Framing the Reading Experience of an Apocryphal Text: The Case of the 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John’s Titles

Abstract

It has long been recognized that paratexts – those liminal features that accompany the main text in a book – perform a primary role in interpretation since they mediate the text to the readers. They function like a commentary, trying to influence and guide readers to a better comprehension of the text. At the same time, they are artifacts of reception because in the pre-modern period, paratexts are the product of scribes and reading communities. Thus, by studying paratexts, one can have access to how the text was received and how readers shape the reading practices of subsequent users. The study of paratexts in the field of biblical studies has been a booming area of research, while the study of these features in the so-called apocryphal literature is only in its dawn. This article intends to help to remedy the situation by studying the titles of the 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John. Since this text exerted a huge amount of influence in shaping the eschatological imagination of many Christians in Late Antiquity and given the scarce amount of information that we have on its reception, studying the paratexts of the manuscripts – titles, specifically – is the safest bet to recover its reception/interpretation and the reading practices of its readers. Based on the study of 1 Apocr. Apoc. John’s titles, this article concludes that (1) 1 Apocr. Apoc. John was read as an apocalypse; that is, readers thought that the text mediated hitherto unknown divine knowledge; (2) readers of 1 Apocr. Apoc. John believed that it was an authentic work of John the apostle and thus authoritative and true; (3) readers were guided to navigate 1 Apocr. Apoc. John as dealing primarily with classical eschatological topoi: the antichrist, the second coming, and the end of the world.