA

New Testament Apocrypha More Noncanonical Scriptures volume two

Edited by

Tony Burke

William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company Grand Rapids, Michigan

Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 4035 Park East Court SE, Grand Rapids, Michigan 49546 www.eerdmans.com © 2020 Tony Burke All rights reserved Published 2020 Printed in the United States of America 29 28 27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 ISBN 978–0-8028–7290–6

Library of Congress Cataloging-­in-­Publication Data A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Biblical citations in this volume follow the New Revised Standard Version unless otherwise noted.

Dedicated to The new class of apocrypha collectors— Mario Erbetta, Luigi Moraldi, François Bovon, Pierre Geoltrain, Jean-­Daniel Kaestli, Christoph Markschies, and Jens Schröter— whose challenges to the traditional “canon” of apocrypha made us all want more.

v

Contents

Preface xi Introduction xiii Abbreviations xxi I. GOSPELS AND RELATED TRADITIONS OF NEW TESTAMENT FIGURES The Adoration of the Magi Adam Carter Bremer-­McCollum

3

The Rebellion of Dimas Mark G. Bilby

13

A Homily on the Life of Jesus and His Love for the Apostles Timothy Pettipiece

23

A Homily on the Passion and Resurrection Dylan M. Burns

41

The Book of Bartholomew Christian H. Bull and Alexandros Tsakos

87

The Healing of Tiberius Zbigniew Izydorczyk

127

The Legend of the Holy Rood Tree Stephen C. E. Hopkins

145

The Story of Joseph of Arimathea Bradley N. Rice

160

A Homily on the Building of the First Church of the Virgin Paul C. Dilley

188

vii

Contents

The Life of Judas Brandon W. Hawk and Mari Mamyan

208

The Life of Mary Magdalene Christine Luckritz Marquis

223

II. APOCRYPHAL ACTS AND RELATED TRADITIONS The Acts of Nereus and Achilleus Richard I. Pervo

241

The Act of Peter in Azotus Cambry G. Pardee

264

The Exhortation of Peter J. Edward Walters

278

The Travels of Peter J. Edward Walters

288

The History of Philip Robert A. Kitchen

293

The Acts of Thomas and His Wonderworking Skin Jonathan D. Holste and Janet E. Spittler

316

III. EPISTLES The Epistle of Pelagia Slavomír Čéplö

343

IV. APOCALYPSES The Dialogue of the Revealer and John Philip L. Tite

355

1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John Rick Brannan

378

2 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John Rebecca Draughon, Jeannie Sellick, and Janet E. Spittler

399

viii

Contents

3 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John Chance E. Bonar, Tony Burke, and Slavomír Čéplö

423

The Questions of James to John Kathleen Gibbons and Tony Burke

461

The Mysteries of John Hugo Lundhaug and Lloyd Abercrombie

481

The Investiture of the Archangel Michael Hugo Lundhaug

499

Appendix: John of Parallos, Homily against Heretical Books 553 Christian H. Bull and Lance Jenott The Investiture of the Archangel Gabriel Lance Jenott

559

The Apocalypse of Thomas Matthias Geigenfeind

580

V. CHURCH ORDERS The Teaching of the Apostles Witold Witakowski

607

Index of Modern Authors

623

Index of Scripture and Other Ancient Texts

631

ix

Preface

The preface to the first volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures expresses the editors’ affection for and esteem of the great apocrypha collections that drew them into their study of this fascinating literature. It has been gratifying to see that first volume receive such positive responses from scholars and readers. We are particularly appreciative of the feedback given at the two conference panels convened to review the book. At the Canadian Society of Biblical Studies (in Calgary, May 2016): Alicia Batten, Robert Kitchen, John Kloppenborg, and Tim Pettipiece. And at the Society of Biblical Literature (in Boston, November 2017): David ­Brakke, Valentina Calzolari Bouvier, J. Gregory Given, Judith Hartenstein, Philip Jenkins, Christoph Markschies, and Julia Snyder. Your comments and suggestions have helped shape the present volume.

A project such as this is truly a collaborative effort, not only because it is a collection of works by multiple authors, but because many of our contributors (and some who worked on the first volume) graciously worked behind the scenes to assist each other, and the editor, in a variety of ways. I want to acknowledge their contributions and express my gratitude. Ivan Miroshnikov clarified and corrected information on Coptic and Church Slavonic manuscripts for several texts, particularly the Acts of Thomas and His Wonderworking Skin, and provided access to some Russian scholarship on 2 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John. Both Ivan and Alin Suciu helped sort out the Coptic sources to the Homily on the Life of Jesus and His Love for the Apostles.

Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott consulted with each other on their two Coptic texts: the Investiture of Gabriel and the Investiture of Michael. And Charles D. Wright and Brandon Hawk contributed significantly to the introduction and translation of the Apocalypse of Thomas. I took advantage of Slavomír Čéplö’s impressive language skills for more texts in this volume than I can remember. Bradley Rice made some corrections to the Armenian translation of the Life of Judas and gave me some much-­needed feedback on the introduction to the volume. And David Eastman and Brandon Hawk helped clarify some aspects of the literary background of the Acts of Nereus and Achilleus. Thanks also to David Lincicum and Steve Reece for providing solutions to some of the tricky Greek readings of 3 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John and to Julian Petkov, Anissava Miltenova, and Olga Mladenova, for their willingness to share their work on the Church Slavonic tradition of that text.

Also working behind the scenes was my co-­editor on the first volume, Brent Landau, who was involved in the planning of the present book and provided valuable comments for improvement of all the contributors’ work.

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Preface To all of the contributors, thank you so much for being a part of this project and for your patience with the near-­endless requests for changes and clarifications. Particular appreciation goes to those who came late to the project when others could not complete their assigned texts: Chance Bonar, Slavomír Čéplö, Cambry Pardee, Lloyd Abercrombie, and Hugo Lundhaug.

Richard Pervo, who provided the translation of the Acts of Titus in vol. 1 and Acts of Nereus and Achilleus for the present volume, passed away in May of 2017. Richard is highly regarded for his work in the field, particularly on the Acts of Paul. Requiescat in pace.

A special thank-you goes to the staff at Eerdmans including Andrew Knapp, David Cottingham, Leah Luyk, Meg Schmidt, and Laura Bardolph Hubers.

This volume would not have been possible without the friendship and support of Slavomír Čéplö, Bradley Rice, and Janet Spittler.

Most of all, I wish to thank my wife Laura Cudworth, for her encouragement and advice, especially on the days when it seemed like this project might never be completed.

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Introduction

The first volume of New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (MNTA) appeared in 2016, a few years after the debut of its sister publication, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures (MOTP), edited by Richard Bauckham, Jim Davila, and Alexander Panayotov. The goal of both projects is to supplement the available, and highly regarded, apocrypha and pseudepigrapha collections in English with translations of newly discovered texts and, in most cases, already published texts that need significant updating in light of newly available sources. Whereas MOTP is envisioned as a companion to James H. Charlesworth’s Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (published in two volumes in 1983 and 1985), MNTA is a companion to J. K. Elliott’s The Apocryphal New Testament (published in 1993). Both Charlesworth and Elliott were interested in “early” texts—i.e., texts created in the first several centuries before or after the Common Era, or texts perhaps incorporating early material that could be traced to that time period. Scholars today have much broader interests. Christian apocrypha are now studied for more than what they can tell us about the composition and collection of the canonical texts. This newfound liberation is reflected in the expansive collections of apocrypha that are available now in Italian, French, and German. These volumes include a wide assortment of texts, extant in a variety of languages and forms, and composed after the typical temporal limit of the establishment of the New Testament canon—once held to be settled in the fourth century, but now increasingly acknowledged as continually in flux, with differences that span time and place throughout Christian history.

The number of texts that can be called “Christian apocrypha” is surprisingly high.

