The Apocryphal Acts

Most of what later tradition tells of Matthew’s mission and death comes from a body of apocryphal literature — chiefly the Acts of Andrew and Matthias among the man-eaters and the Martyrdom of Matthew — late, novelistic texts that the Orthodox tradition does not receive as Scripture and that the Church reads, when at all, as witnesses to devotion rather than as history. This file describes these texts, their date and character, their confusion of Matthew with Matthias, and the principle by which they are reported here, not endorsed.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)

The Apocryphal Apostolic Acts

From the second century onward the Church produced, alongside the canonical Acts, a large literature of apocryphal Acts of individual apostles — of Peter, Paul, John, Andrew, Thomas, and others — recounting their missions, miracles, and martyrdoms in the manner of the Hellenistic romance. These texts are of very uneven origin and value; some preserve early traditions, many are frankly legendary, and several carry the doctrinal coloring of the groups that produced them. The Church distinguished them sharply from the canonical Scriptures: they were not read in the assembly, not received into the canon, and often explicitly rejected (Eusebius lists several apocryphal acts among the books “to be cast aside as absurd and impious,” Ecclesiastical History 3.25.6–7; NPNF II/1). For Matthew the relevant texts are two, both late and both legendary.

The Acts of Andrew and Matthias

The first is the Acts of Andrew and Matthias among the man-eaters (the anthropophagi), a Greek text usually dated to roughly the fourth or fifth century in its surviving form, though resting on earlier material connected with the lost Acts of Andrew. It tells how the apostle assigned by lot to “the city of the man-eaters” — a fabulous land whose inhabitants blind, fatten, and devour strangers — is imprisoned and blinded there, and how the apostle Andrew is sent by Christ (who appears as the pilot of a miraculous ship) to rescue him, after which the city is converted through a flood that pours from a statue. The text is pure hagiographical romance, with no claim to be sober history.

Crucially, the apostle imprisoned among the man-eaters is named in the manuscripts sometimes Matthias and sometimes Matthew, and the two figures — Matthew the evangelist and Matthias who replaced Judas (Acts 1:26) — are confused throughout the tradition. The very title varies between the two, and later Byzantine and Western retellings transferred the man-eaters episode to Matthew the evangelist and fused it with his Ethiopian mission. This confusion is one reason the “Ethiopia / man-eaters” strand of Matthew’s mission must be handled with such care (see The Mission Traditions): a good part of it derives from a romance whose hero may originally have been Matthias, not Matthew at all. [Disputed: whether the apostle of the *Acts of Andrew and Matthias* is Matthew the evangelist or Matthias the replacement of Judas; the manuscripts and recensions vary between the two names, and the figures are conflated in the later tradition (R. A. Lipsius, *Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten*, 1883–90; J. K. Elliott, *The Apocryphal New Testament*, 1993). Material from this romance was secondarily attached to Matthew the evangelist.]

The Martyrdom of Matthew

The second text is the Martyrdom of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Matthew, a later Greek composition (later than and dependent on the Acts of Andrew and Matthias), translated in the older English collection of the New Testament apocrypha (in Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 8). It sets Matthew in a city of the man-eaters / Ethiopia, recounts his preaching, a miraculous tree and a raising of the king’s son, the hostility of a king (named Hyrtacus or Aeglippus in different recensions) over the king’s wish to take a consecrated virgin, and the apostle’s death — variously by fire, by spear, or by being pinned to the ground and burned. The recensions disagree among themselves on the manner of the martyrdom, which is itself a sign of their legendary and secondary character: a firmly remembered historical death does not multiply into several incompatible deaths. The text is valuable as a witness to how the later Church imagined and venerated the apostle, and to the themes it associated with him (the preacher among the savage nations, the defender of the consecrated virgin, the martyr by fire), but not as a record of events.

Reported, Not Endorsed

The principle governing this collection’s use of such material is that of the repository methodology (§3.5): apocryphal and hagiographical claims are reported as the testimony of the texts that carry them, with their date and character named, and are never certified as historical fact. The apocryphal acts of Matthew are accordingly described here for what they are — late, novelistic, doctrinally and geographically unreliable compositions, valuable for the history of devotion and iconography but not for the biography of the apostle — and the details they supply (the named kings, the manner of death, the man-eaters) are not asserted as history. The Orthodox tradition’s veneration of Matthew rests on his place among the Twelve, his Gospel, and the Church’s unbroken commemoration of him as a holy apostle and evangelist, not on the romances; and the romances are read, where they are read at all, with the discernment the Church has always applied to the apocrypha — neither received as Scripture nor wholly discarded, but held at the distance their character requires.

See Also

References

  • The Acts of Andrew and Matthias (in the City of the Man-eaters); The Martyrdom of the Holy Apostle and Evangelist Matthew. In Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 8. Ed. Roberts and Donaldson.
  • Eusebius of Caesarea. The Ecclesiastical History 3.25.6–7 (the apocryphal acts rejected). Trans. McGiffert. NPNF II/1.
  • Elliott, J. K. The Apocryphal New Testament: A Collection of Apocryphal Christian Literature in an English Translation. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.
  • Lipsius, R. A. Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten und Apostellegenden. Braunschweig, 1883–1890.