The Acts of John Overview

THE ACTS OF JOHN

• Date: 150-200

• Claimed Author: John; Leucius (in tradition)

• Sect: Valentinian Gnostic, Modalist (only in 94-102; 109—which are composed by a different author from the original)

• Provence: Egypt?

• Original Language: Greek

• References: Eusebius, Epiphanius, Augustine, Innocent I, Turribius of Astorga, The Stichometry of Nicephorus

• The Acts of John was noted to be about the length of the canonical Gospel of Matthew, but we only have about ⅔’s of that today

pgs. 310-338 & http://www.gnosis.org/library/actjohn.htm

1-17. [Lost?]

18. John is on his way to Ephesus and has a vision. Jesus says that John will give him glory in Ephesus.

19-25. When John reaches Ephesus, the commander-in-chief of the city, Lycomedes, asks him to give God glory by healing his extremely sick wife. They go to see the wife, and Lycomedes laments the injustice of her death [and falls down and dies?]. John then asks God to revive both of them. God raises the wife, Cleopatra. John tells her that if she does right, God will raise her husband. She breaks down crying, but is not angry, so John raises her husband, Lycomedes. They both beg John to stay with them.

26-29. Lycomedes has a painter paint a portrait of John. When John sees it, he asks if it is an image of some other god he worships and how he could have drawn it. Lycomedes says, “My only God is he who raised me up from death with my wife: but if, next to that God, it be right that the men who have benefited us should be called gods -it is thou, father, whom I  have had painted in that portrait, whom I crown and love and reverence as having become my good guide.” John (who had never seen his face before) asks why he mocks him. Lycomedes brings a mirror, and John sees himself. He says,

“As the Lord Jesus Christ lives, the portrait is like me: yet not like me, child, but like my fleshly image; for if this painter, who has imitated this my face, desires to draw me in a portrait, he will be at a loss, [needing more than] the colors that are now given to you, and boards and plaster and glue, and the position of my shape, and old age and youth and all things that are seen with the eye.
But become for me a good painter, Lycomedes. You have colors which he gives you through me, who paints all of us for himself, even Jesus, who knows the shapes and appearances and postures and dispositions and types of our souls. And the colors which I ask you to paint are these: faith in God, knowledge, godly fear, friendship, communion, meekness, kindness, brotherly love, purity, simplicity, tranquillity, fearlessness, griefiessness, sobriety, and the whole band of colors that paints the likeness of your soul, and even now raises up your members that were cast down, and levels them that were lifted up, and tends your bruises, and heals your wounds, and orders your hair that was disarranged, and washs your face, and chastens your eyes, and purges your bowels, and empties your belly, and cuts off that which is beneath it; and in a word, when the whole company and mingling of such colours is come together, into thy soul, it shall present it to our Lord Jesus Christ undaunted, whole (unsmoothed), and firm of shape. But this that you have now done is childish and imperfect: you hast drawn a dead likeness of the dead.”

[?]

30-36. (We don’t know the underlying context or backstory to this because an unknown portion has been lost before this.) John commands Ephesus to bring him all the infirm elderly women so he can heal them (and convert them). However, the proconsul, Andronicus, says John should come naked, holding nothing, and not using Jesus’ name (which he describes as “a magical name”) because he can't heal them. John shows up, first preaches against heaping up riches on earth, greediness, and fornication (including Sodomy). These sinners will be cast into the pit of eternal fire, and their riches won’t comfort them.

*The manuscript has been rearranged so the original chaptering is out of order. This reading follows what scholars maintain is the original ordering of material*

87-89. People are confused that Drusiana (who presumably converted, along with Andronicus) said that Jesus appeared to her in the tomb in the form of John and a youth. John explains that he cannot write to them what he “saw and heard”. He then explains to the people how, when he was with James and Peter, Jesus once appeared as a child to James while appearing normal to John. Later, John saw him as bald with a big beard, while James saw him bald with a little beard, but his eyes appeared to be always open. He would sometimes also look ugly and sometimes celestial. Jesus would also take him on his breast when they were at the table, and his breast was sometimes hard like stone and sometimes smooth. Here, John says that he can’t write what he “saw and heard” as if to prove that 1 John and its anti-Gnostic arguments are actually false. This also claims that Jesus appears differently to different people at different times.

90. John describes when Jesus was transfigured on the mountain, and John snuck up to look at his back and saw that he was actually naked but “not at all like a man”. Jesus pulls John's beard and tells him to believe and not be inquisitive, and the place where Jesus pulled John’s beard hurts a lot for the next month. John asks Jesus what would have happened if Jesus had beaten him if that simple tug hurt so much, and Jesus tells him “not to tempt him who is not to be tempted.” Jesus is naked but has some way of appearing differently at different times to different people.

