The History of John the Son of

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The History of John
the Son of Zebedee
 Texts from Christian Late Antiquity

56

Series Editor

George Anton Kiraz

TeCLA (Texts from Christian Late Antiquity) is a series presenting

ancient Christian texts both in their original languages and with
accompanying contemporary English translations.
 The History of John
the Son of Zebedee

Introduction, Texts and Translations

Jacob A. Lollar

gp
2020
Gorgias Press LLC, 954 River Road, Piscataway, NJ, 08854, USA
www.gorgiaspress.com
Copyright © 2020 by Gorgias Press LLC

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright

Conventions. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning or otherwise without the
prior written permission of Gorgias Press LLC.

2020 ‫ܗ‬
1

ISBN 978-1-4632-4075-2 ISSN 1935-6846

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication

Data

A Cataloging-in-Publication Record is available

from the Library of Congress.

Printed in the United States of America

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ........................................................................... ix
Preface.............................................................................................. xi
List of Plates .................................................................................... xv
Chapter 1. History of Scholarship ...................................................... 1
The History of John as a Syriac Text ..........................................3
The History of John in the Acta Iohannis Traditions ............... 9
The Baptism Sequences in the History of John ........................ 15
Conclusion............................................................................... 16
Chapter 2. The Manuscripts ............................................................ 19
Extant/Fragmentary Manuscripts ........................................... 20
Witnesses Lost or Unaccounted For ........................................ 32
Lines of Transmission.............................................................. 33
Other Versions........................................................................ 34
Chapter 3. Provenance, Date, Authorship........................................ 37
Provenance .............................................................................. 38
Date ......................................................................................... 39
The History of John and the Abgar Legend ....................... 40
The History of John and the Works of Ephrem the
Syrian ........................................................................ 47
The Baptismal Formula of the History of John .................. 50
The History of John and the Material Culture of
Ephesus ...................................................................... 55
Conclusion ........................................................................ 62
Author .....................................................................................63
The Curmudgeonly Old Woman (History of John
4) || The Woman at the Daisan (Vita 11).................... 66
Working at the Bathhouse (History of John 6 || Vita
12) .............................................................................. 68
v
vi THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

Conclusion.............................................................................. 72
Chapter 4. Texts and Translations ................................................... 75
Appendix A ................................................................................... 193
Appendix B .................................................................................... 205
Bibliography ................................................................................. 249
Indices ............................................................................................ 265
Index of Names, Terms, and Subjects .................................... 265
Index of Scriptural Citations ................................................. 268
Plates .............................................................................................. 271
For Kora and Maryn

vii
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

So many people have contributed to making this book possible. First

and foremost, thanks to my dissertation committee, chaired by Ni-
cole Kelley and including David Levenson, Matthew Goff, and Svet-
la Slaveva-Griffin, who provided invaluable feedback for me and
were gracious in their comments and critiques. Second, I would like
to thank Christelle Jullien who so graciously sponsored me through
the Chateaubriand fellowship and was a generous host while I was in
Paris. Additionally, my time in Paris would have been wasted had it
not been for Anne-Catherine Baudoin, Muriel Debié, and Alain
Desreaumaux. My sincere thanks to all of you and to the other
members of SELAC who graciously suffered through my presenta-
tion of much of this material.
Third, I would like to thank my colleagues and many conversa-
tion partners over the years: Blake Jurgens, Carson Bay, Sheldon
Steen, Giancarlo Angulo, Josh Matson, Tara Baldrick-Marone, RC
Griffin, Andrew Gardner, James Walters, Philip Forness, Thomas
Whitley, Yonatan Binyam, David Skelton, Grace Hall. And thanks
to those scholars who have mentored me in a variety of ways and
have helped me think through various aspects of this project: Trevor
Thompson, Tony Burke, Janet Spittler, Stanley Jones, Rebecca Fal-
casantos. All of you have been instrumental in helping me finish this
project—whether you realized it or not.
A very important thanks to Jeff Childers, who taught me Syriac
and fostered in me an interest in Christianity in the East that has
blossomed into a passion. Finally, thanks to my wife Sarah for work-
ing so hard to put me through graduate school (you are my champi-
on) and thanks to my daughters, Kora and Maryn, for teaching me
discipline and for teaching me how to love. This book is for you.
ix
PREFACE

In the autumn of 2012 I was finishing my Master’s degree in the

Graduate School of Theology at Abilene Christian University. I was
taking Intermediate Syriac and simultaneously working on my first
conference presentation—which had nothing to do with Syriac, but
focused on the Greek Acts of John. While reading through J.K. El-
liot’s Apocryphal New Testament, I noticed a passing reference to
acts of John in Syriac translation. Since I was learning Syriac at the
time, the reference caught my attention. Thankfully, due to the on-
going work of Jeff Childers, ACU has an ever-growing library dedi-
cated to the Syriac Christian traditions and they happened to have a
copy of William Wright’s Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles in Syriac.
There, unexpectedly, I first discovered the History of John the Son of
Zebedee.
Like most of the pieces in Wright’s collection, the History of
John had largely been overlooked in favor of “the jewel” of Wright’s
volume: a Syriac version of the Acts of Thomas. In Wright’s assess-
ment, the History of John was of little value from a historical point of
view and he thought it only useful for purposes of philological com-
parison to its assumed Greek Vorlage. This attitude was, of course,
typical of a methodological obsession with trying to get back to an
original, Urtext for any given narrative. As a result, Wright gave little
thought or attention to the contextual conditions that gave rise to
the History of John within Syriac communities—regardless of its ori-
gins in Greek or Syriac.
Since Wright, several other witnesses have come to light that
have called most of his assumptions into question. Moreover, the
work of Eric Junod and Jean-Daniel Kaestli has begun to sort out the
place of the History of John within the larger Acta Iohannis corpus.
xi
xii THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

This volume is the culmination of text-critical work as much as it is a

venture into what I would call “contextual criticism”, building on
the work of Junod and Kaestli. No one, until now, has offered any
strong cases for the date, authorship and provenance of the History
of John, and thus my own inquiry must begin with such basic, but
foundational, questions.
Along the way, a few methodological questions have guided my
thinking in the course of this project. When I first encountered the
History of John, I was struck that a Christian group in a post-Nicaea
(and post-Eusebian) context would write and continue to read and
copy this text. Who would write such a text? Why would they write
it? What type of literature is this? What was the intended function of
this text? Whose interests was it intended to serve? Who was trying
to convince whom of what with this narrative? How does this text
help contribute to our understanding of Christian literature in Syri-
ac?
I started with these fundamental questions that had yet to be
asked of this particular narrative, many of which were stimulated by
religion scholars like Bruce Lincoln.
These questions and others have been the driving force behind
my inquiry. In the end, I must admit that I have merely scratched the
surface of this text. With this book, however, I provide a solid foun-
dation for further investigation by offering some preliminary hy-
potheses about its origins and functions. It is my hope that this ini-
tial work will stimulate further interest in this text that has been the
object of my curiosity for so long.
The layout of the book is quite straightforward. I begin with a
history of scholarship—which is quite brief, given the text has re-
ceived little attention. Most of the critical investigation surrounding
the History of John has focused on its relationship to other literature
in the Acta Iohannis corpus. This is a discussion that needs to con-
tinue beyond the confines of this book and I offer here a mere sum-
mary of the important arguments. Some material incorporated into
later versions of the narrative—which is published here for the first
time—may have a bearing on the discussion of how this text fits into
the traditions about John writ large.
Chapter two addresses the manuscripts, focusing particularly
on how they might relate to one another. Again, more work here
 PREFACE xiii

needs to be done, as I have not been able to compare the Syriac ver-
sions to the Arabic or the Armenian versions. Chapter three turns to
the questions about provenance, date and authorship. Much of this
material has grown out of investigations from my dissertation. I have
left out the more speculative hypotheses to save for other venues.
Here, I think it is important to address the fundamental questions as
critically as possible before moving into speculative investigation.
The rest of the book consists of the texts and translations. I
have followed current trends in publishing Syriac texts and have opt-
ed to use the earliest extant manuscript as the base text. I have made
every effort to present the base text as it appears in the manuscript.
The same may be said of the recorded variants. In the appendices I
have included longer portions of added material from later witnesses,
which could not reasonably be included in footnotes. In the case of
one manuscript, which is an abridgment of the narrative, I have in-
cluded the entire Syriac text with a translation.
William Wright did not see much value in this text. Neverthe-
less, the History of John has been an academic gold mine for me over
the last several years and will likely continue to be so for years to
come.
LIST OF PLATES

Plate I : Remains of Artemision in Ephesus (Selçuk, Turkey) with

ruins of the Church of St. John on the hill behind it. ã Livius.org |
Jona Lendering. Used with permission.

