The Scillitan Saints and the Pauline Epistles
It is, no doubt, appropriate that the document which ushers in the stormy history of the African Church should be a record of martyrdom. But there is another, scarcely less significant, feature in the Acts of the Scillitan Saints—a reference to Holy Scripture. Saturninus proconsul dixit: Quae sunt r...
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
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| Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
1956
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| In: |
The journal of ecclesiastical history
Year: 1956, Volume: 7, Issue: 2, Pages: 141-146 |
| Online Access: |
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| Summary: | It is, no doubt, appropriate that the document which ushers in the stormy history of the African Church should be a record of martyrdom. But there is another, scarcely less significant, feature in the Acts of the Scillitan Saints—a reference to Holy Scripture. Saturninus proconsul dixit: Quae sunt res in capsa vestra? Speratus dixit: Libri et epistolae Pauli, viri justi. Biblical scholar and palaeographer alike find the reference interesting. For the one, there is evidence of the spread of the text of the Bible in North Africa at the end of the second century. For the other, there is the problem of the nature of the book-form in which the scriptures circulated. Recently, however, another aspect has been mentioned, in this Journal, by Dr. W. H. C. Frend in an article on ‘The Gnostic-Manichaean tradition in North Africa’. In this article, Dr. Frend argues that there was in the North African Church, besides the rigorist tradition which produced the Donatists, and the more inclusive and more compromising element, which constituted the strength of the Catholics, a third element, whose outlook was enshrined first in the Gnostics against whom Tertullian fulminated and later in the Manichees, from whom African Catholicism was to draw her most illustrious convert. Dr. Frend argues persuasively for the existence of an historical continuity between the Gnostics and the Manichees, one of his points being that both heretical movements relied extensively on the writings of St. Paul to support their teaching. In this connexion, he writes: ‘Rejection of the Old Testament led in Africa to an almost exaggerated respect for the Epistles of St. Paul, and also for the various Gnostic Ada of the Apostles. |
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| ISSN: | 1469-7637 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: The journal of ecclesiastical history
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0022046900072535 |