A dispassionate Passion

Yesterday, rooting around the various Acts and what they might contain, I ran across PJ Lalleman (1998) on the Johannine Acts chs. 87–105. This led me to István Czachesz (2009). Utterly mindblowing.

These chapters are in Codex Vindobonensis historicus graecus 63 (1319 or 1324) - alone. In this form the chapters had been attached to the aforementioned Acts, whereafter ch. 109 refers back to chs. 94-102 and wherein (somewhere) Second Nicaea found most of them (among other likely witnesses: Philip). But then some copyist(s) up to the fourteenth-century yanked chs. 87–105(?) and assembled them separately. The longer-Acts subsequently got lost. In 1897 when MR James restored "chs. 87–105" to the Acts, this location was simply his best-guess. Although Lalleman defends that decision.

Czachesz argues the chapters originally came from a Johannine community; or perhaps from a parallel community which the longer-Acts' author immediately noticed as close to 1 John (and to the Gospel). So this last copyist had restored its original's intent, against the longer-Acts. James Barker (2022) would agree at least insofar as we should quit pretending that the Acts of John are somehow unfit to be considered part of the Johannine Corpus.

How come nobody told me? Is "Czachesz" too hard to spell? Dude - use the ctl-C and ctl-V method.

Anyway: Lalleman had drawn up a synopsis, upon which Czachesz relies. As the Johannine narratives go, the synopsis boils down to the Transfiguration, the multiplication of bread, and the ... Ascension.

That's key. Already to be noted is that the empty-tomb narratives, although shared by the canonical four (and by Peter, and by anybody orthodox AD second-century AD) are absent from: Paul's letters; Ignatius' letters; Barnabas; Aristides; nor John 3:14+12:34 nor Q if we're moving to speculation. As Philippians 2:5-11 (and Thomas) against 1 Cor 15:1-4(!), there isn't even a burial. Yikes! One wonders about Egerton . . .

The Acts' Jesus, further, is a polymorph. Sometimes his flesh is soft; sometimes it is - er - woody and thick (hylódes kai pachýs). No I am not making this up. Oh and sometimes his substance was immaterial and bodiless. The "asomatic" Christ is exactly what Ignatius' Gospel is refuting, which refutation Ignatius recites for the Smyrnaeans. 2 John refutes the same, in Johannine language no less.

MORE DETAIL 3/21: Structure and other sources. Leaving aside the Johannine parallels, for now.