"In Iconium she went into the house of Onesiphorus 'where Christ made the light first to shine upon hei-.' After having tried in vain to convert her mother— Thamy- lis having died in the meantime — she went to Seleucia, where she enlightened many by the word of God, and where she died in peace."
This is the legend of Thecla. How great or how little the substratum of truth in it, we cannot decide.
The fact is that churches were built in honor of the " beata virgo martyr Thecla ;" in prose and rhyme the deeds of our heroine were celebrated; and Sept. 24 is commemorated in her honor.
XL Date of Compilation. — We have a long line of Greek and Latin fathers by whom Thecla is mentioned in such a manner as to lead to the supposition that whatever is said of her is the same as we find it in tl'ie Acta Pauli et ThecUe. As one writer has followed tlie other, our examination will be confined to tlie earliest testimony — to that of Tertnllian. In his treatise De Baptismo, ch. .xvii, we read : '• But if any defend those things which have been rashly ascribed to Paul, under the example of Thecla, so as to give license to women to teach and baptize, let them know that the presbyter iu Asia, who compiled the account, as it were, under the title of Paul, accimiidating of his own store, being convicted of what he had done, and confessing that he had done it out of love to Paul, was removed from his place. For how could it seem probable that he who would not give any firm permission to a woman to learn should grant to a feinale power to teach and baptize?" It has been taken for granted that the meaning is that a presbyter of Asia, somewhere towards the end of the 1st century, compiled a history of Paul and Thecla. and, instead of ])ublisbing it as a trtie narrative, either in his own name or with any name at all, but in good faith, published it falsely, and therefore wickedly, under the name of Paul, as though he were himself the writer; that he was con- victed of Jiis forgery, and deposed from the priesthood.- This account has been marvellously dressed up, and some of its advocates liave ventured to say that a IMou- tanist writer of the name of Leucius was the real author of these A cts (Tillemont, Memoires, ii, 440). Jerome {Catalogiis Script. Eccl. c. 7), commenting upon the pas- sage of Tertnllian, says that the presbyter who wrote the history of Paul and Thecla was deposed for what he had done by John (apmlJo/umnem) the apostle. That Jerome relied uiion Tertnllian is evident from his state- ment; but his conduct in fathering the story of the dep- osition by John upon Tertnllian is inexcusable, becau.se no such statement was made by Tertnllian. On the other hand, we must bear in mind that, according to tradition, alleged or real events which occurred in Asia Jlinor and touched upon the life of the Church have been brought in connection with .John. Thus he is said to have confuted Cerinthus, Ebion, Marcion, and even Basilides. Even miracles which were first narrated by disciples of the apostles or by bishops of Asia Minor were afterwards referred to him (comp. Pati: Apost. 0pp. ed. Gebhardt, Harnack, Zahn, i [ed. i], 194). Our pas- sage is a proof of this. Tertnllian speaks of an Asiatic presbyter, .Jerome adds apudJohannem. and his copyists write, instead of "apud Johannem," a Johanne.
Now, putting aside Jerome's commentarj- and the other patristic testimonies, which will be found collect- ed at great length in Baronius, Tillemont, and Schlau, we see from the external evidence as contained in Ter- lullian's passage that the Acts of Paul and Thecla must have existed in his time. To this external evidence of antiquity we have the internal, furnished by the Acts themselves. This will determine nothing as to who was their author, but will be valuable in helping us to assign an approximate date. An indication of the early origin of a Christian document is the absence of cpiotations from the New Test. True, -this is only a negative evidence; but when found in connection with sayings attributed to Christ or the apostles which arc not found in tlie canonical Scriptures, it tends to estab- lish antiquity. Now there is not a single direct citation from the New Test.; and when Paul preaches upon the Beatitude-s, words are boldly put into his mouth which are not in Scripture. This was becoming enough in a contemporary of the apostle, or in a writer of the 2d century who had received tliem through a not far-dis- tant tradition ; but it would have been unbecoming in a writer of the 3d cciitur}-, and, speaking in general terms,
TIIECLA AND PAUL
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TIIECLA AND PAUL
it was wlial writers of tlie 3d century seldom did. Tims ■we oould (iiiote Clement of Home, Ignatius of Antioch, .lustin Martyr, Polyearp, besides referring to the art. Sayings, Tkaditionai., of Ciiitisr, that such has been the case; and it is therefore not a matter for surprise, but it is exactly what wo niinht be prepared to expect, il' the .lc/,< (if Tliccia are. in the main, a document ol' the 'Jd century, that the writer should represent I'aul not only as saying "Blessed are tiie merciful, for they shall ob- tain mercy," but " IJlessed are they which have kept the baptism, for they shall have rest with the Father and the Son." A further indication of the comparatively early date of this composition is its teaching the sal- vability of departed lieathens. All early Christendom l)elieved in the efficacy of prayers for those who had fallen asleep in the faitli of Christ, liut it was oidy the lirst two centuries which tauglit that prayer was of avail for such as had died witiiout baptism and without the knowledge of Christ on earth, i'hus we iiave a parallel case to the prayer of Thccla for Falconilla in the Passlo PirpeliKv I't Felicit(iti.<, where we read that I'erpetua, through her prayers, saved her brother Dinocrates, who liad died witiiout baptism, "from tlie dark place;" and from the place of sntferings he comes to the place fidl of light. Augustine, commenting upon this {De Origine .1 itimir. i, 10; iii,!)), says that Dinocrates must have been baptized, aiul that he was suffering in conseijuence of some childish fault committed after baptism. But Au- gustine's statement that the boy was baptized is arbi- trary, because best suited to his own theory. But is it i.i tlie least likely that Dinocrates liad been baptized, wlien Perpetua herself was unbaptized,aud only received l)aptism shortly before her martyrdom? Now in the 2d century it was not an inicommon thing to pray for non- Christians; but after the '2d century, not only do we lose all trace of prayer for non-Christians who had departed I his life, but we find t\w contrary opinion tirnily main- tained. So entirely was this the case that, as we have seen, Augustine, " ill order to get rid of the plain infer- ence to be drawn from St. Perpetiia's prayer for her broth- er, was driven to iuveut the ingenious but scarcelv amia- ble explanation that a little child who had died at the ear- ly age of seven years wms suffering purgatorial torments lor some infantile fault committed u/'ter his baptism."