Plate II: Remains of Artemision with Church of St. John on the hill
behind it. ã Livius.org | Jona Lendering. Used with permission.

Plate III: Theatre of Ephesus from the Arcadian road. ã Livius.org |

Jona Lendering. Used with permission.

Plate IV: View of the top most seat of theatre, the easternmost point
of the complex. ã Livius.org | Jona Lendering. Used with permis-
sion.

Plate V: BnF syr. 236. The name “Satan” is inverted. Courtesy of the
Bibliothèque nationale de France.

Plate VI : BnF syr. 236. Photo by the author. Courtesy of the Biblio-
thèque nationale de France.

Plate VII : BnF syr. 235. Photo by the author. Courtesy of the Biblio-
thèque nationale de France.

Plate VIII : Trichur, India, Chaldean Syrian Church, HMML Proj.

Num. APSTCH THRI 00009 folios 168r to 180r. Photo courtesy of
the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, Saint John’s University,
Minnesota, USA. Published with permission of the Chaldean Syrian
Church. All rights reserved.
xv
xvi THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

Plate IX: Manuscript E, fol. 169r with examples of word-length lacu-

nae left by the copyist. Trichur, India, Chaldean Syrian Church,
HMML Proj. Num. APSTCH THRI 00009 folios 168r to 180r.
Photo courtesy of the Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, Saint
John’s University, Minnesota, USA. Published with permission of
the Chaldean Syrian Church. All rights reserved.
CHAPTER 1.
HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP

The study of Christian apocrypha has advanced our understanding

of the late-antique Mediterranean world regarding the diversity of
Christianity and its manifestations, but also of the social, political,
and epistemological issues that Christians faced. As a subfield of the
study of Christian apocrypha, however, those texts that originated in
the Syriac language have received comparably less attention from
scholars than their Greek and Latin counterparts. Despite the fact
that Syriac apocrypha have been edited and in circulation since the
nineteenth century, those interested in Christian apocrypha have
generally overlooked Syriac sources.1 This is in part due to the fact
that the study of Christian apocrypha has typically focused on their
relationship to “canonical” texts. The further away the apocrypha are
from the first two or three centuries of the common era, the less val-

1 The collections of apocrypha by Hennecke and Schneemelcher and by J.K.

Elliot include the Acts of Thomas, which may have originated in Syriac.
They both also include the Abgar-Jesus correspondence, but not the full
narrative of the Doctrina Addai. To his credit, Hans-Josef Klauck mentions
several of the Syriac versions of apocrypha, including the History of John,
and he at least footnotes the Syriac versions of the Acts of Thekla. He does
not mention the History of Philip or the Syriac versions of the Acts of An-
drew and Mattathias.

1
2 THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

ue they are assumed to have for purposes of comparison to New Tes-

tament sources.2
Regrettably, this tendency to overlook Syriac apocrypha has al-
so been true of scholars of Syriac Christianity, to some extent.3 Some
of the early pioneers of Syriac scholarship focused their efforts on
attempting to reconstruct the origins of Christianity in the Syrian
and Persian frontiers and often passed over sources they deemed to
be purely fictional. Thankfully, more recent scholarship has begun to
alter this trend, especially European scholarship which has led the
way in this regard. 4 Broadly speaking, this book aims to join in this
effort by (re)introducing an important narrative from the Syriac tra-
dition into discussion about Syriac studies, Christian apocrypha, and
late antique studies in general.
The present work focuses on a text known as the History of
John (other scholars have called it the “Syriac Acts of John”), alt-
hough I have also included some other Syriac works dealing with the
life of John the son of Zebedee in the appendices. The history of
scholarship on this text may be separated into two broad fields of

2 For a response to this trend, see the recent essay by Pierluigi Piovanelli,
“Scriptural Trajectories Through Early Christianity, Late Antiquity, and
Beyond”, pp. 95-110.
3 There is no entry for “apocrypha” in the Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary
of the Syriac Heritage, although there is an entry for “Hagiography” and
one for “Martyrs and persecutions.” They do include individual entries on
the Doctrina Addai, the Acts of Mar Mari, and the Acts of Thomas.
Though, see the essay by H.J.W. Drijvers, “Apocryphal Literature in the
Cultural Milieu of Osrhoëne”, pp. 231-247. He does not mention the Histo-
ry of John.
4 See especially Muriel Debié, Christelle and Florence Jullien, and
Alain Desreumaux, eds. Les apocryphes syriaques; Muriel Debié, “Les apo-
cryphes et l’histoire en syriaque”, pp. 63-76. Ground-breaking studies on
Syriac apocrypha continue to come out of Europe. See Desreumaux, His-
toire du roi Abgar et de Jésus; Jullien and Jullien, Les Actes des Mar Mari.
Flavia Ruani and Émilie Villey are currently working on a critical edition of
the History of Philip for the CCSA series. On the general trends of North
American scholarship on Apocrypha, see J.-M. Roessli, “North American
Approaches to the Study of the Christian Apocrypha on the World Stage”,
pp. 34-49.
 CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP 3

inquiry. The first deals with the text itself and its origins as an origi-
nal Syriac narrative. The second deals with the relationship of the
History of John to other legends about John the son of Zebedee. The
following survey will treat these two fields separately for the sake of
organization.

T HE HISTORY OF JOHN AS A SYRIAC T EXT

In 1871, British Orientalist William Wright published a collection of
apocryphal acts of apostles in Syriac.5 The crown jewel of this collec-
tion—both from Wright’s own point of view and within the history
of Syriac apocrypha scholarship—was a version of the Syriac Acts of
Thomas, which became a focal point for scholarship for over a centu-
ry afterward.6 The other texts in Wright’s collection have received far
less attention by comparison. Most, in fact, appeared to be Syriac
translations of already known Greek works, such as the Acts of
Thekla and the Acts of Mattathias and Andrew.
The first text in Wright’s volume was a work entitled in Syriac
The History of John the Son of Zebedee. For his introductory com-
ments he wrote:

These Acts, which are obviously translated from the Greek, be-
ing of comparatively late date, and to all appearance destitute of
any historical basis, are chiefly valuable from the linguistic point
of view…The Greek original, however, is, so far as I am aware,
unpublished, if indeed it be still extant. 7

Wright’s judgment about the usefulness of the History of John

notwithstanding, the most intriguing observation he offered was his
opinion about a Greek Vorlage. Upon reading the narrative, it is im-

5 William Wright, Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles.

6 The bibliography on the Acts of Thomas is immense. For quick reference,
see the one compiled by Henry, Jonathan. “Acts of Thomas.” e-Clavis:
Christian Apocrypha. Accessed 19 September 2018.
http://www.nasscal.com/e-clavis-christian-apocrypha/acts-of-thomas/.
7 Wright, Apocryphal Acts, p. ix.
4 THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

mediately clear that the History of John is quite distinct from the
Greek Acts of John. The Syriac narrative begins at Pentecost where
John is led by the Spirit of Holiness ($(‫ ܕ&'ܕ‬$#‫ )ܪܘ‬to Ephesus,
which is described as the head of idolatry. John travels to Ephesus in
Palestinian raiment and converts a few people along the way. He
enters the city at the height of a festival and takes on a job as a bath-
keeper under a man named Secundus, who becomes John's first con-
vert in Ephesus. After a run-in with an adulterous youth named
Menelaus, during which the youth is killed by an angel of the Lord,
John comes to the attention of the local governor—and father of
Menelaus. The governor, Tyrannus, is inclined to allow the mob to
lynch John until John raises Menelaus back to life and the youth
stops the mob by testifying to John’s legitimacy.
Based on the testimony of Menelaus and his vision, Tyrannus
and his entourage agree to hear John’s message. They are convinced
and agree to abandon worship of the goddess Artemis. They make a
baptistry in the theatre and John baptizes Tyrannus and the nobles
of the city. The priests of Artemis retaliate by calling people to wor-
ship. John asks for a hut to be built for him on a hill overlooking the
Temple of Artemis. When the priests inquire of the goddess how to
respond to John, it is revealed that Artemis’ image is inhabited by a
demon named Legion. The demon warns the priests that John’s
Lord is more powerful than they are and recommends that the
priests acquiesce to his teachings. The priests come to John and beg
for baptism. After their conversion, Nero hears of these events and
has John arrested. An angel of the Lord visits Nero and threatens
him to release John. Out of fear, Nero orders John’s release. Peter
and Paul come to Ephesus to see John and beg him to write his gos-
pel. He writes it in an hour and gives it to the other Apostles. John
lives out the rest of his life in peace and dies in his hut at the age of
120 years old.
This story, while unique insofar as its Greek Vorlage was unde-
termined, was only interesting to Wright as an example of Syriac
translation of Greek. As far as he was concerned, the History of John
had not originated in Syriac and was simply an apocryphon that had
been coopted by Syriac churches. Compared to the Acts of Thom-
as—whose origins in either Greek or Syriac have yet to be completely
settled—this text was, for Wright, derivative and less worthy of at-
 CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP 5