The Clavis apocryphorum Novi Testamenti compiled by Maurice Geerard in 1992 lists 346 texts or versions of texts. Today more can be added to that number due to new discoveries—including, from MNTA 1, the Berlin-­Strasbourg Apocryphon (first published in 1999), the fragment P. Oxy. 5072 (2011), and the Discourse of the Savior and the Dance of the Savior (2006)—or due to unwitting omissions—including, again from MNTA 1, the Revelation of the Magi, the Legend of the Thirty Pieces of Silver, the Acts of Cornelius the Centurion, the Life and Conduct of the Holy Women Xanthippe, Polyxena, and Rebecca, the (Latin) Revelation of John about the Antichrist, and the fragment P. Oxy. 210. Geerard’s list is also temporally limited; though no parameters are explicitly indicated, the clavis does not include any modern apocrypha, such as the Unknown Life of Christ or the Letter of Benan. To these can be added the most recent modern apocryphon: the Gospel of Jesus’ Wife. To paraphrase Ecclesiastes (12:12), of making apocryphal books there is no end.

This second volume of MNTA continues the work of the first by making available to English readers more apocryphal texts, some published here for the very first time. xiii

Introduction The introduction to MNTA 1 finished with a provisional list of texts to be included in vol. 2. As can be seen in the new volume’s table of contents, that list was provisional indeed. Some of the differences are due merely to changes in the titles assigned to the texts. But some texts are entirely absent because the work required to prepare the translations proved to be so substantial that they could not be completed in time for this volume. Other texts were set aside by contributors due to professional or personal constraints on their workload. Fortunately, there is no shortage of apocrypha, nor of apocrypha scholars, to fill the gaps.

As with vol. 1, the texts are arranged, mostly for convenience’s sake, in the same generic categories found in the New Testament and followed in other apocrypha collections. Section 1, Gospels and Related Traditions of New Testament Figures, features texts that expand upon the life and teachings of Jesus as well as tales of Jesus’ family and acquaintances (the Virgin Mary, John the Baptist, Joseph of Arimathea, and Judas). The section begins with two texts that add to the story of Jesus’ childhood. The first, the Adoration of the Magi, is particularly noteworthy because it is extant only in Old Uyghur. The text comes from an assortment of manuscripts purchased in Turfan (China) and uses a language restricted to the ninth and thirteenth centuries. Its inclusion here demonstrates how far stories of the Magi traveled over time and how the scope of Christian apocrypha scholarship has grown in recent decades to include a range of little-­studied languages and cultures. The second childhood text, the Rebellion of Dimas, is a tale about the Good Bandit (aka the Good Thief), a character made famous by the Gospel of Luke. The story is found in a single manuscript of the Gospel of Pseudo-­Matthew, a gospel first published three centuries ago, but the dogged determination of scholars to seek out additional manuscripts of this text, and others, has led to the discovery of a number of such free-­floating stories. The inclusion of Reb. Dimas in this volume illustrates how the goal of text-­critical work is no longer simply to reconstruct the original text (if indeed such a goal is attainable), but to examine the various forms a text takes throughout its transmission history.

Jesus’ adult career is featured in only one text in this volume: a Homily on the Life of Jesus and His Love for the Apostles. This is one of several Coptic texts in the collection classified as “pseudo-apostolic memoirs,” a genre described in detail in Alin Suciu’s contributions to MNTA 1. They are so called because the texts begin with a framing narrative in which a leading figure in the church—such as Cyril of Jerusalem or Basil of Caesarea—begins a homily and then presents the contents of a text said to be written by one of the apostles. Many of the apostolic memoirs have yet to be published, much less translated into a modern language. One of the difficulties involved in their publication is that they have to be reconstructed from Coptic manuscripts that were torn apart and sold to various European libraries. Portions of Hom. Life Jesus were discovered and translated into English over a century ago; the translation here incorporates all of the additional evidence for the text published in the decades since. A similar situation exists for the second apostolic memoir in this collection: a Homily on the Passion and Resurrection attributed to Evodius of Rome. The homily was published and translated previously from a complete manuscript held in the Pierpont Morgan Collection, but new fragments from dispersed manuscripts have become available in the interim. Among its varied contents is the pseudepigraphical author’s defense of composing apocrypha; he likens their creation to dying cloth or combining gold with other minerals—the holy Gospels appear more glorious as a result. The Book of Bartholomew, another text associated with the apostolic xiv

Introduction memoirs, but lacking a frame narrative, is equally complicated to reconstruct and in need of an update. Though fairly well known, the text rarely appears in apocrypha collections; when it does, it is usually only in summary. The full text is included here in the first English translation to be made in over a century.

Events that took place after the resurrection are spotlighted in the Healing of Tiberius, a text of the Pilate Cycle that was popular in the Middle Ages but, until now, never translated into English. Medieval Christians showed considerable interest also in the history of the wood from which the cross of Jesus was constructed, as may be seen in the many forms of the Legend of the Holy Rood Tree. The version of this legend offered here, the Post Peccatum Adae, is available in over eighty manuscripts in Latin alone. This text is similar in many ways to the Legend of the Thirty Pieces of Silver, which appeared in MNTA 1. Leg. Sil. traces the transmission of the coins from their creation by Abraham’s father through pivotal events in Jewish history to their role in the betrayal of Jesus; a similar history is told of the wood, which derives ultimately from the tree of life and is used by Moses, David, and Solomon before it is fashioned into a cross. At one point the legend even intersects with the story of Judas, when thirty silver rings attached to the tree are removed to pay the betrayer. Both texts are what may be called “object gospels,” written to demonstrate how God’s providential hand guided every aspect of Jesus’ life and death. Judas is seen again in the popular Life of Judas, a biography of the wayward apostle adapted from the story of Oedipus.

The text has never before appeared in an apocrypha collection, despite its widespread transmission in multiple forms and languages, including the never-­before-­published Armenian version, which appears here alongside the earliest of the Latin versions.

Many late antique and medieval apocrypha were composed to establish feast days and holy sites as memorials to Christian saints. The Life of Mary Magdalene, translated for the first time into English, is one such text. It takes Western tales of Mary’s evangelical work in Marseille, removes their depiction of Mary as a repentant prostitute, and adds to them Eastern traditions about her death in Ephesus and the translation of her relics to Constantinople. Several European pilgrimage sites claimed to be stewards of Mary’s remains; Life Mary provides the warrant for a rival shrine available to devotees in the Christian East. Two other texts in the collection vie with one another over which city—Lydda or Philippi—can boast of being home to the official church of the Virgin Mary. The Story of Joseph of Arimathea, also appearing for the first time in English translation (this time from Georgian, another rare language in Christian Apocrypha Studies), tells of how the church in Lydda received divine and human sanction after an image of the Virgin miraculously appeared inside; similarly, the Homily on the Building of the First Church of the Virgin, an apostolic memoir attributed to Basil of Caesarea, contains a letter said to be written by Luke, in which the evangelist narrates how a buried icon of the Virgin was revealed and then was miraculously transported into a church in Philippi built by the apostles.

Section 2, “Apocryphal Acts and Related Traditions,” comprises six accounts of the missionary endeavors of the apostles. Again, previous apocrypha collections in English typically present only the earliest of such texts—the so-­called “five great apocryphal acts” of Peter, Andrew, Paul, John, and Thomas. Of these, only Thomas is complete; the others are reconstructed as well as possible from multiple manuscript sources that include one story here, and another story there. Scholars continue to search for the missing tales. Perhaps some of the texts included in the MNTA volumes can contribute to xv

Introduction this goal. MNTA 1 includes the Syriac History of Simon Cephas, the Chief of the Apostles, a combination of several accounts of Peter’s career, including the Greek Acts of Peter, otherwise extant principally in a much-­transformed Latin form. This Syriac version may help to distinguish between readings in the original Acts and changes introduced in the Latin version. MNTA 2 features four texts that expand the sources for Peter’s apocryphal exploits. Two of these are in Syriac: the never-­before-­published Travels of Peter, and the Exhortation of Peter, presented in this volume in an expanded form. A third, from Coptic and Latin sources, features a story about Peter’s paralyzed daughter and is often considered by scholars to be part of the original Acts of Peter. It is mentioned by Augustine, alluded to in the Acts of Philip, excerpted in the (Apocryphal) Epistle of Titus, and presented in full in the Act of Peter preserved in Papyrus Berolinensis 8502.4. But there is another version of this tale embedded within the Acts of Nereus and Achilleus, which is included here in its first complete English translation. Rounding out the Petrine texts is the Act of Peter in Azotus, a short Greek narrative published and translated into French in 2008 and now presented in English. It is by no means certain that any of these stories were once part of the original Acts of Peter; the independent circulation of these tales testifies to an abiding interest in short stories about the apostolic heroes, so it is possible they are preserved in precisely the form in which they were created. Perhaps, too, some of the stories presently assigned to the great apocryphal acts were not originally part of these texts at all.

