Acts of St Paul
1 Paul and the lion
a) In the desert, before Jericho (ActPl 9,79)
Shortly after his calling outside Damascus, Paul is travelling in the desert towards Jericho, probably not too far from the Jordan. As can happen in the desert, he encounters a large lion. Paul, absorbed in prayer, does not even notice it at first. When he does, the animal has prostrated itself at his feet. Paul asks him: "Lion, what do you want?" The lion replies: "I want to be baptised!" Paul enters the river with the lion, now literally: "I took the lion by his mane and immersed him three times in the name of Jesus Christ. When he came out of the water again, he shook his mane and said to me: 'Mercy be with you, Paul!' And I answered him: 'Likewise with you, lion!
The episode is not quite over yet. It follows: "As the lion ran away into the field, he met a lioness, but he did not turn his face towards her, but ran away and hit the bushes." It was probably even an attractive young lioness, but basically the fun stops here, because what we have before us is an exquisite example of the connection between baptism and renunciation of marriage, practised above all in the Syrian church. We encounter rejection of sexuality and even marriage at every turn in these Acts of the Apostles, albeit with varying degrees of radicalism.
b) In the arena, in Ephesus (ActPl 9,2326).
Our story of the baptism of a lion, which the church fathers could not mock enough, has a second part. Some time later, Paul is sentenced to animal fighting by the governor in Ephesus. Here we also recognise links to the New Testament. In his first letter to the Corinthians, Paul writes: "If I had only fought with wild animals in the manner of men (i.e. without belief in the resurrection) (in Ephesus), what good would it do me?" Paul probably meant this figuratively; in the Acts of Paul it is translated into reality.
Back to the text. A particularly ferocious lion, trained on humans, is let loose on Paul. He runs towards Paul, but only to lie down at his feet like a well-behaved lamb. When he stands on his four paws again, he says to Paul: "Grace be with you!", to which Paul responds: "Grace be with you too". The two take a closer look at each other and Paul recognises that this is the lion he had once baptised. The governor unleashes more beasts against Paul and sends archers against the unruly lion, all to no avail. A violent hailstorm thwarts his actions. Paul and the lion say goodbye to each other. One goes to the harbour, the other escapes into the mountains, this time without a confrontation with a lioness.
The second episode is perhaps not quite as spectacular as the first, but it is very instructive for another reason. It shows us how uninhibitedly these early Christian authors made use of secular Greco-Roman literature. In this case, the well-known fable of Androclus and the lion was the inspiration. During an animal fight in the Circus Maximus in Rome, a lion stands out due to its particularly muscular physique, long flowing mane and terrible roar. The slave Androclus is thrown to him as the victim. But the lion approaches him slowly, cuddles him like a lapdog and licks him. The solution to the riddle: Androclus had escaped from his master in North Africa. A lion comes into the cave that served as his hiding place, limping and bleeding on one foot. He gestures to Androclus for help, who pulls a large splinter of wood from the sole of his foot. A wonderful friendship develops that lasts three years until Androclus is discovered, captured and condemned as a runaway slave ad bestias. Following this report, Androclus is granted amnesty and is seen walking through the city with his lion, which he leads on a thin leash, admired and gifted from all sides. We can see how these stories also served an understandable need for entertainment on the Christian side, as Luke's Acts of the Apostles already does to some extent.
2 Paul and Thekla
a) First encounter (ActThecl 2)
The Acts of Paul include a longer section, which also circulated independently, under the title "Acts of Paul and Thekla", because this time it is not Paul but Thekla who is the main character. Again, I will pick out two details.
The opening scene takes place in Iconium in Asia Minor, also known from Luke's Acts of the Apostles as a travelling station. Titus has given Onesiphoros, the intended host, a profile with a real portrait of Paul, and we experience at first hand how Paul affects him:
He (Onesiphoros) saw Paul coming, a man small in stature, with a bald head, bent legs, (but) with a noble bearing, his eyebrows knit together, his nose slightly protruding, (but) full of grace. Sometimes he appeared like a man, sometimes he had the face of an angel.
