A second category of pseudepigrapha writings were written by Christians during the first to third century AD. These writings have as their subject matter the lives of the apostles after the crucifixion, as well as writings about Mary Magdalene and the Virgin Mary.
These Christian writings as well as some Jewish writings belonged to the Gnostic movement of people seeking personal spiritual knowledge – gnosis. Mystical insights were given more weight than orthodox Christian views coming from the Bible and the Church Fathers.
Gnostic writings containing esoteric knowledge were found at Nag Hammadi in Upper Egypt in 1945. Other collections of Gnostic writings were found in the 19th century at Akhmim in Upper Egypt. They were written in a dialect of Coptic, date from the 5th century and are known as the Berlin Codex.
Acts of John / Acts of St John by Prochurus
The text is attributed to Prochurus who travelled to Ephesus with John. This makes it a pseudepigrapha work, as it is very unlikely that any companion of John was the real author.
In the 9th century bishop Photius thought that a companion of John called Leucius Charinus had written this text, but this is extremely unlikely if he had actually listened to the teachings of the apostle John. Acts of John is very different to the Gospel of John or the letters of John in the New Testament.
What is certain is that Acts of John was written before 180 AD as by this time Irenaeus was condemning the text as heretical.
Acts of John has stories about the miracles performed by the apostle John in Ephesus, raising several people to life. It speaks about destruction occurring in the temple of Artemis due to John’s presence there.
The text has John reflecting on his experiences of knowing Jesus. It claims that Jesus’ body was sometimes material and sometimes not material, and that Jesus did not suffer on the cross as humans suffer. This identifies the text as Gnostic, as this was a belief in Gnosticism.
It ends with John having a trench dug, lying down in it and dying.
Acts of John was declared heretical at the Council of Nicaea in 787 AD.
Apocryphon of John / Secret Book of John / Secret Revelation of John
In this book Jesus appears to John after the Resurrection and Ascension, and gives secret knowledge (gnosis) to him. The book is about the spiritual realms and the spiritual history of humanity.
It was written before 180 AD and is identifed as Sethian Gnostic Christian pseudepigrapha. The Sethians lived in Egypt and the Roman province of Syria Palaestina in the 2nd and 3rd centuries. Sethians believed that Seth (the third son of Adam and Eve) was Christ.
This book was preserved as 4th century Coptic translations of the Greek. It was found among the Berlin Codex and Nag Hammadi Library collections of Gnostic writings.
Merry and True 