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94 many were coming forth of the city and returning unto their own homes because the feast was at an end. But we, the twelve disciples of the Lord, were weeping and were in sorrow, and each one being grieved for that which had befallen departed unto his own house. But I, Simon Peter, and Andrew my brother, took our nets and went unto the sea: and there was with us Levi the son of Alphaeus, whom the Lord





We have as yet no true critical edition of this book: one is in preparation, by E. von Dobschütz, to be included in the Berlin corpus of Greek Ante-Nicene Christian writers. A short statement of the authorities available at this moment is therefore necessary.

Tischendorf in his Evangelia Apocrypha divides the whole writing into two parts: (1) the story of the Passion; (2) the Descent into hell; and prints the following forms of each: six in all:


 * 1) Part I, Recession A in Greek from eight manuscripts, and a Latin translation of the Coptic version in the notes.
 * 2) Part I, Recession B in Greek from three late manuscripts.
 * 3) Part II (Descent into Hell) in Greek from three manuscripts.
 * 4) Part I in Latin, using twelve manuscripts, and some old editions.
 * 5) Part II in Latin (A) from four manuscripts.
 * 6) Part II in Latin (B) from three manuscripts.

Tischendorf’s must be described as an eclectic text not representing probably, any one single line of transmission: but it presents the book in a readable, and doubtless, on the whole, correct form.

There are, besides the Latin, three ancient versions of Part I of considerable importance, viz.:

Coptic, preserved in an early papyrus at Turin, and in some fragments at Paris. Last edited by Revillout in Patrologia orientalis, ix. 2.

Syriac, edited by Rahmaui in Studia Syriaca, II.

Armenian, edited by F. C. Conybeara in Studia Biblica, IV (Oxford, 1896): he gives a Greek rendering of one manuscript and a Latin one of another.

All of these conform to Tischelldorf’s Recession A of Part I: and this must be regarded as the most original form of the Acta which we have. Recession B is a late and diffuse working-over of the same matter: it will not be translated here in full.

The first part of the book, containing the story of the Passion and Resurrection, is not earlier than the fourth century. Its object in the main is to furnish irrefragable testimony to the resurrection. Attempts have been made to show that it is of early date—that it is, for instance, the writing which Justin Martyr meant when in his Apology he referred his heathen readers to the ‘Acts’ of Christ’s trial preserved among the archives of Rome. The truth of that matter is