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 Apostles relates how Peter and John encounter a cripple whom Peter healed, saying, “I have neither silver nor gold, but what I do have I give to you: in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean, rise and walk” (Acts 3:6). When the high priests questioned them about this healing, Peter declared, “All the people of Israel should know that it was in the name of Jesus Christ the Nazorean whom you crucified, whom God raised from the dead” that the cripple was saved (Acts 4:10).
Why is the Gospel of John so different?
John's Gospel differs from the Synoptic Gospels in several ways: it covers a different time span than the others; it locates much of Jesus' ministry in Judaea; and it portrays Jesus discoursing at length on theological matters. The major difference, however, lies in John's overall purpose. The purpose of this gospel, as stated by John himself, is to show that Jesus of Nazareth was Christ, the Son of God, and that believers in him might have eternal life.
Many scholars think that versions of the episode considered to belong to the "Acts of John" were already circulating in the second century.
The names of any authors involved in the project are unknown. One older tradition associated the texts with one Leucius Charinus, a companion of John, but his name does not appear in the text and modern scholars do not think he was involved in composing them.[citation needed]
Some version of the "Acts of John" containing at least portions of Section B and the Lycomedes episode was rejected as heretical by the Second Council of Nicaea in AD 787. The exact contents of the "Acts of John" known to participants in the Council is unknown.
Polymorphic christology, seen in Section B, developed mostly during the second century, lending credence to the second century development date.
Why is the Acts of John not in the Bible?
Acts of John, an apocryphal (noncanonical and unauthentic) Christian writing, composed about ad 180, purporting to be an account of the travels and miracles of St. John. The book was condemned by the second Council of Nicaea, in ad 787, because of its subversion of orthodox Christian teachings.
Legend was also active in the West, being especially stimulated by the passage in Mark 10:39, with its hints of John’s martyrdom. Tertullian, the 2nd-century North African theologian, reports that John was plunged into boiling oil from which he miraculously escaped unscathed. During the 7th century this scene was portrayed in the Lateran basilica and located in Rome by the Latin Gate, and the miracle is still celebrated in some traditions.
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| John to be plunged into boiling oil still exists at the Latan Gate |
According to a collection of stories written by Tertullian at the end of the second century, St. John the Evangelist underwent martyrdom at Rome by being immersed in boiling oil, from which he emerged unharmed. He was later exiled to Patmos.
The place of this martyrdom was traditionally said to have occurred at the Latin Gate (located on the southern portion of the Roman wall). This is referred to in the martyrology, which was begun in the seventh century, where already there was a celebration in honor of the martyrdom.
In the original form of the apocryphal Acts of John (second half of the 2nd century) the apostle dies, but in later traditions he is assumed to have ascended to heaven like Enoch and Elijah. The work was condemned as a gnostic heresy in 787 CE. Another popular tradition, known to St. Augustine, declared that the earth over John’s grave heaved as if the apostle were still breathing.
Notes: What did Sethians believe?
The Apocryphon of John is concerned primarily with an account of the creation of the world. The text was discovered in the Nag Hammadi library as the first document in a series of Sethian Gnostic texts and it includes the most detailed Sethian creation mythology. The role and position of Jesus in the Godhead is very different from orthodox canonical descriptions as a result of the presuppositions of Sethians who wrote this text. Sethian believers appear to have accepted ] Jesus AS DEPICTED IN HISTORY but attempted to place Him within their preconceived Sethian beliefs. This is important when assessing this work because the Sethians believed that while the material world was created by an ignorant, angry and jealous God, Adam himself had a spark of divinity that came from the true God, the Father who exists in the realm of pure spirit. “Adam is actually smarter and more perceptive than the creator being,”
The title "Acts of John" is used to refer to a set of stories about John the Apostle that began circulating in written form as early as the second century AD. Translations of the "Acts of John" in modern languages have been reconstructed by scholars from a number of manuscripts of later date. The "Acts of John" are generally classified as "New Testament Apocrypha."
Numerous stories about John and other apostles began circulating in the second century after Christ. These stories trace to a variety of different authors and contexts, and were revised and retold in many different forms and languages over the centuries. Sometimes episodes that had originally circulated independently were combined with other stories to form collections about an apostle, and sometimes episodes that had originally been part of multi-episode collections were detached and circulated independently. Most extant manuscripts of such stories also date to a period considerably after they first began circulating.
These factors can make it difficult to reconstruct the earliest forms of stories about the apostle John, and scholars continue to debate about which episodes originally belonged together. One set of stories, in which John appears before Domitian in Rome and survives drinking deadly poison, appears in some old translations of the "Acts of John," but is no longer considered to have the same origins as other episodes. It is now known as the "Acts of John at Rome [fr]", and understood to be a separate tradition.
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