92. John also describes one time in Gennesaret when people were preparing to go to sleep. John tried to see what Jesus would do, but heard a voice commanding him to go to sleep. He then hears a voice tell Jesus that his chosen ones still don’t believe, and Jesus says it’s because they are men.

93. John then says that sometimes he felt that Jesus was material and had a solid body, and sometimes he was immaterial and bodiless. He sometimes looked to see if he left a footprint, but Jesus’ feet never left a print. John says they must keep silent about these acts because “they are mysteries and doubtless cannot be uttered or heard.” John explains the reason why there weren’t other canonical writings explaining what he just explained: this knowledge is esoteric: Jesus does not have a fully physical body.

94-96. John describes a hymn that Jesus had all his disciples sing with him as grace danced to it. The hymn is esoteric and odd. Afterwards, Jesus tells his disciples to keep secret about his mysteries and that they will not know who he is until he has gone away. He says that they must learn suffering so that they can have power not to suffer. He says that he is preparing “holy souls” for himself. Jesus supposedly had this secret song that he taught his disciples. Jesus in fact instructed them not to teach the esoteric mysteries that he taught them (explaining why they weren’t written down), he says that who he is before he goes away is different from what they will know when he is gone (to disprove the orthodox teaching based on Jesus’ life ministry), and says that he is preparing them to be “holy souls” rather than preparing them for the resurrection. However, he says that his disciples should learn suffering so that they won’t need to suffer more, rather than teaching that they will need to suffer and find life through death.

97-103. When people were led astray or asleep, all the disciples went their own way: John saw him suffer a little and then went to the Mount of Olives to weep. At the sixth hour, as there is darkness on the land, and Jesus is hanging on the cross, Jesus stands in the middle of a cave and lights it up. He says to John that he needs to hear what he has to say because his disciples will need to learn it. He shows him the cross having one form, with a great multitude around it with no form. He shows that the cross has no shape but an unfamiliar, sweet, divine voice that says that the cross of light is known by many names: the Word, Mind, Jesus, Resurrection, Son, Father, Spirit, Life, Truth, Faith, Grace. However, it is truly “the harmony of the wisdom…and…wisdom of the harmony.” He then says that the person on the cross isn’t him. Instead, people call him something vile and untrue. Just as people don’t see “the place of rest”, they don’t see who he really is. In fact, he has “discarded manhood”. This offers a supposed explanation as to “what really happened” when Jesus supposedly only appeared to be dying. This also calls the cross the Father, Son, and Spirit, confusing them as one person (and with the cross?). Jesus is said not to have actually died, but for all of it to only have died in appearance. Jesus is also said to have left his manhood.

104. John finishes his preaching of no man, but only God on high.

*The manuscript has been rearranged so the original chaptering is out of order. This reading follows what scholars maintain is the original ordering of material*

37-38. John decides to take some of his brothers and Andronicus to go to the temple of Artemis to find ministers of the Lord. When they come, everyone is dressed in white, except John, who wears black. They take John and try to kill him. John climbs up on the stage to preach to them.

39-42. John asks why the people try to kill him: he has only come to save them from their idolatry. In fact, he challenges them to pray to ask Artemis to kill John to prove Artemis is real; he, on the other hand, will pray to God to kill all of them because of their unbelief. Because the people had seen John raise people from the dead, they tell him not to, so John prays to God for mercy. After his prayer, the temple falls to the ground, the roof crushes and kills the priest, the altar splits in half, the idols shatter, and all the people cry out and repent.

43-47. John praises Jesus and tells the people to get up. They get up and immediately destroy the rest of the temple. John stays with them in the house of Andronicus. Then, he hears about a relative of the dead priest who put his body at the gate and came with the others to follow John. Someone tells John that this person thought it was more important for his life to be saved by following John than to care for the dead. John agrees and raises the dead priest.

48-52. John has a vision, so he goes three miles outside the gate. There is a farmer whose father told him not to marry the wife of his co-worker, who had threatened to kill him. The farmer is offended by his father and kills him. John comes to this man and approaches him. The man confesses how he wasn’t chaste and killed his father; he was going to kill his co-worker's wife and husband and then himself, since her husband would’ve had him executed. John asks how he can keep the man away from the wife of his co-worker, and he says John should raise his father from the dead. John raises the father, and he follows God.

54-55. The farmer takes the sickle, cuts his genitals off, and throws them at his co-worker's wife, telling her she is the reason he killed his father. John then comes and asks who made him do such a thing, as if cutting off his genitals were righteous? They aren’t hurtful, “but the hidden sources, by which every shameful inclination is stirred and becomes manifest.” He commands him to repent and follow God—and he does.

