ABDIAS (PSEUDO). - First (imaginary) bishop of Babylon, elected by the apostles Simon and Jude.
Toward the middle of the 16th century the Viennese scholar Wolfgang Lazius attributed to him the authorship of a collection of apostolic legends, which he entitled De historia certaminis apostolici, published at Basel in March 1552 (the preface bears the date 1 Aug. 1551). A. was supposed to have written this work in Hebrew, later translated into Greek by Eutropius, his disciple, and into Latin by Julius Africanus.
But in reality it is an anonymous work written in Gaul in the 6th century in two stages. The first redaction was to contain only the passions of the twelve apostles, drawing on the collection of Leucius Charinus for Peter, Paul, John, Andrew, Thomas, and on other accounts for the other apostles (Gregory of Tours alludes to it in the preface to his Liber de miraculis s. Andreae); the second adds to the passiones the virtutes et miracula, in particular for Andrew and Thomas, drawing on the works of the same name attributed to Gregory of Tours. Hence the variety of its content in the manuscripts and the various names by which it is called: Passiones, or Miracula, or Virtutes Apostolorum.
The reviser of Auxerre (592-600) of the Hieronymian Martyrology (cf. e.g. the notices of 1 July and 28 Oct. concerning the feasts of Sts. Simon and Jude) and Venantius Fortunatus (Carm., VIII, vv. 147-50) drew on this collection. From the literary point of view, the work of A. is useful for knowledge of the transmission of various apostolic apocrypha.
Bibliography10 worksEditions: F. Nausea, Anonymi Philalethii Eusebiani in vitas, miracula, passionesque Apostolorum Rhapsodiæ, Cologne 1531; the cited ed. of La
BIBL.: Editions: F. Nausea, Anonymi Philalethii Eusebiani in vitas, miracula, passionesque Apostolorum Rhapsodiæ, Cologne 1531; the cited ed. of Lazius (1552) was several times reprinted (e.g. Paris 1560, 1566, 1571, 1583; Cologne 1566, 1569, 1576); J. A. Fabricius, Codex apocryphus Novi Testamenti, 2nd ed., II, Hamburg 1719, pp. 388-742 (with learned annotations); III, ibid., pp. 568-90 (additions and annotations); revised version, 2nd ed., Stuttgart 1835, and French version in Dictionnaire des Apocryphes, II, Paris 1858 (Migne); R. A. Lipsius, Die apokryphen Apostelgeschichten, I, Brunswick 1883, pp. 117-78; L. Duchesne, Acta SS. Novembris II, 1, Brussels 1892, pp. [LXXVIII-IX]; id., Les anciens recueils de légendes apostoliques, in Compte rendu du III Congrès scientifique international des catholiques tenu à Bruxelles en 1894, V, ibid. 1895 (offprint pp. 8-10); E. Amann, Apocryphes du N. T., in DBs, I, coll. 512-14.
Frutaz, Amato Pietro. “Abdia (Pseudo).” In Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. I, col. 56. Città del Vaticano: Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1948. https://azioneromana.com/article/abdia-pseudo.
MLA
Frutaz, Amato Pietro. “Abdia (Pseudo).” Enciclopedia Cattolica, vol. I, Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico, 1948, col. 56. Azione Romana, https://azioneromana.com/article/abdia-pseudo.
BibTeX
@incollection{ec1_abdia_pseudo,
author = {Frutaz, Amato Pietro},
title = {Abdia (Pseudo)},
booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica},
volume = {I},
pages = {56},
note = {Cited by column},
publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico},
address = {Città del Vaticano},
year = {1948},
url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/abdia-pseudo}
}
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