The Use of Scripture in the Apocryphon of John: A Diachronic Analysis of the Variant Versions

David Creech explores at length the Apocryphon of John’s ambivalent treatment of the Jewish and Christian scriptures. Although Moses is explicitly corrected at five points in the text, Genesis’ account of creation is nonetheless the basis for the Apocryphon’s cosmogony and anthropogony. Its uneven treatment of the biblical text is the result of a dispute between the authors of the Apocryphon and other early Catholics. At the earliest stage of the text the Christians who wrote and read the Apocryphon worshiped alongside other early catholic Christians without any sense of contradiction or inconsistency. The key shift in the Apocryphon occurred after Irenaeus of Lyons’ assault on Knowledge Falsely So-Called. In response to his concerted effort to bring the church under the authority of early catholic bishops, the framers inserted corrections to Moses. The corrections are primarily rhetorical and used to refute early catholic identity markers.