tention. This was, thankfully, not the final assessment of the narra-
tive.
Three decades after Wright published the History of John, R.H.
Connolly devoted two essays to its contents, including one in which
he argued against Wright that Syriac was, in fact, the original lan-
guage of the narrative. 8 Connolly pointed to the affinities between
certain Syriac expressions from third- and fourth-century Syriac liter-
ature (which was Wright’s proposed period of provenance for the
History of John). I will briefly summarize them here.9 First, in ch. 1,
the History of John refers to demons and devils as “children of the
left hand” ($/.- ,+)̈). This symbolic representation of evil on
the left hand and good on the right hand appears in the works of St.
Ephrem the Syrian († 373), in particular, in the Hymns against Julian,
which were written in his Edessene period (363-373 CE).10 Second, in
three instances (chs. 2, 14, 18) John mentions that Christ “entered by
the ear of the Virgin” (867‫ܘ‬6) ‫ ܕ‬$5‫ ܐܕ‬32 10‫)ܘ‬, an idea also
echoed by Ephrem in his commentary on the Diatessaron. It also
appears in the Revelation of the Magi, which only survives in Syriac
and might be an original Syriac composition.11 Third, a favorite ex-
pression for the incarnation in the History of John is the symbolic
notion that Christ “put on the body” (>=<; :97). The phrase

8 R.H. Connolly, “The Diatessaron in the Syriac Acts of John”, pp. 571-581;
Connolly, “The Original Language of the Syriac Acts of John”, pp. 249-261.
9 See Connolly, “Original Language”, pp. 250-255.
10 Ephrem, Cont. Jul. 1.2, 7, 14. The context of these references is the emper-
or Julian as the head of the forces of evil, i.e., the “left hand.” See Kathleen
McVey, Ephrem the Syrian: Hymns, pp. 226-232.
11 Comm. 20.32 “Death entered through Eve’s ear; consequently life entered
through Mary’s ear.” Translation from Carmel McCarthy, Saint Ephrem’s
Commentary on Tatian’s Diatessaron, p. 311. In the Revelation of the Magi
Mary says to the infant Christ, “I have rejoiced that I have seen the treasury
of salvation, and my light, and the holy child, who is the obedience of my
ears.” See Brent Landau, The Revelation of the Magi, p. 75. Landau says
(note 221 on p. 141) that this statement “seems to demonstrate a familiarity
with the ancient Christian doctrine that Mary’s conception happened
through auditory channels—i.e., through her ear. Although the doctrine
becomes especially popular in the mid-fifth century and beyond, traces of it
appear as early as the second-century Protevangelium of James [cf. 11:5].”
6 THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

occurs in chs. 18 and 28 and is a favorite metaphor for the incarnation

in the Acts of Thomas,12 Ephrem,13 Aphrahat, the Persian Sage (early
fourth century),14 and also appears in the Doctrina Addai.15
Fourth, the baptism sequences include a signing of the cross
($9@7‫ ܕܨ‬$.(‫ )ܪܘ‬over the initiates prior to baptism (chs. 21, 27).
This was an early Syrian baptismal rite mentioned in the Odes of Sol-
omon, the Acts of Thomas, Aphrahat, and Ephrem.16 The baptismal
scenes overall are comparable to the earliest known Syrian rites and
are particularly related to those found in the Acts of Thomas. Finally,
in a few places in the History of John, Connolly suggested that specif-
ic Syriac phrases imitate St. Ephrem. For example, in ch. 18 we find
“while he was forming children in wombs he was with his Father,” a
phrase similar to one from Ephrem’s Hymn on Nativity 4: “While
the fetus of the Son was being formed in the womb, He himself was
forming babes in the womb.”17
Connolly went so far as to suggest that “the author of these
Acts was acquainted with the writings of St. Ephraim, or, vice versa,
that Ephraim knew the Acts.”18 After providing several examples of
Syriac word play in the History of John, Connolly concluded that the
History of John is an original Syriac composition belonging to the
earliest extant idiom of Syriac Christian literature. It is immersed in

12 Acts of Thomas 10, 48, 76, 80, 143. See also A.F.J. Klijn, The Acts of
Thomas, p. 35.
13 This phrase occurs all over Ephrem’s writings and is his favorite metaphor
for the incarnation. Cf. Sebastian P. Brock, “Clothing Metaphors as a
Means of Theological Expression in Syriac Tradition”, pp. 11-38; Brock, The
Luminous Eye, pp. 32, 36-43; Robert Murray, Symbols of Church and King-
dom, 73-82.
14 Dems. 21, 22, 23. See Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom, pp.69-73.
15 DA 36-37. George Howard, The Teaching of Addai, pp. 38-39;
Desreumaux, Histoire du roi Abgar, pp. 76-77.
16 See Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom, p. 21; Klijn Acts of Thomas,
pp. 54-61; OdeSol 27; 42.1-2.
17 Translation from McVey, Ephrem the Syrian, p. 101. Connolly listed this
phrase in Hymn 3.
18 Connolly, “Original Language”, p. 253.
 CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP 7

the style, imagery, symbolism, metaphors, and liturgical rites of the

third and fourth century Syriac literary epoch.
As a result of Connolly’s study, we can no longer take for grant-
ed Wright’s original observation that the History of John was “obvi-
ously translated from the Greek”.19 Rather, it appears to be an origi-
nal Syriac work distinct from the Greek Acts of John, though sharing
some traditions in common with it. Scholarship since Connolly con-
tinues to consider the History of John an original Syriac composition.
In 1904, right around the same time that Connolly was studying
the text, Agnes Smith Lewis published an Arabic version of the His-
tory of John, which is shorter than the extant Syriac versions (with
the exception of manuscript E).20 Lewis relied to a large extent on the
prior work of R.A. Lipsius and raised some interesting questions
worth mentioning, although her hypotheses remain largely unex-
plored. First, she maintained that the Arabic was “probably a transla-
tion of the Syriac version of this story,” which may bolster the argu-
ment that the History of John is an original Syriac composition.21
Second, she suggested that the Arabic version was based on an earlier
version of the Syriac than what is found in the extant versions.
The Syriac version contains traces of the Nicene Creed which are
less distinct in the Arabic, such as “Light of light”; “the Son of
God, Who was eternally with His Father” ; “the Spirit of holi-
ness, Who proceeded from the Father.” The baptism of chil-
dren, described in the Syriac but wanting in the Arabic, was not
yet customary in the East at the close of the fourth century. The
anointing with oil before baptism…is in accordance with a
Catholic form of the rite used since the fourth century. The
Lord’s Supper is not called the “Body of God” in the Arabic ver-
sion, as it is in Dr. Wright’s text. These things, together with the
greater consciousness of the Arabic, suggest that our text is
translated from a Syriac MS older than Add. MS. 17,192 of the

19 Wright, Apocryphal Acts, p. ix.

20 Agnes Smith Lewis, Acta Mythologica Apostolorum.
21 Lewis, Acta Mythologica Apostolorum, p. xxxii.
8 THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

British Museum, or even than the sixth century St Petersburg

MS used by Dr. Wright.22
It is possible, Lewis argued, that the Arabic version represents
an older version of the text. It contains shorter prayers and speeches
than the Syriac versions; it omits some of the ascetic terminology
used to characterize John; it leaves out some of the specific Syriac
phrases used as evidence by Connolly, such as Christ entering “the
ear of the Virgin.” In other words, the extant Syriac witnesses con-
tain a more elaborate version of the story than the Arabic. Overall,
Lewis regarded this as evidence that the story preserved in the Arabic
manuscript may pre-date the known Syriac versions.
While this is an interesting hypothesis, there are reasons to sus-
pect that the Arabic version actually represents a later, abridged re-
cension. Syriac manuscripts E and F preserve a paraphrased version
of the History of John, which is evidence for the editing of the Syriac
narrative in the later stages of its transmission. In fact, we notice
many of the same excisions and omissions in ms E (and possibly F,
which is only a fragment) as we see in the Arabic text edited by Lew-
is, including missing ascetic terminology and pared down prayers and
speeches. It may be the case, therefore, that the Arabic text was based
on a later, edited Syriac version similar to ms E. In their assessment of
Lewis’ hypothesis, Eric Junod and Jean-Daniel Kaestli reviewed fur-
ther discrepancies between the Syriac and the Arabic and came to a
similar conclusion that, instead of the Arabic representing an earlier
version, rather, the editor of the Arabic has intentionally paraphrased
the more verbose Syriac.
Quand l’écart entre un texte long et un texte court devient sou-
dain tellement large, il est difficile de croire que les premier
puisse être une amplification du second. On admettra plus vo-
lontiers que le traducteur arabe s’est lassé de la verbosité du sy-
riaque.23