The five “great” apocryphal acts tend to overshadow other accounts of the apostles’ lives that were created, it seems, as replacements of or at least rivals to the earlier, somewhat heterodox accounts. For many Christians, these were the true lives of the apostles. Some of these later acts were composed in Latin for the churches of the West, others were composed in Greek, but most of these Greek forms exist today only in Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopic, and sometimes Church Slavonic translations. One exception is the Acts of Thomas and His Wonderworking Skin, extant in at least nine Greek manuscripts, four of which are used as the basis for this volume’s translation.

Rounding out the selection of apocryphal acts is the History of Philip, appearing in a new translation incorporating a number of recently recovered Syriac manuscripts.

Epistles form a large group of materials in the New Testament—twenty-­one out of the twenty-­seven texts in the corpus. Apocryphal epistles are less plentiful, and only one is included here: the Ethiopic Epistle of Pelagia. Yet this text is an epistle only in its title. Its content is more akin to the free-­floating stories of the apostles mentioned above, and indeed features two tales of Paul’s encounters with a lion that were long believed to have once belonged to the Acts of Paul. For a time, Ep. Pelag. was the only known witness to this portion of the early acts, but more recent manuscript discoveries of Acts Paul in Greek and Coptic that include the tales have overshadowed it in importance. A new translation of Ep. Pelag. drawing on several additional manuscripts may help bring attention back to the text, if not for the story of Paul and the lion, then for the other tales of Paul it contains that have been largely forgotten. Ep. Pelag.’s placement in the category of “Epistles” thus illustrates the problems that arise from efforts to bring order to texts within a collection. Even the compilers of the New Testament struggled with this issue, placing Hebrews after the letters of Paul based on a traditional association of the text with the apostle, even though it does not contain Paul’s name and is more a sermon in form than an epistle. Other texts within the present volume could also be placed within the “Epistles” category: the “apostolic memoir” contained in Hom. Church xvi

Introduction Vir. is presented as a letter written by Luke, and Acts Ner. Ach. contains three letters: one from Nereus and Achilleus to Marcellus, Marcellus’s reply, and another letter to Marcellus from Eutyches, Victorinus, and Maro. Other methods of organization are possible, including grouping all of the apostolic memoirs together based on their close association with one another; or perhaps it is better to ignore genre altogether and simply order the texts alphabetically. However, since MNTA is conceptualized as a supplement to Elliott’s Apocryphal New Testament, it seemed best to the series editors to follow his canonical divisions, even though recent scholarship on Christian apocrypha is trying to resist the pull of the New Testament for defining and delineating the genres of apocryphal texts and indeed has become quite critical of using such titles as “New Testament Apocrypha” as a description of the literature. In scholarship, change frequently comes slowly and the results can be messy.

Section 4 covers the final traditional genre: Apocalypses. The New Testament features only one apocalypse, composed by a certain John in the late first century. The conversation between John and Jesus in the Book of Revelation continues in several noncanonical apocalypses. Many of these are readily available in John M. Court’s recent collection, The Book of Revelation and the Johannine Apocalyptic Tradition (JSNTS 190; Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2000). At first there seemed to be no need to revisit them so soon. However, it became clear that the number of available sources for these texts has expanded considerably in recent years and that, in some cases, the new sources significantly impact the texts’ reconstruction and interpretation. The first of these is the widely known 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John, which has not appeared in English collections since 1870. Unfortunately, no new edition of the text has appeared since (though there is one in preparation), but it is included here in a new translation principally for comparison with the other Johannine apocalyptica. The text known as 2 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John is perhaps poorly named, as the manuscripts vacillate over the identity of its interlocutor: sometimes he is called John the Theologian, as in the other apocalypses, at other times he is called John Chrysostom, thus moving the text out of the purview of apocrypha and into patristica. It is possible that the apocalypse experienced a second transformation, as portions of its material are apparently drawn from Byzantine erōtapokriseis (or “question-­and-­answer”) literature. Given the evident fluidity in this text’s transmission, it was decided to present 2 Apocr. Apoc. John here in two versions, arranged in parallel. A relationship with erōtapokriseis literature is evident also in 3 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John, translated here from Greek into English for the first time, though a translation from Church Slavonic is already available. The Church Slavonic version also spawned a sequel called the Questions of John to Abraham, which also appears here in its first translation into any modern language. It is John, not Jesus, who answers the questions in the Questions of James to John, translated by Court from a single manuscript but here based on five witnesses and significantly improved. These four Johannine texts illustrate the appeal of John the Theologian as a transmitter of not only additional information about the eschaton, but also about the afterlife and other subjects of interest to their apparently monastic audience, such as the order of the liturgy and the intricacies of the relationship between hegumens, monks, and their wider community.

Grouped with the Byzantine apocalypses are the fragmentary Dialogue of the Revealer and John, which does not appear in Elliott’s collection and tends to be overlooked in examinations of Coptic “gnostic” apocrypha, and another, more orthodox, xvii

Introduction Coptic text: the Mysteries of John. Like 1 Apocr. Apoc. John, Myst. John is included here primarily because of its connections to other texts in the volume: the Investiture of the Archangel Gabriel and the Investiture of the Archangel Michael. All three texts belong to the pseudo-apostolic memoirs genre and are related in content to the Investiture of Abbaton, included in MNTA 1. The translation of Myst. John improves on earlier work with the integration of evidence from a second, fragmentary manuscript; Invest. Gab. and Invest. Mich. appear here in English for the first time. Appended to the translation of Invest. Mich. is the Homily against Heretical Books, composed by John of Parallos in the seventh century. He mentions Invest. Mich. along with several otherwise unknown apocrypha and cautions his readers against reading their “filthy words.” John at once testifies to the use of Invest. Mich. in celebrations of the angel on his feast day and to resistance to such practices. This homily is a useful reminder that apocryphal texts were integral to the spiritual lives of Christians long after the apparent closing of the canon and that the calls to avoid and even destroy such literature were not always effective. The final apocalypse included here, the Apocalypse of Thomas, is a common sight in apocrypha collections, including Elliott’s compendium. But a number of additional witnesses to the text have been published over the last decade, and they are integrated into the new translation.

This second volume of MNTA breaks finally with traditional efforts at organization by introducing a fifth category of apocryphal texts: church orders. The earliest and most well known of such texts is the Didache, which contains regulations for the congregation (on baptism, on prayer, etc.), bookended by a code of Christian morals (the teaching of the “Two Ways”) and a brief description of the eschaton. Church orders do not appear in most versions of Christian Scripture, but three are found in the Ethiopian canon: the Book of the Covenant, the Senodos, and the Didascalia. This fifth category can be thought of as also a “supplementary” section of the canon akin to the organization of Codex Sinaiticus, which follows Revelation with the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas, and Codex Alexandrinus, which concludes with 1 and 2 Clement and once also contained the Psalms of Solomon. The church order featured here is the Syriac version of the Teaching of the Apostles, which, along with the typical disciplinary and liturgical rules, includes several apocryphal episodes, including a framing story placing the delivery of the rules in the upper room where the apostles and Mary hide after the death of Jesus, and a list of the various regions appointed to the apostles for missionary activity.

Even More New Testament Apocrypha?

The two volumes of MNTA by no means exhaust the number of apocryphal texts that still need to be published or published anew. At the time of publication, plans began for a third volume. A preliminary list of texts to be included is given below.

