What Are the Apocryphal Acts?

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily match my own. - Dr. Bart D. Ehrman

From the earliest centuries of Christianity, believers told stories about the apostles who carried the message of Jesus across the ancient world. Some of these accounts became part of the New Testament, most notably the Acts of the Apostles, while many others circulated outside the biblical canon. These later writings—known today as the apocryphal acts—combined miracle stories, missionary adventures, martyrdom accounts, and theological teaching into dramatic narratives, some of which became part of Christian tradition through the ages.

In this article, I’ll explain how these apocryphal acts reveal what certain Christian communities valued and debated after the first century, granting us insight into the evolving identity of Christianity itself in the ancient world.

Was “Acts” a Literary Genre?

Our earliest example of a book called “Acts” is the canonical Acts of the Apostles (Greek:  Praxeis Apostolon, Latin: Actūs Apostolōrum) in the New Testament. The book has the same author as the Gospel of Luke, and both the Gospel and Acts were written between 80 and 90 CE.

While Luke tells the story of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus, Acts goes on to describe the formation and development of the early church. Moreover, like the Gospel of Luke, the Acts of the Apostles originally had no title; the title was applied sometime in the 2nd century.

Despite this, scholars have wondered what the template for this book might have been: was there a pre-Christian Roman genre of literature called “Acts?” In short, no other literature called “acts” has been found from the period prior to the composition of the New Testament.

However, in his book Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament, Bart Ehrman writes that the genre of literature that the Acts of the Apostles most closely resembles is “ancient pagan Romances (sometimes called novels).” Ehrman notes that, like the Acts of the Apostles and the apocryphal acts, pagan Romances included “travels and dangers on sea and land, shipwrecks, piracy, kidnappings, stories of broken marriages and frustrated love.” While the Christian writings hold a very different set of values from the pagan Romances, the similarities in style and story are undeniable. However, not all scholars agree with this assessment.

Darryl W. Palmer argues for classifying the book as a historical monograph, “a historical writing, which deals with a limited issue or period and may also be limited in length.” Calling the book a historical monograph, by the way, does not depend on confirming that every detail in it is historically accurate. It does mean, however, that the author wants to convince readers that the book generally reflects actual events.

When it comes to the historical reliability of the Acts of the Apostles, for instance, some of the events it mentions can be corroborated from other, non-Christian sources. Even so, many of the events specific to the early church are all but impossible to verify with any certainty according to Charles Talbert. Given this fact, it probably makes sense to call the canonical book of Acts a combination of historical monograph and Romance.

Whatever its genre, however, it’s clear that the original book of Acts in the New Testament was highly influential on the early church because beginning in the second century, apocryphal acts began to proliferate. Despite this literary diversity, the one thing that ties these apocryphal acts together is the theological ideology they represent. According to Ehrman,

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Ehrman notes that this rejection of pleasure, known as asceticism, often included a rejection of marriage and family life, “in order to serve the God who stands over against the social conventions of this world.”

The heroes of the apocryphal acts, both the apostles and other characters, often reject marriage, choosing a life of celibacy instead. This reflects a conflict in early Christianity between those Christians who saw marriage and family life as acceptable and those who saw it as inimical to the Christian life. This had started much earlier. After all, Jesus, Christians’ ultimate example, was unmarried, as was the celibate Paul who, although he acknowledged that some should marry to avoid sexual immorality, said “I wish that all were as I myself am” (1 Cor 7:7).

Having looked at the general genre and ideology of the apocryphal acts, I’ll now summarize a few well-known examples of these books. It’s impossible to mention all of the most prominent that you may have heard of in passing, such as the Acts of Pilate. But, this overview gives you a good starting point.

The Acts of Peter

The Acts of Peter was written sometime in the second half of the 2nd century CE. Although the text was written in Greek, the earliest surviving manuscript is in a Latin collection known as the Codex Vercellensis. It contains a miracle contest between Peter and a sorcerer named Simon Magus, probably meant to be the Simon from Acts 8:9–25, who tries to buy the power of the Holy Spirit from Peter. The book, therefore, addresses the often blurry line between miracle and magic.

The book begins in Rome where Paul, having made a number of converts, departs for Spain. After Paul’s departure, a magician called Simon arrives and leads most of the new converts astray through his magic. As a result, Peter, living in Jerusalem, receives a vision of Christ who tells him to go to Rome. When he arrives in Rome, those Christians who were deceived by Simon begin to return to the true faith.

