ABSTRACT

Most early Christian literature was didactic, devotional or theological. But thereis also imaginative literature, some examples of which we shall consider in this chapter. Such works, of course, had religious aims, but aims which were fulfilled by the telling of imaginative stories. Works of the narrative imagination are found especially among some of the so-called apocryphal works produced from the second century onwards. In this connection the term ‘apocryphal’ should not be given much weight. These were not necessarily works which might have been included in the canon of the New Testament but in fact were excluded. Most were never candidates for canonicity. They were not necessarily works condemned as heretical by the emerging orthodoxy of the Catholic church, though some of them were. Many were widely read in thoroughly orthodox circles as edifying and entertaining literature, and some, even when roundly condemned by councils and theologians, were thought too good to lose by scholars and monks who preserved them, and much too interesting to abandon by ordinary readers with whom they remained popular. English translations of the Christian apocryphal works discussed in this chapter can be found in Elliott (1993) and Schneemelcher (1991-2).