The Acts of Andrew and Paul The Acts of Andrew and Philemon The Acts of John by Prochorus The Acts of John in the City of Rome The Acts of Mark The Acts of Thaddaeus

xviii

Introduction The Book of the Rooster The Decapitation of John the Forerunner The Dialogue between Jesus and the Devil The Dialogue of Mary and Christ on the Departure of the Soul The Disputation between Peter and Nero The Dream of Nero The Dream of the Rood The Encomium on Barnabas, by Alexander Monachos The Epistle of James to Quadratus The Epistles of Ignatius to John and the Virgin Mary The Epistles of Longinus, Augustus, Ursinus, and Patrophilus The Gospel of the Twelve The History of Paul A Homily on How Archangel Michael Defeated Satanail, by Pseudo-John ­Chrysostum The Hospitality and Perfume of the Bandit John and Cerinthus (Irenaeus, Haer. 3.3.4; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.28) Latin Lives of Mary Magdalene The Martyrdom of Zechariah On the Star, by Pseudo-­Eusebius of Caesarea The Preaching of Philip The Preaching of Simon Cephas in the City of Rome The Questions of John The Revelation of Matthew The Revelation of Matthew about the End Times The Revelation on the Lord’s Prayer The Story of the Image of Edessa The Travels of Peter and Christ to Rome The Vision of Theophilus

e-­Clavis: Christian Apocrypha

While the first volume of MNTA was in press, the newly formed North American Society for the Study of Christian Apocryphal Literature (NASSCAL) was in the process of creating e-­Clavis: Christian Apocrypha. The open-­access electronic resource (accessible at NASSCAL.com) consists primarily of a bibliography and manuscript index. An individual page for each text in the database provides the following information: 1) the various titles and standard abbreviations used in English scholarship; 2) the clavis numbers assigned to the text (CANT, BHG, BHO, etc.); 3) a short summary with lists of characters and locations mentioned in the text; 4) a variety of resources, such as examples of the text’s use in popular culture, documentaries, and websites; and 5) an exhaustive bibliography, including information on each manuscript in which the text is preserved, and all critical editions, translations, and secondary works. Links are provided to online editions of older works (provided by archive.org and other resources) and to Manuscripta apocryphorum entries, which feature detailed descriptions of each manuscript with further links to digitized catalogs and manuscript images. At the time of press, contributors to e-­Clavis had created

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Introduction entries for over one hundred texts and more than 150 Manuscripta apocryphorum pages. One of the benefits of this resource is that contributors can continually update the entries with new scholarship and new manuscript sources. Readers of the introductions and translations featured in MNTA, therefore, are encouraged to consult the entries in the e-­Clavis for changes and developments in the reconstruction and interpretation of the texts.

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Abbreviations

Unless listed below, all abbreviations used in this volume are found in The SBL Handbook of Style (ed. SBL Press; 2nd ed.; Atlanta, GA: SBL Press, 2014).

AG

The Apocryphal Gospels: Texts and Translations. Edited and translated by Bart Ehrman and Zlatko Pleše. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011.

ANT

The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation. Edited and translated by James K. Elliott. 1993; rev. ed. Oxford: Clarendon, 2005.

BHG

Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca. Edited by François Halkin.

3rd ed. 3 vols. Subsidia Hagiographica 8/8a. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1986.

BHO

Bibliotheca Hagiographica Orientalis. Edited by Paul Peters.

Subsidia Hagiographica 10. Brussels: Société des Bollandistes, 1910.

CANT

Clavis apocryphorum Novi Testamenti. Edited by Maurice Geerard. Corpus Christianorum. Turnhout: Brepols, 1992.

CPC

Clavis Patrum Copticorum. Online at http://www.cmcl.it/~cm​ cl​/chiam_clavis.html.

DJBA

A Dictionary of Jewish Babylonian Aramaic of the Talmudic and Geonic Periods. Edited by Michael Sokoloff. Ramat-Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University Press, 2002.

DJPA

A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period. Edited by Michael Sokoloff. Ramat-­Gan, Israel: Bar Ilan University Press, 1990.

EAC

Écrits apocryphes chrétiens. Vol. 1 edited by François Bovon and Pierre Geoltrain. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade 442. Paris: Gallimard, 1997. Vol. 2 edited by Pierre Geoltrain and Jean-­ Daniel Kaestli. Bibliothèque de la Pléiade 443. Paris: Gallimard, 2005.

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Abbreviations HUAA

Die handschriftliche Überlieferung der altslavischen Apokryphen. 2 vols. Edited by Aurelio de Santos Otero. PTS 20 and 23. Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978–1981.

Lampe

Lampe, G. W. H., ed. A Patristic Greek Lexicon. Oxford: Clarendon, 1961.

LEW

Liturgies Eastern and Western. Edited and translated by Frank E. Brightman. Oxford: Clarendon, 1896.

LSJ

Liddell, Henry George, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones, eds.

A Greek-­English Lexicon. 9th ed. with revised supplement.

Oxford: Clarendon, 1996.

MNTA

New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures.

Vol. 1. Edited by Tony Burke and Brent Landau. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2016.

P. Oxy.

The Oxyrhynchus Papyri. Edited by B. P. Grenfell et al. London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1898–.

Act Pet. Az.

Act of Peter in Azotus

Acts Andr. Phlm.

Acts of Andrew and Philemon

Acts Barn.

Acts of Barnabas

Acts Corn.

Acts of Cornelius the Centurion

Acts John Proch.

Acts of John by Prochorus

Acts Pet. Andr.

Acts of Peter and Andrew

Acts Pet. Paul

Acts of the Apostles Peter and Paul

Acts Thom. Skin

Acts of Thomas and His Wonderworking Skin

Acts Titus

Acts of Titus

Ador. Magi

Adoration of the Magi

1 Apocr. Apoc. John

1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John

2 Apocr. Apoc. John

2 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John

3 Apocr. Apoc. John

3 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John

Apos. Con.

Apostolic Constitutions

Arnobius Nat.

Adversus nationes

Bede the Venerable Exp. Luc.

Expositio in Lucam

Birth Sav.

xxii

Book about the Birth of the Savior (Liber de Nativitate Salvatoris)

Abbreviations Bk. Bart.

Book of Bartholomew

Bk. Rooster

Book of the Rooster

6 Bks. Dorm.

Six-­Books Dormition of the Virgin

B-­S Ap.

Berlin-­Strasbourg Apocryphon (aka Gospel of the Savior)

Cassiodorus Chron.

Chronicle

Cassius Dio Hist.

Roman History

Death Pil.

Death of Pilate (Mors Pilati)

Dial. Rev. John

Dialogue of the Revealer and John

Disc. Sav.

Discourse of the Savior

Dorm. Vir.

Dormition of the Virgin

Dorm. Vir. John

Dormition of the Virgin by the Apostle John

Encom. Bapt.

Encomium on John the Baptist

Encom. Mary

Encomium on Mary Magdalene

Ep. Chr. Heav.

Epistle of Christ from Heaven

Ephrem Hymn Nat.

Hymns of the Nativity

Ep. Pelag.

Epistle of Pelagia

Ep. Tib. Pil.

Epistle of Tiberius to Pilate

Ep. Tim. Dion.

Epistle of Pseudo-­Dionysius the Areopagite to Timothy

Exhort. Pet.

Exhortation of Peter

Germanos of Constantinople Div. lit.

De divina liturgia Gos. Jud.

Gospel of Judas

Gregory of Tours Glor. mart.

Liber in gloria martyrum

Gregory the Great Hom. in Euang. Homiliae in Euangelia Heal. Tib.

Healing of Tiberius

Hist. Paul

History of the Holy Apostle My Lord Paul

Hist. Phil.

History of Philip

Hist. Vir.

(East Syriac) History of the Virgin xxiii

Abbreviations Hom.

Pseudo-­Clementine Homilies

Hom. Church Vir.

Homily on the Building of the First Church of the Virgin

Hom. Life Jesus

Homily on the Life of Jesus and His Love for the Apostles

Hom. Life Pass.

Homily on the Life and the Passion of Christ

Hom. Pass. Res.

Homily on the Passion and Resurrection

Hom. Rock

Homily on the Church of the Rock

Hosp. Dysmas

Hospitality of Dysmas

Hosp. Oint. Band.

Hospitality and Ointment of the Bandit

Hosp. Perf. Band.

Hospitality and Perfume of the Bandit

Invest. Abbat.

Investiture of Abbaton

Isidore of Seville Etym. Etymologiae Jos. Arim.

Narrative of Joseph of Arimathea

Leg. Aphr.

Legend of Aphroditianus

Liber Requiei

Liber Requiei Mariae

Life Jud.

