Acts of Paul

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Last page of the Hamburg papyrus with the book title and handle cross

The Acts of Paul or Acta Pauli (ActPaul) are an apocryphal pseudepigraphe Acts of the Apostles from the 2nd century. The text is only preserved in fragments, but the content can be reconstructed in many parts. As far as we know today, in contrast to the Acts of the Apostles according to Luke in the New Testament , which was known to the author, only a missionary trip by Paul is presented; this leads from Damascus via Asia Minor , Macedonia , Greece to Rome and is characterized by numerous stops and miracle stories. Paul's sermon consists mainly of calls to chastity and the proclamation of the resurrection hope.

construction

The structure follows the course of the journey, the associated episodes are told at each place where Paul is staying. Three parts of this writing were handed down independently at an early stage and are better preserved:

Evidence that these parts belong to the Acts of Paul was provided by the Heidelberg papyrus . The story of Thekla is a self-contained composition and is about the conversion of Theklas, about her double martyrdom, which she survives living, and her death. Paul is not the main character here and this part probably goes back to an older tradition. The third letter to the Corinthians is not an original part of the Acts of Paul and was only later integrated into this work. The martyrdom forms the end of the scriptures, it was read on the holy day in the service and therefore passed down separately from the entire work.

Date of origin, place and author

The Acts of the Apostles
a collection of
apocryphal stories of the Apostles

The acts of Paul are attested for the first time shortly after 200 in Hippolyt's commentary on Daniel and in Tertullian , who displeases the fact that Thekla gives sacraments and teaches:

“If those [women] who (invoke) the falsely written acts of Paul to defend the permission for women to teach and baptize using [the example of Thekla], they may know that the presbyter is in Asia who produced this writing as if he could add something of his own to Paul's reputation, resigned from his office after being convicted and confessed that he did it out of love for Paul. "

- Tertullian, De baptismo 17.5.

This coincides with the focus of the stories in Asia Minor, so that Tertullian's statements are plausible. The script is one of the few apocrypha about whose author and place of origin we know more. The section is also evidence that literary forgeries at that time were not accepted if they were discovered. The presbyter was apparently not expelled from the church, so that the scripture was probably not considered heretical , although it has extremely encratic tendencies. Origen quotes them twice. Eusebius distanced himself from this script and counted it among the not undisputed or spurious scripts. Jerome counts them to the Apocrypha, as does the Decretum Gelasianum .

Later the Acts of Paul were combined with four other apocryphal Acts of the Apostles to form a Manichaean collection of Acts of the Apostles.

Lore

There are few witnesses to all of Scripture, not a single full one. The rough structure is revealed by the Coptic Heidelberg fragments, but many gaps remain. The separately transmitted parts have their own text history and are better attested. Codex Patmos 48 and Codex Vaticanus 79 exist for the martyrdom of Pauli.

According to a statement in the Codex Claromontanus, the text comprised a total of 3560 engravings , almost 1000 engravings more than the Acts of the Apostles of Luke with 2600 engravings.

Greek

The most important Greek copy can be found in the SUB Hamburg since 1927 under the name P. Hamb. bil. 1 . The Hamburg papyrus comes from the Faiyum , as can be seen from the dialect of the Coptic parts, and the unreliable information given by the Egyptian dealer about the place of discovery does not contradict this. The palaeographic elements and letter forms point to around 300 AD for the origin of the manuscript. This textual witness offers four more episodes: The apostle's animal fight in Ephesus, the stay in Corinth, the journey from Corinth to Italy and the martyrdom.

One fragment is under the designation P 13893 in Berlin. A Greek fragment P. Oxy comes from Oxyrhynchos . XIII 1602, a sheet from a parchment code, probably from the end of the 4th century, at the latest from the beginning of the 5th century. Albert Ehrhard only recognized it as part of the Pauline Act after its publication by Grenfell and Hunt . An excerpt from the Pauline acts can be found in Nikephoros Kallistos Xanthopulos , who remains so close to the text in some details that he can be used to help reconstruct the text.

Coptic

In Heidelberg in 1897 Carl Schmidt discovered fragments of this writing in Coptic among the Heidelberg papyri, today signed as P. Heid. Inv. Cop. 300 + 301. This manuscript had disintegrated into approx. 2000 fragments and had to be put together again in painstaking detail. The original format is approx. 27 × 19 cm. The copy was made by an educated scribe and contains hardly any errors, the writing is careful and clear, the papyrus used is of good quality and is not the cause of the fragmentary character. Because of these circumstances, Schmidt dates the manuscript to the 4th century. The language shows overlaps between different Coptic dialects and is therefore of interest to linguists. Although the fragment is very sketchy, it revolutionized research on the Acts of Paul. This fragment can shed some light on the content and provided evidence that the separately transmitted parts of the Theclaacts, 3rd Corinthians and Martyrdom are parts of this writing.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Boerleffs, CChrSL, 1, 1954, p. 291f, quoted from Schneemelcher p. 195, orthography adapted.
  2. ↑ Origen: De principiis 1, 2, 3 and Commentary by John 20, 12.
  3. ↑ Eusebius: Historia Ecclesiastica 3, 3, 5 and 3, 25, 4.
  4. ↑ Schneemelcher, Apokryphen I, p. 30.
  5. ↑ cf. C. Schmidt: Πράξεις Παύλου
  6. ↑ Carl Schmidt (Ed.): Πράξεις Παύλου; Acta Pauli. This manuscript contains Coptic and Greek texts. From the Acta Pauli only 11 pages are left, probably about 48 pages of the Acta Pauli in this manuscript have been lost.
  7. ^ C. Schmidt: a Berlin fragment of the old Praxeis Paulou in SBA, Phil-Hist Kl. 1931, 37ff.
  8. ↑ Grenfell and Hunt, Oxyrhynchus Papyri Vol. 13http: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Doxyrhynchusppt1300grenuoft~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3D23~ double-sided%3D~LT%3DOxyrhynchus%20Papyri%20Bd.%2013~PUR%3D , pp. 23ff.
  9. ↑ Carl Schmidt (Ed.): Πράξεις Παύλου; Acta Pauli, p. 16f.
  10. ↑ The Greek text of the excerpt can be found in C. Schmidt, Acta Paulihttp: //vorlage_digitalisat.test/1%3D~GB%3D~IA%3Dactapauliausder00papygoog~MDZ%3D%0A~SZ%3Dn125~ double-sided%3D~LT%3DActa%20Pauli~PUR%3D , p. 111.
  11. ^ Carl Schmidt: Acta Pauli p. 1.
  12. ^ Carl Schmidt: Acta Pauli p. 4.

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