Taken generally, the
Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles share an ascetic orientation
in regard to sexuality that finds expression in a
repeated narrative formula: the apostle converts a
married man or woman to the worship of Christ, which
entails in turn the renunciation of carnal relations.
If one of the partners to the marriage remains unconverted,
she or he may seek to retaliate for this disruption
in conjugal life. When the offended spouse is powerful
enough to encompass the apostle's death, the narrative
is brought to a conclusion in the form of a martyrdom
or passion. Three out of the five Acts that survive
in substantial portions terminate in this way.
The apostle, by his
intervention, may be perceived as a rival to the husband
or wife for the devotion of the spouse, since he acts
as an alternative pole of attraction. In this respect,
the pattern in the Acts inverts the basic paradigm
that informs the ancient Greek novels, in which the
mutual erotic passion between husband and wife, or
between fiances, is repeatedly tested and wins out
against the allure or the threats of potential rivals.
The bond of eros between marital partners, which is
privileged in the novels, 2 is systematically devalued
in the Acts in favor of a religious commitment to
the apostle and the faith for which he stands. As
Judith Perkins observes: "The anti-social bias
of the Acts emerges from a comparison of their endings
with the typical conclusions of the [End Page 15]
Greek romances with which they are contemporary and
thematically linked." 3
In the paper that
follows, I shall call attention to another narrative
motif in the Acts, one that does not pose so radical
an opposition between human love and spiritual zeal.
Before turning to my central theme, however, let me
illustrate just how the apostle is presented as a
competitor for the affections of a married convert.
Our primary Greek
source for the Acts of Andrew narrates only the final
episode in the apostle's life, leading to his crucifixion.
This segment begins with the apostle's arrival in
Patras, where, prior to the point at which the Greek
text commences, Andrew had healed Maximilla, the wife
of the proconsul Aegeates, who, as we learn from Gregory
of Tours' epitome and other sources, had been prepared
to commit suicide in the event that Maximilla should
die. As a convert to Christianity, Maximilla henceforward
adopts a life of celibacy and refuses to perform the
services of a wife, putting her husband off for a
while by sending to him a slave named Euclia in her
place. When Euclia's disguise is exposed by her fellow
slaves (sundouloi, 18, 22), Aegeates mutilates her
and expels her from the house (22); however, he approaches
his wife in all humility and begs: "I cling to
your feet, I who have been your husband now for twelve
years, who always revered you as a goddess and still
do because of your chastity [sophrosune] and your
refined character" (23). Aegeates naturally supposes,
moreover, that Maximilla's abstention is due to her
erotic interest in a rival: "So if you are keeping
some secret from me about another man--something I
never would have suspected--I will make allowances
and I myself will cover it up, just as you often put
up with my foolishness." 4 Maximilla's answer
is calculated to inflame his suspicions: "I love
[philo], Aegeates, I love [philo]; and what I love
[philo] is not of this world and therefore is imperceptible
to you. Night and day it kindles and enflames [exaptei
kai phlegei] me with love [storgei] for it. . . .
Let me have intercourse [prosomilein] with it and
take my rest with it alone" (23, trans. MacDonald,
modified). [End Page 16]
Maximilla's language
leaves Aegeates in doubt as to her condition; he does
not know, he says, "if my wife is in a state
of ecstasy or lunacy [ekstasei e maniai]" (24,
trans. MacDonald). On the one hand, she employs erotic
imagery of burning and intimate association; but the
object of her passion is given in the neuter, and
she uses terms for love (philein, storge) that do
not in principle refer to sexual attraction. A slave
of Aegeates, however, who professes to tell him the
whole truth, makes the apostle the direct object of
Maximilla's passion: "She has so given way to
desire [pothoi] for him that she loves [stergein]
no one more than him, including you I would say"
(25, trans. MacDonald). The slave adds that Stratocles,
the brother of Aegeates, has become entwined in the
same longing (pothos) for Andrew.
Apprised now of Andrew's
role in encouraging Maximilla's abstinence, Aegeates
has him incarcerated, though Maximilla visits the
apostle by night. When Andrew proves unrelenting,
and exhorts Maximilla not to submit despite Aegeates'
threats to harm him (37 [5]), Aegeates has the apostle
scourged and crucified (51 [1]). After his death,
to which Andrew willingly, indeed eagerly submits,
Maximilla and Stratocles dedicate their lives to the
worship of Christ, leaving Aegeates lonely and childless
(64 [10]).
Within the terms of
the text, the slave's interpretation of Maximilla's
attachment to Andrew is misguided. Maximilla herself
makes it clear that she is not attracted to the man,
but to the spiritual doctrine he preaches. It is this,
not Andrew the person, that blocks her carnal relationship
to her husband. The apostle is not a rival to Aegeates;
rather, the narrative tension is generated by her
individual commitment to sexual continence, which
of itself acts as a solvent on traditional conceptions
of marriage.
Recently, however,
Kate Cooper has argued that the tension between celibacy
and marriage is something of a smokescreen for the
real conflict within the narrative, which is precisely
that between an official of high status--in this case,
the proconsul of Achaea--and the apostle's challenge
to his authority. If sexuality is denigrated in the
Acts, it is "in the service of a challenge to
the establishment." 5 For the contemporary audience,
"the parable of the wandering ascetic and the
settled householder" served as "an exploration
not of asceticism but of Christianity's claim to moral
superiority, with the figure of the ascetic teacher
representing a disinterested challenge to the status
quo" (58). As Cooper [End Page 17] sums up her
elegant and subtle argument: "The challenge by
the apostle to the householder is the urgent message
of these narratives, and it is essentially a conflict
between men" (55). 6
Whether the struggle
between Andrew and Aegeates is over authority as such,
with sexual abstinence serving as a proxy issue, or
whether Maximilla's choice of an ascetic life is itself
centrally thematic in the Acts, and serves as propaganda
for an early manifestation of Christian encratism,
the apostle's intervention results in a disruption
of marriage as a mortal relation based on mutual desire.
Maximilla's philia, pothos, and storge are deflected
away from her husband, to whom they should by rights
be directed, and toward an abstract ideal of remaining
chaste (sophron) or, more accurately, pure (katharos)
and "beyond the flesh" (38; cf. 14). Maximilla's
wish to associate with Andrew is essentially a metonymy
for her dedication to the way of life to which he
invites her. Conversion means giving up purely human
ties in favor of a transcendent object of desire.
