Resurrection in Acts of Andrew

(avg. read time: 4–8 mins.)

As the previous two entries in this series addressed apocryphal gospels, this is the first of four entries to address apocryphal acts. The Acts of Andrew is a difficult text to interact with because of the number of different stories attached to Andrew and how they were collected in “acts” stories. There is a text known as the Acts of Andrew. There is one known as the Acts of Peter and Andrew. There is one known as the Acts of Andrew and Matthias. There is a brief text known as the Acts of Andrew and Paul. There are fragments that may or may not be related to the Acts. And there is an epitome of the Acts (like 2 Maccabees is an epitome) preserved by Gregory of Tours. He found value in the text but edited its prolixity and excised parts that would be considered objectionable in order to bring it more in line with orthodoxy. Moreover, there were many versions of Andrew’s martyrdom in particular.

Eusebius of Caesarea was aware of the Acts and others like it (Hist. eccl. 3.25.6–7) and noted how much they were at variance with apostolic writings. The Acts is mentioned even earlier in the third century by a Manichean text. The Acts of Andrew was likely originally composed in the (late) second century or early in the third century.

Our focus for this entry is Gregory’s epitome because it has the most relevance for our analysis. The typical approach of noting explicit references followed by implicit links will return here. But there will not be as much pertinent material for the implicit links. (For the Latin of the text I will be working with, see here.)

Explicit References

As is unsurprising in acts texts, the explicit references appear in the contexts of raising miracles. The first of these comes in ch. 7 in a context vaguely resembling the story of the widow of Nain and her dead son in Luke 7:11–17 (see here). The resemblance is simply that the parents of the dead son are in mourning, and he is lying on a bier at the entrance of a city (in this case, Nicomedia). However, his death was the result of an attack of demons whom Andrew drove out of Nicea. Andrew calls upon Jesus to raise (resuscites) him, and after he wishes for the son to be returned to life so that his parents may convert, he commands the boy in the name of Jesus Christ to rise (surge) and stand on his feet. The boy obeys by arising (surrexit) and standing. The people glorify Andrew’s God for this deed. And because the parents dedicated the son to Andrew’s service should he be raised from the dead, he goes with Andrew to receive instruction.

Later, at Thessalonica, another death would be caused by a demon, except this time it would be of the one he possessed. For when he foresaw that he would be exorcised, he made the person he possessed hang himself. His father had the corpse brought to Andrew, believing he could raise (resuscitare) him, and he later says this to Andrew with a different verb (resurgere) preceded by an equivalent of the oft-noted prepositional phrase that will signify his separation from the rest of the dead (a morte; 14). Andrew has been working other wonders before this crowd, and he questions them about what good this deed will do if they do not believe. They respond by making his raising (resuscitato) this one a condition for all of them believing in the God he proclaims. He then commands the boy in the name of Jesus Christ to rise (surge), and he rose (surrexit). The people then believe, and Andrew instructs them for three days.

While he is in Thessalonica, his opponents appeal to Virinus the proconsul to intervene, and they say he wants the temples destroyed, the ceremonies rejected, the ancient laws abolished, and only one God worshiped (18). These accusations are fitting in the context, but it is interesting how they conceptually parallel an accusation made against Paul and his fellows in Thessalonica in Acts 17:7. Virinus sends soldiers to accost him, and they meet resistance. One of the soldiers had a demon who departs from him after upbraiding Virinus, and he leaves the soldier dead. He tries various means of killing Andrew, all of which fail. The last attempt was to sic a leopard on him, but the leopard strangled the proconsul’s son instead. Andrew points to the power of the true God who rules these beasts, but he also promises to raise (suscitabo) the dead son so that others would believe. And so he raises (suscitavit) him, and the people glorify God.

The next story (19) features Andrew slaying a massive serpent with his words (which also evoke Gen 3:14–15). He then approaches a child the serpent had killed. He commands Virinus’s wife (whose conversion was not included in this epitome) to go and raise (suscita) the child. She commands him in the name of Jesus to rise (surge) whole/healed, and he rises (surrexit).