A not entirely flattering portrait, but various cultural values have been incorporated into this image. People have used profiles for slaves, the description of a general, the character head of the philosopher Socrates and more for comparison, but the most important parallel is probably with Emperor Augustus, who, at least according to his biographer Suetonius, was no paragon of beauty, despite his statues and coins. We hear about him:
He had bright, shining eyes and wanted you to get the impression that they were imbued with a divine power ... His teeth were wide apart, small and bad. His hair was slightly curly and light blond, his eyebrows were knitted together in the centre, his ears were of medium size, his nose protruded at the top and curved at the bottom ... He was small in stature ... but this was concealed by the shapeliness and regularity of his limbs ...
You can't really get any clearer than that. The similarities go so far (small figure, eyebrows that have grown together, protruding nose) that I seriously wonder whether our author has not deliberately borrowed from the portrait of Augustus in order to stylise Paul as a ruler of his own kind. For Paul, there is also what the opening sentence to Augustus basically says (his eyes are imbued with divine power), that the dialectic of flesh and spirit becomes clear. "Like a man" refers to the flesh, the physical appearance. "The face of an angel" refers to the spirit that fills the charismatic Paul and that breaks through again and again.
Having arrived at the house of Onesiphoros, Paul proclaims "the word of God about abstinence and resurrection", in that order. He unfolds it in a series of twelve beatitudes, several of which revolve around sexual purity. While Paul is speaking, Thekla is sitting in the window of the neighbouring house. She cannot see Paul, only hear him, but she listens to him day and night as he talks about the virginal life. When this goes on for three days, her mother alerts Thekla's fiancé and vividly describes her daughter's behaviour as an inverted form of intense love: "My daughter clings to the window like a spider. She is gripped by his words as if by an unprecedented desire and terrible passion". This is not love at first sight, because Thekla does not see Paul and would perhaps not even be particularly taken with his appearance as outlined above, but it is love at first sight.
What follows can practically be predicted. Thekla abandons her mother and fiancé, wants nothing more to do with marriage and joins Paul. Unfortunately, we cannot follow Thekla's further path to becoming a successful missionary in detail, otherwise we would have no time left for other texts. But we would like to pick out at least one other scene that shows Thekla in the amphitheatre.
b) Thekla in the amphitheatre
Her resistance to the advances of a noble Syrian finally brings Thekla to the arena in Antioch in Pisidia, also an important place for Paul in Luke's Acts of the Apostles. Thekla prays with her arms outstretched in the shape of a cross, then she sees a large pit full of water in which seals are swimming around. The women in the audience who sympathise with Thekla warn her that the seals will eat her. But Thekla realises: "Now is the time to wash myself" ("wash" is a verb that is also used for baptism), and she throws herself into the water with the words "In the name of Jesus Christ I baptise myself on (my) last day". In our story, this self-baptism is apparently considered to be fully valid. The dangerous seals see a flash of lightning and immediately swim to the surface, dead, while a cloud of fire surrounds Thekla in salvation.
We know seals either as helpless babies who arouse our compassion, or as circus and zoo performers who juggle colourful balls and will do almost anything for fresh fish. Once again, we have to engage in the reconstruction of an ancient preconception that our author shares with his addressees. Extensive pools of water were actually built in the Roman arena for the staging of naval battles. Fights between bears and seals in the circus are, as unlikely as it may sound, documented for the imperial period. Another ironic side-swipe is their elimination by lightning, as seal skins of all things were said to have lightning-repelling powers. Emperor Augustus is said to have never left home without a sealskin for fear of being struck by lightning. All of this lends the seal episode the degree of credibility that remains essential for a successful story.
Thekla's spurned lover does not let up, but puts one last proposal into action, which even astonishes a hardened audience with its barely concealed sexual aggression (Vouaux wrote in 1913: "l'auteur a vraiment exagéré", here the author has really exaggerated). Thekla is tied with her feet spread apart to wild bulls, to whose genitals red-hot irons are held in order to irritate them even more. They are supposed to tear Thekla to pieces, but blazing flames burn through the ropes and nothing happens. You don't have to be an outspoken follower of Siegmund Freud and psychoanalysis to see that repressed instincts - I think on the part of our author too - are seeking an outlet here and turning into projections of unbridled cruelty.
A final word about Thekla. She is finally released, joins the core Christian community around Paul and has a great career ahead of her as an apostle and miracle worker in the early church, with a large monastery complex, partly archaeologically preserved, in Seleucia in south-east Asia Minor.
