Gripla - 20.12.2005, Blaðsíða 11

STYLISTICS AND SOURCES OF THE POSTOLA SÖGUR 9
attributed to Abdias (containing the lives of eleven apostles) is thought to have
been produced in France in the sixth or seventh century, and it became the
most widely-known collection of apostles’ lives in the Middle Ages prior to
the appearance of Jacobus de Voragine’s late thirteenth-century Legenda
Aurea.4
Saints’ and apostles’ lives were among the first types of material written in
Icelandic. They were first brought to Iceland by foreign missionaries during
the conversion period and the formative years of the Icelandic church (from
Julius Africanus (2nd-3rd centuries) is the author of arguably the most influential universal
history for the medieval Christian world, the Chronicle (Greek Chronographiai); the attribu-
tion of the Pseudo-Abdias collection to him is spurious.
Concerning the sixth- or seventh-century Apostolic History of Abdias, James (1924:438)
states that Abdias „has no right to figure as its author at all.“ Lipsius discusses the authorship
of the work in DAAA I:117-121.
4 Editions of the Pseudo-Abdian collection exist in Nausea 1531; Lazius 1552; Faber 1560;
Beauxamis 1566 and 1571; Fabricius 1743; versions of the Pseudo-Abdian texts are also to
be found in Mombritius and A A A.
The Pseudo-Abdian collection does not hold a highly regarded position in studies of Biblical
apocrypha; in fact it has not been republished since Fabricius’ third edition was published in
1743, and very few studies dealing with it exist (the most complete is DAAA I:117-178). Its
relegated status is primarily due to its late date and its derivative nature, which render it of
little critical interest to scholars who are interested in original apocryphal texts, in the rela-
tionships between these texts, and in the theology embedded in them. The preferred text of
Pseudo-Abdias, when it is given a place in studies of Biblical apocrypha, is that of Fabricius,
although this is due more to Fabricius’ rather copious notes on the sources used for the nar-
ratives in the collection than to the quality of the texts themselves (variants between Fab-
ricius’ and earlier editions are minimal).
While Fabricius’ edition was the only one to provide a scholarly critical apparatus designed
to highlight the derivative nature of the texts (Fabricius’ notes are used extensively by Lip-
sius in DAAA), scholarly opinion regarding the value of the texts for studies of Biblical
apocrypha was not aided by the fact that his notes tend to repeat earlier patristic criticisms
levelled against the narratives for their spurious content. Lazius’ edition (which is also given
somewhat extensive treatment by Lipsius) was in fact the first to publish the texts in their
‘original’ form in ten books.
For further information on the published editions of Pseudo-Abdias, as well as on the manu-
scripts used for them, see DAAA I:124-134. Other works that deal with Pseudo-Abdias
include James 1924:462-469 (actually just summaries of books in Pseudo-Abdias that are not
derived from established versions of the apocryphal Acts), and Elliott 1993:525-531 (a
reworking of James’ text). Brief mention of Pseudo-Abdias is made in Hennecke 1965 and
1992. Elliott lists no English translations of the Apostolic History of Pseudo-Abdias, except
for the summaries given by James (thus the translations provided in the present author’s
doctoral thesis may represent the only complete translation of a ‘version’ of Pseudo-Abdias).