APOCALYPSE OF PAUL
Epiphanius tells us that the Caianites or Cainites had forged a book full of unspeakable matter in the name of Paul, which was also used by those who are called Gnostics, which they call the Anabaticon of Paul, basing it on the words of the apostle—that he was taken up into the third heaven. This has left no trace (Heresy, 38. 2).
St. Augustine laughs at the folly of some who had forged an Apocalypse of Paul, full of fables, and pretending to contain the unutterable things which the apostle had heard. This is, I doubt not, our book. (Aug. on John, Tract 98.) Sozomen, in his Ecclesiastical History (vii. 19), says: The book now circulated as the Apocalypse of Paul the apostle, which none of the ancients ever saw, is commended by most monks; but some contend that this book was found in the reign we write of (of Theodosius). For they say that by a Divine manifestation there was found underground at Tarsus of Cilicia, in Paul's house, a marble chest, and that in it was this book. However, when I inquired about this, a Cilician, a priest of the church of Tarsus, told me it was a lie. He was a man whose grey hairs showed him to be of considerable age, and he said that no such thing had happened in their city, and that he wondered whether the tale (or, the book) had not been made up by heretics.
Sozomen's story is that which appears in our book; and we need not doubt that this Apocalypse made its appearance in the last years of the fourth century.
It is condemned in the Gelasian Decree, and is mentioned with disapproval by various late church writers.
Though not an early book, it is made up very largely of early matter; and it had an immense vogue, especially in the West. Greek copies of it are rare, and the texts they contain are disfigured by many omissions. Of the Eastern versions—Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopic—the Syriac is the best. But possibly the full Latin version is superior to ail other authorities. There are several abridged Latin texts, and from these were made the many versions which were current in almost every European language.
In an early canto of the Inferno (ii. 28) Dante mentions the visit of the 'Chosen Vessel' to Hell[1]—an undoubted allusion to the Apocalypse. And both in the Divine Comedy and in the hundreds of earlier mediaeval visions of the next world the influence of this book is perceptible, sometimes faintly, often very plainly indeed.
The reader will soon see for himself that Paul is a direct descendant of Peter, especially in his description of Hell-torments.[2] He will also see that the book is very badly put together; and that whole episodes,- ↑ 'Andovvi poi lo Vas d'elezione,' &c.
- ↑ I have not marked the parallels with Peter: the reader cannot miss them; but I have adduced passages from Elias and Zephaniah which seem to be the sources of several episodes in Paul. Our texts of Elias and Zephaniah are not good; we have them only in Coptic, edited by Steindorff. Note, by the way, that what I (and most others) call Zephaniah, Steindorff too cautiously calls an 'anonymous Apocalypse'.