But if this is the
apparent message of Maximilla's renunciation of conjugal
communion and the events leading up to the execution
of Andrew, there are other episodes that indicate
a sensitivity and respect on the part of Andrew for
mortal love, and it is to the narrative formula that
encodes this alternative sensibility that I should
like now to turn. The first miracle that Andrew performs
in the version of the passion that has come down to
us is not the healing of Maximilla, which occurs prior
to the action narrated (cf. 1, 26), but rather that
of a boy, perhaps a slave (the ambiguous term pais
rather than doulos is consistently employed, 2-5),
named Alcman, who is possessed by a demon and betrays
symptoms resembling those of epilepsy (2-3). Alcman
is attached to the household of Aristocles (or of
Stratocles, brother of Aegeates, if one adopts Prieur's
emendation). At all events, he is one "whom Stratocles
loved dearly [esterge panu]" (2), and his reaction
to the boy's illness is extreme:
When Stratocles saw
him he said, "If only I had never come here but
perished at sea this would not have happened to me!
Friends. . . I cannot live without him." And
as he said this, he hit himself about the eyes and
became disturbed and unfit to be seen. (2, trans.
MacDonald).
Maximilla comforts Stratocles by telling him of Andrew's
extraordinary curative powers, and at her bidding,
the apostle treats Alcman and [End Page 18] expels
the demon that has inhabited him (5). Alcman subsequently
converts to Christianity (10).
Stratocles is deeply
moved by Andrew's feat in reviving the boy, and the
apostle seizes the opportunity to awaken him to the
true faith, affirming his conviction that he "must
bring out into the open the person [anthropon] now
latent" within him (7). The idea that one must
be born anew to enter the kingdom of Christ has its
roots, of course, in the Gospels (John 3.3-5; cf.,
e.g., Titus 3.5). Andrew, however, develops to the
point of a conceit the quite distinct image of the
new man as an embryo or fetus within the self, waiting
to be born: "Bring to birth the child you are
carrying and do not give yourself over to labor pains
alone. I am no novice at midwifery or divination.
I love [philo] what you are birthing, I am passionate
[ero] for what you are stifling" (7, MacDonald
trans. slightly modified; cf. also 9, where the symbolism
is elaborated still further).
It is possible--I
think likely--that the maieutic metaphor here serves
in part as an exegesis or elaboration of Stratocles'
earlier infatuation with the boy Alcman, substituting
the inner, spiritual child which Stratocles has begun
to develop for the outer and carnal object of his
affection. 7 Taken together, the two passages recall
the doctrine elaborated in Plato's Symposium, according
to which love for a handsome youth is seen as a first
step on the road to a nobler passion for the beautiful
as such. The Symposium suggests, rather enigmatically,
that the spiritual lover somehow causes the beloved
to procreate in the beautiful (206b-207a); one is
reminded also of Socrates' famous comparison, in the
Theaetetus, of his own dialectical technique to the
art of a midwife. Indeed, Jean-Marc Prieur specifically
connects the figure of Andrew with that of Socrates
as a "divine man," citing, among other similarities,
"the extraordinary and voluntary character of
his death," his "ascetic life," his
"supernatural knowledge," and the fact that
"Andrew acts as a master of 'midwifery.'"
8
Even if, however,
the account of Stratocles' intense love for Alcman
has some such ulterior or symbolic function (the verb
employed, it [End Page 19] should be noted, is stergein,
commonly used for familial feeling, rather than eran),
it remains the case that the immediate reason for
Andrew's intercession is to assuage the acute grief
that Stratocles experiences at the threat to the boy's
life. The effect of Andrew's action in this case,
at least, is to salvage a powerfully sentimental relationship,
not to destroy it.
The healing of Alcman
is parallel to Andrew's earlier act of saving the
life of Maximilla. Both Alcman and Maximilla adopt
the Christian faith after they are cured. Stratocles'
anguish in behalf of Alcman is no more fervent than
Aegeates' had been at the prospect of his wife's demise,
for which Andrew had gently comforted the proconsul
(Gregory 30). The difference between the two cases,
of course, is that while Stratocles too converts,
and henceforward will be a brother in Christ of Alcman,
Aegeates resists the apostle's message, and persists
in his desire for a sexual relationship with his wife.
In consequence he both loses his wife's devotion and
embarks upon the fatal persecution of Andrew.
The story of Stratocles
and Alcman demonstrates, however, that this was not
a necessary conclusion to the chain of events inaugurated
by Andrew's responsiveness to Aegeates' sorrow and
his cure of Maximilla. The apostle does not destroy
human bonds of affection, except insofar as they necessarily
involve sex. Nor is it simply that he works to replace
ordinary love with a more elevated or spiritual tie
among Christian brethren. Rather, the apostle is moved
precisely by the intense mortal affection or storge
that a man may feel for a boy or a husband for a wife.
In illustrating Andrew's concern for such specifically
human attachments, the two healing episodes counter
the impression of indifference or even hostility to
worldly love which the violent sundering of the relationship
between Aegeates and Maximilla might produce.
Stories of healing
testify to the spiritual power of the apostle, often
contrasting the effectiveness of the true faith with
the false claims made by pagan magicians. 9 They may
also serve as parables of rebirth, and thus image
forth the Christian promise of resurrection. The first
episode in the summary of the Acts of Andrew recorded
by Gregory of Tours tells, for example, how the apostle
restored sight to a blind man by casting out a demon
from him (2); its effect is merely to impress the
reader with Andrew's authority over malevolent fiends
(cf. also 6, 13-16, 24). [End Page 20] But the episode
immediately following more closely resembles that
of Stratocles and Alcman, and deserves citation in
extenso:
Demetrius, the leader
of the community of Amasians, had an Egyptian boy
[puer] whom he cherished with an unparalleled love
[quem amore unico diligebat]. A fever overtook the
boy, and he expired. Later, when Demetrius heard of
the signs the blessed apostle was performing, he came
to him, fell at his feet with tears, and said, "I
am sure that nothing is difficult for you, O servant
of God. Behold my boy, whom I love to an extraordinary
degree [quem unice diligebam], is dead. I ask that
you come to my house and restore him to me.
When the blessed apostle heard this, he was moved
by his tears [condolens lacrimis eius] and went to
the house where the boy lay. (3, trans. MacDonald)
The apostle sympathizes deeply with the human sense
of loss (cf. condolensque lacrimis eorum, 7, where
Andrew is moved to raise from the dead the son of
an old man and woman; also tunc sanctus apostolus
misericordia motus, 29, of Antiphanes' lament over
his stricken wife). Andrew then restores the lad to
health and returns him to his master, whereupon all
the bystanders accept baptism.