22 Lewis, Acta Mythologica, p. xxxiii.

23 Eric Junod and Jean-Daniel Kaestli. Acta Iohannis, vol. 2, p. 717.
 CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP 9

While an intriguing hypothesis, it is unlikely that the Arabic

text contains an earlier recension of the History of John than that
preserved in extant Syriac witnesses. Since Lewis published her text,
another Arabic witness has come to light that, to my knowledge, has
not been edited or compared with Lewis’ manuscript. More work is
needed to fully respond to Agnes Smith Lewis’ hypothesis.
Based on the scholarship after Wright’s initial publication of
the text, it appears that the History of John is an original Syriac work.
I see no reason to doubt this conclusion. The late Robert Murray
briefly mentioned the work in his study of the early Syriac tradi-
tion.24 In fact, he hinted that it belonged alongside other early Syriac
apocrypha, such as the Doctrina Addai and, if originally from Syriac,
the Acts of Thomas. The History of John, therefore, may be consid-
ered as a witness to the early invention of apostolic apocryphal leg-
ends specific to the Syriac-speaking Christian traditions.

T HE HISTORY OF JOHN IN THE ACTA IOHANNIS

TRADITIONS
These early publications focused primarily on the text of the History of
John and its origins as an original Syriac text. Parallel to these discus-
sions were hypotheses concerning the History of John’s relationship to
earlier Greek traditions about John. The most obvious of these rela-
tionships is found between the History of John and the Acts of John by
Ps. Prochorus (just Prochorus from here on). Prochorus probably
comes from the sixth century and the roughly 150 manuscripts were
edited by Theodor Zahn in the nineteenth century.25 The History of
John and Prochorus share some important details with one another:26
• the narratives begin with the dispersion of the Apostles at
Pentecost
• when John arrives at Ephesus he first procures employment
at a bathhouse

24 Murray, Symbols of Church and Kingdom, p. 37.

25 Theodor Zahn, Acta Ioannis. See Klauck, Apocryphal Acts of the Apos-
tles, pp. 43-4.
26 Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, p. 2.708.
10 THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

• the son of an official dies at the bathhouse and is raised by

John
• the cult of Artemis becomes a focal point after the bath-
house scene and John eventually defeats the goddess.
The amount of overlap between the two texts led some scholars
to posit a literary relationship. For his part, Zahn downplayed the
significance of their shared material and said that, since the overlap
only occurs for the first part of Prochorus (which is significantly
longer than the History of John), the comparisons could not be ex-
plained by dependency on a common source, but by the diffusion of
general traditions about John (presumably both oral and written).27
A few years later, R.A. Lipsius provided his take on the matter.
Lipsius argued that since both narratives follow such a close se-
quence—even if only at the beginning—they both must share a
common source, which he concluded must have been the Greek Acts
of John.28 He suggested that the two narratives displayed different
degrees of dependency on the Acts of John, beginning with the jour-
ney from Jerusalem to Ephesus, the shipwreck (found in Prochorus),
and the death of the young man in the bathhouse.29 Lipsius admitted
that the Syriac narrative borrowed much more loosely from the Acts
of John, but he maintained that there were still clear parallels.
In 1911, V.C. Macmunn advanced a brief hypothesis based on
Lipsius and another work (which I have not been able to locate30)

27 Zahn, Acta Joannis, pp. lvi-lvii.

28 Richard A. Lipsius, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und Apostellegen-
den, pp. 1.433-441.
29 Lipsius, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und Apostellegenden, 1.435-438.
30 The book was evidently published in London in 1910 (by Paul, Trench,
Trubner & Co.) by “the author of ‘Resurrectio Christi’.” A description
from the Journal of Religious Psychology 4 p. 315 describes, “The author
treats the visions of men who are raised from the dead, the visions of young
men, the double view of Pentecost, how the five hundred were brought to
Jerusalem, the first, second, and third psychological question, were all the
Christophanies subliminal? our theory in the light of St. Paul, the compress-
ibility of events.”
 CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP 11

called The Vision of the Young Man Menelaus.31 Macmunn argued

that the author of the History of John must have had a copy of the
common source (for Macmunn the “Leucian” Acts of John) in front
of him. This is clear, he argued, from the murder/resurrection of
Menelaus which, in the narrative, takes place after Menelaus and the
harlot exit the bathhouse. However, when Menelaus recounts his
after-death experience and reveals to the crowd what happened be-
tween him and John, Menelaus says he perished inside the bath-
house. Macmunn hypothesized that the author’s source placed the
altercation inside the bathhouse, where the characters would have
been nude. This “outraged [the author’s] sense of propriety” so that
he moved the scene outside of the bathhouse after Menelaus and his
female consort had dressed themselves (see ch. 10).
To some degree, Lipsius and Macmunn were not unjustified in
their conclusions. One place Lipsius overlooked that could demon-
strate distinct knowledge of the Acts of John is in History of John 24.
John attempts to leave Ephesus to go to Phrygia and other parts of
Asia to promote his gospel. The Ephesians beg him to stay, which
John reluctantly agrees to do. Right after this, John goes head to head
with the cult of Artemis. In Acts of John 37 a similar scene takes
place. Here, John’s followers want to depart to Smyrna, having been
in Ephesus for some time. John responds, “First let us go to the tem-
ple of Artemis! For if we are seen there we shall be able to find minis-
ters of the Lord.”32 The sequence here of plans to leave Ephesus fol-
lowed by confronting and dismantling the cult of Artemis may indi-
cate that the author of the History of John at least knew about the
Acts of John and perhaps used it as a source.
In their authoritative volumes on the Acta Iohannis traditions,
Eric Junod and Jean-Daniel Kaestli also agreed with Lipsius that
there must be some common source behind the History of John and
the acts by Ps. Prochorus. 33 In their assessment, however, the two
texts must be treated distinctly, even though their common elements

31 V.C. Macmunn, “The Menelaus Episode in the Syriac Acts of John”, pp.
463-465.
32 Translation from Elliot, The Apocryphal New Testament, p. 322.
33 Acta Iohannis, pp. 2.705–17.
12 THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

probably go back to a shared source tradition. However, Junod and

Kaestli rejected the arguments of Lipsius and Macmunn that this
common source was the Acts of John. Rather, Junod and Kaestli
were content to say that the source is no longer extant, if it was even
a written source at all.34 They note (a la Zahn) that the two texts
only share common material in the early parts of the narratives while
the later parts—in which John goes to Patmos in Prochorus and
writes his gospel in History of John—have seemingly very little con-
nection with the earlier parts of the narratives. They write,
C’est comme si les deux textes, depuis l’exil, étaient soudain lâ-
chés par un cadre narratif auquel ils s’étaient jusque-là très li-
brement rattachés.35
Following Junod and Kaestli, Alain Desreumaux says that the
narrative of the History of John is distinct from Ps. Prochorus, “avec
lesquels elle pourrait remonter à une source commune.”36
Desreumaux does not elaborate on the type of source he imagines
behind the two texts. He does, however, acknowledge the attempts
in the History of John to bridge traditions between Ephesus and
Edessa.37 With this in mind, Desreumaux concludes,
…on perçoit dans ce simple exemple, un rôle que certains textes
apocryphes au moins ont pu jouer dans l’histoire de Églises et
dans les conceptions ecclésiales.38
Desreumaux is therefore attuned to the role of the History of
John—and Christian apocrypha in general—in contributing to the
formation and structuring of Syriac ecclesiastical institutions, rituals,
histories, and ideologies. This is a potentially fruitful direction for