Peter then challenges Simon to a miracle contest, which takes place in front of a large multitude. Peter raises three people from the dead, while Simon is only able to make the head of one corpse move and open its eyes. Desperate to win back his followers, Simon uses magic to fly into the air, but when Peter prays, Simon falls to the ground, breaking his leg and later dying.

Meanwhile, Peter is arrested because some of his followers have started refusing sex with their spouses, eventually causing a Roman prefect named Agrippa and a friend of Caesar’s named Albinus to be denied sex by their wives. Peter is almost persuaded by followers to escape, but changes his mind after Christ tells him not to in a vision. Peter is then crucified upside down after he refuses regular crucifixion due to it being too similar to that of his master,  Jesus.

The Acts of John

This book purports to contain missionary stories of John, one of the sons of Zebedee and a disciple considered by some to be Jesus’ closest companion (at least in the Gospel of John). Like the Acts of Peter, it was written in the second half of the 2nd century. The beginning of the text is missing.

The text that remains begins with John and his followers travelling to the city of Ephesus. As they near the city, a magistrate named Lycomedes comes to John, begging him to raise his wife Cleopatra, who has died seven days earlier. John goes with him but, after arriving at the house where Cleopatra lies, Lycomedes dies of grief. John prays for God to raise both of them and they are raised, leaving the Ephesians amazed.

John then goes to the temple of the goddess Artemis, where some Ephesians try to kill him because he is wearing black instead of ceremonial white to the temple. In response, John prays to God to chase the demon out of the temple. At this, the altar to Artemis shatters, killing a pagan priest.

In Ephesus, a Christ-believing woman named Drusiana has been refusing sexual relations with her husband, Andronicus, due to her beliefs. She then contracts an illness because another man, Callimachus, lusts after her, a circumstance which ultimately causes her to die of grief. After she is placed in a tomb, Callimachus bribes a guard of the tomb to let him in, and he attempts to ravage her corpse. However, a serpent appears and kills Callimachus and the guard. John comes to the tomb and raises Callimachus and Drusiana, and Callimachus converts as a result.

At the conclusion of the story, John and his disciples leave the city. Outside the city gates, John asks his disciples to dig a trench. He prays, thanking Christ for helping him maintain a lifelong virginity. Finally, John lays down in the trench and dies.

The Acts of Paul

As Bart Ehrman notes, we do not have a complete manuscript of the Acts of Paul. Instead, we have large fragments that don’t fit together neatly. Scholars believe the original text also included the Acts of Thecla, as well as a letter, 3 Corinthians, written in Paul’s name long after his death. Interestingly, most scholars identify the Acts of Paul as a book referred to by the 2nd and 3rd-century Christian Tertullian, who wrote that the book had been forged by a priest who had admitted what he had done “out of love for Paul.”

Because the text is fragmentary, it’s a bit difficult to summarize. However, here are a few key episodes:

While Paul is in the desert outside of Ephesus, he is approached by a talking lion who asks Paul to baptize him. Paul complies with this request, and the lion runs off. When Paul is later arrested in Ephesus, he is condemned to execution by wild beasts. However, the beast sent out to kill him turns out to be the baptized lion, who meekly bows at Paul’s feet. When the governor orders that more beasts be unleashed on Paul, a hailstorm kills some of the animals and forces the rest to run away. Only Paul and the baptized lion are spared.

In another incident based in Syrian Antioch, Paul raises a young man from the dead and is ousted from the city by angry and fearful citizens.

Later, a young, wealthy woman named Thecla from the city of Iconium who is engaged to be married changes her mind and breaks her engagement because of Paul’s preaching. She renounces sex and marriage to follow Paul. As a result of her conversion, Thecla is arrested and condemned to death twice, but escapes both miraculously.

Finally, we see Paul’s arrest, trial before Nero, and martyrdom. When he is beheaded, milk spurts from his neck instead of blood.

The Acts of Thomas

Written in the early 3rd century, the Acts of Thomas tells the story of Thomas’ missionary journey to India. Although Jesus initially appears to Thomas and orders him to go to India, he is reluctant to do so. Therefore, Jesus sells Thomas as a slave to work as a carpenter for the king of India. On the way, Thomas performs miracles and lectures people on the importance of an ascetic life.

