Introduction to This Volume
How this book is arranged
This is the hundred and seventh volume of a series that gathers the writings of the early Church. The first volumes of the series follow the writers in order of date; this volume belongs to the later part of the series, which gathers the apocryphal and pseudepigraphal writings: the apocalypses and visions of the Church, the Gnostic Pistis Sophia and the Acts of Archelaus. This volume holds the apocalypses of Peter, Paul, Thomas, Esdras, John, Moses, Sedrach, Samuel of Kalamoun and Daniel, the Narrative of Zosimus, the Gnostic Pistis Sophia and the Acts of Archelaus against Mani.
Within each work the text is divided into chapters and numbered sections, so that any passage can be found again and cited. The small bold figures in the text are the section numbers.
The translations
The text is in English only. Wherever a modern English version has been prepared for SermonIndex it is used here; otherwise the book prints an older public-domain translation. In both cases the wording is the translator’s own: older translations have not been altered beyond dividing them into sections. The sources for every work are listed at the back of the book, together with the licence under which each text is released. All the works in this volume are printed in older public-domain translations. The Ante-Nicene translations were transcribed by the volunteers of English Wikisource. The translations of M. R. James and G. R. S. Mead were read by machine from scans of the printed books and have not been proofread against the pages, so a misreading may remain. Page numbers and footnotes are left out. Greek, Hebrew and Latin words in the editors’ notes are left out or, where a Greek word occurs in the text itself, given in Latin letters. The apocalypses of Samuel of Kalamoun and of Daniel are Roger Pearse’s translations from French, and he calls them rough.
In this volume
Most of the visions in this volume describe heaven and hell, and tell the reader what will be done to the sinner after death. The Apocalypse of Peter and the Vision of Paul were read in the churches in the early centuries,. The later Coptic and Arabic apocalypses written under Muslim rule look to the end of the world and the coming of a king who will deliver the Christians.
Pistis Sophia is a Gnostic book in Coptic, and the Acts of Archelaus is a Christian account of a debate with the heretic Manes. They are placed here because each shows the religion that the church of the first centuries had to answer. G. R. S. Mead’s translation of Pistis Sophia is divided here into the books of the Saviour and the First and Second Books.
Dates and authorship
None of these books is part of the Bible. Some were written by Jews before the time of Christ, some by Christians in the first centuries, and some much later, and many carry the name of a patriarch, an apostle or a Father who did not write them. Some of them contain stories that the Church never received and teaching that it rejected. They are printed here so that a reader can see what they say and judge them against the Scriptures, as the Fathers themselves did. The books in this volume range from the second century to the twelfth. Pistis Sophia is a Gnostic book, and the Church did not receive its teaching.