34 Junod and Kaestli, Acta

Iohannis, p. 2.710.
35 Junod and Kaestli, Acts
Iohannis, p. 2.711.
36 Alain Desreumaux, “Les apocryphes apostoliques”, p. 79.
37 Desreumaux, “Les apocryphes apostoliques”, p. 81-82.
38 Desreumaux, “Les apocryphes apostoliques”, p. 82.
 CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP 13

scholarship on Syriac apocrypha and my hope is that this book will

contribute to this methodological trend. 39
Based on the broader narrative trajectory of the History of John,
I am inclined to agree with Junod and Kaestli and Desreumaux
against Lipsius and Macmunn. I do not think that the Syriac narra-
tive is directly dependent on the Acts of John as a source. I do think,
however, that the author of the Syriac knew about the Acts of John
in some form. In fact, it is possible, as some have argued, that por-
tions of the Acts of John may have developed independently in Syria
(perhaps even in Syriac) and may have been disseminated by Mani-
chaeans in the region.
The textual history of the Acts of John is complex and will not
be discussed in detail here. 40 In the 1964 edition of Hennecke and
Schneemelcher’s Neutestamentliche Apokryphen, Knut Schäferdiek
argued that the Acts of John belonged to Valentinian gnostic cirlces.41
Junod and Kaestli built on Schäferdiek’s hypothesis and proposed
that Manichaeans had integrated the gnostic sections into other exist-
ing Acts of John traditions.42 In a 1983 essay, Schäferdiek went fur-
ther to suggest that portions of the Acts of John had originated in
Syria (possibly in Syriac) and were in circulation as authoritative texts
among Manichaeans in the region, as exemplified by the Manichae-
an Psalm-Book, which was originally written in Syriac.43

39 For a good example of this type of approach see the recent book by Jeanne-
Nicole Saint-Laurent, Missionary Stories and the Formation of Syriac Churches.
40 See the discussion in Junod and Kaestli and also in Pieter J. Lalleman,
Acts of John, pp. 5-24.
41 “Acts of John”, in Hennecke and Schneemelcher, New Testament Apoc-
rypha, pp. 2.125-176. The “gnostic” origin of the Acts of John is also defend-
ed by Lallemann, Acts of John, and Luttikhuizen, “A Gnostic Reading of
the Acts of John”.
42 Eric Junod and Jean-Daniel Kaestli, “L’histoire des Actes Apocryphes des
Apôtres” ; Eric Junod and Jean-Daniel Kaestli, “Le Dossier des ‘Actes de
Jean’”, pp. 4293-4362. Cf. Lalleman, Acts of John, pp. 59-68 who rejects this
separation and argues that the two parts may have developed in the same
group and area, but at slightly different times.
43 Knut Schäferdiek, “Herkunft und Interesse der altern Johannesak-
ten”, pp. 247-267. For the Psalter, see Charles R.C. Allberry, A Manichaean
Psalm-Book. Allberry contended that the Psalter originated in Syriac and
14 THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

Building on Schäferdiek, Cornelia Horn recently suggested that

it was through Manichaeans that gnostic ideas travelled from the
Acts of John and came to be incorporated into passages in the
Qur’an.44 She briefly touches on the History of John, suggesting in
passing that despite the possible existence of portions of the Acts of
John in Syria among Manichaeans, the author of the History of John
may have consciously rejected the majority of the Acts of John narra-
tive, choosing, rather, to rewrite the legend of John altogether.
Ultimately the Syriac History of John, in the form in which it is
available, represents a revised narrative of the adventures of the
apostle, from which potentially offensive or heretical passages
that could smack of Gnosticism were expurgated, or into which
such material was not incorporated in the first place.45
This is an intriguing hypothesis. If the Acts of John had been a
popular Manichaean text, then it is likely that some form of it had
been widely disseminated throughout Syria, where Manichaeism
made its entrance into the Roman world.46 It is plausible, therefore,
that the author of the History of John would not only have known
the Acts of John, but also would have known about its association
with Manichaeans. Could the History of John have been composed
with this in mind? That is, the author may have taken issue with the
portrayal of John as a gnostic teacher and chosen to recalibrate the
story of John to make him and his teachings more acceptable to his
audience. After all, the History of John has a clear Trinitarian theolo-

was subsequently translated into Coptic. For the use of apocryphal acts by
Manichaeans, see Jean-Daniel Kaestli, “L’utilisation des Actes Apocryphes
des Apôtres dan le Manichéisme”, pp. 107-116; P/ Nagel, “Die apokryphen
Apostelakten des 2. und 3. Jahrhunderts in der manichäischen Literatur”,
pp. 149-182; Manfred Heuser and Hans-Joachim Klimkeit, “The Use of
Scripture in Manichaeism”, pp. 111-122.
44 Cornelia B. Horn, “Lines of Transmission”, pp. 337-355.
45 Horn, “Lines of Transmission”, p. 342.
46 Peter Brown, “The Diffusion of Manichaeism in the Roman Empire”,
pp. 92-103. See also Samuel N.C. Lieu, “Christianity and Manichaeism”, p.
286: “It was missionary success in frontier cities like Edessa, Nisibis and
Palmyra that brought the religion into the Roman empire.”
 CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP 15

gy that places it in a post-Nicaea context. 47 By casting John as a pro-

Nicene apostle, the History of John may be seen as reclaiming John
from the Gnostics/Manichaeans, by whom John was held captive, so
to speak, in texts like the Acts of John. There certainly were polemics
between the various groups claiming the title “Christians” through-
out Syria and claims to apostolic authority could serve to reinforce
the legitimacy and authority of a particular set of teachings. The very
raison d’être behind the composition of the History of John may lay
in the interreligious competitive landscape of late-antique Syria.
The question of the exact relationship between the History of
John and other texts in the Acta Iohannis corpus remains open to
some degree. I have advocated here the hypothesis that the author of
the History of John knew of some version of the Acts of John, but has
consciously recalibrated the story of John in a way that conformed to
the sensibilities of the imagined audience.
Although the History of John appears to be an original Syriac
composition, it is certainly related to the wider legendarium sur-
rounding John the son of Zebedee. Junod and Kaestli place it along-
side the Acts of John by Ps. Prochorus, the Virtutes Iohannis, the Pas-
sio Iohannis, and the Acts of John in Rome, all of which make up a
corpus they refer to as the Lives of John (“Vies de Jean”).48 R. Alan
Culpepper summarizes that the various myths surrounding the life
of John cannot be reduced to a “single apocryphal account,” but ra-
ther they represent a “history of apocryphal traditions.”49 Later on,
Culpepper comments that the History of John is an example of “the
way in which legend builds on legend.”50 Thus, while the History of
John may not be directly dependent on any single earlier Greek text,
it certainly belongs to the wider Corpus Iohannis.

T HE BAPTISM SEQUENCES IN THE HISTORY OF JOHN

Beyond issues of the text, original language, and place within the
Acta Iohannis traditions, the baptism scenes in the History of John

47 Klauck, Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, p. 42.

48 Acta Iohannis, p. 2.703.
49 R. Alan Culpepper, John the Son of Zebedee, p. 190.
50 John the Son of Zebedee, p. 223.
16 THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

have attracted the most scholarly attention. The interest in these se-
quences began with an insightful essay by A.F.J. Klijn in 1963 in
which he concluded that the liturgy in the History of John was a
“primitive” one, akin to the baptisms found in the Acts of Thomas
and several fourth-century writers, including Cyril of Jerusalem,
Ephrem, and John Chrysostom.51 Klijn’s conclusions have been
adopted by others—including E.C. Whitaker,52 Sebastian Brock,53
Henry Kelley,54 Everett Ferguson,55 and Harald Buchinger56—that 1)
the History of John includes a pre-baptismal anointing of the candi-
dates, a distinct marker of the earliest forms of the Syrian baptismal
liturgy57; 2) there is no exorcism and 3) there is no explicit renuncia-
tion of Satan by the candidates.58 Although Klijn did not propose a
specific date for the History of John, his important study suggested
that the narrative belongs to an early period of Syriac Christian tradi-
tion.

CONCLUSION
Scholarship on the History of John has yielded several conclusions
and has left a few questions open. First, based on the work of Con-
nolly, it is clear that the History of John should be understood as an
original Syriac narrative. The affinity for particular idioms suggests
that the text belongs to the early part of the Syriac literary epoch, that
of writers like Ephrem and Aphrahat, and perhaps the Acts of
Thomas. Second, the History of John is also an important witness to