Intermediate reflection: Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles
It is probably time for a somewhat dry but unavoidable interim reflection. The Acts of Paul belong to the five ancient Acts of the Apostles, which also include the Acts of Peter, the Acts of John, the Acts of Andrew and the Acts of Thomas. "Old" means that they were written between 150 and 240 AD. There are even more recent Acts from the fourth century, including the extensive Acts of Philip, which are very well preserved. The Pseudo-Clementines, a Christian bildungsroman centred on Peter, also belong here. The keyword "novel" also reminds us that all apocryphal Acts of the Apostles are similar in genre to Greco-Roman novel literature, from which they borrow heavily. This distinguishes them from Luke's Acts of the Apostles, which belongs more to historiography. The Acts of the Apostles, as a genre in their own right, ultimately flow into the stream of hagiography, the lives of the saints.
The reference to the size and good state of preservation of the more recent files makes sense, because of the old files, only the Thomas files have survived in their entirety. We only have fragments of the other four old files, which have to be painstakingly collected, edited and translated. An example from the current work: important details of the scene with the baptised lion can only be found in a Coptic papyrus that was published for the first time in 2004.
We know next to nothing about the authors of the Acts of the Apostles. Tertullian only remarks on the author of the Acts of Paul that a presbyter in Asia Minor forged them out of love for Paul and then resigned from office as a result of the outrage he caused. There are also only guesses as to the places of origin. For the Acts of Peter, one could tend towards Rome. Smyrna, now Izmir, has been suggested for the Acts of St Paul. Only for the Acts of St Thomas are we on somewhat firmer ground, namely Syria. Edessa in the east is a serious possibility.
One final point: how do the ancient Acts of the Apostles relate to the canonical Acts of Luke? Here we must bear in mind that in the late 2nd century the canon of New Testament writings was itself still under development. The definition of the relationship varies greatly among scholars. I think that the authors of the Acts of the Apostles were familiar with the Book of Acts, but did not regard it as binding, and therefore felt entitled to supplement, update, correct or even oppose it.
That's enough of the more technical things. I will now proceed as follows: I will leave aside the Acts of Andrew. From the Acts of Peter, the Acts of John and the Acts of Thomas, I will again select two episodes each for discussion.
Acts of St Peter
The Acts of Peter mainly take place in Rome, where Simon Peter has to deal with an old acquaintance, Simon Magus from Samaria (see Acts 8). The two Simons engage in a veritable duel to see who can perform the more impressive miracles. Incidentally, we know the genre of these stories. Think of Moses and Pharaoh's magicians in the Book of Exodus, Paul and the Jewish magician Barjesus on Cyprus in Acts 13 or, to borrow from modern mythology, Saruman and Gandalf in The Lord of the Rings or Dumbeldore and Voldemort in Harry Potter.
1. the dried fish (ActPt 13)
Simon Magus is staying at the house of Senator Marcellus, whom he has successfully persuaded to convert to Christianity. Some of the crowd demand miraculous signs from Peter in the courtyard, as Simon has also worked many miracles, which is the only reason they have followed him.
Peter sees a smoked fish hanging in the window. The crux of the matter with "smoked" is that it is an intensification of "dead" to "dead as a doornail". More "dead" is simply not possible. Peter asks the crowd whether they would be willing to believe if this dried fish were to swim again, and receives an affirmative answer. He throws the fish into a pool of water and it immediately swims around happily. So that this process does not appear to be a figment of Simon's imagination, the fish remains alive and attracts crowds of visitors who feed it chunks of bread.
From this scene, it is initially clear that miracles are evidence for our author. But it is not always easy to distinguish them from the "magic tricks" of the other side. A comparable incident from Greek tradition can also be cited here. The final passage of Herodotus' Histories tells of a miraculous sign. When one of the guards holding a Persian governor prisoner roasts salted fish, the following happens: "When the salted fish came over the fire, they jumped and wriggled like freshly caught animals." The correct interpretation is given by the captured governor himself. He had committed an offence against a Heros, and this Heros "Protesilaos wants me to understand that, although he is dead and a mummy, he nevertheless receives the power from the gods to chastise the offender (that is the speaker himself)", which is done by executing him on the cross. The joke is that the Greek word for "smoked fish" can also mean "mummy". A withered mummy doesn't exactly return to life, but nevertheless becomes vengefully active, like the wriggling fish.
