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Begin Typing VigilThis book, Tertullian tells us, was composed shortly before his time in honour of Paul by a presbyter of Asia, who was convicted of the imposture and degraded from his office. The date of it may therefore be about A.D. 160. The author was an orthodox Christian.
Our authorities for it are:
(1) The sadly mutilated Coptic manuscript at Heidelberg, of the sixth century at latest.
(2) The Acts of Paul and Thecla, a single episode which has been preserved complete in Greek and many versions: parts of it exist in the Coptic. It is possible that in this episode the author of the Acts may have used a local legend, current in his time, of a real Christian martyr Thecla. It is otherwise difficult to account for the very great popularity of the cult of St. Thecla, which spread over East and West, and made her the most famous of virgin martyrs. Moreover, one historical personage is introduced into the story, namely, Queen Tryphaena, who was the widow, it seems, of Cotys, King of Thrace, and the mother of Polemo II, King of Pontus. She was a great-niece of the Emperor Claudius. Professor W. M. Ramsay has contended that there was a written story of Thecla which was adapted by the author of the Acts: but his view is not generally accepted.
(3) The correspondence with the Corinthians, [which] circulated separately in Syriac, Latin, and Armenian, and found a place in the Syriac collection of Pauline epistles (and is commented on with the rest by Ephraem the Syrian), and in the Armenian Bible. We have it in (1) many Armenian manuscripts, (2) in Ephraem’s commentary—only extant in Armenian, (3) in three Latin manuscripts, at Milan, Laon, and Paris: as well as in the Coptic manuscript, which is here less fragmentary than in the preceding pages.
(4) The Martyrdom, the concluding episode of the Acts, preserved separately to be read on the day of Commemoration, [existing] in two Greek copies, an incomplete Latin version, and versions in Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic, Slavonic, besides fragments in our Coptic manuscript.
(5) Detached fragments or quotations.
The length of the whole book is given as 8,600 lines (Stichometry of Nicephorus), or 8,560 (Stichometry of the Codex Claromontanus): the Canonical Acts are given by the same two authorities respectively as 2,800 and 2,600. We have, perhaps, 1,800 lines of the Acts of Paul.
Included here are the Catholic Epistles, Hebrews, and the formerly canonical works of the Second Testament.