51 A.F.J. Klijn, “An Ancient Baptismal Liturgy in the Syriac Acts of John”,
pp. 216-228. For Cyril see E. Yarnold, Cyril of Jerusalem; for John Chrysos-
tom see Piédagnel and Doutreleau, Jean Chrysostome: Trois Catéchèses Bap-
tismales.
52 E.C. Whitaker, Documents of the Baptismal Liturgy, pp. 21-23.
53 Sebastian P. Brock, “Studies in the Early History of the Syrian Orthodox
Baptismal Liturgy”, 16-64.
54 Henry A. Kelley, The Devil at Baptism, pp. 161-187.
55 Everett Ferguson, Baptism in the Early Church, pp. 700-702.
56 Harald Buchinger, “Liturgy and Early Christian Apocrypha”, pp. 361-377.
57 Sebastian P. Brock, “The Transition to a Post-Baptismal Anointing in the
Antiochene Rite”, pp. 215-225.
58 Klijn, “Ancient Baptismal Liturgy”, p. 228.
 CHAPTER ONE: HISTORY OF SCHOLARSHIP 17

the development of the Johannine apocryphal tradition—

particularly as that tradition spread eastward. Exactly how it is relat-
ed to earlier and later parts of this tradition is still an open question,
to some degree.
Third, the liturgical sequences in the History of John are im-
portant witnesses to an early stage of the Syrian baptismal liturgy.
They are likely a representation of practices that were in vogue prior
to eastern cities like Edessa aligning themselves with the liturgical
traditions of Antioch. This feature of the narrative, above all, indi-
cates that the History of John must be studied alongside other narra-
tives of the early Syriac literary period, such as the Odes of Solomon,
the Doctrina Addai, and, perhaps, the Acts of Thomas, to name a
few.
Most recently, I have argued for a specific context out of which
the History of John emerged.59 Some of these arguments will be pre-
sented here. Much work remains to be done on this narrative, given
its relative neglect. What scholarship has been done on the History of
John has shown its potential to shed light on some key features of the
text that merit closer evaluation: 1) the development of the traditions
and legendarium surrounding the figure of John the son of Zebedee;
2) the early Syriac liturgical traditions, specifically those pertaining to
baptism; and 3) the ways in which Christians in the East developed,
used, and understood texts taxonomically identified as “apocrypha.”

59 Jacob A. Lollar, “A Sanctifying Myth”.

CHAPTER 2.
THE MANUSCRIPTS

In the first half of the tenth century, Mushē of Nisibis, the abbot of
Dayr al-Suryān (‘Monastery of the Syrians’ in the Nitrian valley,
Egypt), traveled to Baghdad in order to appeal to the caliph (al-
Muqtadir) concerning taxation of the Egyptian monasteries. While
awaiting the results of his appeal, Mushē visited sites all over Syria
and collected manuscripts, around 250 in all, and eventually brought
them back to his monastery in 931/2.1 Two of the manuscripts from
the Nitrian collection at Dayr al-Suryān contained the History of
John. Wright relied on the two Nitrian manuscripts for his edition of
the History of John. Since then, several other witnesses have been
identified, although some of these no longer appear to be extant. The
codicological and textual data presented here are a result of direct
examination during the Fall of 2017, with the exception of two wit-
nesses: St. Petersburg Syr. Ms 4 and Ms. Trichur Aprem 83.2 For the
latter, I was generously supplied with high definition photographs of
the manuscript by professor Alain Desreumaux while I was in Paris.
Desreumaux originally discovered the manuscript alongside
Françoise Briquel-Chattonet. 3 Since then, the manuscript has been

1 See Sebastian Brock, “Without Mushē of Nisibis, where would we be?”, 15-
24; Lucas Van Rompay, “Mushē of Nisibis”, 301-2.
2 A detailed overview of the manuscripts may be found in Jacob A. Lollar,
“Survey of the Manuscripts”, pp. 113-136.
3 Françoise Briquel-Chatonnet, Alain Desreumaux, and Jacob Thekepa-
rampil. “Découverte d’un manuscript très important”, pp. 587-97. Desreu-
maux presented a number of mss in “Les apocryphes apostoliques”, pp. 71-

19
20 THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

digitized and made available by the Virtual Hill Museum and Manu-
script Library (HMML).4

Siglum Manuscript Date Status

A St. Petersburg Syr. Ms 4 C. 5 Extant (St. Petersburg)
B B.L. Add. 17,192 C. 9 Extant (London)
C BnF Syr. 236 1193/4 Extant (Paris)
D BnF Syr. 235 C. 13 Fragment (Paris)
E Trichur Aprem 83 1615 Extant (Kerala, India)
F Vat. Syr. 597 C. 17 Fragment (Rome)
- Urmia 103 1715 Lost
- Seert 64 C. 16 Lost
- Diyarbakir 41 1198 ?

EXTANT/FRAGMENTARY MANUSCRIPTS
A. St. Petersburg, St. Petersburg Syr. ms 4; vellum, 22.8 x 15.2 cm, 94
fol., 2 col., 5th cent.: fols. 38v-74v. 5
A is the oldest witness to the History of John. It was the basis for
Wright’s text and it is the base manuscript for the present edition. It has

95. His was an updated catalogue of the one presented in Anton Baum-
stark’s Geschichte der syrischen Literatur, p. 68 fn. 6. Neither of these bibli-
ographies included mss D, E, or F. In private correspondences with Prof.
Desreumaux, he communicated that he was aware of all of these manu-
scripts. Thanks to the Chateaubriand Fellowship in the Humanities I was
able to work with mss C and D at the Bibliothèque nationale de France. My
thanks to the BnF and to the British Library for allowing access to mss B, C,
and D, and especially for allowing me to photograph the manuscripts.
4 www.vhmml.org.
5 Catalog: William Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts of the British
Museum, vol. 3, pp. 1082-1086; N. V. Pigulevskaya, “Katalog Siriyskikh
Rukopisey Leningrada”, pp. 140-3, 1960. See also William Wright, “Syriac
Manuscripts at St. Petersburg, etc.”, pp. 461-462; Dorn, Catalogue des ma-
nuscrits et xylographes orientaux de la Bibliothèque Impériale publique de
St. Pétersburg; Michel van Esbroeck, “Le manuscrit syriaque Nouvelle Série
4 de Leningrad (Ve siècle)”, pp. 211-219.
 CHAPTER TWO: THE MANUSCRIPTS 21

been studied in detail by Michel van Esbroeck and has drawn scholarly
attention because it contains the earliest and most complete witness to
the Doctrina Addai. A has a relatively early Syriac orthography that
places it within the latter half of the fifth century. It is damaged in some
places, but the surviving texts are related to those also found in B.L.
Add. 14,644, the other primary witness to the Doctrina Addai. Both
manuscripts contain a dossier of three accounts of the finding of the
True Cross (by Protinike, Kyriakos, and Helena Augusta). In Michel
van Esbroeck's assessment, the origins of the dossier should be traced to
near the turn of the fifth century, perhaps at the instigation of John II of
Jerusalem (d. 392).6
Wright did not indicate if this witness was among those ac-
quired by Mushē, but a note on fol. 142v clarifies that it belonged to
the Monastery of the Syrians.7 When the British were taking posses-
sion of manuscripts from this and other sites in the course of the 18th
and 19th centuries, evidently a Greek named Pacho withheld this par-
ticular manuscript, despite having served as liason for manuscript
sales prior. Later, he sold this manuscript and a few others (including
one dated to 462 and containing the works of Eusebius in Syriac) to
the Russian Imperial Library for 2500 rubles.8 To my knowledge,
this manuscript has not been photographed in full or digitized.9
The fact that the History of John appears in the same manu-
script as the most complete copy of the Doctrina Addai and share
common characteristics of 5th/6th century Syriac orthography. Both

6 van Esbroeck, “Le manuscrit syriac Nouvelle Série 4 de Leningrad (Ve

siècle)”, p. 217.
7 It is very likely that this ms was one acquired by Mushē. Brock, “Without
Mushē of Nisibis, Where Would We Be?”, p. 17 says that 60 of the 250 mss
brought by Mushē belong to the seventh century or earlier. He writes,
“This makes it very likely that at least the majority of the large number of
other very early manuscripts originating from Deir es-Suryān also belong to
the collection of 250 manuscripts that Mushē brought back from Baghfaf,
even though the absence of any specific acquisition note makes it impossible
to be certain about this.”
8 Wright, Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, lviii.
9 Photographs of the folios containing the Doctrina Addai were published
in E.H. Meschcherskaya, Legenda ob Abgare, pp. 118-84.
22 THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

texts, for example, contain matres lectionis on Syriac words that later
drop them, such as ‫'ܠ‬A2 instead of 1A2 or ‫'ܠ‬C instead of 1C. 10
Beyond orthography, both narratives refer to or make use of the Dia-
tessaron Gospel harmony, and the two share a Trinitarian theologi-
cal outlook and employ much of the same anti-Jewish and anti-
“pagan” vocabulary. How much of this comparison is due to scribal
habit and how much is due to their possible connection in prove-
nance is unclear.
Specific to the History of John in ms A is the lack of Syriac vow-
el representation in Greek loan words. Words like ED;‫ ܐ‬become
‫'ܣ‬D;‫ ܐ‬in later witnesses; E/C‫ ܐ‬becomes ‫'ܣ‬/C‫ ;ܐ‬and
‫ܣ‬H5'G- becomes ‫ܘܣ‬H5'G-. These orthographic shifts between
ms A and the later witnesses conforms to the idea submitted by Aa-
ron M. Butts that “over time, vowels in Greek loan words tend to be
represented more fully in Syriac.”11
The title and opening sequence in ms A is important for con-
sidering the history of the text’s transmission. The titles among the
witnesses are not consistent but I have chosen to retain the one from
the earliest extant witness: $N@/( ‫ܝ‬H)‫ )= ܙ‬3+#'K‫ ܕ‬86@J( ‫ܬ‬
$AD/<5‫—ܘܐܘ‬The History of John the Son of Zebedee, Apostle
and Evangelist. The later witnesses vary in terms of which parts of
this early title they retain. Probably more intriguing in ms A is the
attribution of the work to Eusebius of Caesarea.
The history of John the son of Zebedee who fell on the breast of
our Lord Jesus at the supper and said, "My Lord, who betrays
you?" This history about St. John was written by Eusebius of
Caesarea, who found it in a Greek book, and it was translated in-
to Syriac when he learned about his way of life and about his
birth and about his sojourning in the city of Ephesus after the
ascension of our Lord into heaven.

