Parabiblica Coptica and the Study of Apocrypha: Some observations from a scholar of Syriac ‘Parabiblica’

By [the Bardaisanites] were there indeed also apocryphal works written with which, by means of the power and signature of the Apostles which they sign, their own godlessness, against which the Apostles fought, they wrote under the name of the Apostles.

So wrote Ephrem the Syrian in his commentary on the third epistle to the Corinthians attributed to Paul (trans. Bundy, 1999: 56). Ephrem accused the followers of Bardaisan of Edessa of forging what he called “apocrypha” in the name of apostles. Somewhat ironically for us, looking back in time, (pseudo?) Ephrem accuses this Christian sect of using apocrypha in a commentary on what we today consider to be an “apocryphal” letter attributed to Paul. To be fair, the irony would have been lost on Ephrem to some degree. After all, he found this letter to be profoundly useful––as did Aphrahat, the Persian Sage (Walters, 2013), as well as the fifth century writer of the Martyrdom of Sharbel (Lollar, 2021b), both of whom made use of 3 Corinthians as an authoritative text. This authority passed into the Armenian Christian tradition which, in some sense, is an heir to the early Syriac Christian tradition. In both the Syriac and Armenian churches of the fifth century and onward, so-called “apocrypha” were incredibly popular (perhaps even to Ephrem’s chagrin), but even more important, they were useful texts.

This new volume, Parabiblica Coptica, shows aptly that the same was also true in Egypt, at least as early as the fifth century. The essays in this volume demonstrate the pervasiveness, popularity, and provincial nature of the texts analyzed. In a comparable fashion to Syrian and Armenian contemporaries, the Egyptian Coptic-reading Christians had a robust tradition of apocrypha which they also found uncompromisingly useful. I am not an expert on the Coptic tradition––though the exciting content in this volume is enough to “convert” any curious scholar!––but I am delighted for a chance to reflect on the importance of this volume for my own realm of expertise in Syriac apocrypha studies. I aim not to critique the volume––a task I will leave to someone more competent than myself––but rather to draw what I hope are interesting lines of comparison.

Of rather obvious importance for my comparison is the fact that the West Syrian (Orthodox) church and the Coptic church share a common miaphysite confession. I take this as a point of significance, especially since, in some cases, the origins of the sources for both traditions (both at a material and contextual level) may be found in the period surrounding the christological controversies––most notably the councils of Ephesus (431) and Chalcedon (451). Many of the essays in this volume acknowledge their indebtedness to the work of Alin Suciu on the so-called “apostolic memoirs,” which Suciu regards as belonging to a post-chalcedonian Egyptian milieu (Suciu, 2017: 128–38). It is perhaps not a coincidence that the earliest extant manuscripts containing Syriac apocrypha appear to date from this exact same period onward (e.g., BL Add. 14644; St. Petersburg sir. 04).

Of course, it is not surprising that biblical literature held a place of prominence in both traditions from a very early period. Yet, as Dylan Burns writes in his essay, Ps. Evodius––a principal witness to the apostolic memoirs tradition––admits that “wisdom from the outside” was useful for Coptic Christians (e.g., p. 33). This sentiment, as Burns points out, was widespread; indeed, none other than Barhebraeus, the great Syriac scholar, notes that authors like Antony of Tagrit and Aristotle himself were useful for Syriac Christians, despite being “from the outside”––the same terminology used by Ps. Evodius (cf. Watt, 1993: 65; my thanks to Mara Nicosia for bringing this reference to my attention). In fact, it struck me upon reading how many similarities we can identify between these traditions.

Dan Batovici notes that the state of preservation of individual Apostolic Fathers differs between the Syriac and Coptic traditions (e.g., the Corpus Ignatianum) (pp. 110–118). It is clear, I think, that there is no direct line of reception between the two traditions. Despite this lack of direct connection, it is remarkable that neither the Coptic nor the Syriac traditions appear to have made much use of the Apostolic Fathers as a literary corpus (p. 105). Both traditions regarded individual texts or smaller collections quite independently of one another. And yet, the broader lack of reception of the corpus of “The Apostolic Fathers” is found in both cases.