There is, no doubt,
a good narratological reason for putting an episode
such as this near the beginning of the Acts (assuming
that Gregory's epitome is a reliable witness to the
order of the original text). It is not yet the moment
to put the apostle in the kind of danger that his
dedication to sexual continence arouses when he intervenes
in the lives of married couples. The story exhibits
Andrew's sensitivity to human love and the beneficent
effect of his mediation.
The next event recounted
by Gregory exposes a mother's incestuous passion for
her son, Sostratus (4). Like Phaedra in Euripides'
Hippolytus, and the step-mother in a similar tale
related in Apuleius' Metamorphoses (Book 10), the
mother, when spurned, turns the charge against Sostratus,
and accuses Andrew as well of fomenting the boy's
illicit desire. Sostratus refuses to denounce his
mother, and the proconsul of the region condemns him
to death, but Andrew produces an earthquake and storm,
and the mother is struck by lightning. This display
of meteorological pyrotechnics induces the proconsul
and his household to accept baptism.
The story of Sostratus
and his mother offers a context in which the apostle
can oppose a sexual liaison that is universally regarded
as illegitimate. It thus provides a safe expression
for the aversion he harbors in respect to sexuality
in general, which, when it interferes with normal
conjugal relations, can provoke the kind of intense
hostility that will lead to Andrew's martyrdom. While
it may be true that Gregory on the whole [End Page
21] plays down the element of celibacy in his summary
of the Acts of Andrew, 10 sexual continence is for
Andrew in principle an extension of the prohibition
against prostitution (cf. the story of Gratinus, 5),
adultery, and incest (cf. Andrew's prohibition of
a marriage between cousins, 11). In two paradigmatic
tales near the beginning of the narrative, the Acts
of Andrew thus represents both Andrew's sensitivity
to human affections, in the case of Demetrius, and
his hostility to carnal association in a way that
does not yet pit the apostle against the values and
powers of the society at large.
Gregory also recounts
episodes in which families are divided by the conversion
of one member, quite apart from the issue of sexual
abstinence, as in the case the youth Exuos, whose
parents condemn him for his choice right up to the
moment of their death (12). Similarly, the civic authorities
may seek to put an end to Andrew's preaching out of
a general antagonism to the new religion, independently
of the question of celibacy: compare the tortures
inflicted on the apostle by Virinus, the wicked proconsul
of Thessalonica (18), although MacDonald (Acts of
Andrew, 266-67) and others (cit. ibid., n. 1) suppose
that Gregory has altered his source to suppress the
encratite message, and that in fact "Varianus's
irritation with Andrew in the AA had less to do with
protecting pagan religion, as in GE, than with protecting
his bed."
According to Gregory,
when Andrew arrives for the first time in Patras (21),
he is opposed by the proconsul Lesbius; Lesbius is
stricken by an angel, and subsequently restored to
health by the apostle, at which point he adopts the
true faith (22; perhaps Lesbius was succeeded by Aegeates
as proconsul after his conversion: so MacDonald, Acts
of Andrew, 53). After this, the proconsul's wife is
killed by a serpent because of her jealous attack
on an innocent woman who had formerly been Lesbius'
mistress: "Ablaze with bitterness, she said,
'So that is why my husband deserted me and for the
last six months has not made love with me: he prefers
his maidservant!'" (23). The wife's complaint
suggests that Lesbius' conversion may have entailed
a vow of continence, which in turn accounted for the
alienation of his wife. 11
The diversity of episodes
in the Acts of Andrew suggests that a complex narrative
pattern informs the text. The apostle not only divides
partners in love by his radical insistence on celibacy,
he also unites them by resuscitating the dead or dying
in behalf of dear ones, having been [End Page 22]
moved by sympathy with their passionate grief. Scenes
of this type culminate in the service Andrew performs
for Stratocles in ridding his beloved Alcman of the
demon that possesses him. In such cases, the consequences
of the apostle's intervention may be uncomplicatedly
benign: a youth is restored to an admirer, a child
to a parent, a wife to a husband. The finale of the
Acts of Andrew as we have it, beginning with the healing
of Alcman and concluding with Maximilla's conversion
and Andrew's martyrdom, seems to stage a transition
from the motif of the reunion of loved ones to that
of violent separation; perhaps it recapitulates as
well a narrative movement that operated over the text
of the Acts as a whole.
*
The Acts of John, in the form in which it has come
down to us, is missing the original beginning (Bonnet
filled the gap with what are generally agreed to be
later materials). 12 The surviving portion opens (ch.
18 in Bonnet's numeration) with John's approach to
Ephesus: "When we came near the city Lycomedes,
the commander-in-chief of the Ephesians, a wealthy
man, met us, fell down before John and asked him for
help, with these words: 'Your name is John; the God
whom you preach has sent you to help my wife, who
has been paralysed for seven days and lies past recovery.'"
13 Lycomedes' grief for his wife Cleopatra is reminiscent,
in its intensity, of Stratocles' for the youth Alcman:
See, Lord, the lost
beauty, see the youth, see the much talked of bloom
of my unhappy wife. . . . What good was it to me,
that I was called godly to this day. . . ? The sun
in his circuit shall not see me, if you are no more
with me. Cleopatra, I will die before you (20).
John admonishes Lycomedes to give up his laments,
saying: "Know that your partner for life [sumbion]
will be restored to you" (21). But when John
urges him to join him in praying to God, Lycomedes
faints dead away. John is understandably alarmed,
and prays for the recovery of both the husband and
the wife. He then proceeds to rouse first Cleopatra,
who, when she saw Lycomedes dead because of her, lost
her voice, "gnashed her teeth, bit her tongue,
closed her eyes, and began to [End Page 23] weep"
(24). But John pities Cleopatra, and perceiving her
heroic restraint [me maneisan mede ekstasan], advises
that she call to her husband, who at her summons returns
to life.
This episode, which
reads like a comic version of the fatal misapprehensions
of Pyramus and Thisbe as related by Ovid, is carefully
constructed to exhibit the reciprocal love that Lycomedes
and Cleopatra bear for one another. In contrast with
the connubial dissension brought on by Andrew in the
case of Aegeates and Maximilla and, if modern reconstructions
are to be trusted, of Virinus and Lesbius as well,
John's intervention works here to reunite a couple
threatened by death. In this respect, it would seem
congruent with the narrative paradigm of the Greek
novels, which is based on the reunion of husband and
wife (or fiances). 14 Certainly, the apostle here
does not act as a rival for the devotion of either
spouse. The entire episode, we may note, is brought
to a conclusion with the healing of a group of sixty
old women in a public theater (36); John thus appears
to reaffirm, rather than subvert, the values of the
civic community.
