The Acts of Peter, Gospel Literature, and the Ancient Novel Rewriting the Past

by Thomas, Christine M.

• ISBN13: 9780195125078
• ISBN10: 019512507X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2003-03-27
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

The Acts of Peter , one of the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles that detail the exploits of the key figures of early Christianity, provides a unique window into the formation of early Christian narrative. Like the Gospels, the Acts of Peter developed from disparate oral and written narrative from the first century. The apocryphal text, however, continued to develop into a number of re-castings, translations, abridgements, and expansions. The Acts of Peter present Christian narrative in an alternate universe, in which canonization did not halt the process of creative re-composition. Now, in this groundbreaking book, Thomas examines the sources and subsequent versions of the Acts, from the earliest traditions through the sixth-century Passions of the Apostles, arguing the importance of its "narrative fluidity": the existence of the work in several versions or multiforms. This feature, shared with the Jewish novels of Esther and Daniel, the Greek romance about Alexander the Great, and the Christian Gospels, allows these narratives to adapt to accommodate the changing historical circumstances of their audiences. In each new version, the audiences' defining conflicts were reflected in the text, echoing a historical consciousness more often identified with primary oral societies, in which the account of the past is a malleable script explaining the present. Although the genre most closely comparable to these works is the ancient novel, their serious historical intent separates them from the later, more self-consciously fictive novels, and maintains them within the realm of the earlier historical novels produced by ethnic subcultures within the Roman empire.

Author Biography

Christine M. Thomas is Associate Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Table of Contents

Abbreviations	xi
Note on the Text and Symbols	xiii
The Apocryphal Acts in a Literary World	3	(11)
Time and Revision: Literary Processes at Work in the Acts of Peter	14	(26)
Fixity and Fluidity in the Narrative Trajectory of the Acts of Peter	40	(32)
Narrative Fluidity as a Generic Characteristic	72	(15)
The Acts of Peter among the Novels and Histories	87	(19)
Appendix One: Overview of the Ancient Editions of the Acts of Peter	106	(2)
Appendix Two: Intertextual Relationships between the Actus Vercellenses and Other Early Christian Literature	108	(7)
Appendix Three: Comparison of the Actus Vercellenses, the Greek Martyrdom Account, and the Linus Text	115	(2)
Notes	117	(38)
Bibliography	155	(16)
Index of Ancient Texts	171	(6)
Subject Index	177