mountainman

Philosopher Jay recently linked to an article called Christ the Magician: A survey of ancient Christian sarcophagus imagery by William Storage and Laura Maish. A reference is made to the apocryphal text called the "Acts of Saints Processus and Martinianus". Does anyone know where an English translation of this text may be sourced?

Here is the WIKI page for Martinian and Processus

Roger Pearse

Martinianus and Processus were the two soldiers guarding Peter in prison, according to the Acts of Linus. Their Acta are 6th century, and were published by the Bollandists in the Acta Sanctorum, July 1, 303.

The cult of these saints is already recorded in the 4th century work Praedestinatus, book 1, ch. 86, where the "Tertullianist" minister (in the period before Theodosius I) claimed that they had been Montanists, and claimed therefore ownership of the church in Rome dedicated to them.

Henry Formby, Ancient Rome and its connection with the Christian religion, p.388-391, gives what seems to be a long translation of a portion of these acts, which may be accessed here. I have not been able to find a PDF which is not a reprint, unfortunately.

UPDATE: I have transcribed the relevant portion here.

PhilosopherJay

Hi Pete and Rodger,

Great stuff, thanks for bringing this up.

I'm thinking that the Acts of Martinianus and Processus were certainly Fourth Century works. They must have been enormously popular in Rome as they contain evidence of Jesus, Peter and Paul all being in Rome in their lifetimes. The fact that this work was kept out of the New Testament Canon shows that the real power of the Catholic Church still lay in the Eastern Churches.

It reminds me of the Mormon Church and Joseph Smith who invented the idea that Jesus visited America. The writers of "Acts of Martinanus and Processus" were catering to the emerging new Christian Roman audience, in the same way that Smith was catering to the new Christian American audience of the 1820's and 1830's. Since their holy books said not a word about the new American identity, it was important to synthesize the new Americanism with the old faith. In the same way the New Testament really doesn't speak at all to Romans. It was therefore necessary to add the silly bit in Acts about Paul coming to Rome and to create works like "the Acts of Martinanus and Processus to show that Christians did care about Rome.

Those of us who grew up in New York in the 1960's understand the sense of pride we got when the Fantastic Four and Spiderman were both set in New York City, unlike the fictional towns of Batman and Superman, "Metropolis" and "Gotham." It merged the fantasy comic book world with the real world for us. After reading the comics, we all looked up at the skyscrapers expecting to see Spiderman battling Dr. Octopus. It is no wonder that Marvel's popularity soon eclipsed D.C. Comics.

Warmly,

Jay Raskin

stephan huller

Pairs are always interesting in early christianity. there seems to have been a revival of the cult of peter and paul at rome on fifth century rome. There were likely TWO episcopal lines

mountainman

Brilliant.


Thanks Roger.

mountainman

Was Jesus crucified a second time?

The exchange between Peter and the Lord at the Appian Gate.



Do we find these sayings of Jesus amidst the Agrapha?

mountainman

Hi Philosopher Jay,

These 4th century texts are somehow all connected. Our task is to ascertain how this evidence - these texts; the canonical and the non canonical - are perceived with the greatest referential integrity.

How do we explain their appearance in their ancient historical context if we do not understand the ancient historical context of the 4th century?
.


That's probably an accurate observation. Politically a New Rome was commissioned c.330 CE East of the Old Rome. The original article about Roman art evidence finds:


The author of this text introduces new material about Peter tracing "the sign of the Cross upon the Tarpeian rock. The same hour, water began to flow from the rock."

This text is full of such 4th century graphic imagery.


This is an intriguing analogy Philosopher Jay. In the analogy instead of the figure of Smith as the author, we have an exceedingly shadowy 4th century figure by the name of Leucius Charinus as the only named suspect.

I would like to point out to you a remarkable coincidence I found looking at the background to this text. As Roger mentioned, the two jailers are also mentioned in another obscure non canonical text called "The Acts of Linus


"The Acts of Linus"

Can anyone point at an English translation for this text?
(Rather than start a new thread)




I was interested to look a little further at these two organisations.

Marvel Comics


DC Comics:




After digesting these profiles I certainly would agree that the 20th/21st century corporate cartoon business of planet Earth can be instructive up to a certain point in the critical questioning of the evidence in reconstructing the history of christian origins.

If we are to believe Augustine then the veneration of the two Jailer-Saints commenced sometime in the 380's, which may be the time the archeological evidence reported about "Peter striking the Rock" appeared. As a rough analogy we first had the comic strips, and when they had become famous enough, we then produced statues and public art about the Heroes.

Therefore the comics may have been authored generations before the archaeology and yet still within the 4th century.

But the elephant in the room of this comic analogy is the political environment in which these two competing organisations operated. We can probably better understand the 20th century environment better than the 4th century environment.

We must understand that the two companies DC and Marvel Comics in the 4th century represented something quite different. On the one hand we had the Imperially Published Canon business, and on the other hand we had subversive published non canonical business. The polital environment did not permit free trade in comic books. There was a prohibition in place and it was not in alcohol but books.

While I agree that the canon and the non canonical text may be seen as comic books, we need to investigate the respective publishing companies in order to estimate the integrity of the authorship.


Is the Acts of Saints Processus and Martinianus a satire


Toto may as usual disagree, but I have to ask this question of this new evidence in a consistent fashion. Is this another Monty Python version of the "One True Canonical Story" which flooded the market after Nicaea?


Thanks Philosopher Jay for the contributions. I should perhaps apologise for mixing up many categories of questions and observations about the history of this text, and the other non canonical texts, but I think that the non canonical texts are far more inter-related than we may suspect.

ATM I think that there may have been a "Gnostic Publishing Company" which continued to manufacture codices until they were swallowed up in a hostile takeover bid by the Canonists.

Best wishes



Pete

mountainman

Historicity exercise for BC&H researchers: the "saints" Cosmas and Damien .


This is likely 4th century authorship captialized on upon Pope and Pontifex Maximus Damasus I - 366 to 384 CE. We know Damasus renovated many Roman catacombs and promoted the "PETER WAS HERE" business. But before this who knows.


Damasus was definitely in competition with other prospective bishops with their own personal armies following the tragic death of Emperor Julian and the resurgence of the christian church business.

As far as episcopal lines went then it was dog eat dog.

The pagans were the losers. The Greek intellectual and literature traditions were being savagely suppressed in favor of the Christian Canonical Codex.

I think that's its more than likely that the academic pagans (i.e. non christians) went out writing satirical stories in competition with the Christian Canonical Codex, and that this "Acts" belongs in the compendium of stories found by Photius centuries afterwards under the name of "Leucius Charinus".



Acts of Linus

English translation anywhere?