Friday, April 28, 2023

J. Christopher Edwards on the Six Books Dormition Apocrypha

  

The Six Books is the oldest exemplar of a literary family of Dormition traditions called the Bethlehem traditions, due to the amount of narrative occurring in Bethlehem. The text of the Six Books is originally composed in Greek, although no Greek manuscripts of the text survive. The earliest extant manuscripts are preserved in Syriac and date from the fifth and sixth centuries. Shoemaker notes at least five Syriac manuscripts, two of which are complete, and three sets of palimpsest fragments. There are two major English translations of these earlier Syriac texts, each undertaken in the nineteenth century. William Wright translated one of the complete Syriac manuscripts, and A. Smith Lewis translated a fragmentary palimpsest codex. Shoemaker is now producing a much-needed critical edition and translation of the Six Books Narrative.

 

The Six Books must have been written sometime before the middle of the fifth century, since the extant Syriac manuscripts are from the late fifth century, and they were translated from an earlier Greek text. The Six Books must have been written sometime after Constantine, since the tradition about the relic of the True Cross and Mary’s practice of praying at Jesus’s tomb are only conceivable after Constantine’s mother, Helena, journeyed to the Holy Land. Shoemaker argues that the Greek original and its traditions can be more specifically dated “almost certainly to the middle of the fourth century, if not perhaps even earlier. The reasons for this more specific dating are somewhat complicated, but can be summarized in the following two points:

 

First, the Six Books is dependent on the Doctrina Addai. After 400 CE, this text begins to include a story of the discovery of the True Cross, known as the Protonike legend, which is derivative of the Helena legend. Because the Six Books includes a story of the True Cross that is different than the Protonike legend, it must be dependent on a version of Doctrina Addai that lacked this legend—that is, a version existing before the year 400 CE.

 

Second, among the heresies addressed by the fourth-century writer Epiphanius of Salamis, in his Panarion are the so-called “Kollyridians.” This group offered Mary a degree of veneration that Epiphanius finds unacceptable. Shoemaker demonstrates the high likelihood that Epiphanius obtained his understanding of the Kollyridians from his acquaintance with the Six Books. Shoemaker conjectures that “Epiphanius encountered the Six Books traditions in Palestine, where he lived prior to becoming metropolitan of Cyprus in 367.”

 

Finally, although this is not a rationale for dating the Six Books in the mid-fourth century provided by Shoemaker, Richard Bauckahm argues for a date “from the fourth century at the latest, but perhaps considerably earlier,” because of the position of the dead in the Six Books as “waiting for the last judgment and resurrection,” which he says can be found in “no other apocalypse [. . . ] later than the mid second century.”(J. Christopher Edwards, “The Departure of My Lady Mary From This World (The Six Books Dormition Apocryphon),” in Early New Testament Apocrypha, ed. J. Christopher Edwards [Ancient Literature for New Testament Studies 9; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Zondervan Academic, 2022], 308-10)