A range of apocryphal and pseudepigraphic texts from Late Antiquity points to the importance of Sunday as a holiday for baptized Christians. First and foremost is the so-called Letter from Heaven, which has experienced a broad and long-lasting reception up to modern times, although it was also criticized as a forgery from its beginning. Unfortunately, these texts have not received sufficient attention so far.
This volume presents various versions of the Letter from Heaven, as well as other texts (the pseudepigraphic Acts of the Synod of Caesarea; pseudepigraphic sermons of Eusebius of Alexandria, John Chrysostom, and Basil of Caesarea; passages from the Didascalia or Diataxis of Jesus Christ; the Second Apocryphal Apocalypse of John; the Visio Pauli; a sermon of Sophronius of Jerusalem; and the Apocalypse of Anastasia), together with a translation and commentary. An introduction tells the story of this letter and integrates it and the other texts into the cultural history of Sunday. It becomes clear that Sunday as a day of rest and a feast day was not in the foreground of the development of an ecclesiastical festival calendar for a long time, although Emperor Constantine enacted a law on holiday rest on Sunday in 321 CE. Sunday, rather, marks the end of the Christianization of time and the calendar, when Easter, Pentecost, Christmas, and martyrs' feasts were already taken for granted. The authors of these texts obviously wanted to accelerate this process, which is why an anonymous person even resorted to presenting Christ himself as the author of this letter. Here, severe punishments are threatened to all who do not observe Sunday, who work as if it were a weekday, and who skip worship. The broad tradition shows that the letter was read and distributed despite all the criticism, and was even turned into an early form of a chain letter.
By:
Uta Heil
Imprint: Fortress Press,U.S.
Country of Publication: United States
Dimensions:
Height: 229mm,
Width: 152mm,
Weight: 318g
ISBN: 9781506491073
ISBN 10: 1506491073
Pages: 535
Publication Date: 17 October 2023
Audience:
Professional and scholarly
,
Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active
"A Introduction 1 Contexts - Uta Heil 2 Texts in addition to the Letter from Heaven - Uta Heil 3 Letter from Heaven 3.1 Introduction and Research History - Uta Heil 3.2 Latin Manuscripts - Angela Zielinski Kinney 3.3 Manuscript Studies (Latin) - Angela Zielinski Kinney 3.3.1 Methodology 3.3.2 Additional Manuscripts of the Latin Letter from Heaven 3.3.3 Results: Latin Recension I 3.3.4 Results: Latin Recension II 3.3.5 Preliminary Conclusions 3.4 Greek Manuscripts - CananAr?kan-Caba 3.5 History of the Letter from Heaven - Uta Heil 4 Considerations 4.1 Framing, Structure, and Discovery Legends - Uta Heil 4.2 Rest or Work - Uta Heil 4.2.1 The Sabbath Commandment in the Greek Sunday Apocrypha 4.2.2 Legacy of Eusebius of Caearea? 4.2.3 Sunday Rest in the Latin Letter from Heaven 4.2.4 A Day of Reconciliation 4.2.5 Ecclesiastical Canons and Punitive Miracles 4.2.6 Duration of Sunday until Monday Morning 4.3 Threats and Punishments - Uta Heil 4.4 Punishment of Women - Uta Heil 5 Evaluation - Uta Heil B Texts and Translations 1 The Letter of Licinianus of Cartagena - Philip Polcar 2 Letter from Heaven - Latin Recension II - Philip Polcar and Christoph Scheerer 3 Letter from Heaven - Latin Recension II as Inscription - Michel-Yves Perrin 4 Letter from Heaven - Latin Recension I - Philip Polcar 5 Letter from Heaven - Greek Recension Alpha - CananAr?kan-Caba 6 Letter from Heaven - Greek Recension Beta - Angela Zielinski Kinney 7 Letter from Heaven - Greek Recension Beta (London) - CananAr?kan-Caba 8 The so-called Acts of the Council of Caesarea - Uta Heil and Christoph Scheerer 9 Sophronius of Jerusalem / Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus - Uta Heil 10 Visio Pauli 34 or Apocalypse of Paul 44 - Uta Heil 11 A homily „Today, my beloved, I'd like to praise the day of the Lord"" ?Annette von Stockhausen 12 A ""Question and answer about Sunday"" - Annette von Stockhausen 13 A homily „Hear, all brothers Christians, what the prophetssay"" - Annette von Stockhausen 14 Four Names for Sunday (from Codex Vaticanus graecus 2392) - Renate Burri 15 Diataxis - Instructions of the Twelve Apostles - Uta Heil and Ioannis Grossmann 16 The Second Apocryphal Apocalypse of John - Uta Heil 17 The Apocalypse of Anastasia - Uta Heil C Literature"
Uta Heil is professor for church history at the University of Vienna, Faculty of Protestant Theology.
Reviews for The Apocryphal Sunday: History and Texts from Late Antiquity
Uta Heil and the team of scholars around her have produced a remarkable and singular piece of scholarship, and they are to be heartily commended. The place of Sunday as a feast in the Christian tradition is a core object of Christian theology and biblical exegesis, and this monograph brings into the light a lesser-known but incredibly influential text, the so-called Letter from Heaven. Weaving together the weighty work of a critical edition of the document's various recensions with a wide-ranging exploration of how Sunday has been understood, The Apocryphal Sunday is now the place where all scholars will have to begin. --Matthew S. C. Olver, Nashotah House Theological Seminary and Durham University Sunday is central to Christian tradition, yet little is known about its origins. Uta Heil and her colleagues open our eyes to a fascinating body of texts from Late Antiquity, which they rigorously analyze, edit, and translate, revealing new perspectives from the margins of mainstream Christianity on the early observance and meanings of Sunday. --Sacha Stern, FBA, University College London This careful introduction to and collection of the popular literature on the observance of Sunday in Christian practice establishes the significance of the issue for both clergy and laity. By providing both an analysis and translations of the surviving documents, it appeals for and invites further investigation and evaluation of the startling means which some Christians dared to employ to urge their preferred practices on their fellows. --J. Patout Burns Jr., University of Notre Dame