This same phenomenon of distinct developments of shared collective values may be reflected in the reception of individual narratives. There are few examples in Syriac of narratives about angels and tours of the underworld (though some examples exist, such as the Apocalypse of Paul). Certainly, there are no direct parallels to stories like the Investiture of Michael and the Investiture of Gabriel, studied by Lilia Frangulian (pp. 127–149). At the same time, the idea she develops that Inv. Gab. is a “sequel” to an earlier narrative, developing or even “correcting” ideas in the earlier text (e.g., p. 130), is reminiscent of the relationship between the Doctrina Addai and the Acts of Mar Mari, where the latter narrative coopts the former but also “corrects” it by recalibrating its characters, geography, and ultimate goals (Jullien and Jullien, 2003: 41–60; Ramelli, 2005). There are also exciting possible parallels between the heavenly vision of the numbers 24 and 72 in these Coptic texts, which correspond exactly to a similar heavenly vision in the Syriac History of John (Lollar, 2020).

Saint Andrew baptizes metamorphized cannibals, Deir al-Surian. Photo by K.C. Innemée.

Similarly, the study by Bull and Kocar on the Acts of Andrew and Paul highlights the importance of specific apostles in the Coptic tradition. In this case, although this narrative is unparalleled in Syriac, the popularity of Andrew and Paul is entirely comparable. There are multiple Syriac and Garshuni copies of the Acts of Andrew and Mattathias (e.g., Wright, 1871) as well as distinct Syriac stories about Paul (e.g., History of Paul; the Story of Paul and the Discovery of his Severed Head; Lollar, 2021a; Lollar, 2023; Eastman, 2015). Perhaps most significant for Copto-Syriac comparisons, however, is the recent discovery at Deir al-Surian––the Syriac monastery in Wādī al-Naṭrūn in Egypt––of a wall painting from the Middle Ages depicting a scene from the Acts of Andrew (Innemée, 2023: 31–35). Despite the relative neglect of the Andrew cycles in past scholarship, the Coptic and Syriac interest in Andrew narratives (and their possible relatedness to one another) deserves further attention.

Finally, the contribution by Miroshnikov on the Coptic Preaching of Philip is noteworthy for some of its shared characteristics with the Syriac History of Philip. Once again, the two narratives are obviously independent, but their shared literary topoi point to shared traditions about Philip. The variant of “Afrika” for “Phrygia,” for example, may have originated from an orthographic mistake, as Miroshnikov suggests (p. 63), but it could also be from the plethora of Philip legenda, within which Philip travels to Carthage in the History of Philip (Kitchen, 2020). This is not to suggest any form of direct (or even indirect) dependency, but only to mention that, whether in Coptic, Arabic, or Syriac, these narratives may be taking from an immaterial “constellation” of Philip traditions that may, in complex ways, be interrelated. 

Such variants like “Afrika”/“Phrygia”, of course, are rooted in the translational nature of many of these Coptic sources. This is another shared aspect of the Syrian and Coptic traditions and is highlighted in the essay by Eugenia Smagina, “Onomastik und Rechtschreibung von Loehnwörtern in den Apokryphen.” Attention to such borrowed terminology (and particularly onomastics) can be crucial for understanding the transmission history of texts and their relationship to a localized milieu (e.g., Bremmer, 2017). By way of a Syriac example, one may consider the invention of the name “Sharbel”––an amalgam of “Ishtar” and “Bel”––as a stereotypical name for a “pagan” priest in both the Martyrdom of Sharbel (from Edessa) and the Martyrdom of Aitilaha (from Adiabene) (Greisiger, 2009). Just as Smagina shows such analysis can help to date certain texts, so can it provide insights into the provenance of certain stories––whether written or oral.

The essays in this volume thus provide a brief sample of what it undoubtedly a virtual goldmine for comparative literary and historical inquiry. I focus here on comparisons with Syriac literature, but this is by no means the only analog, as van Gerven Oei and Tsakos show in their contribution exploring the relationship between Coptic and Old Nubian apostolic memoirs. Indeed, this volume demonstrates––if not explicitly, then implicitly, for those who know to look––that Coptic and Syriac apocrypha traditions do not belong to different universes but may be regarded as distinct constellations in the galaxy of “parabiblical” literature. Nils Anders Pedersen’s essay on the infamous Festal Letter 39 of Athanasius demonstrates this aptly: Athanasius was part of a larger discussion about canon and apocrypha happening within, but also beyond the boundaries of Egypt (pp. 152–155). This was not a closed conversation; rather, much as Ephrem with the Bardaisanites with whom I began, Athanasius, and his heirs in the Coptic tradition, saw the pervasiveness of non-canonical “parabiblica” in their local cultures. These writers and those who came after them continued to read, struggle, engage, and negotiate with these texts. They found them troubling at times, evocative at times, and useful at times. Whatever the case for them, for us they provide us with evermore glimpses into the wonderous universe of ancient Christianity.