At this point, the
order of the received text is disturbed: the next
sequence in the original presumably narrated the conversion
of Drusiana, the wife of Andronicus, and its consequences
(cf. 87, 105). As it may plausibly be reconstructed,
this account involved Drusiana's election of sexual
abstinence, for Drusiana later apostrophizes Jesus:
"you protected me when my former husband [sumbiou],
Andronicus, did violence to me, and gave me your servant
[doulon] Andronicus as a brother" (82.8-9; cf.
63.11-13). Junod and Kaestli thus conclude:
As opposed to the
parallel narratives in the Acts of Andrew and the
Acts of Thomas, the violent reaction of the abandoned
husband did not end up with the martyrdom of the apostle.
Andronicus, instead of bringing his murderous intentions
to fruition, converted in turn to the new faith and
agreed to see in Drusiana nothing more than a sister.
15
If this is right, once again the Acts of John has
emphasized the unity of the married couple upon their
conversion.
In the surviving text,
John next brings about the destruction of the [End
Page 24] great temple of Artemis at Ephesus, its priest
dying under the collapse (42); however, when a relative
mourns his deceased kinsman, John grants him the power
to revive him (47). After this, John becomes involved
in a grim event in which a young man, in love with
the wife of a fellow worker, slays his own father
for reprimanding him. John resurrects the father (52),
upon which the boy, in his horror at his deed, castrates
himself; John reproaches the lad for destroying what
is not in itself hurtful. Both these episodes may
be taken as indicating John's responsiveness to the
importance of familial ties.
After another interruption,
the text resumes with a second voyage to Ephesus;
with John are Drusiana and Andronicus, Lycomedes,
and various other devoted followers (59). (Along the
way, John persuades bedbugs kindly to wait outside
his hotel room for the night.) Once in Ephesus, a
prominent young Ephesian named Callimachus becomes
enamored of Drusiana, and attempts to seduce her (63).
When she learns of his base desire, Drusiana wills
her own death, to the great grief of Andronicus, with
whom she had lived chastely since their conversion.
Callimachus goes so far as to attempt to molest the
corpse, but he is prevented from doing so by a magical
serpent. John revives the lad, who at last repents
of his evil passion, and then rouses Drusiana; she
in turn resurrects the slave Fortunatus, who had assisted
Callimachus in his morbid plan, though the slave remains
unrepentant (83).
It would thus appear
that Drusiana has been twice at risk of suffering
sexual violence in Ephesus: the adulterous designs
of the wanton Calli-machus are a reprise of the earlier,
potentially tragic conflict between Drusiana and her
husband Andronicus that resulted from her original
vow of chastity. Both trials are resolved by the conversion
of the lustful aggressor, unlike the two episodes
at Patras recounted in the Acts of Andrew, which end
without a reconciliation. Taken together, the doublets
in the Acts of John might be understood as suggesting
the equivalence of conjugal sex and adultery. Equally,
one may conclude that the apostle succeeds in bringing
harmony not only to married couples potentially divided
by the continence of one partner but even to a would-be
adulterer like Callimachus and the chaste object of
his desire. More importantly, the second episode fuses
the two narrative patterns that we have elicited in
the analysis of the Acts of Andrew: Andronicus' pious
remorse over his wife's death, which is rewarded by
her resurrection, stands in contrast with the purely
physical passion of Callimachus that extends even
to the point of necrophilia. Having eliminated in
Andronicus the motive of lust, John is shown in fact
to have strengthened the bond between the spouses
in the face of a potential rival. [End Page 25]
John dies peacefully.
For this reason, a story involving unresolved strife
between a married couple, leading to the persecution
and martyrdom of the apostle, is out of place at the
conclusion. 16 Instead, the Acts of John offers a
tale that emphasizes the power of the apostle to cure
passion and resurrect the dead. But the difference
between the Acts of John and the Acts of Andrew is
not, perhaps, reducible simply to the extrinsic circumstance
that John escaped crucifixion. Throughout the narrative
of John's acts, the emphasis seems to have fallen
on John's contribution to the integration of the family,
albeit in the form of a chaste matrimony, rather than
on the separation brought about by the conversion
of one of the partners to Christianity. By aligning
the apostle more with the narrative motif of the resurrection
and reunion of loved ones than with the alternative
paradigm of estrangement and violence, the Acts of
John differs from the vigorous confrontation between
the apostle and the civic authorities that is staged
in the Acts of Andrew. It is by selection among a
range of commonly available narrative strategies that
the two texts achieve their specific tone and texture.
It may be worth noting
that in the Latin Virtutes Iohannis (printed by Elliott
following the Greek Acts of John), a woman petitions
the apostle to raise her son, who had recently been
married, just as he had done for Drusiana: "there
was such a great weeping that the apostle himself
could hardly refrain from crying and tears" (VII),
and he duly accomplishes the miracle.
In abstracting from
a rich text only the bare framework of those segments
that are most novelistic in character, and suppressing
the lengthy passages devoted to homily and exhortation,
I am conscious of distorting its character in the
way a cross section of cell tissue misrepresents the
complexity of the living organism. What stands out
as a result of this dissection, however, is John's
responsiveness to the pain of mortal loss, whether
between spouses, parents and children, or even more
distant kin like the relative who mourns the death
of a priest of Artemis. John's primary interest is
in the conversion of the souls he saves, but his sympathy
answers to the anguish of human beings who have lost
someone dear. Despite hints of the potentially disruptive
effects of conversion upon the family, the Acts of
John eschews violent separations. I should not at
this stage wish to claim, however, that the divergent
narrative strategies of the Acts of John and the Acts
of Andrew reflect an underlying distinction in doctrine.
[End Page 26]
In the Acts of Peter,
the central narrative, which coincides with Peter's
arrival at Rome, is organized around the return to
the true faith of Marcellus, who had been seduced
away from Christianity by the magical tricks of the
impostor Simon. With Peter back in action, a miracle
involving a speaking dog promptly recaptures Marcellus'
loyalty (9-10). The narrative choice is thus between
devotion to the false prophet, whom Marcellus describes
as a young god, and to Christ, whose power is manifest
in the various marvels that Peter performs, such as
bringing dead fish to life (13) and endowing a seven-month-old
baby with voice and a gift for preaching (15). The
religious options, in turn, are mapped onto a second
opposition between selfishness and true charity. Simon
seeks to block Marcellus' beneficence in order, it
is implied, to enrich himself at Marcellus' expense,
whereas Peter insists on the altruistic distribution
of wealth among the poor. 17
Inserted into the
frame story involving Marcellus is Peter's narration
of his previous encounter with Simon in Jerusalem,
where he exposed Simon for having robbed the gold
of the wealthy matron Eubula (17). When, thanks to
Peter's visions, her wealth is recovered, Eubula acknowledges
the true faith and disburses her goods among the poor.
