Acts of Andrew 3/8

The Acts of Andrew (Acta Andreae), is the earliest testimony of the acts and miracles of the Apostle Andrew. The surviving version is alluded to in a third century work, the Coptic Manichaean Psalter, providing a terminus ante quem, according to its editors, M.R. James (1924) and Jean-Marc Prieur in The Anchor Bible Dictionary (vol. 1, p. 246), but it shows several signs of a mid-second century origin. Prieur stated that "The distinctive christology of the text", its silence concerning Jesus as a genuinely historical figure, and its lack of mention of church organisation, liturgy, and ecclesiastical rites, lead one to "militate for an early dating". By the fourth century the Acta Andreae were relegated to the New Testament apocrypha.

Prieur also stated that its "serene tone" and innocence of any polemic or disputes concerning its ideas or awareness of heterodoxy, particularly in the area of Christology, show that "it derived from a period when the Christology of the Great Church had not yet taken firm shape".

The episodic narratives in which Andrew figures survive incompletely in two manuscript traditions, aside from citations and fragments that are assumed to have come from lost sections. One is an early Coptic manuscript of part of one of the narratives, conserved at Utrecht University Library; The other is embodied in the Greek Martyrium, supplemented by manuscripts that bring it to 65 chapters.

Traditionally the text is said to have been based on the Acts of John and the Acts of Peter, and even to have had the same author, the "Leucius Charinus" who is credited with all the second-century romances. Like these works, the Acts of Andrew describes the supposed travels of the title character, the miracles he performed during them, and finally a description of his martyrdom.

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• Acts
• of
• Andrew
• Leucius
• Charinus
• Apostles
• Jesus
• Apocryphal
• New
• Testament