Furthermore, the specifically Christian symbolic language of this miracle story is palpable. The resurrection of the dead, both in the inner world and in the end times, is alluded to. The casting into the pool of water is reminiscent of the bath of baptism, which involves rebirth. Peter is present as a fisherman by trade, appointed by the Lord to be the fisher of men. The use of the fish symbol for Christ himself is also well known, but also for the Christians, whom Tertullian once described as pisciculi, the small fish of the great fish Jesus. In view of these symbolic effects, is it going too far to think of the broken bread of the Lord's Supper in terms of the chunks of bread that the fish willingly consumes? Perhaps, perhaps not.
2. the death of Peter (ActPt 3539)
This time we take the opportunity to take a closer look at the death of at least one apostle. Peter makes high-ranking enemies in Rome in the usual way. He persuades four concubines of the city prefect to live chastely from now on, which does not please him at all. Peter is in grave danger and his fellow Christians persuade him to leave the city.
Peter goes out of the gate alone. The Lord Jesus comes to meet him on his way into the city. In response to Peter's question, "Where to, Lord?", he replies, "I am going into Rome to be crucified," and when asked again, he adds, "Yes, to be crucified again." Peter has understood. He goes back to the city, to certain death on the cross.
We can trace the basic idea back to the New Testament. In the Gospel of John, Jesus announces that he is going away and Peter asks him: "Lord, where are you going?". If we translate this into Latin, we get Quo vadis, the title of a famous novel (1895) and a no less famous film (1951). I can still remember being deeply impressed by the book and then the film as a teenager. Here we are dealing with a modern apocryphon, so to speak, the Quo-vadis files.
Peter then asks his four executioners to crucify him upside down, which is not entirely unheard of. The Roman philosopher and statesman Seneca wrote at around this time: "I see there sticks of torture, not of one kind alone, of course ... with their heads to the ground, some hit the cross ... others spread out their arms on the cross". In this position, Peter gives a long, profound speech that would require its own interpretation. He does not interpret the special position - head downwards - as a gesture of humility, as popular opinion would have it, because he did not consider himself worthy to die in the same way as his Lord. Rather, his inverted position symbolises fallen human nature. Because of the first man's misstep, everything in the world has been turned upside down and twisted. Right appears as left, and bad as good. This is why the Lord said in an otherwise unknown word: "Unless you make right as left, and left as right, and above as below, and behind as before, you will not recognise the kingdom of God". Under the sign of sin, this reversal in Peter even means as much as restoring the original, correct order. That is true redemption.
IV. Acts of St John
1. with Drusiana and Kallimachos in the burial chamber (ActJoh 62-86)
We are about to zoom into a colourful miracle story. It takes place on John's return to Ephesus, his city (no Paul for miles around). The believers stretch out their hands to John, and when contact is made, even if it is only with his robe, they kiss them afterwards (compare the woman in the Gospel who is flowing with blood and Paul's therapeutically effective handkerchiefs in Acts 19).
The actual plot begins with a flashback to a new chastity conflict. After turning to the Christian faith, Drusiana consistently refuses her husband Andronicus, who also converts after initial resistance and lives with her as brother and sister. But the sexual trials are not over yet. Kallimachos, an 'emissary of Satan', is seized by an unholy lust for the beautiful Drusiana. Drusiana is so grieved by this that she is seized by fever and dies within a few days, which can be explained psychologically or as a miraculous intervention by the Lord.
While the apostle performs a rhetorically elaborate song of praise for Drusiana in the circle of brothers, the "multiform Satan" goes to work in the tomb through his assistants. Fortunatus, the money-hungry steward of Andronikos, accepts a large bribe and opens the burial chamber for Kallimachos, who wants to commit an offence against Drusiana's body. When Drusiana's body has already been stripped down to her last shirt, a huge snake suddenly appears, kills Fortunatus with a bite, brings Kallimachos down and coils itself around him. The young man falls into a death-like stupor. Edgar Hennecke, the deserving creator of the "New Testament Apocrypha in German Translation" from 1904, is worth reading here as he gives free rein to his indignation: The Acts of St John have "a strong sensual streak mixed in, which occasionally - in the case of Callimachus - even reaches the peak of the abominable ... One will have to search the contemporaneous profane literature to find scenes of equally repulsive effect as these." One cannot even completely disagree with him. This particularly offensive necrophilia probably also conceals a negative judgement of sexuality. Sexual intercourse takes place between dead bodies and has nothing to do with a community of living souls.
