The Bartholomew Apocrypha

A body of apocryphal literature circulated under the apostle’s name: the Questions of Bartholomew (the so-called Gospel of Bartholomew), in which the apostle interrogates the risen Christ and the Theotokos about hidden mysteries; the notices of a “Gospel of Bartholomew” in Jerome and the Gelasian Decree; and the Martyrdom of Bartholomew, the source of the king-conversion and flaying narratives. This file describes and dates these texts — named as apocrypha, not received as Scripture or as history.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle)

The “Gospel of Bartholomew”: A Title in the Sources

Ancient writers knew of a “Gospel of Bartholomew.” St. Jerome, in the prologue to his Commentary on Matthew, lists among the apocryphal gospels that have been rejected one “according to Bartholomew” (Jerome, Commentary on Matthew, prologue; cited in Elliott 1993). The sixth-century Decretum Gelasianum (the so-called Gelasian Decree), a Latin list of received and rejected books, likewise names a “Gospel in the name of Bartholomew” among the apocrypha “not received” by the Church (Decretum Gelasianum, in Elliott 1993). These notices establish that a text or texts bearing the apostle’s name circulated by late antiquity and were known to the Fathers — and were placed by them outside the canon.

Whether the “Gospel of Bartholomew” named by Jerome and the Gelasian Decree is the same work as the surviving Questions of Bartholomew, or a lost separate text, is uncertain; scholars commonly treat the surviving Questions as the most likely candidate or as closely related (James 1924; Elliott 1993).

The Questions of Bartholomew

The chief surviving Bartholomew apocryphon is the Questions of Bartholomew, preserved in Greek, Latin, and Slavonic recensions and usually dated by scholars to perhaps the third to fifth centuries, though its layers are hard to fix (James 1924; Elliott 1993). It is cast as a series of revelations: the apostle Bartholomew puts questions to the risen Christ and afterward to the Virgin Mary, and receives disclosures of matters hidden from ordinary sight.

The contents are strikingly speculative. Bartholomew asks the Lord where He went when He vanished from the cross, and is told of the descent into Hades and the harrowing of the underworld — the loosing of the captive dead. He questions the Theotokos about the manner of the Incarnation, and she begins to reveal it but is restrained. The apostle is shown the abyss and the adversary: in one of the work’s most curious scenes, Beliar (Satan) is brought up in chains and made to recount the fall of the angels and the deceiving of mankind. The work mingles canonical motifs — the descent into Hades, the questioning of the risen Lord — with elaborate apocryphal speculation about the cosmos, the angels, and the secrets of the Incarnation (James 1924, The Apocryphal New Testament, “The Gospel of Bartholomew”; Elliott 1993).

The genre is that of the post-resurrection revelation dialogue, common in the apocryphal and gnostic-adjacent literature of the second to fourth centuries, in which a risen Christ imparts secret teaching to a chosen apostle. The Questions of Bartholomew is orthodox in much of its framework (it affirms the Incarnation, the descent into Hades, the defeat of Satan) but apocryphal in its method and detail, and it was never received into the canon or read in the Church’s worship.

The Martyrdom of Bartholomew

Distinct from the Questions is the Martyrdom of Bartholomew, surviving in Greek and Latin (and related to a broader cycle of apostolic acta), which supplies the narrative of the apostle’s mission and death (James 1924; Elliott 1993). In this text Bartholomew comes to “India,” to a city whose king is named Polymius (Polymius/Polimius); he overthrows the idol Astaruth (Astaroth), whose demon he exposes and silences; he heals the king’s demon-possessed daughter; and he converts King Polymius and many of his people. The enraged pagan priests, or the king’s brother Astreges (Astyages), seize the apostle, and he is put to death.

It is the Martyrdom of Bartholomew and the related passiones that are the principal literary source of the famous manner of his death — the flaying — and of the surrounding details of the king-conversion and the idol-confrontation (the death is treated in The Martyrdom). The work belongs to the genre of the apocryphal Acts of the Apostles and shares their character: edifying, miracle-laden, and legendary, composed long after the apostolic age to satisfy the Church’s desire to know how its founders had labored and died.

The Status of These Texts

These works are apocrypha in the proper sense: writings outside the canon, not received as Scripture, and not the basis of the Church’s doctrine. They are named here and described, never endorsed. The Orthodox tradition has always distinguished such literature sharply from the canonical Gospels and Acts, while sometimes drawing on the apocryphal acta and passiones for hagiographical detail — which is precisely how the flaying-martyrdom and the king-conversion entered the standard biography of Bartholomew (see Assessing the Tradition). The methodological point, developed in the companion file, is that much of what is popularly “known” of Bartholomew’s mission and death derives not from Scripture or from the early historians but from these late and legendary texts — a provenance that must be stated, not concealed (METHODOLOGY §3.5; on the patristic frame for judging apocrypha, see The Church Fathers).

See Also

References

  • James, M. R. The Apocryphal New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924. (Translations and descriptions of the Gospel/Questions of Bartholomew and the Martyrdom of Bartholomew.)
  • Elliott, J. K. The Apocryphal New Testament. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993. (Updated edition, introductions, and the notices of the “Gospel of Bartholomew” in Jerome and the Gelasian Decree.)
  • Jerome. Commentary on Matthew, prologue. (Notice of a “Gospel according to Bartholomew.”)
  • The Decretum Gelasianum (Gelasian Decree). (Lists a “Gospel in the name of Bartholomew” among rejected apocrypha.)