*The manuscript has a large gap. The following two sections have been placed in this section by many editors.*

John and the Partridge

56-57. A partridge flies in front of John and plays in the sand before him. John stays seated and is amazed. Some old man comes by and thinks about how a man like John shouldn’t rejoice in such a thing. John perceives his thoughts and tells him he should’ve looked at the partridge instead of thinking as he did. He says that God brought the partridge to bring him to repentance and conversion and that the partridge is his very soul. The man falls to his knees and blesses John. John prays for him, gives him commandments, and dismisses him.

John in Smyrna: The Sons of Antipatros

56-57. An old man comes to John with money to pay him to cast demons out of his grown sons. John says he doesn’t do anything for money, but that they should give their souls to God, and he’ll heal them. This old man, Anitpatros, says he was about to poison his sons because it was getting so bad, but that he agrees to John’s deal. John prays to God to cast out the demons, and they leave. John teaches the family about the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, baptizes them, and tells Antipatros to give his money to those in need.

*The manuscript has a large gap. The above two sections have been placed in this section by many editors. The following continues after the gap.*

58-61. John leaves for Ephesus. On his way, he and those with him find an inn to stay in and sleep. The others throw their cloaks on a bare bed for John to sleep on while they sleep on the floor. However, some bugs bother John the whole night, so he commands them to go away from God’s servants, and they do. When they wake up and open the door, all the bugs are piled up in front of the door. John tells the bugs to go back to their place, and they disappear. John then says,

“This creature heard the voice of a man and kept quiet and was obedient. We, however, hear God’s voice, and yet irresponsibly transgress his commandments. And how long will this go on?”

62-64. John comes to Ephesus, and Andronicus and everyone meet him and kiss his feet. There is some “servant of Satan”, however, who desires Andronicus’ wife Drusiana. The people reproach him and tell him about how she didn’t even sleep with Andronicus when they were married out of piety. They say that before Andronicus was Christian, he locked her in a tomb and told her she could die there or sleep with him. They say, if she was willing to die rather than sleep with her husband, how would she sleep with him and commit adultery? He tells her anyway, and she becomes despondent and eventually sick. She cries out to God about how she became his stumbling-block and then dies.

68-72. John begins to preach about rejecting earthly goods for eternal goods and how one should not rejoice over something they have decided to do until they have done it completely. At the same time, the man infatuated with Drusiana pays off one of Andronicus’ servants to go to her tomb and rape her dead body. However, after opening the tomb, a serpent appears, bites the servant so he dies, and when the other man falls on the ground in fear, the snake sits on him.

73-74. John decides that they will go to Drusiana’s tomb to break bread. They go to the tomb and find an angel, telling them about the man he found who was about to defile her body. They then see the man lying dead on the ground with the serpent sleeping on him and the dead servant of Andronicus. John wonders why God didn’t reveal this to him. Andronicus sees the scene, understands what happened, and explains it to John.

75-78. John commands the snake to leave and asks God to heal the infatuated young man. The young man gets up and explains how, after he had taken off Drusiana’s grave clothes, the angel had appeared and covered her with his cloak, and told him, “Callimachus, die, that you may live.” He asks John to let that be true and help him be delivered from the evil he tried to do. John then praises God.

79-84. Andronicus points out that Drusiana had died because she knew she made the other man stumble, so John prays, and she is raised as well. Drusiana asks that Andronicus’ other evil guard be raised, but Callimachus says he didn’t hear him mentioned by the voice that said he should have life. John reprimands him and says that Jesus forgave us, so we should forgive others. John allows Drusiana, and she prays to raise him. He sees her alive, and Callimachus is converted and runs away.

85-86. They get bread and celebrate the Eucharist in the tomb. Later, John prophesies that the servant died of the serpent’s bite. They go check and find him dead and praise God for the Devil receiving his servant again.

*The manuscript has been rearranged so the original chaptering is out of order. This reading follows what scholars maintain is the original ordering of material*

106-110. John calls the brethren together and encourages them to live a sober and holy life. He then breaks bread and celebrates eucharist with everyone.

111-115. John gets people to dig a deep and wide trench for him. Then, he takes off his clothes and lays them at the bottom of the trench so that he only has his vest. He then prays for God to receive him and mentions how he stayed “free from intercourse with a woman” and how he appeared to him when he wanted to marry as a youth and told him, “I am in need of you, John.” He mentions almost marrying him, once again saying he would have let him marry if he weren’t his. He mentions him making him blind for 3 years and then showing him how repugnant it is to look at women in lust. He then lies in the grave and peacefully gives up his spirit.