On the morning of the third day, John goes to the tomb with Andronikos and other brothers to celebrate the service there. They gain access to the burial chamber through a door-opening miracle performed in passing. Only Andronikos immediately recognises what is being "played" here (the metaphor of theatre is entirely appropriate in this case, as Andronikos speaks directly of the "dramaturgia of deceit" that was at work here). He has to explain to the obtuse apostle what has happened.
Johannes then puts things in order. He puts the "poisonous reptile" out of action. Kallimachos returns to a waking state. Drusiana is resurrected and asks for the life of the still-dead villain Fortunatus, of all people. She is allowed to resurrect him herself, but this doesn't make much sense, as he dies shortly afterwards from the residue of the snake poison. For the moment, the Christian group in Ephesus is back on track.
2 Jesus' death on the cross (ActJoh 97-102)
So far we have not talked about Christology, the perception of the person of Jesus Christ. The Acts of John have a very peculiar approach to this, which requires a closer look.
In Jerusalem, on the day of Jesus' execution, the disciples flee in all directions, but John only as far as the Mount of Olives, where he hides in a cave. Exactly at the hour of the crucifixion, when darkness falls over the whole earth, the Lord appears, illuminates the cave and says to his disciple: "Only for the crowds down in Jerusalem will I thrust with spears and thrust with reeds. But with you I speak...". Then the Lord shows him a cross of light of cosmic dimensions, the crossbar of which serves as a boundary between the lower, material world and the upper, spiritual world. John sees the Lord himself above the cross. He no longer has a physical form, but is only a voice, a truly divine voice that explains to the apostle: the cross of light "is not the wooden cross that you will see when you descend from here. Even I, whom you do not see now, but whose voice you only hear, am not the one on the (wooden) cross". The dialogue continues in an almost obsessive manner. The Lord speaks, in the original tone:
So nothing of what they will say about me I have suffered ... You hear that I have suffered - and yet I have not suffered ...that I have been stabbed (with the lance) - and yet I have not been beaten, that I have been hanged - and yet I have not been hanged, that blood has flowed from me - and yet it has not flowed - in short, that I have not had to endure what they say about me, but have suffered what they do not say.
The last sentence is once again particularly änigmatic and can only be explained to the apostle in enigmatic words. In a nutshell, the point is that all these historical statements must be dematerialised and spiritualised and refer metaphorically to a spiritual event in the drama of redemption. This is why John can say: "When I went down to Golgotha, I laughed at all those who wanted to make me believe what had happened, for I knew "that the Lord had done all this only symbolically and economically (salvation-historically) for the conversion and salvation of men".
There is no doubt that we are looking at a particularly drastic concept here. Researchers speak of docetism and gnosis. Docetic means that Christ did not really become man, but either only had an illusory body or merely entered into a temporary union with the man Jesus, from baptism until shortly before the crucifixion. Gnosticism implies a devaluation of creatureliness and corporeality and an overvaluation of intellect and knowledge. In research on early Christianity, we have now become cautious with the judgements "orthodox" or "heretical". But if you ask me, I really can't get much out of the Christology of St John's Acts, or the attempted necrophilia.
V. Thomas files
1. the mission to India (13.1725)
As already mentioned, the Acts of Thomas are the only ones to have survived in their entirety, which means that they have an introduction that is missing in the other Acts and that we can insert at the very beginning this time. The apostles, eleven in number, not including Judas Iscariot, are gathered in Jerusalem after the Ascension. Among them is Judas Thomas Didymos, which is his full name. "Thomas" is an Aramaic epithet and means "twin", while "Didymos", also found in the Gospel of John, means the same in Greek, so that we ultimately have "Judas' twin twin" before us. This man was actually regarded as Jesus' twin brother in parts of the early church and was able to act as Jesus' earthly double after the ascension.
The apostles draw lots among themselves for the potential mission territories and take the decision by lot as a commission from the absent Lord. India falls to Thomas, who immediately objects: How can I go to India as a Hebrew with no knowledge of the language? The Lord encourages him during the night, but he remains stubborn: "Wherever you want to send me, send me, but somewhere else. For I will not go to the Indians."