The tale is obviously parallel to that of Marcellus,
and, taken together, the pair constitute a narrative
formula distinct from those that we have so far examined.
Peter goes on to cure
the blindness of a group of old women (20-21). Finally,
in a public contest with Simon at Rome, Peter revivifies
a man whom Simon had ostensibly put to death, and
when two mothers appeal to him to raise their sons
(one of them a senator), Peter obliges (25-28). Here,
then, is the story pattern that we have identified
in the Acts of John and of Andrew: the apostle responds
to familial grief and miraculously reunites loved
ones.
Among the witnesses
to the senator's revival is Agrippa, the prefect of
Rome. But when Peter alienates from Agrippa his four
concubines (33[4]), whom he converts to a life of
chastity, the stage is set for a martyrdom analogous
to that of Andrew. Compounding Peter's offense is
the conversion of Xanthippe, whose husband Albinus,
a close friend of the emperor Nero, incites Agrippa
to take action against the apostle [End Page 27] (34[5]),
leading to his crucifixion. As in the Acts of Andrew,
where Alcman is restored to Stratocles, the penultimate
miracle performed by the apostle Peter is in the service
of mortal love, in this case the affection of mothers
for their sons. Here, however, the essentially comic
device of resuscitation and the renewal of the household
is less closely integrated into the narrative of the
apostle's death, which is once again brought on by
the disruption of a marriage resulting from the wife's
choice of sexual abstinence.
The well-known story
of Paul and Thecla again focuses on the consequences
for marriage of a woman's conversion and commitment
to chastity, as Thecla endures and survives a series
of threats because of her refusal to wed Thamyris,
to whom she was betrothed. As Schneemelcher remarks:
"The consequences correspond to the pattern which
occurs also in other apocryphal Acts: the husband
(here it is the fiance), who through the woman's continence
has been deprived of her, stirs up the people or the
authorities against the apostle." 18 In the end,
Thamyris has the decency simply to die (43), thereby
resolving the tension in the narrative, though Thecla,
like Drusiana, first has to endure another set of
torments because of the unwanted attentions of a Syrian
named Alexander.
At Myra, Paul, after
healing a man named Hermocrates, apparently raises
his son Dion, for whom Hermocrates and his wife, Nympha,
have been weeping disconsolately. 19 Schneemelcher
notes (223) that
the sexual continence
which in other parts of the APl [= Acts of Paul] plays
so prominent a role is lacking in the extant fragments
of this episode. It might in some way have been of
importance in the lost sections. We may however also
assume that the author wished in this case to display
by means of an example the other side of Paul's preaching,
the resurrection. But even this is by no means clearly
said.
I would call attention to the fact that the fragments
suggest that Paul revives Dion with a view to comforting
his parents, and that Paul also reconciles with them
their other son, Hermippus, who had opposed his father's
cure out of a desire to inherit his property. Whatever
the provenance of the episode, it seems shaped to
the pattern according to [End Page 28] which miracle
working and the symbolism of resurrection are deployed
at least partly in the service of restoring family
ties.
In Ephesus, Paul is
obliged to fight wild beasts in the amphitheater because
of the jealousy that the governor Hieronymus experiences
after his wife, Artemilla (along with the freedwoman
Eubula, wife of Diophantes), dedicates herself to
the apostle's teachings. Paul eludes the danger by
means of a timely hail storm. The story seems to function,
however, as a prelude to Paul's death in Rome at the
order of the emperor Nero, thus reiterating the encratite
theme near the moment of the apostle's martyrdom.
The Acts of Thomas
is the most completely preserved of the five apocryphal
Acts. Perhaps for this reason it also betrays the
most coherent narrative structure, especially in the
latter portion. It is remark-able, however, that unlike
the other Acts, the Acts of Thomas scarcely adumbrates
the narrative topos of reuniting dear ones by a miraculous
resuscitation.
As his first deed,
Thomas persuades the daughter of the king of Andrapolis
and her husband, on their wedding night, to adopt
a life of abstinence. When he learns of their choice,
the king is enraged, but Thomas has already departed
for India and thus escapes unharmed. Because of the
mutual conversion of the couple, they are not sundered,
but rather united in their common love of Christ.
The king's wrath, in turn, is aroused not by deprivation
of sex, but rather by his daughter's choice of a new
faith (and, presumably, her decision not to bear children,
that is, heirs). Here is a clear case of competition
between the apostle and the secular authority, though
the issue of chastity is displaced one generation
downward (cf. the wrath of Thecla's mother).
In the second episode,
Thomas takes money given him by the Gandophur, the
king of India, for the purpose of building a palace
and instead distributes it among the poor: the acts
of charity are imagined as contributing to the construction
of a palace in heaven. The theme is analogous to the
contrast in the Acts of Peter between Christian alms-giving
and pagan luxury. When he learns of Thomas' activities,
the king determines to punish him. However, the king's
brother, Gad, who had goaded the king to take vengeance
against Thomas, dies and sees the palace prepared
for Gandophur in heaven; restored to life by angels,
he recounts the vision, and the two royal brothers
decide to follow Thomas and practice charity. The
death and return of Gad thus differs from the [End
Page 29] motif of a dear one brought back to life
by an apostle, and serves chiefly to persuade the
king of the truth of Thomas' claims about the heavenly
palace.
In the third praxis,
Thomas encounters the dead body of a beautiful (eumorphos,
30) youth who has been slain by a serpent. Thomas
conjures the serpent into sucking its venom from the
boy's body, thereby destroying itself and reanimating
the youth, who then follows the way of Thomas. Despite
the boy's beauty, however, there is no suggestion
of an amatory motif in the tale, which focuses entirely
on the struggle between Thomas as representative of
Christ and the serpent as the spirit of evil. 20 Contrast
the rescue of Stratocles' beloved Alcman in the Acts
of Andrew.