When Thomas arrives in India, he is commissioned to build the king a palace. Instead, he takes the funds provided for the project and gives them to the poor. However, after converting the king’s brother, he is freed and goes around preaching and converting people all over India and emphasizing the necessity of sexual abstinence for Christians.

Many miracles ensue: when he finds the body of a young man killed by a snake, Thomas compels the snake, who admits he’s the devil’s representative, to suck the poison out of the dead man’s body, after which the young man comes back to life. Thomas also casts a sexually-inclined demon out of a woman and sends a wild ass into a house to exorcise demons from a woman and her daughter.

Thomas is finally thrown into prison and sentenced to death. Two manuscripts of the Acts of Thomas introduce a well-known poem called the “Hymn of the Pearl” at this point. In the end, he is killed by warriors with spears and buried in the tombs of ancient Indian rulers.

The Acts of Timothy

This text was written in the 4th or 5th centuries and portrays Timothy, the companion of Paul in the New Testament, as the bishop of Ephesus. It claims that Paul made him bishop on a visit to Ephesus during the reign of Nero.

The story tells us that Timothy was born to a Greek father and a Jewish mother in Lystra, which is exactly what it says about him in Acts 16:1–3. After being converted by Paul, he traveled with him, eventually putting down roots in Ephesus.

Most of the story centers on Timothy's life in Ephesus. While he is there, the Apostle John arrives in the city before later being exiled to Patmos. The culmination of the book explains a pagan festival called Katagogia, in which there are idol worship and sexual acts. As the bishop of the city, Timothy preaches vehemently against the festival, especially the idolatry. As a result, angry pagans beat him to death outside the city, and local Christians buried him.

The Acts of Simon and Jude

This text is more often called the Passion of Simon and Jude. The story tells of two disciples, Simon the Zealot and Jude (or Judas) Thaddeus—not to be confused with Judas Iscariot—who go on a missionary journey to Persia.

The book starts with two Persian magicians named Zaroes and Arfaxat, both idol worshipers. However, some scholars see a resemblance between the magicians’ beliefs and Manichaeism, a popular 3rd-century dualistic religion in which a cosmic struggle between a spiritual world of light and a material world of darkness is the main myth. In the text, the magicians call the Christian God “the god of darkness,” claiming that he created the human body, although the soul contains a particle of another, higher God. They believe Jesus was not a real person nor born of the Virgin, crucified, or resurrected.

Together, Simon and Jude challenge Zaroes and Arphaxat and confront the priests responsible for idol worship, in the process converting many Persian citizens to Christianity and miraculously razing pagan temples. Several miracles follow.

Simon and Jude then found a church in Persia. Later, they make sure that a local deacon is cleared from a fornication charge made by a princess when the apostles make her newborn baby speak, declaring that the deacon is innocent. Simon then heals a friend of the king from an apparently fatal arrow gash, and the two apostles pacify two tigers who have gotten out of their cages.

When Simon and Jude are told by local religious authorities that they must sacrifice to the pagan gods, they refuse. At this point, Simon is told by an angel to choose between killing all of the people or his own martyrdom. Simon chooses to die and calls upon the demon in the sun statue to come out, reducing the statue to rubble; Jude does the same with the moon statue.

Conclusion

While the Acts of the Apostles is the only “acts” that became part of the Christian Bible, many other such narratives, known as the apocryphal acts, were written in the centuries following its composition. With the earliest ones written in the 2nd century and the latest in the 5th, the genre of Acts became an important feature of Christian literary culture.

There are no similarly-named texts in Greco-Roman literature which would be obvious precedents to these books. Some scholars have argued that the original Acts of the Apostles, with its stories of travel and adventure, are emulating ancient pagan Romances, another scholar claims that there is a different genre he calls the historical monograph which better suits the text.

While most historians would not claim the perfect historicity of the apocryphal acts, they do provide us with a glimpse into the emphases Christian authors were concerned with after the 1st century. While there are several, asceticism, especially sexual abstinence, seems to be a main focus of many of these acts. In each, those who are celibate and preach celibacy to others become conduits for the power of God to perform miracles. While this kind of extreme asceticism is not often found in churches today, these acts are evidence of a long-standing ideology of self-denial that drove many early Christians.