A radical cure follows. There is an Indian merchant in the city who is supposed to hire a carpenter for his king Gundafor. The gentleman sells Thomas to him for three pounds of silver and draws up the following bill of sale: "I, Jesus, the son of Joseph the carpenter, confirm that I have sold a slave of mine named Judas to you." In response to the merchant's very ambiguous question to Thomas: "Is this your master?", Thomas replies: "Yes, he is my master", thus implicitly agreeing to his fate. He answers the merchant's question as to which trade he has mastered with the admission:
(I can) make ploughs and yokes and scales and ships and rudders and masts and small wheels (for pulleys) out of wood, and pillars and temples and royal palaces out of stone.
That sounds good, but like almost everything in these acts, it is also ambiguous, because ploughing and ploughing as well as navigating and steering can be images for missionary work and pillars and temples can be images for the church and its leaders. It is no coincidence that Jesus himself is a carpenter and the son of a carpenter, as we have already heard.
When he arrives in India, King Gundafor, delighted with his new acquisition, first asks if Thomas wants to build him a palace. "Yes," he replies, "I will build and finish it, for that is what I have come to build and finish." We readers already know better and are excited about this building. The king goes with the apostle to the designated building site outside the city, and the apostle begins to mark out the ground plan with a measuring tube and draw it on the ground, indicating the exact position of the doors, windows, bakehouse and water supply, which deeply impresses the king and prompts him to comment: "You are truly an artist. It befits you to serve kings", again quite right, except that this is a different king. When Gundafor departs again, he leaves enough money behind and provides supplies from afar from time to time, for example when the apostle tells him that the palace has been built but the roof is still missing. Thomas, however, takes all the money and distributes it to the poor in the neighbouring villages, including the proverbial widows and orphans. He also preaches and performs healings, all without payment, while leading an extremely ascetic lifestyle.
The king finally realises what is actually going on and reacts accordingly angrily. He is not impressed by the fact that the apostle tells him: "You will not see the palace until you have departed this life", although we readers are already thinking of the treasure in heaven from the Sermon on the Mount. Gundafor wants the apostle and the merchant in charge to be cruelly executed.
But things turn out differently. A favourite brother of the king named Gad dies. Angels receive his soul and escort it up to heaven. They show him places and dwellings there, one of which he is to choose to stay in, which no doubt alludes to the many dwellings in the Father's house in John 14:2f. They also come to the building that Thomas has built for the king with his money in heaven, which has obviously become a particularly splendid palace, because Gad would like nothing better than to live in one of the lower rooms of this building. The angels have to refuse him this request because the palace does not belong to him but to his brother, but Gad is not at a loss for a morally slightly dubious idea: "I beg you, my lords, to allow me to go away to my brother so that I may buy this palace from him. For my brother does not know what kind of building it is and will sell it to me.
No sooner said than done. Gad's soul returns to his body, which is still lying on his deathbed. The king hears the good news and hurries to him. Gad asks his brother: "Sell me the palace you have in heaven". The king is surprised at first, but then doesn't need very long to put the two components together, the eyewitness report from the afterlife on the one hand and the apostle's promise that he himself, the king, would only see the palace after the end of his life on the other. Gundafor tells his brother Gad that he cannot sell him his own palace, but that the apostle could easily build him another, even more magnificent one.
With this realisation, the conversion of the two brothers has already begun. The apostle and the merchant are brought out of prison. The apostle addresses a prayer of thanksgiving and consecration to Jesus and thus prepares the sacramental sealing of the two brothers.
The apostle has prepared a place in heaven for the king with his treasure, with many dwellings, but the biblical metaphors have been spun out into an allegorical narrative. The socially critical component in the apostle's behaviour is sympathetically touching: tax money should go to those who really need it and not be invested in magnificent buildings. Nevertheless, a certain worldliness cannot be denied. Only the immortal soul sets out on a journey, and it finds its true home in heaven.
2. the death of the donkey filling (ActThom 3941)
The apostle is on a country road and is talking to the crowd. A donkey's colt comes up to him and addresses him: "Twin brother of Christ (very well informed, this colt!), apostle of the Most High and co-consecrated in his hidden word..., co-worker of the Son of God, who, while you were free, became a slave and, sold, led many to freedom..., get up, sit on me and rest until you enter the city!"
The apostle asks the stuffed donkey about its origins, and it turns out that it has a truly noble gallery of ancestors. A representative of his family, who incidentally could also speak, served Balaam, who in the book of Numbers is supposed to curse Israel but instead blesses it; another carried Jesus when he entered Jerusalem. It could hardly be better. Our donkey's colt literally imposes itself on the reluctant apostle as his mount. Like Jesus, the apostle now enters the city sitting on the donkey's colt and accompanied by the crowd. The colt dies after completing its task and is not resurrected despite the fervent pleas of the onlookers.
