Have you read it and what's it about?

I recently began reading the non-canonical Acts of the Apostles that Ehrman includes in his book, Lost Scriptures. It struck me as I was reading The Acts of John and The Acts of Paul that there are some similarities between these, what we might call legendary tales about holy men, and the legendary tales about Elijah and Elisha in 1 Kings 17 – 2 Kings 8. One example of the similarities can be found in 2 Kings 4 and Elisha’s healing of the Shunnamite woman’s son and John’s healing of Cleopatra in chapter 19 of The Acts of John. Another example is the contest between Elijah and the prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18 and John’s visit to the Temple of Artemis in chapters 38-44 of The Acts of John.

The stories about the Israelite prophets do not in and of themselves include anything of religious significance. They are really more about the power of the respective holy man. The religious, or maybe better put, the theological significance of these stories comes from the narrative framework around them – the books of 1 and 2 Kings and the Hebrew Bible as a whole. One could argue the same thing with regard to The Acts of John. The work seems to say more about John than it does about the God he worships. John though does offer us a glimpse of the God he worships as we overhear his prayers in the midst of his encounters with others, or at least a glimpse of how he understands this God. The prayer at the end of chapter 21 casts the struggles of Cleopatra and Lycomedes into the larger framework of the cosmic battle between good and evil. John offers an altar call of sorts in chapter 22 as he prays that God perform this miracle so that others will believe.

In fairness to The Acts of John, I was struck with several questions in response to particular aspects of the text. When John is preaching at the Temple of Artemis, he says to the crowd, “How many miraculous deeds did you see me perform, how many cures! And still you are hardened in the heart and cannot see clearly” (Ch. 39, Lns 9-13). John appears to believe that the miraculous should lead to belief. It prompts me to ask myself, “What does lead to belief?” “Is the proof in the pudding?”

When John eulogizes Drusiana, he says of her, “And she preferred to die rather than to commit the repugnant act [consenting to sexual intercourse after vowing abstinence]” (Ch. 63, Lns 14-16). Now before anyone asks, I’m not advocating sexual abstinence as an absolute. Rather, John prompts me to wonder, “How far am I willing to go out faith or for my faith?” Regardless the area of my life, “How does my faith define or effect my behavior?” I am also driven to contemplate the significance of the body as Callimachus breaks into Drusiana’s tomb in order to practice necrophilia.

The last question that I will offer in this post is in response to John’s words, “The believer must above all things consider the end and carefully examine how it will come, whether energetic and sober and without impediment, or in confusion and flattering worldly things and bound by passions” (Ch. 69, Lns. 1-6). The question is, “How do I want to die?” It is a question related to many situations covered in the media in recent years and in particularly memorable ways this past year.

I found these texts to be provocative. I also noticed what Ehrman describes as a more gnostic or docetic characteristic of chapters 88 and following. That probably indicates that these were added to the material from a different source. Also, did anyone notice the hymns in chapters 94-96?