Life of Judas

Life Mary Magd.

Life of Mary Magdalene

Lin. Mart. Paul

Martyrdom of the Blessed Apostle Paul (Ps.-Linus)

Mir. Jesus

Miracles of Jesus

Myst. John

Mysteries of John

Nicephorus Callistus Hist. eccl.

Historia Ecclesiastica Orosius Adv. Pag.

Historiarum Adversum Paganos

Pass. Apost. Pet. Paul Passion of the Apostles Peter and Paul Pass. Holy Pet. Paul Passion of the Holy Apostles Peter and Paul (Pseudo-­Marcellus) Photius of Constantinople Amph.

Amphilochia Bib.

Bibliotheca

Pist. Soph.

Pistis Sophia

PPA

Post Peccatum Adae

Pre. Pet. Rome

Preaching of Simon Cephas in the City of Rome

xxiv

Abbreviations Procopius Wars

History of the Wars

Quaest. ad Ant.

Quaestiones ad Antiochum ducem

Quest. Bart.

Questions of Bartholomew

Quest. Jas.

Questions of James to John

Quest. John Ab.

Questions of John to Abraham

Reb. Dimas

Rebellion of Dimas

Rec.

Pseudo-­Clementine Recognitions

Solomon of Basra Bk. Bee

Book of the Bee

Soranus Gyn.

Gynecology

Story Jos. Arim.

Story of Joseph of Arimathea

Teach. Apos.

Teaching of the Apostles

Thomas Aquinas ST

Summa Theologiae

Trav. Pet. Syr.

Travels of Peter (Syriac)

Veng. Sav.

Vengeance of the Savior

Vis. Theo.

Vision of Theophilus

Sigla [text]

Square brackets indicate damaged, illegible, or missing text, whether restorable or unrecoverable.

(text)

Parentheses or round brackets indicate words added by the translator for clarity.

<text>

Pointed brackets indicate a correction or emendation made to a text by the translator.

{text}

Braces enclose dittographies (double writings) or other erroneous readings in a manuscript or text.

{. . .}

Braces containing three ellipsis points indicate that a textual tradition (i.e., involving more than one manuscript) has lost one or more words in transmission and that the original reading cannot be reconstructed with any confidence.

†. . .†

Cruces containing three ellipsis points indicate that a reading in an individual manuscript cannot be reconstructed with any confidence. xxv

I. G ospels and Related Traditions of New Testament Figures

The Adoration of the Magi

A new translation and introduction

by Adam Carter Bremer-­McCollum

In the early twentieth century, various colonialist expeditions in Central Asia yielded a hoard of texts in a myriad of languages and scripts.1 Among these texts is the Adoration of the Magi (Ador. Magi), a four-­page narrative in eighty lines that recounts in unique fashion the story of the Magi’s visit to the young Jesus. The work, while incomplete, nevertheless offers a relatively intact story, with some details that are little known or unknown in other sources. It is written in Old Turkic (more specifically, Old Uyghur) and in Uyghur script. The text has been translated into German (more than once), Russian, and French, but is translated here into English for the first time.

Contents

Ador. Magi naturally shares some things in common with Matt 2:1–13,2 but it also has unique elements unknown, or at least only barely known, from any other source. As it now survives, the story begins with the Magi in Jerusalem speaking with Herod. The Magi depart from there, following a star, to Bethlehem, having with them three gifts for the one whose majesty they wish to honor. The star stops, of course, at Bethlehem, and they know they are at the right place. The young Jesus sleeps in a crib made of stone, a piece of which he breaks off as a gift for the Magi, but they are unable to carry it, and at first do not recognize its worth. They end up throwing it into a well, yet when they have done so, a light and fire come forth from it, giving the narrator an opportunity to make a link between Jesus’ gift to the Magi and Zoroastrian reverence for fire. The story ends with an angelic appearance to the Magi directing them safely away from Herod, who is thus angered at having been tricked and commands the slaughter of the innocents. Finally, an angel appears to Joseph in a dream to deliver an unspecified command.

Manuscript, Editions, and Translations

Ador. Magi is extant in a form of Old Turkic known as Old Uyghur.3 Old Uyghur texts were created between the ninth to the thirteenth centuries. They are written in 1. See the popular coverage in Peter Hopkirk, Foreign Devils on the Silk Road: The Search for the Lost Treasures of Central Asia (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1980).

2. The Magi pericope comprises Matt 2:1–12, but I include verse 13 here, too, since the last three lines of the text mention the angelic appearance to Joseph in a dream.

3. In addition, Old Turkic includes the language of some runiform (i.e., written in runes) inscriptions from the seventh to the tenth centuries and of some eleventh-century texts from the Karakhanid Khanate, written mostly in Arabic script. The modern Uyghur language also belongs to the Turkic family but does not derive from Old Uyghur.

3

The Adoration of the Magi a variety of scripts, including Uyghur, which is used for Ador. Magi. Some of the later Christian material is written in Syriac script,4 but Uyghur, adapted from Sogdian script and widely used irrespective of religious community,5 is most common.6 As for the lone manuscript in which the text is found—Berlin, Berlin-­Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften, U 9175 (formerly TII B 29)—it is now lost. It was taken from Berlin to Moscow after World War II, but its whereabouts are now unknown, even though efforts have been made to locate it.7 Fortunately, at least, the facsimiles published by Müller in 1908 (and reprinted by van Tongerloo) are still relatively readable.

The text, the beginning and perhaps the end of which are missing, is written on two folios (four pages), in one column, with twenty-­one lines on the first three pages, and seventeen on the last. The title is in red, and there are some punctuation marks to indicate certain degrees of division. Müller saw a probable Syriac origin in these codicological aspects of the extant pages.8 Some lines are completed by a Zeilenfüller—that is, the last letter of the last word in the line is repeated so as to fill out the line. At the bottom of the last page, the ornamentation suggests we may in fact have the end of the text. There are four four-­dot diamonds to end the last line, and then two decorative line-­fillers to get to the end of the page. There is something in Uyghur script at the end of pages 1 and 2, but both were apparently indecipherable even to Müller. In the margin of page 2, we have näčükin ant . . . ol; the ellipses were added by Müller to represent a few letters missing due to a small tear in the folio. Some of the writing has been rubbed off on page 3, as at the beginning of lines 13–15. Overall, however, the four pages were relatively well preserved and legible at the time Müller saw them in the first decade of the twentieth century.

The Uyghur text has been published four times (by Müller, Malov, van Tangerloo, and Zieme), and three German translations (Müller, Bang,9 and Zieme), one Russian (Malov), and one French (van Tangerloo) have appeared. Part of the story was published in English by Leonardo Olschki but the source of the translation is unclear—either the Old Uyghur itself or one of the German translations of Müller and Bang, both 4. See Nina V. Pigulevskaya, “Fragments syriaques et syro-­turcs de Hara-­Hoto et de Tourfan,” Revue de l’Orient chrétien 30 (1935–1936): 3–46, and also the later part of Zieme, Altuigurische Texte.

5. See the description in Marcel Erdal, Grammar of Old Turkic (Handbook of Oriental Studies 8.3; Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2004), 37.

6. Further on Uyghur script see Nicholas Sims-­Williams, “The Sogdian Sound System and the Origins of the Uyghur Script,” Journal Asiatique 269 (1981): 347–60; Albert von le Coq, “Kurze Einführung in die uigurische Schriftkunde,” Mitteilungen des Seminars für Orientalische Sprachen, Westasiatische Studien 22.2 (1919): 93–109; György Kara, “Aramaic Scripts for Altaic Languages,” in The World’s Writing Systems (ed. Peter T. Daniels and William Bright; New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 536–58 (esp. 539–45).

7. Personal communication from Zieme (16 Jan. 2015): “unfortunately the original text is lost.

There was some hope that it was brought after WW II to Moscow or [St.] Petersburg, but among those ‘rediscovered ones’ it was not found.”

8. “Äußerlich betrachtet macht das Papierdoppelblatt mit seinem roten Titel (S. 4) und den Schlußverzierungen den Eindruck, als ob es aus einem syrischen Buche stammte” (Müller, “Anbetung der Magier,” 5).

