Course Of The Narrative.

        As pieced together from these Coptic and Greek papyri and the famous chapter so long known as the “Acts of Paul and Thecla,” the story of the Acts of Paul ran somewhat as follows:

        1. Paul is at Pisidian Antioch. He restores a Jewish boy to life, and the boy's parents are converted, but the populace becomes incensed and Paul is driven from the town.

        2. Paul reaches Iconium. This is the episode that has survived as the “Acts of Paul and Thecla.” It always seemed to begin very abruptly: “As Paul was going up to Iconium after his escape from Antioch, Demas and Hermogenes the coppersmith were his fellow travelers.” This apparent abruptness now disappears; it is just a natural transition from one scene to the next. Thecla is a Greek girl of position who becomes interested in Paul's preaching, breaks off her engagement, is converted and, although thrown to wild beasts in the arena, escapes and lives to teach others her new faith. Paul approves her doing this, in contrast with his reputed unwillingness that women should teach. Thecla subsequently visits Paul at Myra and later retires to Seleucia, where she dies. The leading interests of the book-aversion to marriage and indorsement of woman's place in teaching religion-appear most clearly in this romantic story, which not only survived in Greek and in many other versions but has been picked up and repeated in a number of modern forms of the life of Paul.

        3. At Myra, where Thecla had left Paul, he cures a man of dropsy and thus incurs the enmity of the man's son Hermippus, who had hoped soon to inherit his father's property. The son is smitten with blindness but repents and is cured.

        4. Paul proceeds by way of Perga to Sidon. There the people shut him and his friends up in the temple of Apollo, part of which collapses in the course of the night. This fu further incenses the people, who hurry Paul and his companions to the theater, but what happens there is lost.

        5. Paul reappears at Tyre, where he heals the sick and discourses about Judaism.

        6. He is next found at some mines, of unknown location, where a certain Frontina, who has been converted, is thrown from a cliff and killed, but Paul restores her to life and leads her home through the town, the people of which are at once won to Christianity.

        7. Here belongs the story related by Nicephorus,[26] about 1320, of a visit to Ephesus, not mentioned in the Coptic fragments but now supplied m much detail by the newly discovered Greek text, which begins with this Ephesian episode. (The Coptic pieces comprise only about one-half the total length given in the medieval stichometry for the Acts of Paul, so that much is certainly missing from them). At Ephesus, Paul is thrown into prison. Two women who are believers visit him in his prison, seeking baptism, and he escapes long enough to baptize them on the seashore. Next day, when a huge lion is let loose upon him in the stadium, it quietly curls up at his feet like a lamb. (This is the incident referred to by Hippolytus). The lion speaks to Paul, and Paul asks if this is not the lion he had previously met and baptized. The lion replies that it is. The story of baptism of the lion (Jerome's fable of the baptized lion [totem baptizati leonis fabulam], which he not unnaturally rejected)[27] is told in detail in the Ethiopic Epistle of Pelagia, which goes on to relate the later encounter of Paul and the lion in the stadium, just as the new Greek portions describe it.[28] A great hailstorm comes on which kills many of the people and the animals and cuts off the governor's ear. The governor is converted. The lion escapes, and Paul is released and proceeds to Macedonia.

        8. The next section, in Greek, is headed “From Philippi to Corinth,” the stay at Philippi being passed over. The Coptic, however, relates that it was while in prison there that Paul received a short letter from the Corinthians, reporting the appearance among them of two false teachers, Simon and Cleobius. He writes a letter to the Corinthians in reply. (This is the letter accepted in ancient times by Syrian and Armenian churches as III Corinthians). He takes leave of the Philippians; a local prophet and prophetess predict his work and fate in Rome.

        9. The Greek proceeds with an account of Paul's stay in Corinth. The brethren are grieved at his conviction that he must go on to Rome. He embarks on a ship the captain of which had been baptized by Peter.

        10. On the voyage Jesus, walking on the water, appears to Paul, urges him on to Rome, and goes before the ship, guiding it on its way like a star. As Paul lands, Jesus again appears and says, “I am going to be crucified again.” Paul is welcomed by the brethren at Rome and addresses them. He is tried, apparently before Nero, and executed with the sword, but later reappears to Nero and his attendants and declares that much evil will overtake him, in no long time, for the righteous blood he has shed. At this point in the Greek manuscript the title, The Acts of Paul, marks the end of the book.

        This is perhaps two-thirds or three-fourths of the Acts of Paul. Jerome says, “The travels of Paul and Thecla, and the whole fable of the baptized lion we reckon among the apocryphal writings.” Commodian, the fifth-century Christian poet, says of God's power, “For Paul, when he preached, he made a lion speak to the people with a God-given voice.” In the Ethiopic Epistle of Pelagia, another of Paul's reputed converts, Paul meets a huge lion on a mountain. They become friends, and the lion asks to be baptized. Paul complies. Later when a woman named Pelagia is converted and leaves her husband, Paul is arrested and a huge lion is set upon him in the “theater.” But it is the baptized lion, and he and Paul prey and converse. They let Paul go “with his lion,” but Pelagia suffers martyrdom. It is now clear that the lion episodes are from the Acts of Paul; here are Jerome's baptized lion and Commodian's talking lion; they are one. The story of Pelagia also exhibits the same aversion to marriage that we find in the story of Thecla.[29]

        The Asian elder who wrote the Acts of Paul was acquainted with the letters to Timothy and Titus; in fact, they evidently influenced him to write. From them he draws the names of Hermogenes and Onesiphorus; the letter's “household,” twice mentioned in the Pastoral Letters, in the Acts becomes his wife Lectra and his children Simmias and Zeno. He also knew the Book of Acts, which gave him his model. His work is first mentioned by Tertullian in On Baptism 17, written at the beginning of the third century. So the Acts of Paul was probably written between A.D. 160 and 170. Its feminist views repelled Tertullian, but Origen and Hippolytus used it without prejudice. It begins Eusebius' list of rejected writings. In the Clermont List, probably formed in Egypt about A.D. 300, it stands between the Shepherd of Hernias and the Revelation of Peter. In the Stichometry ofNicephorus, about A.D. 850, it leads the list of rejected books (apocrypha) under the title “Journey of Paul.”