Works Cited

Bremmer, J.N. 2017. “The Onomastics and Provenance of the Acts of Paul.” Pages 527–547 in Philologie, herméneutique et histoire des textes entre Orient et Occident. Mélanges en hommage à Sever J. Voicu. Edited by F.P. Barone, C. Macé, and P.A. Ubierna. Turnhout: Brepols.

Bundy, D. 1999. “The Pseudo-Ephremian Commentary on Third Corinthians: A Study in Exegesis and Anti-Bardaisanite Polemic.” Pages 51–63 in After Bardaisan: Studies on Continuity and Change in Syriac Christianity in Honour of Professor Han J.W. Drijvers. Edited by G.J. Reinink and A.C. Klugkist. Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 89. Leuven: Peeters.

Eastman, D.L. 2015. The Ancient Martyrdom Accounts of Peter and Paul. Writings from the Greco-Roman World 39. Atlanta: SBL.

Greisiger, L. 2009. “Šarbēl, Göttin von Arbela – Šarbēl, alias Tūṯāēl, Märtyrer in Edessa: Religions- und überlieferungsgeschichtliche Probleme.” Pages 75–96 in Edessa in hellenistisch-römischer Zeit: Religion, Kultur und Politik zwischen Ost und West: Beiträge des Internationalen Edessa-Symposiums in Halle an der Saale, 14-17. July 2005. Edited by L. Greisiger, C. Rammelt, and J. Tubach. Beirut Texts and Studies 116. Würzburg: Ergon.

Innemée, K.C. 2023. “Dayr al-Suryan: 2023 Update of New Discoveries.” Claremont Coptic Encyclopedia. Open Access: https://ccdl.claremont.edu/digital/collection/cce/id/2185/rec/1.

Jullien, C and F. Jullien. 2003. Aux origines de l’église de Perse: les Actes de Mār Māri. Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium 604, Subs. 114. Leuven: Peeters.

Kitchen, R.A. 2020. “The History of Philip.” Pages 293–315 in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume 2. Edited by T. Burke. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Lollar, J.A. 2020. The History of John the Son of Zebedee: Introduction, Texts and Translations. Piscataway: Gorgias Press.

Lollar, J.A. 2021a. “‘The History that Should Be Places at the Beginning of the Book of Paul the Apostle’: New Evidence for the Syriac Euthalian Apparatus in Apocryphal Texts.” Hugoye: Journal of Syriac Studies 24.1: 187–216.

Lollar, J.A. 2021b. “‘The Marks of My Body, That I Might Come to the Resurrection’: A Quotation of 3 Corinthians in the Syriac Martyrdom of Šarbēl. Apocrypha 32: 71–83.

Lollar, J.A. 2023. “The History of Paul.” Pages 393–407 in New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures, volume 3. Edited by T. Burke. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Ramelli, I.L. 2005. “The First Evangelization of the Mesopotamian Regions in the Syriac Tradition: The Acta Maris as a Continuation of the Doctrina Addai.” Antiguo Oriente 3: 11–54.

Suciu, A. 2017. The Berlin-Strasbourg Apocryphon: A Coptic Apostolic Memoir. WUNT 370. Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck.

Walters, J.E. 2013. “Evidence for Citations of 3 Corinthians and Their Influence in the Demonstrations of Aphrahat.” Vigiliae Christianae 67: 248–262.

Watt, J. 1993. “Grammar, Rhetoric, and the Enkyklios Paideia in Syriac.” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 143.1: 45–71.

Wright, W. 1871. Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles Edited from Syriac Manuscripts in the British Museum and Other Libraries. London: Williams and Norgate.

Jacob Lollar is a British Academy International Fellow in the Department of Classics and Ancient History at Durham University. Prior to this he was an Alexander von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow at the Centre “Beyond Canon” at the Universität Regensburg. His recent publications include The Doctrine of Addai and the Letters of Jesus and Abgar and The History of John the Son of Zebedee. His von Humboldt project was on the Acts of Thekla in the Syriac tradition (forthcoming) and his current BA project is on apocryphal traditions in Syriac manuscripts and their role in shaping late antique Christian cultures.