9. Bang made a new translation drawing upon the advances in Turcology since Müller’s initial publication, and suggests that the new translation is “ahead by a camel’s head”: “Ich setze eine neue freie Übersetzung her, da die Turkologie seit 1908 nicht ganz stationär geblieben ist, sodass meine Übersetzung der Müllerschen um die bekannte Kameelskopflänge voraus ist” (“Türkische Bruchstücke,” 43).

4

The Adoration of the Magi of which are referenced by Olschki.10 As already mentioned, the English translation that follows below is the first complete one to be published.

Language, Date, and Provenance

Albert von le Coq, in a letter to Gustaf Richard Raquette dated 2 September 1907, wrote:11 You will be interested to know that we have had the good luck to find amongst the Mss. I brought from Turfan, parts of a Bible in ancient Turki of say the 7–9th centuries—I was ready to disbelieve my eyes when I saw the words [. . .]12 “Khirodees Khan” the King Herodes, followed by a description of the kings before the cradle at Bethlehem!!

It was, of course, not a part of the Bible they had found, but our Magi text.

Müller suggests a Syriac or Sogdian Vorlage for the text,13 and, as noted above, even sees possible evidence for a Syriac origin in the codicological features of the Uyghur manuscript. Malov, based explicitly on the writing of the proper names, likewise considers the Uyghur text to have a Syriac or Sogdian original,14 while van Tongerloo, based on the same evidence, claims it as certain that the text was translated from Sogdian, but still assumes a Syriac original.15 Earlier, Olschki had briefly questioned the assumption of translation, following Bang’s work on the text and the apparent “idiomatic character of its language,” noting, too, that if it is a Turkic composition (even in part, we may add), and not a translation, it means we are dealing with “a comparatively independent development of the legend in the Central Asiatic area.”16 Although the trend of the rest of Christian Uyghur literature would indeed point to a Syriac or Syriac to Sogdian source—in part, if not in full—we can link no known Syriac or Sogdian source directly to the Uyghur text.

Literary and Theological Considerations

The Old Uyghur corpus has the largest amount of Buddhist texts (mostly Mahāyāna),17 followed by Manichaean, and finally, Christian. The texts are generally translations, in the case of the Christian texts, from Syriac or an Iranian language.18 The study of the 10. Olschki, “Crib of Christ,” 162.

11. See Aloïs van Tongerloo and Michael Knüppel, “Briefe von Albert v. Le Coq an Gustaf Richard Raquette aus den Jahren 1907–1927,” Zentral-­Asiatische Studien 43 (2014): 269–309 at 279–80. The two exclamation points at the end of the portion quoted here are in the text as published by the editors.

12. Here the letter gives the words in Uyghur script.

13. Müller, “Anbetung der Magier,” 5.

14. Malov, “Pamyatnik khristianskogo,” 131.

15. Van Tongerloo, “Ecce Magi,” 69.

16. Olschki, “Crib of Christ,” 161.

17. Johan Elverskog, Uyghur Buddhist Literature (Silk Road Studies 1; Turnhout: Brepols, 1997), and Peter Zieme, Fragmenta Buddhica Uigurica: Ausgewählte Schriften von Peter Zieme (ed. Simone-­ Christiane Raschmann and Jens Wilkens; Studien zur Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur der Turkvölker 7; Berlin: Klaus Schwarz, 2009).

18. “Religious Uygur texts, which are the majority, are normally translations, reformulations, expansions etc. of texts in other languages; Chinese, Indic, Iranian or Tokharian if the text is Buddhistic, Iranian if it is Manichaean, Iranian or Syriac if it is Christian” (Erdal, Grammar, p. 23 n. 43).

5

The Adoration of the Magi Christian material in Old Uyghur has been made much easier with the publication of Peter Zieme’s Altuigurische Texte der Kirche des Ostens aus Zentralasien, though most of the texts are still not available in English.19 One common literary characteristic of Old Uyghur, also well in evidence in Ador.

Magi, deserves mention here: hendiadys, the use of (usually) two near synonyms side-­by-­side to describe one entity. For example, elig han (king-­king, l. 20), otačï ämči (physician-­physician, l. 24), oot yalïn (fire-­flame, l. 51), kök kalïkka tägi (up to the sky-­firmament, ll. 51–52), aŋlap bilip (understand-­recognize, l. 54), tapïngu yüküngü (honoring-­worshipping, l. 56), and bukagulukčï ölütči yargan-­lar (slayers-­ murderers-henchmen, ll. 73–74). These are generally translated below by a single term in English.

As we turn to the narrative content of our text, we might naturally ask about the rich assortment of Syriac witnesses to the Magi, especially given the supposed Syriac basis for the greater part of Uyghur Christian literature.20 Not surprisingly, there are at least a few places of overlap between what is known from Syriac Magi literature generally and the Uyghur text, but the most interesting parts of our text find no obvious counterpart in known Syriac literature. Müller mentions at the end of his edition (thanks to Albert von le Coq) a somewhat similar story in Marco Polo (whose translator, Yule, also points to such a tale in al-­Masʿūdī).21 Even if we are dealing in this case with echoes of the same version of the story as our Turkic text presents, the Turkic text remains our most direct reference to this form of the story with its otherwise relatively unknown happenings.

While we might compare in detail the version of the story in Ador. Magi with the various interpretations given in Syriac and other literatures—for example, the ways the gifts of the Magi have been understood—here I will only briefly touch on a few matters that are especially notable in this version of the story: the crib and the stone, the well and Zoroastrian reverence for fire, and Herod and the murder of Zechariah.

One striking part of the Turkic version of the story is that, while the Magi are present, the young Jesus breaks off a piece of his stone cradle and gives it to them.22 This stone, the Magi eventually realize, is extremely heavy, and neither they nor their 19. See also his earlier overview, “Zu den nestorianisch-­türkischen Turfantexten,” in Georg Hazai and Peter Zieme, eds., Sprache, Geschichte und Kultur der altaischen Völker: Protokollband der XII. Tagung der Permanent International Altaistic Conference 1969 in Berlin (Schriften zur Geschichte und Kultur des alten Orients 5; Berlin: Akademie, 1974), 661–68 (+ 4 plates). See also Pigulevskaya, “Fragments syriaques et syro-­turcs.”

20. See Witold Witakowski, “The Magi in Syriac Tradition,” in Malphono w-­Rabo d-­Malphone: Studies in Honor of Sebastian P. Brock (ed. George Kiraz; Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2008), 809–43 and Brent Landau, “The Revelation of the Magi,” in MNTA 1:19–38. Within Central Asian Christianity, which rested especially on the Syriac Church of the East, we find in the Xi’an Stele (also known as the Nestorian Stele/Monument) a brief reference to the Magi, but nothing in great detail: “In Persia they saw the shining light and approached with offerings” (Bōsī dǔ yào yǔ lái gòng, end of line 6 in the inscription; in the Chinese text as published by P. Yoshio Saeki, The Nestorian Monument in China [London: SPCK, 1916], this phrase is found in the penultimate line of p. 260).

21. See further Olschki, “Crib of Christ,” 162; van Tongerloo, “Ecce Magi,” 72–74; and Schilling, Anbetung der Magier, 168–69.

22. For bread (not a stone) given to the Magi, see Schilling, Anbetung der Magier, 170 n. 43 (citing the Ethiopic Liber nativitatis Mariae 16.25–31, ed. Marius Chaîne, Apocrypha de Beata Maria Virgine [CSCO 39, Aeth. 22; Rome: Karolus de Luigi, 1909], 3–19), but Schilling (Anbetung der Magier, 178–80) argues that the stone is the earlier version.

6

The Adoration of the Magi horse(s) are able to carry it. Olschki sees this heavy stone as an instance of “miraculous immobility” of relics like the Buddha’s alms-­bowl, beggar’s staff, and coffin.23 In (later) Christian hagiographic tradition there are indeed cases where “a sacred relic withstands removal by unworthy hands,” but, as Loomis notes, “it is often hard to decide whether the feat is one of adhesion or one of immobility,”24 and we may question whether these legendary events, Buddhist or Christian, are really of the same sort as that of the unbelievably heavy piece of stone that the child gave the Magi.

