The Apostles Peter, Paul, John, Thomas, and Philip with Their Companions in Late Antiquity. Edited by Tobias Nicklas, Janet E. Spittler, and Jan N. Bremmer. Studies in Early Christian Apocrypha 17. Leuven: Peeters, 2021. 340 pp. 74€.

This volume includes collected essays from a 2019 conference on the apocryphal acts of the apostles (AAA). The opening essay by T. Nicklas employs a number of examples to highlight the role of the AAA in describing the foundation of particular churches or communities, explaining the origins of cultic objects, creating sacred spaces, and organizing Christian time through liturgical practices. The implications of these observations pervade the remaining essays, for an important theme that links many of them is the role of the AAA as lieux de mémoire in Christian tradition—literary, textual, liturgical, and spatial. The creative contribution of A. Merkt, for example, uses comparisons to Pokémon Go to argue that stories about Peter created a Christian “virtual reality” in the Roman Forum. Any image or fragment of a Peter story could trigger this heterotopic vision, leading to sightings of a virtual Peter in the minds of those moving through the space. Essays on the literary impact of the AAA on later texts include J. Van Pelt on the Acts of Peter and the ninth-century Life of Leo of Catania, K. Staat on the “usefulness” of the Acts of Paul and Thecla for later hagiographical texts, D. Syroyid on a seventeenth-century church Slavonic retelling of the story of Thecla, and C. Pricop on the reception of the Acts of Thomas in a later synaxarion. Other essays take a different approach and analyze the AAA as reception of canonical traditions, including J. Downie on the canonical Acts of the Apostles as chronotopic space for the AAA, J. Snyder on marriage regulations within a minority community, and C. J. Berglund on the Acts of Philip as commentary on discipleship in the canonical Gospels. The volume also includes focused studies on manuscript traditions: T.J. Kraus on the Acts of Thecla, J. Spittler on the Acts of John by Prochorus, and L. Muñoz Gallarte and Á. Narro on the Acts of Thomas. A final group of essays represents focused analysis of particular textual issues: J. N. Bremmer on the Acts of Timothy, S. de Blaauw on a Johannine martyrdom tradition in Rome, and J. Verheyden on the battle against “paganism” (and ultimately the Devil) in the Acts of Philip. Scholars will find in this volume a number of challenges to traditional ways of thinking about the AAA and a consistent encouragement to approach the AAA as highly dynamic and generative traditions.