Thomas of the Acts
is the identical twin of Jesus, and at times it seems
as if they were conceived of as the mortal and divine
aspects of a single self. The drama, accordingly,
appears to take place on two planes, the earthly and
the cosmic: the handsome youth is saved after a contest
between Thomas, with assistance from Jesus himself,
and an avatar of the primeval serpent; the Indian
king's choice is between a palace in this world and
a palace in heaven; the young couple at Andrapolis
choose marriage to Christ rather than carnal marriage
to one another. The focus is not on love and separation
as such but rather on the Manichean duel between the
supernal and infernal realms.
In the fourth of Thomas'
acts, a juvenile donkey speaks in praise of Jesus
(this episode is plainly a companion piece to that
of the serpent). In the fifth, Thomas exorcizes a
demon that has sexually tormented a woman; no loss
of mortal affection results from its departure, though
the demon professes (46) to have been happy with its
host and paramour. The sixth act recounts how a young
man who has adopted a life of Christian chastity slays
the woman he loves because she insists on having sex
with him; as a result, his hands wither. Thomas restores
his hands and brings the woman back to life, upon
which she recounts a vision of the torments of hell.
The resurrection is not a consequence of the youth's
love for the woman, but a sign of Thomas' power; the
woman renounces adultery and worships Christ, but
there is no narrative interest in the reunited couple.
From the seventh act
onward, the narrative comprises one interlocking set
of tales involving exorcisms and a succession of conversions
to [End Page 30] chastity and Christ; these lead to
separations, but ordinary loves are not mourned or
respected, and in no scene does Thomas resurrect anyone
out of sympathy with human attachment. Thus, in acts
seven and eight, demons are driven from the wife and
daughter of the king's captain, Siphor (whom the king
will later send to arrest Thomas), with the assistance
of a speaking ass who serves as messenger; to be sure,
the deed is performed for Siphor's sake, but the emphasis
is exclusively on Siphor's subsequent conversion rather
than human love.
In the ninth act,
Mygdonia, the wife of Charisius who is the relative
and closest friend of the king Misdaeus, comes and
adores Thomas, gives away her jewels, and commits
herself to a life of chastity. Charisius is furious
at this rejection, and petitions the king to curb
Thomas. Charisius' longing for his wife is deep and
sincere (e.g., 116, where he addresses her as potheinotate),
but she chooses a higher love, saying: "the man
I love [hon philo] is heavenly" (117, my trans.).
In the tenth act, Mygdonia is baptized. Charisius
beseeches Thomas to restore his wife to him (128),
and charges him with doing him unprovoked harm. Thomas
answers: "Believe me, my son, if men loved [estergon]
God as much as one another they would receive from
him everything that they ask, without being forced
by anyone" (128 fin., trans. Elliott). The love
of God is here contrasted with mortal love, and though
the tacit implication is that Charisius may enjoy
a holy relationship with his wife if he converts to
Christianity, it is clear that mortal love counts
for relatively little in Thomas' view. 21 In the eleventh
act, King Misdaeus' wife Tertia also cleaves to Thomas
and chooses chastity, to the king's horror (138);
the king's son, Vazan, is converted in the twelfth
act, and baptized, along with his own wife, his mother
Tertia, and Siphor's wife and daughter, in the thirteenth.
The story ends, like the Acts of Andrew and Peter,
with Thomas' willing martyrdom at the orders of the
desolate ruler, followed lastly by Misdaeus' own conversion.
Throughout the finale, the themes of abstinence and
the domestic estrangement that ensues are prominent.
It is time now to
inquire what the above typology of plot elements,
and more particularly the disjunction between separations
and reunions, may [End Page 31] mean for the characterization
of the apocryphal Acts as a form. The question of
the genre of the Acts continues to excite controversy.
Thus, Wilhelm Schneemelcher, in his introduction to
the translations of the "Second and Third Century
Acts of Apostles," comments: "There is still
no exact and generally recognized definition of the
kind of text to which the apocryphal Acts belong."
22 While acknowledging that the Acts have certain
themes in common with ancient Greek romantic fiction,
above all in respect to travel and erotic motifs,
23 Schneemelcher concludes: "One cannot . . .
simply derive the AGG [= Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles]
from the hellenistic novel" (ibid.).
Schneemelcher goes
on to question whether there is sufficient internal
resemblance among the five major apocryphal Acts to
warrant subsuming them under a common type at all:
"the fact that the AGG differ markedly from one
another tells against this" (ibid.). When he
turns, however, within the space of a few pages, to
criticizing what he identifies as an American tendency
to treat the Acts as an expression of women's "resistance
to the patriarchal order in marriage, the family,
in society and in the state" (81), 24 Schneemelcher
retreats from nominalism and allows, somewhat contradictorily,
that the Acts both cohere as a group and betray a
particular kinship with the novel: "The AGG took
on their special stamp through the position of the
apostles. They (and not the liberated women) stand
in the centre of the works, and it was because of
them that the AGG were written. They are intended
to be the bearers of the message, which is proclaimed
in a form that comes close to the novel. So here the
aims of entertainment, instruction and religious propaganda
are combined into a unique Gattung" (82-83).
[End Page 32]
Now, it seems indubitable
to me that the Acts constitute a well-defined corpus,
marked by the central role of a wonder-working apostle
who travels widely with the purpose of attracting
adherents to a form of Christianity that puts a premium,
among other things, on sexual continence. The encratite
intention finds narrative expression in the tension
that is generated between spouses when one of them
elects abstinence. 25 The plot of the Greek erotic
novels is based, on the contrary, on the efforts of
a couple to be united or reunited in a marriage marked
by mutual sexual desire. To this extent, the two forms
are, as Kate Cooper says, diametrically opposed. 26
Nevertheless, the Acts--or at least some of them--do
accommodate, as we have seen, a set of episodes in
which the apostle, whether by healing or resurrection,
restores the relationship between a married couple
or other dear ones--a motif that has an analogue in
the Scheintod or apparent death that the novelistic
protagonists sometimes undergo. 27
Unlike the hero and
heroine of the novels, the apostle bears no special
affection for any one individual: his most complete
devotion is reserved for Christ or God. Thanks partly
to this focus on a single protagonist, Jean-Marc Prieur
affirms categorically that the author of the Acts
of Andrew "has chosen the literary Gattung of
a biographical narrative." 28 As many scholars
have noted, however, the Acts depart from the usual
formula for biography in that they do not record the
birth or childhood of the apostles, and concentrate
exclusively on their mature efforts to spread the
faith. 29 More importantly, the miracles and spiritual
transcendence of the apostles suggest not so much
biography in general as the narratives about thaumaturgic
sages like Apollonius of Tyana. [End Page 33]
Closer to the Acts
than the novels in this regard is the so-called Alexander
Romance, which exhibits the extraordinary abilities
of Alexander not only, or even chiefly, in his military
prowess, but rather in his cunning, in accord with
the paradigm of the clever sage or eiron. A second
strand of the romance focuses on the king's aspiration
to more than mortal stature. The hero of the Alexander
Romance thus combines a sense of mission with a magical
acumen. One understands how, in mediaeval literature,
the figure of Alexander could be assimilated to the
image of the Christian or Moslem saint. Analogous
to the Alexander Romance are the so-called lives of
Aesop and Homer, which celebrate a sharp-witted hero
of humble station. In this same class, moreover, of
quasi-biographical narratives, in which a canny protagonist
inspired by a special confidence repeatedly triumphs
over adversaries, are the four canonical Gospels themselves.