The Magi, in order to rid themselves of the onerous burden of the piece of stone, throw it into a well they pass by, and then this well, presumably due to the stone, emits a bright, fiery light.25 It is at this point that the Magi then realize the specialness of the stone the child Jesus had given them, even calling it a “jewel.” The narrator pauses the narrative here to offer an explanation: the Magi’s sight of this fiery light and their recognition of the value of Jesus’ gift is the origin of their (i.e., Zoroastrians’) adoration of fire “to this very day.”26 The anachronism of this etiology notwithstanding, the narrator is trying to draw a causal connection between Jesus (and perhaps Christianity) and a particular aspect of Zoroastrian practice and belief. A connection between Zoroastrianism and Jesus—and in that order, not the other way around—is found elsewhere in the literature of the Church of the East, but in wholly different trappings.

Išoʿdad mentions Zarathustra’s prophecy of Jesus’ birth,27 as does, with different details, Solomon of Basra’s the Book of the Bee, in which Zarathustra says of Jesus: He will descend from my family. I am he, and he is me, and he is in me, and I am in him. And when the beginning of his coming is seen, great signs will be seen in the sky, and his light will conquer the light of the sun. . . . [I]t is you who will first perceive the coming of that great king, whom prisoners are waiting on, that they might be released . . . And when the star that I have told you about is rising, messengers should be sent from among you, carrying offerings, and they should offer him worship. (Bk. Bee 37)28 23. Olschki, “Crib of Christ,” 163–64; cf. Tubach, “Weisen aus dem Morgenland,” 329–34.

24. C. Grant Loomis, White Magic: An Introduction to the Folklore of Christian Legend (Mediaeval Academy of America Publication 52; Cambridge, MA: Mediaeval Academy of America, 1948), 56–57; see also 49, and the references at 174 n. 90.

25. There is a tradition of a well in Bethlehem connected with Mary and with the Magi that seems to have been a pilgrimage site. See Schilling, Anbetung der Magier, 182 n. 101, where Gregory of Tours, Glor. mart. is quoted: “In Bethlehem there is a large well, from which Mary the glorious is said to have drunk water. Often a famous wonder is shown to observers, that is, the star that appeared to the Magi is revealed to those there who are pure in heart” (“Est autem in Bethleem puteus magnus, de qua Maria gloriosa aquam fertur hausisse. Saepius aspicientibus miraculum inlustre monstratur, id est stella ibi mundis corde, quae apparuit magis ostenditur,” 488.23–30; ed. Bruno Krusch, in Monumenta Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum, vol. 1 [Hanover: Hahn, 1885], 284–370; my translation).

26. For Jerusalem as the source of the fire, see Schilling, Anbetung der Magier, 180–81 (with nn.

95–96) for two Armenian witnesses. For Zoroastrian reverence for fire, see Mary Boyce, Zoroastrians: Their Religious Beliefs and Practices (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), index s.vv. “fire,” “fires, temple,” “fire temples,” and “fire worshippers.”

27. Syriac text in Margaret Dunlop Gibson, ed., The Commentaries of Ishoʿdad of Merv (5 vols.; Horae Semiticae 5–7, 10–11; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1911–1916), 2:32; English translation in 1:19.

28. Syriac text in Ernest A. W. Budge, ed., The Book of the Bee (Oxford: Clarendon, 1886), 90.5–15;

7

The Adoration of the Magi Thus the Magi’s reverence for fire has in the Turkic text a unique (and anachronistic) etiology, one leading back directly to the infant Jesus and the Magi’s response to his personal gift to them.

Finally, at the end of the story (at least as it survives), the narrator turns to the slaughter of the innocents, but begins this part of the story by referring to “the death of Zechariah, the high priest, at the hands of the evil-­doing king Herod” (Ador. Magi 8). While the author says “we would like to write” about this incident, he says nothing else about Zechariah, being concerned thereafter directly only with Herod’s anger at the Magi and then his command that the kingdom’s male infants under age two should be killed. In some traditions the reference to the murder of Zechariah in Matt 23:35 is thought to refer indeed, not to the prophet, but to John the Baptist’s father, whom Herod had killed when he did not reveal John’s location during the slaughter of the innocents: thus told, for example, in the Cave of Treasures 47:1829 and Bk. Bee 39.30 Schilling remarks that the Uyghur version derives from the Protevangelium of James, although this may be overstated.31 While the Uyghur text does mention Zechariah’s death at Herod’s hand (cf. Prot. Jas. 23–24), it is perhaps not necessary to link it so directly and specifically with the earlier text.

Translation

The English translation that follows is based on an examination of the Uyghur text in Müller’s facsimile, as well as consultation with all of the known editions and translations (German, Russian, and French).32 I have divided the translation into short numbered paragraphs. Words or phrases specifically added for the sake of English are in parentheses. As mentioned above, hendiadys is rendered by one element only.

Bibliography Editions and Translations Bang, Willy. “Türkische Bruchstücke einer nestorianischen Georgspassion.” Mus 39 (1926): 41–75. (Annotated German translation, pp. 43–53.)

Malov, Sergey E. “Pamyatnik khristianskogo verouchitel’nogo soderzhaniya ‘Pokloneniye volkhvov’ (in Russian).” Pages 131–38 in idem, Pamyatniki drevnetyurkskoy pis’mennosti.

Teksty i issledovaniya. Moscow: Izdatel’stvo Akademii Nauk SSSR, 1951. (Text, transcription, and Russian translation with Uyghur-­Russian glossary.) my translation. For more on Zarathustra’s prophecy, see John C. Reeves, “Prophecy of Zardūšt,” in A Multiform Heritage: Studies on Early Judaism and Christianity in Honor of Robert A. Kraft (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1999), 167–82; and Giuseppe Messina, “Una presunta profezia di Zoroastro sulla venuta del messia,” Biblica 14, no. 2 (1933): 170–98.

29. Su-­Min Ri, La Caverne des Trésors: Les deux recensions syriaques (CSCO 486–87, Syr. 207–8; Leuven: Peeters, 1987), eastern recension 14–18. For an updated introduction and translation of Cav. Tr. see Alexander Toepel, “The Cave of Treasures,” in Old Testament Pseudepigrapha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, vol. 1 (ed. Richard Bauckham et al.; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2013), 531–84.

30. Syriac text in Budge, Book of the Bee, 95 (Syriac numbering); translation, p. 86.

31. Schilling, Anbetung der Magier, 169: “aus einer Exegese des Protoevangelium Jacobi erwachsen ist.”

32. I would like to thank Peter Zieme for looking over my initial translation of the text and for his comments, and Lydia Clare Bremer-­McCollum for several helpful comments on the introduction.

Any remaining failings, of course, are my own.

8

The Adoration of the Magi Müller, Friedrich W. K. “Die Anbetung der Magier, ein christliches Bruchstück.” Pages 4–10 and Tafel I and II in idem, Uigurica. Abhandlungen der Königlich Preußischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Philosophisch-­historische Klasse 2. Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1908. (Editio princeps with facsimile, transcription, and German translation.)

Olschki, Leonardo. “The Crib of Christ and the Bowl of Buddha.” JAOS 70 (1950): 161–64.

(Partial English translation.)

Tongerloo, Aloïs van. “Ecce Magi ab oriente venerunt.” Acta Orientalia Belgica 7 (1992): 57– 74. (Reprint of Müller’s facsimile and transcription, with annotated French translation.)

Zieme, Peter. “Magierlegende.” Pages 49–55 in idem, Altuigurische Texte der Kirche des Ostens aus Zentralasien. Gorgias Eastern Christian Studies 41. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2015. (Transcription and annotated German translation, with Uyghur-­German glossary.)

Studies Schilling, Alexander Markus. Die Anbetung der Magier und die Taufe der Sasaniden. Zur Geistesgeschichte des iranischen Christentums in der Spätantike. CSCO 621. Subsidia 120.

Leuven: Peeters, 2008. (Esp. 168–83.)

Tubach, Jürgen. “Die Weisen aus dem Morgenland in einer Erzählung aus der Turfan-­ Oase.” Pages 323–45 in Walter Beltz and J. Tubach, eds., Regionale Systeme koexistierender Religionsgemeinschaften. Leucorea Kolloquium 2001. Hallesche Beiträge zur Orientwissenschaft 34. Halle (Saale): Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-­Anhalt, 2002.

