The Epistle of the Apostles.

About the middle of the second century a Greek Christian of Asia, probably in the vicinity of Ephesus, wrote in the name of the apostles a letter to all the churches, gathering from the Four Gospels, the Acts, and other sources what he considered of most value and interest in the way of Christian history and tradition, ethics and expectation. He meant it as a kind of summary, for the whole world, from all the apostles, of Christian beliefs and hopes. Perhaps he felt that the growing number of Christian books must confuse simple minds, and he tried to condense all that material into one small book, about the length of I Corinthians. The idea of writing in the name of all the apostles was not new and had been taken up in the Teaching of the Lord through the Twelve Apostles, early in the second century, and again toward the end of it in the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles.

The only trace of the Epistle ofthe Apostles seems to occur in in the fifth-century Christian poet Commodian, who may reflect chapter i i in the words “Vestigium umbra non facit” (“A phantom does not make a footprint”). But the book itself was entirely unknown until Carl Schmidt reported the discovery of a part of it in Coptic in 1895. A Latin fragment of it, a single leaf from the fifth century, came to light in 1908. Meanwhile in 1907 a work in Ethiopic called The Testament of Our Lord in Galilee had been reported and described, and was recognized by M. R. James as including a version of the Epistle of the Apostles; it was published in 1913 and preserves the work in full. From these three sources, Coptic, Latin, and Ethiopic, Schmidt in 1919 published the text. But no part of it has yet been found in Greek, the original language of the book.

The writer of the Epistle ofthe Apostles names its authors as John, Thomas, Peter, Andrew, James, Philip, Bartholomew, Matthew, Nathanael, Judas the Zealot, and Cephas although John i”42 explains that Cephas, so often mentioned in Paul, really means Peter. Nathanael is, of course, never mentioned in the gospel lists of apostles. The book begins with a warning against the “false apostles” Simon (meaning Simon Magus) and Cerinthus, the latter the earliest of the schismatic leaders (ca. A.D. 100). It records the creation by God the Father and his incarnation in God the Son. A summary of Jesus' miracles is given, followed by his crucifixion, burial, and resurrection. He rejoins the apostles, apparently in Galilee, and tells them of his experiences in the other world. He promises to release Peter from prison and instructs them to observe the Lord's Supper. They ask when he is to return, and he answers that it will be when a hundred and fifty years are past (so the Ethiopic; the Coptic has “When the hundred and twentieth part is fulfilled,” evidently counting not from Jesus' birth but from his death). He teaches the apostles and answers their questions, promising them resurrection, and declaring that he will go with them as they preach. He predicts the conversion, work, and martyrdom of Paul and describes the signs of the end. He justifies the condemnation of the wicked but encourages the apostles to pray for sinners and commissions them as “fathers, servants, and masters.” He explains the parable of the bridesmaids, giving each one the name of some virtue or faculty. The wise ones were Faith, Love, Grace, Peace, and Hope; the foolish were Knowledge, Understanding, Obedience, Patience, and Compassion. (This suggests the names given the twelve virgins in the Shepherd of Hermas, Parable 9:15). After giving further moral instruction and the prediction of schismatic teaching, he is carried away on a cloud.

The writer's historical weakness is obvious; he can assemble only eleven apostles, although he counts both Cephas and Peter and includes Nathanael (of John I:45-49). He describes Jesus as crucified by Pontius Pilate and Archelaus, although the latter disappeared from history in A.D. 6; Antipas, of course, is whom he meant.

He draws heavily upon the Four Gospels and the Acts and uses the Revelation of John, the Revelation of Peter, I Peter, and probably Ignatius (Eph. 7:2), the Letter of Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hernias. He tells the famous story of Jesus and his alphabet teacher (chap. 4), which appears in the Gospel of Thomas and is quoted in Irenaeus (Against Heresies 1. 20. 1), but we cannot be sure he derived the story from that gospel; he may have gotten it from tradition. He describes Jesus as quoting extensively from the Psalms (Pss. 3 [in full], 13, 49).

There are gropings toward a creed, as when the writer in chapter 3 proclaims his doctrine of God the Father and God the Son and in chapter 5 explains the five loaves as the symbol of our faith in “the Father, the Lord Almighty, and in Jesus Christ our Redeemer, in the Holy Spirit the Comforter, in the holy church, and in the forgiveness of sins.” This was just at the time when the Roman church (A.D. 140-50) was first shaping its baptismal confession, which we know as the Apostles' Creed.

The fixing of the second coming “when a hundred and fifty years are past” points to a date between A.D. 140 and 150. Justin Martyr, in Apology XLVI. 1, speaks of Jesus as having been born one hundred and fifty years before he writes. Some touches sound as though Marcion were a contemporary of the writer; he flourished at just that time. On the whole, the Epistle was probably written between A.D. 140 and 160.