Mystery of the Judgment of Sinners

Mysterium iudicii peccatorum

Standard abbreviation: Myst. Sinners

Other titles: Narrative of the glorious and hidden mystery and dispute of this narrative on the judgment of sinners: Peter probed our Lord on his mercy for Adam (title and subtitle from d’Abbadie 51)

Clavis numbers: ECCA 225

Category: Apocalypses

Compiled by: Chance Bonar, Tufts University ([email protected])

Citing this resource (using Chicago Manual of Style): Bonar, Chance. “Mystery of the Judgment of Sinners.” e-Clavis: Christian Apocrypha. Accessed DAY MONTH YEAR. https://www.nasscal.com/e-clavis-christian-apocrypha/mystery-of-the-judgment-of-sinners/.

Created May 2022. Current as of August 2023.

1. SUMMARY

The Mystery of the Judgment of Sinners is a medieval Ethiopic apocryphal revelatory monologue given by Jesus to Peter. The text of Myst. Sinners is currently known from two late medieval and early modern Ge’ez manuscripts from around Lake Tana in northwestern Ethiopia, where the text likely had local prominence. It was likely translated into Ge’ez from Arabic in the late thirteenth or early fourteenth centuries during the Solomonic dynasty’s renewal of literary and translational activity. Myst. Sinners is copied and collected in codices alongside texts like the Doctrine of Jacob the Newly Baptized, the Epistle of the Apostles, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Second Coming of Christ and the Resurrection of the Dead. Some scholars, such as Cowley and Bausi, have even suggested that the Ethiopic version of the Apocalypse of Peter is best understood as a combination of the Greek Apocalypse of Peter, Second Coming, and Myst. Sinners given their potentially interwoven narratives and codicological arrangement.

The narrative of Myst. Sinners can be broken down into five sections. The text opens with Jesus exhorting Peter at an undisclosed location to tell his apostolic brothers not to be deceived by material gain in the world, as well as offering an extensive list of God’s characteristics. Jesus goes on to compare humans to angels, in that they have a shared purpose of worshiping God. This second section discusses how Eucharistic practices and belief in Christ make Christians properly children of the Father. The third section contains revelations that Jesus tells Peter to pass on to Clement about God’s justice and punishment, with various warnings about protecting these revelations from being shared too widely. Here, humans are depicted as disobedient children who need punishment as a reminder not to sin, and Jesus claims that God will punish the wicked with the goal in mind of urging them to self-correct and return to God. Adam’s punishment, like all human punishment, is described as temporary and aimed at reconciliation. In the fourth section, Jesus narrates Adam and Eve’s time in the Garden of Eden and the Fall (Gen 2–3) in detail, describing how the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil was dangerous because it was not yet ripened and picked by God for humans to eat. In order to defeat the devil, who became incarnate through the serpent, Christ becomes incarnate at a later time period via Jesus in order to participate in human life and suffering. Finally, Myst. Sinners ends with a discussion of Passover and the combined roles of prophets and priests, embodied by both Melchizedek and Jesus. The text concludes with a discussion of Abraham’s tithe for Melchizedek and its role in tying together the functions of kings and priests.

Myst. Sinners is of interest not only for its apocryphal encounter between Jesus and Peter or its retelling of creation, but also for its Origenist tendencies. Both Marrassini and Lusini have argued that Myst. Sinners (along with the Second Coming of Christ) present some evidence of little-explored late medieval Ethiopic Origenist anthropology and soteriology, especially through a revised concept of apokatastasis. With the exception of Satan and his demons, Myst. Sinners portrays all of humanity as eventually repenting as part of God’s plan for both salvation and the universal destruction of evil.

Named historical figures and characters: Abraham (patriarch), Adam (patriarch), Amalek, Clement (bishop), David (king), Eve (matriarch), Jacob (patriarch), Jesus Christ, Melchizedek, Peter (apostles), Satan.

Geographical locations: Eden, Sheol.

2. RESOURCES

3. BIBLIOGRAPHY

3.1 Manuscripts and Editions

3.1.1 Ethiopic

P Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Éthiopen d’Abbadie 51, fols. 146^v–157^v (15th/16th cent.)

T Tānāsee, Kebran Gabriel Monastery, 35, fols. 59^r–70^v (18th cent.)

Grébaut, Sylvain. “Littérature éthiopienne pseudo-clémentine.” Revue de l’Orient Chrétien 12 (1907): 380–92; 13 (1908): 166–80, 314–20 (text, pp. 380–87, 166–74, 314–18; translation, pp. 388–92, 175–80, 318–20).

3.2 Modern Translations

3.2.1 French

3.3 General Works

Bauckham, Richard B. The Fate of the Dead: Studies on Jewish and Christian Apocalypses. NT Supp 93. Leiden: Brill, 1998 (p. 147).

Bausi, Alessandro. “Towards a Re-Edition of the Ethiopic Dossier of the Apocalypse of Peter: A Few Remarks on the Ethiopic Manuscript Witnesses.” Apocrypha 27 (2016): 179–96.

Beck, Eric J. “Perceiving the Mystery of the Merciful Son of God: An Analysis of the Purpose of the Apocalypse of Peter.” PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 2018.

Buchholz, Dennis D. Your Eyes Will Be Opened: A Study of the Greek (Ethiopic) Apocalypse of Peter. SBLDS 97. Atlanta: Scholars, 1988 (pp. 122–39).

Cowley, Roger W. “The Ethiopic Work Which is Believe to Contain the material of the Ancient Greek Apocalypse of Peter.” JTS 36.1 (1985): 151–53.

———. “The Identification of the Ethiopian Octateuch of Clement, and Its Relationship to the Other Christian Literature.” Ostkirchliche Studien 27 (1978): 37–45 (esp. p. 39).

Grébaut, Sylvain. “Littérature éthiopienne pseudo-clémentine.” Revue de l’Orient Chrétien 12 (1907): 139–51, 285–87.

Marrassini, Paolo. “Gli apocrifi etiopici: alcune osservazioni.” Pages 238–66 in Corso di perfezionamento in Storia del Cristianesimo Antico diretto da Luigi Cirillo e Giancarlo Rinaldi. Atti. Napoli marzo-giugno 1996. Edited by N. del Gatto. Serie Didattica 2. Naples, 1999 (esp. pp. 249–51).

Lusini, Gianfrancesco. “Tradizione origeniana in Etiopia.” Pages 1177–84 in Origeniana Octava: Origen and the Alexandrian Tradition. Origene e la tradizione alessandrina. Papers of the 8^th International Origen Congress. Pisa, 27-31 August 2001. Edited by L. Perrone. Vol. 2. BETL 164. Leuven, 2003.

Watson, Francis. An Apostolic Gospel: the ‘Epistula Apostolorum’ in Literary Context. SNTS Monograph Series 179. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020 (pp. 29–31).