Murderous Man-Eaters, Savage Cave Dwellers, and a Love-Struck Giant Serpent: Christianized Paradoxography in the Apocryphal Acts.

In the many fictional stories about the disciples of Christ that circulated in the ancient world, there is an undeniable interest in strange, exotic, and wondrous phenomena such as when the apostle Thomas fights a giant serpent in India, when the apostle Matthew is said to have encountered savage cave dwellers in Ethiopia, and when the apostle Matthias is almost eaten by murderous man-eaters in Scythia. These and similar features have regularly been regarded as proof of these stories' affinities with ancient novels but have rarely been discussed in the context of ancient nonfiction including paradoxography, a genre focused on collecting precisely such strange and wondrous phenomena from around the world. This article analyzes how three early Christian apostle stories from the Acts of Philip, the Acts of Andrew and Matthias, and the Acts of Thomas make use of ancient paradoxography for characterization and plot construction, and it discusses how their authors adapt paradoxographical data to integrate them in a biblically informed Christian worldview and use them to promote their own theological outlook. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]