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TheActs of Paul and Thecla (Latin:Acta Pauli et Theclae) is anapocryphal text describingPaul the Apostle's influence on a young virgin namedThecla. It is one of the writings of theNew Testament apocrypha.Edgar J. Goodspeed called it a "religious romance".[1]
It is attested no earlier thanTertullian,De baptismo 17:5 (c. 190), who says that apresbyter from Asia wrote theHistory of Paul and Thecla, and was deposed after confessing that he wrote it.[2]Eugenia of Rome in the reign ofCommodus (180–192) is reported in the Acts of her martyrdom to have taken Thecla as her model after reading the text, prior to its disapproval by Tertullian.[3]Jerome recounts the information from Tertullian,[4] and on account of his exactitude in reporting on chronology, some scholars regard the text a 1st-century creation.[5]
Many surviving versions of theActs of Paul and Thecla inGreek, and some inCoptic, as well as references to the work amongChurch Fathers show that it was widely disseminated. In theEastern Church, the wide circulation of theActs of Paul and Thecla in Greek,Syriac, andArmenian is evidence of the veneration ofThecla of Iconium. There are also Latin, Coptic, and Ethiopic versions, sometimes differing widely from the Greek. "In the Ethiopic, with the omission of Thecla's admitted claim to preach and to baptize, half the point of the story is lost."[6]
The Thecla narrative is also contained in aCoptic text of theActs of Paul, which was prepared and published by German CoptologistCarl Schmidt inHeidelberg in the early 20th century.[7]
The author sets this story duringPaul the Apostle'sFirst Missionary Journey, but this text is ideologically different from theNew Testament portrayal of Paul in theActs of the Apostles and thePauline Epistles.
Acts of Paul and Thecla were written near the end of the second century and one of many controversial views on women’s leadership and roles within Christianity. Their story is a part of an early Christian text that does not include the new testament. Although it reflects early Christian views, many churches do not “officially” accept this as a standard or authorized set of texts. The story itself includes dramatic and unusual events, like Thecla surviving wild animals, baptizing herself, and Paul encouraging her to preach and act as an apostle. Later on, this challenges Paul’s own words in 1 Timothy 2:12 . Even though the story was very popular at the time, early Christian leaders did not accept it as part of the official Bible. Specifically, in theActs of Paul and Thecla, Paul travels toIconium (Acts 13:51), proclaiming "the word of God about abstinence and theresurrection." Paul is given a full physical description that may reflect oral tradition. In the Syriac text, "he was a man of middling size, and his hair was scanty, and his legs were a little crooked, and his knees were projecting, and he had large eyes[8] and hiseyebrows met, and his nose was somewhat long, and he was full of grace and mercy; at one time he seemed like a man, and at another time he seemed like an angel." While in Iconium, Paul gave his sermons in the house ofOnesiphorus (cp. 2Tim 1:16) in a series ofbeatitudes, which Thecla, a young noble virgin, heard from her window in an adjacent house. She listened, enraptured, without moving for days. Thecla's mother, Theocleia, and her fiancé, Thamyris, became concerned that Thecla would follow Paul's demand "that one must fear only one God and live in chastity," and they formed a mob to drag Paul to the governor, who imprisoned the apostle. From the start, Thecla listens to Paul’s sermons from her window for days and is completely entranced by him. She eventually leaves her family, fiancé, and her life just to go after Paul. In Acts 2 she bribes a guard to sit at Paul’s feet in prison and kisses his chains, creating an intense spiritual admiration. Thecla’s intense devotion to Paul is often interpreted as a symbol of her radical commitment to Christ's message as preached by Paul. It is more of an admiration of his role than a romantic attachment. Some modern readers might see her behavior as obsessive because she does reorient her life around Paul’s teachings after one encounter by the window. At her mother's request, Paul was sentenced toscourging and expulsion (cp. Acts 14:19, 2 Tim 3:11 refers to Paul, but not specifically Thecla), and Thecla to be killed by beingburned at the stake, so that "all the women who have been taught by this man may be afraid." Stripped naked, Thecla was put on the fire, but she was saved when God sent a miraculous storm to put out the flames.
According to apocryphal sources, Thecla and Paul reunited outside of Iconium, where she told him, "I will cut my hair off, and I shall follow you wherever you go."[9] The two then traveled toPisidian Antioch (cp. Acts 14:21), where a nobleman named Alexander desired Thecla and offered Paul money for her. Paul claimed not to know her, and Alexander then attempted to take Thecla by force. Thecla fought him off, assaulting him in the process, to the amusement of the townspeople. Alexander dragged her before the governor for assaulting a nobleman, and, despite the protests of the city's women, Thecla was sentenced to beeaten by wild beasts. To ensure that her virtue would still be intact at her death, QueenAntonia Tryphaena took her into protective custody overnight.
The next day, Thecla was tied to a fierce lioness and paraded through the city. Though some condemned her for being sacrilegious, other women in the city protested the injustice of her sentence. Still, Thecla was stripped naked and thrown into an arena, where the lioness protected her from a bear and died while killing a lion that belonged to Alexander. Believing that the day in the arena would be her last chance to baptize herself, Thecla jumped into a vat of water that contained ravenous seals (or sea-calves, in some versions of the story). A miracle killed all the seals by lightning, before they could eat her.[10] Further miracles occurred during Thecla's trial when the perfumes of the women in the arena hypnotized the wild beasts so they wouldn't hurt Thecla, and when fire spared her from raging bulls. Thecla was freed when Queen Tryphaena fainted and Alexander begged the governor for mercy, believing that the queen was dead. The governor heard Thecla speak about the Christian God, ordered her clothed, and released her to the rejoicing women of the city.[11] After the violent public punishments that mean to either shame or kill her, she survives! She is not a passive martyr but actively and even sometimes fighting off her attacker again very unusual for at the time. Eventually, Thecla doesn’t rely on Paul anymore.
In Myra, Thecla returned to Paul unharmed and "wearing a mantle that she had altered so as to make a man's cloak."[12] She later returned to Iconium to convert her mother.[13] She went to live inSeleucia Cilicia. According to some versions of theActs, she lived in a cave there for 72 years, becoming a healer. The Hellenistic physicians in the city lost their livelihood and solicited young men to rape Thecla at the age of 90. As they were about to take her, a new passage opened in the cave and the stones closed behind her. She was also able to go to Rome and lay beside Paul's tomb.[14] Some traditions also assert that Thecla journeyed to Rome near the end of her life, where she sought to pay homage to Paul by visiting his tomb. In certain versions of the narrative, she was said to have been buried beside him, underscoring her spiritual equality with the apostle and cementing her legacy as one of the earliest and most influential female figures in Christian history.Thecla’s life and legends contributed to her widespread veneration in the early Christian world, especially among women and ascetic communities, and she was later canonized as a saint in both the Eastern and Western Christian traditions.
The full text ofThe Acts of Paul at Wikisource, translation byM. R. James in the 1924 bookThe Apocryphal New Testament; section II of the full Acts are the Acts of Paul and Thecla{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link)Authority control databases: National |
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