THE GNOSTIC SOCIETY LIBRARY
ACTS OF ANDREW
From "The Apocryphal New Testament"
M.R. James-Translation and Notes
Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924Introduction
We have no ancient record of the length of this book, as we had in the cases of John, Paul, and
Peter (but I suspect it was the most prolix of all the five), and we have fewer relics of the original
text than for those. We have, however, a kind of abstract of the whole, written in Latin by
Gregory of Tours: and there are Greek Encomia of the apostle which also help to the
reconstruction of the story. The Martyrdom (as in other cases) exists separately, in many texts.
Max Bonnet has established the relations of these to each other: and J. Flamion has made a most
careful study of all the fragments.
The best specimen of the original text which we have is a fragment preserved in a Vatican MS.,
tenth-eleventh centuries, containing discourses of Andrew shortly before his passion. There are
also a few ancient quotations.
These Acts may be the latest of the five leading apostolic romances. They belong to the third
century: C. A. D. 260?
It was formerly thought that the Acts of Andrew and Matthias (Matthew) were an episode of the
original romance: but this view has ceased to be held. That legend is akin to the later Egyptian
romances about the apostles of which an immense number were produced in the fifth and later
centuries. An abstract of them will be given in due course.
The epitome by Gregory of Tours is considered by Flamion to give on the whole the best idea of
the contents of the original Acts. The latest edition of it is that by M. Bonnet in the Monumenta
Germaniac Historica (Greg. Turon. II. 821 - 47 ). The greater part appears as Lib. III of the
Historia Apostolica of (Pseudo-)Abdias, in a text much altered, it seems, in the sixteenth century
by Wolfgang Lazius: reprinted in Fabricius' Cod. Apocr. N. T.
Gregory's prologue is as follows:
The famous triumphs of the apostles are, I believe, not unknown to any of the faithful, for some
of them are taught us in the pages of the gospel, others are related in the Acts of the Apostles,
and about some of them books exist in which the actions of each apostle are recorded; yet of the
more part we have nothing but their Passions in writing.
Now I have come upon a book on the miracles (virtues, great deeds) of St. Andrew the apostle,
which, because of its excessive verbosity, was called by some apocryphal. And of this I thought
good to extract and set out the 'virtues' only, omitting all that bred weariness, and so include the
wonderful miracles within the compass of one small volume, which might both please the reader
and ward off the spite of the adverse critic: for it is not the multitude of words, but the soundness
of reason and the purity of mind that produce unblemished faith.
[What follows is a full abstract, not a version, of Gregory's text.]