Who was the Apostle John? One of the sons of Zebedee (a fisherman) and Salome, St. John and his elder brother St. James were among the first disciples called by Jesus. With St. Peter, they formed a nucleus of intimate disciples. John and James were called “Son’s of Thunder” by Jesus… John is seen differently in the West than the East and Africa has its own account of John’s experiences.. Incidentally, In the West, John is depicted as a young beardless man. In Byzantine art he appears old, with a long white beard and hair. An early Christian work called the Acts of John is one of a set of early Christian writings collectively called “the apocryphal acts of the apostles.” Here, the Apostle John raises six people from the dead, bedbugs obey his command, and a lusty young man cuts off his own genitals.. We know that Jesus did give his disciples the power to heal… We also see an extension of Jesus’ bodily and spiritual healing in the life of the infant Church. The Acts of the A...
PAUL, APOCALYPSE OF. Paul wrote of being caught up into Paradise in the third heaven, and hearing “things that cannot be told” (2 Cor 12:1-4). Such passages offered a clear opportunity for the writing of apocrypha, in this case to narrate Paul’s vision; in due course the opportunity was taken. Augustine mentions an Apocalypse of Paul, and a book of that name is condemned by the Decretum Gelasianum. The Decretum Gelasianum or the Gelasian Decree is so named because it was traditionally thought to be a Decretal of the prolific Pope Gelasius I, bishop of Rome 492–496. The Decretal was decrees of selection regarding the cannon among other things … The Decretum has five parts actually. Parts 1, 3, and 4 are not relevant to the canon. The second part is a canon catalogue. The Deuterocanonical Books (other than Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah) are accepted by the catalogue, and are still found in the Roman Catholic Bible, though not in the Protestant canon…This work that we are studyi...