Returning back to the translations of E. A. Budget with another Ethiopic tale, this time in regards to Saint John the Evangelist/Theologian. This translation appeared in 1898 in “The Contendings of the Apostles Vol 2” and I’ve slightly modified some of it for the modern reader. I am currently unsure where and when this story …
Continue reading “The History of the Death of Saint John the Evangelist”
On September 17, it is the Orthodox feast day for Saint Sophia and her Daughters. The daughters being Faith, Hope and Love. Now while these characters (presented as literal people) were all given a back story by the church, they are actually allegorical figures. This past year I joined a Freemason fraternity and it has …
Another Apocalyptic John text that appears in the New Testament Apocrypha Volume 2 (edited by Tony Burke) is titled “Apocalypse of holy John the Theologian” or “3 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John”. The exact date of this work can not be pinpointed, but it looks like 1300s CE-ish. It survives in Greek and Church Slavic manuscripts. …
With my last post, I mentioned how there are several “Apocalypses of John” texts out there besides the canonical version. In the book New Testament Apocrypha: More Noncanonical Scriptures Vol 2 (edited by Tony Burke) there are 3 more texts with this title. This post will be going over what the book refers to as …
No, this isn’t about the book in the canonical Bible, but rather an apocrypha text. In case you are unaware, there are a handful of texts that have the name of “Apocalypse of John” / “Revelation of John”, and I plan to highlight a few of them in the near future. This particular text I …
Being that June 24 is the feast day (nativity, as his death feast day is later) of John the Baptist, I wanted to bring light to this story found in the New Testament Apocrypha Volume 3 edited by Tony Burke. This interesting text makes it’s modern English translation debut thanks to Tony Burke and Sarah …
Continue reading “The Martyrdom of Zechariah, father of John the Baptist”
Here is a short text involving the life of Mary Magdalene after the resurrection of Christ. It survives in quite a few manuscript copies, all dating from the 10th century onward, however it is believed to originate earlier. This tale is pretty similar to other western legends regarding MM though it does not feature her …
Recently I acquired all three volumes of the “New Testament Apocrypha: More noncanonical Scriptures”, edited by Tony Burke. These volumes contain rarely seen apocrypha texts, some of which are making their English debut. I noticed volume 2 and 3 had some Mary Magdalene stories. With this post, I am going to talk about the story …
In a post awhile back I mentioned some newly translated fragments from the oxyrhynchus dig that had been released to the public. These are fragments 5575, 5576 and 5577. 5575 is a Jesus sayings fragment that has similarities to Matthew, Luke and Thomas. 5576 is a gnostic style fragment. 5577 is a dialogue between Mary …
Continue reading “Mary Magdalene: Baptism of water and fire”
The past month or so I have been doing a deep dive into the Quran and really enjoy comparing the aspects of various figures in there with their Christian / Jewish counterparts, particularly that of Jesus / Isa. I had a previous blog post (link HERE) that mentions the crucifixion body swap that appears in …
Culmination of Wisdom