This ending also leaves us somewhat unsatisfied. Why did the poor little creature have to die? The key to a symbolic reading is provided by a line from the prayer in which Thomas addresses the Lord: "O Jesus Christ..., O hidden rest..., our Saviour and Nourisher, who keeps us and lets us rest on other people's bodies". At the narrative level, the "strange body" is to be understood as the body on whose back the apostle is already experiencing part of the longed-for "rest". Rest (anapausis) is considered an essential part of redemption in Gnosticism. However, the "foreign body" can also refer to the apostle's body, which transports his soul to its earthly destination. The death of the filler then anticipates the death of the apostle in the final paragraphs as a narrative preview. The journey on the back of the filler thus represents the journey of life, as in the related parable by the contemporary philosopher Epictetus: "The whole body is to be regarded as nothing other than a loaded donkey, which carries its goods as long as it can and as long as they are left to it". St Francis also referred to his body as a "brother donkey" and called an actual donkey a "brother", although I wonder what that means for the actual brothers.
The usual entanglements in marital matters, even in the royal house, lead to the martyrdom of the apostle, who is stabbed to death by four soldiers with four lances. His long-distance effect remains astonishing. In India, there are still Thomas Christians today who trace their origins back to the apostle and display and venerate his tomb. The Acts of St Thomas serve them as a document of their origin.
VI Conclusion
Our final reflection can be brief because the texts actually speak for themselves. The apocryphal Acts of the Apostles are (1) widely unknown, (2) sometimes instructive and edifying, (3) often dangerous and (4) not least exciting and entertaining.
1 Unknown. Why are the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles not better known? It is on a different scale to the four Gospels and the canonical Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament. The four Gospels have a much more prominent position, especially in the liturgy, because they deal with Jesus. Luke's Acts of the Apostles attracts much less attention. That can be transferred. Most people now know what apocryphal gospels are. The Gospel of Thomas in particular is on everyone's lips, while hardly anyone takes any notice of the Acts of Thomas.
2. instructive and edifying. For example, I would consider the story of the donkey being filled to be edifying if you recognise its ambiguous meaning. However, it is often necessary to ask for a deeper meaning. This also includes the many prayers, sermons, speeches, revelatory dialogues, hymns, songs (the Acts of Thomas contain the famous Song of the Pearl), visions, rituals, etc., which we were unable to address.
3. dangerous. However, these texts can also be dangerous, to varying degrees. Among other things, this is about their relationship to gnosticism, if we want to stick with that, and to so-called encratism, which means sexual abstinence and even the rejection of marriage. The Acts of St Paul are the furthest removed from gnosticism; I would categorise the Acts of John as downright aggressively gnostic, at least in part. The aim of making existing marriages impossible from then on is most pronounced in the Acts of Thomas. Reading them, one develops an almost aversion to the inevitable next story, in which the apostle once again successfully sabotages a functioning marriage.
4. exciting and entertaining. This moment makes up for many others, and our cursory reading has probably shown that it exists. I would like to take the liberty of referring one last time to a secular work that our Christian authors may also have known. In the 2nd century AD, Apuleius from Madaura in North Africa, a lawyer and Platonic philosopher, wrote a successful novel entitled Metamorphoses, also known as "The Golden Ass". At the beginning, the main hero Lucius is transformed into a donkey by witchcraft and from then on describes his world from this perspective. We are taken on long walks and journeys and experience numerous colourful adventures, some of which are very raunchy, but this does not prevent Apuleius from including the philosophical fairy tale of Cupid and Psyche and adding a religiously inspired conclusion in book 11. The long fairy tale is about nothing less than the marriage of the soul to its heavenly bridegroom, and the 11th book is dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis and her mystery cult. During a procession in her honour near Corinth, Lucius regains his human form. Here we recognise a moral of the story: it shows how an old donkey can, with divine help, become a completely useful human being after all.
But I'm interested in the beginning, because there Apuleius says: lector intende, laetaberis, which means: "Reader, pay attention! You will enjoy it." We could at least write this about the encounter between Paul and the lion, but it also applies to the smoked fish and the donkey stuffing and other incidents: "Reader, pay attention! Pay attention! You will - hopefully - have fun with it."