30
All such wise-man
tales have in common an episodic structure, in which
the several scenes are concatenated like beads on
a string until they culminate in the extraordinary
death of the hero. As a result, they are easily subject
to expansion, reduction, and variation of incident,
and they tend accordingly, like the Alexander Romance
and the Gospels, to survive in multiple redactions.
For this reason, Christine Thomas and I independently
came up with the label "open text" for narratives
of this kind. 31 Although the armature of these biographical
chronicles may be fairly uniform, their hospitality
to inserted episodes allows the several rescensions
to have a character of their own, depending on the
choice and arrangement of the subordinate tales. Thus,
in evaluating the thematic emphases of works like
the apocryphal Acts, it is particularly important
to attend to the inset pieces, and not just the overall
resemblance that the frame stories bear to one another.
[End Page 34]
At the larger level,
the various Acts are as alike as the surviving Greek
erotic novels, in each of which the hero and heroine
fall in love, suffer tests of their fidelity, and
are reunited in the end. All five of the so-called
ideal novels honor reciprocal eros as the basis of
marriage. It is instructive to contrast with this
pattern the anonymous Latin romance, The History of
Apollonius King of Tyre, which, though it is also
based on the paradigm of separation and reunion, focuses
primarily on the relationship between a father and
daughter rather than on young lovers, and is deeply
suspicious of the power of erotic passion. Thus, even
though the formal similarities between Apollonius
and the Greek novels are close enough for some scholars
to have posited a Greek original for the Latin romance,
thematically they are radically different and indeed
opposed. 32
In the apocryphal
Acts, thematic concerns such as views of human love
are likely to manifest themselves in the structure
and order of the subordinate tales. It is in the nature
of open texts, of course, that they accrete materials
from various sources, and a number of episodes, as
scholars have shown, probably circulated independently
or in quite distinct contexts before being integrated
into the Acts as we have them. 33 Nevertheless, each
of the different sequences seems to have its own character,
either because the Acts were differentially receptive
to particular kinds of anecdotes (e.g., the apparent
immunity of the Acts of Thomas to the narrative paradigm
we have elicited in this study) or because they put
their individual stamp on the bits that accrued to
them (e.g., the transcendental interpretation of pederastic
affection in the Acts of Andrew).
The coexistence of
distinct, even contradictory narrative motifs imparts
to the corpus of the Acts a tension that enables complex
identifications on the part of the audience. On the
one hand, election of sexual abstinence on the part
of married men and women threatens to dissolve the
family as the site of social reproduction and, further,
to eliminate the fundamental axis of gender difference
in antiquity, that is, the active sexual function
of the male and the passive role of the female. As
David Halperin writes: "sexual penetration was
thematized as domination: the relation between the
insertive and the receptive sexual partner was taken
[End Page 35] to be the same kind of relation as that
obtaining between social superior and social inferior."
34 Refusal of sexuality in the Christian context thus
has the consequence of collapsing the hierarchical
structure of gender roles into the undifferentiated
communion of brethren; hence too the androgynous imagery
of male parturition (cf. Andrew's role as midwife
to Stratocles) and female virility. Analogously, conversion
and sexual continence annul the polarization of homoerotic
subject positions as lover (erastes) and beloved (eromenos
or pais, i.e., "boy"), recasting the partners
as brothers and equals. On the other hand, the restoration
of familial ties, thanks to the sympathetic intervention
of the apostle in his capacity as supernatural healer
(the alternative paradigm we have identified), affirms
the traditional structure of the household and the
division of functions between husbands and wives,
parents and children, masters and slaves.
The double or ambiguous
perspective of the Acts permits them a wide appeal,
inasmuch as the image of radically celibate and independent
women, youths and slaves is balanced or at least varied
by the depiction of familial affection and integration.
In calling attention to the role within the Acts of
a secondary narrative paradigm based on the apostle's
respect for mortal ties, I hope to have contributed
something to the appreciation of their richness in
respect both to their formal structure and to their
thematic subtlety in encoding a complex attitude toward
the place of love in Christianity.
David Konstan
is Professor of Classics at Brown University.
Notes
1. This paper is a revised version of a lecture presented
to the Philadelphia Seminar on the Origins of Christianity,
held at Princeton University on 20 March 1997. I am
grateful to the participants in the seminar for their
stimulating comments and suggestions, as well as to
the anonymous referees of this journal for their helpful
remarks.
2. See David Konstan,
Sexual Symmetry: Love in the Ancient Novel and Related
Genres (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994).
3. Judith Perkins,
The Suffering Self: Pain and Narrative Representation
in the Early Christian Era (London: Routledge, 1995),
26.
4. Para. 23, trans.
Dennis Ronald MacDonald, The Acts of Andrew and the
Acts of Andrew and Matthias in the City of the Cannibals,
SBL Texts and Translations, vol. 33 (Atlanta: Scholars
Press, 1990).
5. Kate Cooper, The
Virgin and the Bride: Idealized Womanhood in Late
Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996),
55.
6. In reference to
Maximilla's "rejection of human love," Perkins,
Suffering Self, 28, observes: "Through the trope
of the marriage union, the Acts illustrated a Christian
rejection of contemporary social structure and the
outrage this engendered."
7. Margaret Aymer
points out to me that Stratocles' metaphorical pregnancy
stands in contrast to the childlessness of Aegeates
at the end of the Acts; it also contributes to a blurring
of the opposition between male and female identities
among Christians.
8. Jean-Marc Prieur,
in Edgar Hennecke, ed., The New Testament Apocrypha,
rev. by Wilhelm Schneemelcher, trans. R. Mc. L. Wilson,
vol. 2, Writings Relating to the Apostles, Apocalypses
and Related Subjects (1989; Louisville: Westminster/John
Knox Press, 1992), 11.