10 A common feature of 5th and 6th century Syriac manuscripts. See Sebas-
tian P. Brock, “Some Diachronic Features of Classical Syriac”, 95-111.
11 Aaron M. Butts, Language Change in the Wake of Empire, p. 93. See also
Butts, “The Integration of Consonants in Greek Loan Words in Syriac”, 1-
35.
 CHAPTER TWO: THE MANUSCRIPTS 23

At least one other manuscript attributes the work to Eusebi-

us—ms C. This attribution may indicate an attempt by the scribe of
ms A (or his source) to bring the History of John into conformity
with the Abgar story represented in the Doctrina Addai. Eusebius’
Historia Ecclesiastica contains the earliest extant reference to the
Abgar story and this work was translated into Syriac as early as the
mid-fifth century.12 It is plausible that the editor(s) of ms A knew the
Syriac translations of Eusebius and intentionally placed the History
of John into the career of Eusebius in order to legitimate this narra-
tive by placing it on par with even the Doctrina Addai for represent-
ing an authentic account of apostolic history.
In terms of the transmission history of the narrative, the attribu-
tion to Eusebius is represented in only two manuscripts (although the
beginning is missing from ms D, so it may have also included this).
Manuscripts B and E omit Eusebius completely. This suggests that
there were at least two lines of transmission for the text: a “Eusebian”
line and a “non-Eusebian” line. I will say more about this below.
B. London, British Library Add. 17,192; vellum, 10.8 x 15.9 cm, 310 fols.,
1 col., 9th cent.: fols. 282v-310v.
B is a rather eclectic volume containing writings from Evagrius, Ignatius,
a letter from Basil to Gregory of Nyssa, a homily by Proclus of Constan-
tinople, and finally ending with the History of John.13 Its small size and
the wear on the pages suggest that the volume was for personal use.
Wright indicated that it was one of the volumes brought to the Wadi al-
Natrun by Mushe. The colophon at the end of fol. 310v states that the
name of the scribe was Jonas, although the name of the original owner
has been erased. Some of the folios have thumb prints on them which
could indicate frequent reading, or may be a byproduct of scholars ex-
amining them (there is a scotch tape stain on fol. 282v). The orthogra-
phy is definitely later than ms A.
Wright compared ms B with ms A for his edition. His assessment
of both witnesses revealed a stable transmission of the narrative be-

12 William Wright and Norman McLean, eds, The Ecclesiastical History of

Eusebius in Syriac.
13 Catalog: Wright, Catalogue of Syriac Manuscripts, vol. 2, pp. 778-781.
24 THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

tween the fifth and the ninth century. There are a couple of notewor-
thy differences between them, however. First, ms B tends to fill in
Gospel quotations more fully than they appear in A. In ch. 8, for ex-
ample, when John is preaching his gospel to Secundus the bathkeeper,
he relates that Jesus “cried out in a loud voice hanging on a tree, then
the preaching of the prophets was fulfilled.” Manuscript B adds direct
speech from the gospel—from the Diatessaron14—saying “he cried out
in a loud voice hanging on a tree, ‘Father, forgive them!’ Then the
preaching of the prophets was fulfilled.” The more developed use of
direct quotations and the desire to fill in such gaps indicates that ms B
contains a later, more developed version of the narrative.
At the same time, there are other factors that intimate that B
contains earlier material. A second noteworthy difference is the miss-
ing attribution to Eusebius that I mentioned earlier. R.H. Connolly
pointed out the fact that neither of the colophons—in fact, none of
them—mentions Eusebius.15 He also suggested that the colophons of
both A and B matched the opening lines of B more closely. Connolly
concluded that ms B must contain the original title of the narrative
which did not attribute the History of John to Eusebius. If Connolly
is correct, then Eusebian authorship may be a later addition to the
textual tradition. It is possible, therefore, that the scribe of A inserted
Eusebius as the author, while the scribe of B was more faithful to the
original title.
A B

8‫'ܬ‬+P/2 6. ̣ /( ‫'ܬܗ‬+P/2 6. ̣ /(
$+̣S‫ ̇ܗܘ ܕ‬.‫ܝ‬H)‫ )= ܙ‬3+#'K‫ܕ‬ X7‫ ܕܐ‬.‫ܝ‬H)‫ )= ܙ‬3+#'K‫ܕ‬
‫'ܥ‬VK ‫=ܢ‬2‫ ܕ‬TKH# 10 ED;Y) H.0‫ ܘܐ‬H.7‫ܘܬ‬
H.7‫ ܕܬ‬.86@.VN) 86+KH2
ED;Y) H.0‫ ܘܐ‬X7‫ܘܐ‬
86+KH2
The teaching of John the son of The teaching of John the son of
Zebedee, who reclined on the Zebedee, who taught and in-

14 Connolly, “Diatessaron in the Syriac Acts of John”, p. 577.

15 Connolly, “Original Language”, pp. 249-250.
 CHAPTER TWO: THE MANUSCRIPTS 25

breast of our Lord Jesus at the structed and baptized in the

supper, (and) who instructed city of Ephesus is ended.
and taught and baptized in the
city of Ephesus is ended.
Colophons of mss A and B

C. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Syr. 236; paper, 26.7 x 17.1

cm, 364 fols., 1 col., 1193/4: fols. 112r-145r. 16
Manuscript C is one of the most important and interesting witnesses
to the History of John. It is dated to 1193/4 and is a collection of various
Lives of Saints. It belongs to the “Eusebian” tradition along with ms A
and it tends to follow ms A where A and B differ—although there are
notable exceptions to this. For example, at the end of ch. 27 the people
of Ephesus are about to receive the sign of baptism and declare their
faith in Jesus Christ. Manuscript A only contains a short doxology
followed by a cry for mercy, whereas mss B and C (also E, but see be-
low) develop this sequence, albeit in slightly different ways.
A B C
$N)'( $N)'( $N)'(
>=97‫ ܘ‬$)Y7 >=97‫ ܘ‬$)Y7 >=97‫ ܘ‬$)Y7
.$(‫ ܕ&'ܕ‬$#‫=ܘ‬7‫ ܘ‬.$(‫ ܕ&'ܕ‬$#‫=ܘ‬7‫ܘ‬ .$VKH& $#‫=ܘ‬7‫ܘ‬
̇ ̇
.3@/0 Z#‫ ܪ‬$̣K=2 .3@/0 Z#‫ ܪ‬$̣K=2 ‫'ܢ܆‬D@//K‫&'ܪ‬
3K‫ ܕ‬8‫̇ܐܙܠ ܗܘ‬ ‫ ܗ̈ܘܝ‬3@J ̈ &‫̈'ܕ> ܘ‬S ‫ ̈ܗܘܝ‬3@J
̈
̈ &
‫ܗܘܢ‬6J& 1& :67‫̈'ܕ> ܬ‬S 67‫ ܬ‬3@7‫ܗ‬
32 =97 :‫'̣ܬ‬C‫ ܗ‬86@2̈H& :$+C‫ ܗ‬86@2̈H&
.8̣6+KH2 86K[#‫ ܐ‬3@+J ̈ &‫ ܘ‬3@7‫ ܗ̈ܘܝ ܗ‬3@+0 ̈ ‫ܘ‬
:\(‫ ܬ‬3@7‫ܗ‬ ̈
>‫'ܕ‬S \(̈‫ܬ‬
̇
:3@/0 Z#‫ ܪ‬$K=2 86@5[#‫ܐ‬
3K‫ ܕ‬8‫̇ܐܙܠ ̱ܗܘ‬ .‫'ܬ‬C̣‫ܗ‬
̇
‫ܗܘܢ‬6J& 1& ‫ ܐܙܠ‬.‫'ܢ‬D@//K‫&'ܪ‬
.8̣6+KH2 32 =97 1& 3K‫ ܕ‬8‫̱ܗܘ‬
=97 ‫ܗܘܢ‬6J̣S
8
̣ 6+KH2 32

