Greek Lists of the Apostles: New Findings and Open Questions

From the 4th/5th century on, one finds in virtually all the languages of early and mediaeval Christianity lists providing basic information about the apostles, which form a large and prolific tradition. Dealing with the Twelve (and Paul), and/or the seventy disciples of Luke 10, these lists bring together biblical and traditional or apocryphal data: for the Twelve and Paul, mainly the regions that they evangelised, their martyrdom and their burial place; for the Seventy, mainly their episcopal sees. Most of the major texts were edited by Theodor Schermann in 1907, but the apostle lists were afterwards largely neglected by scholars. Conceived as a preliminary report on a new research project on theses texts, this article deals with the identification of many new Greek witnesses, before focusing on two particular textual traditions on which the results attained so far shed new light: firstly, the "Anonymus I" (Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca [BHG] 153c), which Schermann failed to recognize as an early and independent form of list, though it probably represents the most ancient one; secondly, the lists associated with the name of (a certain) Hippolytus, which form a far more complex tradition than was thought.(1)