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The Adoration of the Magi

[. . .]a

Matt 2:8

Matt 2:9

Matt 2:11

Lines 1–8 1“Let us go and worship his great majesty,” they requested.b Then kingc Herod commanded them thus: “Now, my beloved sons,d go well and seek for (him) carefully! When you find (him), turn and come back and let me know,e so I, too, can go and worship him,”f he said.

Lines 8–21 2Now the Magi,g when they departed Jerusalem,h the star was also going to­ gether with them.i Whenj the Magi made it to Bethlehem,k the star stopped, not moving. Then and there they found Christ, God. Then, trembling, they drew near and entered. They opened their baggage, and ventured to pre­ sent the gifts they had brought,l three kinds of treasure: gold, myrrh,m and incense.n They worshipped and ventured to present praise and blessing to Christ, the king, God. a. As indicated above, there is presumably something missing at the beginning of the text, but just how much is uncertain. b. The verb ötün- can have the sense of “to submit a statement or request to a superior; to request, pray” (Gerard Clauson, Dictionary of Pre-­Thirteenth Century Turkish [Oxford: Clarendon, 1972], 62), as well as “to do something respectfully or imploringly.” c. As van Tongerloo (“Ecce Magi,” 70) notes, Herod is called han, while Christ is called elig han (hendiadys). d. Differently, van Tongerloo (“Ecce Magi,” 70) takes oglan as “son (of a king)” > “prince”; cf. Clauson, Dictionary, 84b. e. Cf. Erdal, Grammar, 195, 482 (together with 213 and 482 on näčükin “when”). f. Cf. Erdal, Grammar, 428. g. Uyghur mogoč is a Sogdian form; cf. van Tongerloo, “Ecce Magi,” 70 and Tubach, “Weisen aus dem Morgenland,” 326 n. 12. h. Uyghur urïšlïm is a Sogdian (< Syriac) form; cf. van Tongerloo, “Ecce Magi,” 70. i. See this sentence also at Erdal, Grammar, 482. j. On kačan, “eventually, at some point in time,” cf. Erdal, Grammar, 331, 481. k. Uyghur bidilhim derives from Sogdian (< Syriac); cf. van Tongerloo, “Ecce Magi,” 70. l. Taking kim differently, as well as another sense of ötün- (on which see above), see ­Erdal, Grammar, 340 (cf. 506): “They said they had brought three types of present.” m. Uyghur zmurun is a Greek loanword (smyrna). n. Uyghur küži < Mongolian küǰi < Chinese xiāngchōu (Annemarie von Gabain, Alttürkische Grammatik, 3rd ed. [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1974], 346).

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The Adoration of the Magi Lines 21–26 3The Magi entered, thinking,a “If he is the Son of God, he will take the myrrh and incense. If he is the king, Christ, he will take the gold. If he is the phy­ sician,b he will take the grass-­cure.”c They put (the gifts) on a platter and brought (them) in.d Lines 26–36 4The Son of the eternal God, the king, Christ, deigned to recognize the thoughts of the Magi, and thus accepted all three kinds of treasure. He deigned (to speak) to them as follows: “O Magi! You entered with three kinds of thought. I am Son of God, and I am also king, and I am also physician,” he graciously said. “Have no doubt, and go!” he added.e Lines 36–46 5For the Magi he broke off a chunk of stone from the corner of the stone cra­ dle, like breaking off bread,f and gave (it to them). So the Magi took the stone, but were not able to lift it themselves, and when they loaded it onto a horse, the horse could not lift it either,g so they took counsel (together): “This stone is very heavy! This one chunk of stone, why is the horse, too, unable to lift it for us? It will be impossible for us to carry it!” they said to one another.

Lines 46–55 6Then in that place a well appeared, and they lifted the stone and threw it into the well. Thus they went and looked back: inside the well a great, terrible light with fire came forth up to the sky and remained. When the Magi saw that a. The converbs sakïnïp (ll. 21–22) “thinking” and tep (line 25) “saying” bracket this sen­ tence, but for a smoother English rendering I have only translated the first. b. “Physician” here is expressed through hendiadys: otačï ämči. Van Tongerloo offers some important remarks on the broader religious significance of healing: “L’interprétation du Prophète-­médecin n’est pas exclusivement attestée dans la Proche-­Orient (ou en Europe), mais possède aussi des racines extrème-­orientales chez Mani, et chez le Bouddha (comme ‘maître de la médecine’, bhaiṣajyaguru. L’image du Christ médecin était très populaire, non seulement dans le christianisme, mais aussi dans le manichéisme . . . Jésus s’insère donc dans la grande tradition des prophètes-­guérisseurs, dans laquelle les hommes de Dieu non seulement utilisent la guérison (miraculeuse) afin de prouver leur mission divine, mais aussi pour démontrer leur grande compassion avec la souffrance humaine au niveau corporel et (—ce qui est plus important—) avec la douleur psychiche” (van Tongerloo, “Ecce Magi,” 71, with further references cited there). c. This “grass-­cure” (ot yäm) is an apparent addition, myrrh and incense having been put together at the beginning of the list. d. For the meanings of the gifts, see further Schilling, Anbetung der Magier, 178–80, and for frankincense and myrrh together, see 179 n. 87; and Zieme, Altuigurische Texte, 52–53 n. 236. e. The verb yarlïka- “command; be gracious, deign” occurs three times in this section, the last two times together with the converb tep “saying.” To avoid an overt redundancy in English, I have translated the latter of these two differently. f. The more usual Old Turkic word for bread is ätmäk/ötmäk, but here we have min (< Chinese miàn; cf. Clauson, Dictionary, 766b), which also means “meal, flour.” g. See Erdal, Grammar, 480 for this sentence.

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The Adoration of the Magi wonderful sign, they understooda (what the stone meant) and were afraid, fell with their heads down, and worshipped.

Matt 2:12

Lines 55–65 7They said, “He gave us a jewelb to be honored and worshipped, yet we were not worthy to honor it; not having realized (what it was), we threw it into the well!”c they said regretfully. (This is the reason that the Magi honor fire to this very day.) At that time a divine angeld appeared to them, led them, and had the Magi go by another road, and they did not reach king Herod.

Matt 2:16

Lines 65–77 8In addition, we would like to write of the death of Zechariah, the high priest,e at the hands of the evil-­doing king Herod. At that time king Herod saw that the Magi had returned by going on a different road. “These Magi mocked me!” he said in great anger. He commanded his attendant executioners, “Go through my kingdom: if there are little boysf under two years of age, kill them all!”

Matt 2:13

Lines 78–80 9Then a divine angel appeared to Joseph in a dream and passed on a com­ mand ‫܀‬ ‫܀‬ ‫܀‬ ‫܀‬

Prot. Jas. 23–24

a. For aŋlap bilip (hendiadys) see Zieme, Altuigurische Texte, 54. b. Uyghur ärdini derives (via Sogdian) from Sanskrit (van Tongerloo, “Ecce Magi,” 74); see also Aloïs van Tongerloo, “Buddhist Indian Terminology in the Manichaean Uygur and Middle Iranian Texts,” in Middle Iranian Studies: Proceedings of the International Symposium Organized by the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven from the 17th to the 20th of May 1982 (ed.

Wojciech Skalmowski and Aloïs van Tongerloo; OLA 16; Leuven: Peeters, 1984), 243–52 at 249–50. c. For this sentence see Erdal, Grammar, 275. d. Uyghur vrišti is an Iranian loanword: cf. Manichaean Parthian frēštag, Middle Persian frēstak, Sogdian frēštē (cf. also Armenian hreštak). As van Tongerloo (“Ecce Magi,” 74) notes, in Manichaean texts it is used for Mani. e. For Uyghur dentar, cf. Middle Persian dēndār “religious, devout,” and Sogdian δēnδār “priest, monk, elect.” In Uyghur, the term means “monk” in Buddhist texts, “elect” in Man­ ichaean, and “priest” in Christian (Zieme, Altuigurische Texte, 103–4). f. Reading oglan-­k(ı)ya.lar instead of oglan kï-­z-lar (Peter Zieme, personal communica­ tion, 8 March 2018), which would be “boys and girls.”

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