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The Apocryphal Acts and the Ancient Novel: Literary Parallels to Early Non-Canonical Christian Writings 1

We expect professional librarians to be tidyminded people, determined that each and every book that crosses their desk be correctly catalogued and classified and then properly shelved. Where on the shelves would we expect them to put the early Christian narratives known collectively as the Apocryphal Acts? Because of some similarities between these early Acts, which typically tell of the lives of their eponymous heroes, their deeds or ‘acts’, and then their deaths, they are sometimes linked to contemporary novels from the 1st–3rd centuries ce. Perhaps they should therefore be shelved alongside pagan novels of the period. But because of the nature of the narrative in the apocryphal stories in general and in the apocryphal Acts in particular, some critics have broadened a search to find parallels in other literature by looking not only at novels but at earlier epics, typically in poetry like Homer’s Odyssey and Iliad. Those and early Christian writings like the canonical Acts are referred to below. We may also ask: Ought our apocryphal Acts be more properly shelved as ‘Religious Literature’ or as ‘History’ or even as ‘Biography’? And what about ancient plays, written for theatrical and public performance? Should one look for parallels there too? We are looking mainly at the five principal apocryphal Acts, those of Andrew, of Paul, of Peter, of John and of Thomas. (I list them neutrally in alphabetical order as I do in my Apocryphal New Testament,2 partly because I am unsure of their relative interdependence and consequently of their likeliest sequence of composition.) Although the canonical Acts features Peter and then Paul, the big five apocryphal Acts deal with one apostle apiece, typically described as the founding father of a particular church. Alongside these are secondary acts.3 We see