16 Catalog: Hermann Zotenberg, Manuscrits orientaux, pp. 187-88.

26 THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

“Praise to the Fa- “Praise to the Fa- “Praise to the Fa-

ther and to the Son ther and to the Son ther and to the Son
and to the Spirit of and to the Spirit of and to the Holy
Holiness! Lord, Holiness! Lord, Spirit! Kyrie
have mercy on us!” have mercy on us!” eleison!” And those
And the sound of And the first three first three groups
their outcry traveled groups were crying were crying out
outside of the city… out thus, while thus, while those
those other nine other nine groups
were crying out, were responding
“Lord, have mercy thus: “Kyrie
on us!” And the eleison!” And the
sound of their out- sound of their bel-
cry traveled outside lowing traveled out-
of the city… side of the city…
In this particular sequence, it is clear that B and C have been influenced
by the same transmission, against A. Thus, although mss A and C be-
long to the “Eusebian” tradition, there is clearly some overlap in the
transmission with the “non-Eusebian” tradition.
The importance of ms C lies primarily in its additional material
not found in mss A or B. First, Junod and Kaestli pointed out that
the History of John lacked any connection between John the son of
Zebedee and John the Revelator. They argued that this was probably
due to the rejection of the Apocalypse by the early Syriac church. 17
This may be the case, but there are some places in the narrative that
are reminiscent of Revelation. For example, the vision of Menelaus
contains a number of similarities with the visions in the Apocalypse
(see my notes in the translation). Further, in ch. 23 John speaks of a
vision of a hand writing down the names of those who were bap-
tized, a trope similar to the Book of Life in Revelation. These are
subtle allusions, to be sure. In any case, the scribe of C also noticed
this lack of connection with John’s authorship of the Apocalypse and
inserts a brief statement about John’s exile to Patmos (fol. 141v). This
is significant in that it shows a further development of the textual

17 Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, pp. 712-13.

 CHAPTER TWO: THE MANUSCRIPTS 27

tradition seeking to align this narrative more closely with other tradi-
tions about John the son of Zebedee.
Second, ms C contains the story of John and the robber, part of
the Virtutes Iohannis narrative, which is recorded by Eusebius (HE
3.23.6-19).18 Desreumaux recently discovered a more complete Syriac
witness to this story that probably dates to the sixth century. Pend-
ing the results of Prof. Desreumaux's investigation, a comparison
between these two versions needs to be made to determine any rela-
tionship between them.19 This important addition reveals an attempt
to align the History of John directly to Eusebius. Moreover, Junod
and Kaestli noted that the later portion of the History of John did
not align well thematically with the rest of the narrative (particularly
chs. 31-32).20 It is here that the John and the Robber story has been
inserted, perhaps in order to even out this part of the story that
seemed lacking.
Third, there is a brief addition to the scene where John converts
Secundus. In ch. 9 Secundus reveals that he has a blind son. On fol.
119v of ms C, there is an additional paragraph where Secundus' blind
son is healed by John. The healing is also inserted into ms E, alt-
hough in a different place in the section (see more below). The earlier
text of A and B at the end of ch. 9 has Secundus ask John when he
can become John’s disciples, to which John responds, “When he
opens the eyes of his child so that he might be baptized.” It seems
that the scribe of ms C was bothered by the fact that John does not
heal Secundus’ blind son and was confused by this later statement. In
order to smooth out the scene, he added a healing sequence for

18 Junod and Kaestli, Acta Iohannis, pp. 799-803. The Greek version of this
story was recently edited by Rick Brannan, “John and the Robber”, pp. 362-
367.
19 Prof. Desreumaux pointed out to me that ms Milan A 296 contains the
continuation of Sinai Syr. 26. The connections between multiple Sinai mss
and fragments in the Ambrosianus library have been cataloged by J.-B.
Chabot, “Inventaire des fragments”, 37-54; Paul Géhin, “Manuscrits
sinaïtiques disperses II”, 1-24; Brock, “Syriac on Sinai: the Main Connec-
tions”, 103-117. Milan A 296 also contains the Metastasis of John, which
Wright translated in his volume from BL Add. 12,174.
20 Acta Iohannis, pp. 707-708.
28 THE HISTORY OF JOHN THE SON OF ZEBEDEE

Secundus’ son. It is odd to think that mss A and B would miss this
healing so it must be a later addition, either by the scribe of C or of
his source.
In terms of agreement between the witnesses, ms C tends to fol-
low A and usually agrees with A against B where A and B disagree.
Moreover, the attribution of authorship to Eusebius appears only in
mss A and C which suggests that they belong to the same tradition of
transmission. Therefore, mss A and C represent one tradition of the
text and ms B represents another. There are places, however, where B
and C share certain readings against A, as I showed earlier, suggesting
that C was influenced by both transmission traditions.
It must be concluded that C has been influenced by the non-
Eusebian tradition to some extent. There seems to have been a more
conscious effort on the part of the scribe(s) of ms C to bring the His-
tory of John into conformity with the rest of Johannine tradition.
The mention of exile to Patmos and the inclusion of the John and
the robber story may have been edited into the narrative in order to
provide better continuity with Eusebian traditions about John.
These important differences aside, ms C also testifies to the remarka-
ble stability of the text through the course of at least 600 years. Due
to the length and importance of some of the additions of ms C, I
have included them in the appendices.21
D. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Syr. 235; paper, 25.4 x 19.1
cm, 341 fols., 2 cols., 13th cent.: fols. 1r-3r.
Manuscript D is unfortunately very fragmentary. It appears to date to
the thirteenth century, and was repaired in 1292. Zotenberg seems to
have been unaware that it contained a copy of the History of John when
he catalogued it.22 It is the first text in the manuscript and the majority

21At the time of editing, Prof. Desreumaux has not published his findings
on the Syriac Virtutes Iohannis versions. Out of respect for Prof.
Desreumaux’s work on this, I have delayed any comparison between the
Milan text (which he provided for me) and ms C’s version. My own tenta-
tive observation is that they are two different translations of the story.
22 Zotenberg, Manuscrits orientaux, p. 185-187. In his description of BnF
Syr. 236, Zotenberg cites Wright and acknowledges the copy of the History
 CHAPTER TWO: THE MANUSCRIPTS 29

of it is missing, with only half of two folios extant along with the final
paragraph and colophon on folio 3r. It was written in two columns and
I have estimated that the original length would have been about 15 foli-
os.23 The cololphon confirms that it was a copy of the History of John
and what remains of the narrative begins in ch. 29. What extant differ-
ences can be verified between this witness and the others are inconse-
quential and few conclusions can be drawn about the relationships be-
tween them, as a result. Because of this, I have placed ms D as its own
tradition.

10‫ ܘ‬.$AD@/<5‫ ܐܘ‬3+#'K 10‫ ܕ‬86@J(‫ ܬ‬6 ݀ .

̣ /(
.$)̣'N) '7‫ ̇ܨ‬:‫'ܣ‬D;‫̇ܗ ܕܐ‬H.7‫ܬܘ‬
The history about John the Evangelist and about his teaching in
Ephesus is ended. Pray in love.
Colophon of ms D

E. India, Trichur Aprem 83; paper, 21 x 15.2 cm, 211 fols., 1 col., 1615: fols.
168v-180r. 24
This manuscript, from the metropolitan library of the Chaldean Church
in Trichur, Kerala, India, is as intriguing as ms C for the study of the
History of John. It was discovered quite recently by prof. Desreumaux
and prof. Briquel-Chatonnet while they catalogued the metropolitan

of John. He makes no such connection for MS 235, which suggests that he

was unaware that it was the same text. It was unnoticed by Baumstark, Ges-
chichte der syrischen Literatur, p. 68, n. 6, who probably just relied on
Zotenberg. It is not listed by Desreumaux, “Les apocryphes apostoliques”,
pp. 78-82.
23 Lollar, “Survey of the Manuscripts”, p. 125.
24 On the history of the collection of Syriac works in Trichur see Mar
Aprem (Mooken), “Syriac Manuscripts in Trichur” (I), p. 355-374; Mar
Aprem, “Syriac Manuscripts in Trichur” (II), p. 96-118; Mar Aprem, “Syriac
Books (Printed) Found in the Metropolitan’s Palace, Trichur, South India”;
Françoise Briquel Chatonnet, Alain Desreumaux, and Jacob
Thekeparampil, “Syriac Written Heritage in Kerala”, p. 135-151.
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