9. On the function
of healing in the Acts, with particular reference
to the Acts of Peter, see Perkins, Suffering Self,
124-41, who argues that the apostles' cures "establish
the superior healing prowess of the Christian community,"
and that the Acts of Peter is designed to "demonstrate
the Christian community's powerful concern with sickness,
health, and human suffering" (125, 129).
10. MacDonald, Acts
of Andrew, 181.
11. So MacDonald,
Acts of Andrew, 283 n. 70, following Jean-Marc Prieur,
ed., Acta Andreae, 2 vols., CCSA 5-6 (Turnhout: Brepols,
1989), 49.
12. Maximilianus Bonnet
and Ricardus Adelbertus Lipsius, edd., Acta apostolorum
apocrypha, 2 vols. (vol. 2 in 2 parts), (1888-1903;
Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1959).
13. Para. 19, trans.
J. K. Elliot, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1993).
14. See Perkins, Suffering
Self, 41-76.
15. "A la difference
des recits paralleles des Actes d'Andre et des Actes
de Thomas, la reaction violente de mari delaisse ne
debouchait pas sur le martyre de l'apotre. Andronicus,
au lieu de mener a leur terme ses projets meurtriers,
adherait a son tour a la foi nouvelle et acceptait
de ne plus voir en Drusiane qu'une soeur"; Eric
Junod and Jean-Daniel Kaestli, ed., Acta Iohannis,
2 vols., CCSA 1-2 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1983), 90.
16. Cf. Junod and
Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, 564-66.
17. On the role of
wealth and patronage in the society represented within
the Acts of Peter, see Judith Perkins, "The Social
World of the Acts of Peter," in James Tatum,
ed., The Search for the Ancient Novel (Baltimore:
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), 296-307;
Perkins, Suffering Self, 135-41.
18. In Hennecke/Schneemelcher,
New Testament Apocrypha, 220.
19. For the reconstruction
of this fragmentary section, see Schneemelcher in
Hennecke/Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, 222-23.
20. The word peirasmos
doubtless indicates a "trial" rather than
a "temptation" in the sense that Thomas
himself might be susceptible to the boy's charms,
though both Elliot, The Apocryphal New Testament,
459, and Drijvers in Hennecke/Schneemelcher, New Testament
Apocrypha, 351, translate "temptation."
21. Thomas does seem
to vascillate once and, in apparent fear, bids Mygdonia
do the will of Charisius (130), but his hesitation
is probably best construed as a test of her, which
she passes by stoutly refusing to submit to her husband.
22. In Hennecke/Schneemelcher,
New Testament Apocrypha, 78.
23. Cf. Rosa Soder,
Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und die romanhafte
Literatur der Antike (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1932);
Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire:
The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1991), 90: "an
association of some kind has commonly been assumed
between the apocryphal acts . . . and the ancient
novel." For a survey of the question of the genre
of the Acts, see Jean-Daniel Kaestli, "Les principales
orientations de la recherche sur les Acts apocryphes
des apotres," in Francois Bovon, ed., Les actes
apocryphes des apotres: Christianisme et monde paien
(Geneva: Labor et Fides, 1981), 57-67.
24. Schneemelcher
associates these views, which he characterizes as
"ahistorical travesties," with Stevan L.
Davies, The Revolt of the Widows: The Social World
of the Apocryphal Acts (Carbondale: Southern Illinois
University Press, 1980); Dennis Ronald MacDonald,
The Legend and the Apostle: The Battle for Paul in
Story and Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster Press,
1983); and Virginia Burrus, Chastity as Autonomy:
Women in the Stories of the Apocryphal Acts (Lewiston,
New York: E. Mellen, 1987).
25. For a more precise
account of encratism and its relation to the several
Acts, see Yves Tissot, "Encratisme et actes apocryphes,"
in Bovon, Les actes apocryphes, 109-19.
26. Cf. Perkins, Suffering
Self, 26.
27. Cf. Shadi Bartsch,
Decoding the Ancient Novel: The Reader and the Role
of Description in Heliodorus and Achilles Tatius (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1989); Glen Bowersock,
Fiction as History: Nero to Julian (Berkeley: University
of California Press, 1994).
28. Jean-Marc Prieur,
in Hennecke/Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha,
113. On philosophical lives as a model for the Acts,
cf. Richard Goulet, "Les vies de philosophes
dans l'antiquite tardive et leur porte mysterique,"
in Bovon, Les actes apocryphes, 161-208; Eric Junod,
"Les vies de philosophes et les actes apocryphes
des apotres poursuivent-ils un dessein similaire?"
ibid., 209-19.
29. Cf. Schneemelcher
in Hennecke/Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha,
79, with reference to Phillip Vielhauser, Geschichte
der urchristliche Literatur (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1975),
693ff.
30. Cf. Cameron, Rhetoric
of Empire, 91: "the Christian story is itself
a biography." Richard I. Pervo, Profit with Delight:
The Literary Genre of the Acts of the Apostles (Philadelphia:
Fortress Press, 1987), 122-31, subsumes the apocryphal
Acts, together with Luke-Acts, under the broad category
of historical novel. There is less to be said in favor
of the connection that Dennis Ronald MacDonald, Christianizing
Homer: The Odyssey, Plato, and the Acts of Andrew
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), draws between
the Acts of Andrew and the Homeric Odyssey; cf. also
MacDonald, Acts of Andrew, 53-55.
31. See Christine
Thomas, "Where is the Text in this Text? Fluidity
in the Alexander Romance and the Apocryphal Acts,"
in Bradley Chance, Ronald Hock, and Judith Perkins,
edd., New Perspectives on Ancient Fiction and the
New Testament (Atlanta: Scholars Press, forthcoming);
David Konstan, "Reading the Alexander Romance,"
in Giusto Traina, ed., Il romanzo di Alessandro =
Lexis (forthcoming).
32. See Konstan, Sexual
Symmetry, 100; cf. Gareth Schmeling, "Historia
Apollonii Regis Tyri," in Gareth Schmeling, ed.,
The Novel in the Ancient World (Leiden: E. J. Brill,
1996), 517-51.
33. The literature
is enormous; for an example, see Yves Tissot, "Les
actes de Thomas, exemple de recueil composite,"
in Bovon, Les actes apocryphes, 223-32.
34. David M. Halperin,
"Is There a History of Sexuality?" in Henry
Abelove, Michele Aina Barale, and David M. Halperin,
edd., The Lesbian and Gay Studies Reader (New York:
Routledge, 1993), 418; cf. David M. Halperin, One
Hundred Years of Homosexuality and Other Essays on
Greek Love (New York: Routledge, 1990).