Another story (23) focuses on Trophima, once the proconsul’s mistress, who became a follower of Andrew. She is said to have kept some Gospel text on her person, and when a man attacked her, the Gospel fell to the ground, and he died. She then raised (resuscitavit) him in the name of Jesus Christ. Likewise, Lesbius’s wife, who had mistreated Trophima, is later struck dead, and Andrew shows mercy to her, despite her husband being content with her death, by praying to Jesus Christ to raise (resuscitetur) her and commanding her in the name of Jesus Christ to rise (surge). And so she rose (surrexit) and reconciled with Trophima.

Next, a corpse is deposited in his vicinity by the sea. Andrew prayed to raise (resuscitari) him, and he is revived (revixit). He tells Andrew that his ship was wrecked, and he and all his fellows had drowned. Thus, he asks him to raise (resuscitati) them as well so that they may know the true God. The thirty-nine others are collected, others pray for them to be raised (resuscitarentur), and Andrew instructs others to call on Jesus Christ, Son of the living God, to raise (resuscitat) them. And so they were raised (suscitati).

As one can see, there is plenty of repetition involved in telling these stories, and this is an epitome of a much longer text. But the terminology varies so that one should not put too much significance in when one word is used as opposed to another, except perhaps that some work transitively and some work intransitively. The word whence we derive “resuscitation” is also used in ways that signal it referring to “resurrection” properly speaking (particularly in 7 and 14). And as we will see at other times as we progress through Latin writings, it is not as if one kind of term was reserved for Jesus’s resurrection/the eschatological resurrection and another was reserved for temporary resurrections.

For example, Old Latin mss use surrexit or resurrexit in Luke 9:7; 24:34; John 2:22; 21:14; Acts 10:41; 1 Cor 15:4, and 12–14. But they also use suscito or resuscito in John 2:22; 12:1; 21:14; Acts 10:40; and 1 Cor 15:15, and they use surgo or resurgo in 1 Cor 15:16 – 17, 20, 29, 32, 35, 42–44, and 51. Tertullian (as well as Cyprian) tends to use resurgo for referring to Jesus’s resurrection and the eschatological resurrection. However, he uses resuscito in Praescr. 30; Marc. 5.14.5; Carn Chr. 5.2, and 3.¹ We observe similar matters in terminology in this text.

Raising miracles tend to lead to belief here. They are nearly always followed with glorification of God, both by those who have already believed (mostly due to other miracles) and those who had not yet expressed belief. It is also tied to Andrew teaching, sometimes most directly in the form of him empowering someone else to perform a raising miracle. There is no magic spell involved, but the name of Jesus Christ is regularly invoked.

Curiously, while these deeds implicitly declare the power of Jesus’s name, at no point is Jesus himself declared to be risen. Events of Jesus’s life are imitated, such as the manner in which Andrew is said to die by crucifixion (36), though even there he is said to preach for three days before he dies. Yet the actual major gospel events are nowhere explicitly proclaimed, including Jesus’s own resurrection. They are fairly assumed, but they are nowhere at the forefront. The raising of others is nowhere linked with Jesus’s resurrection.

Implicit Links

There are only a few implicit links to note in this narrative text. One, as we have observed the link between raising miracles and belief, we see a particularly important example in ch. 7. There, Andrew ties the coming resurrection miracle, which will be temporary in its consequence of restoring a child to life, with the more permanent consequence of the parents receiving eternal life. That is not explicitly tied to eschatological resurrection, as in other texts. But it is a frequent implicit link we have observed throughout this series.

Two, other forms of healing are implicitly tied to resurrection. For example, the command given to those healed to rise in ch. 15 is the same term used for commands to rise to life (surge) elsewhere in this text. The terms also tend to indicate the bodily nature of resurrection and the healing associated with it, as we have seen elsewhere with Hebrew and Greek terms (also see here).

Three, Andrew declares how grateful he is that Lesbius fears the judgment to come (23). Lesbius had just witnessed God’s temporal judgment against his wife for her mistreatment of Trophima. But he acts now to avoid condemnation at the judgment to come. That final judgment is frequently linked to resurrection, as we have noted many times over.

1. I owe these particular references to John Granger Cook, Empty Tomb, Resurrection, Apotheosis, WUNT 410 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2018), 48–49.