“If You Can Change Your Name, You Can Write”: Pseudepigraphy in Antiquity and Its Function in 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John

Abstract

This article attempts to answer the following question: why did the author of the apocryphon called 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John choose to efface himself and adopt John as his pseudonym? Why not Peter or Paul? This paper argues that the author of 1 Apocryphal Apocalypse of John intended to harness the audience attached to John, the seer of Revelation, by taking his name as a pseudonym. This paper sustains this claim by demonstrating that, in antiquity, each author had a specific pool of readers, often made out of friends and accolades of the author. Thus, authors’ names evoke an audience attached to them. When an author takes another person’s name to write under, he does so out of necessity, because he does not have an audience. But, when he takes another’s person name, he does so hoping to trick the audience of the impersonated into reading him. Based on this insight, this article concludes that the author of 1 Apocr. Apoc. John wanted the readers of canonical Revelation to engage with his work and that he achieved his purpose as evinced by the fact that the titles of both works share an uncanny resemblance, ranging from identical titles to similar wording. Since titles in antiquity were given to the works by their readers, the most logical explanation for canonical Revelation and 1 Apocr. Apoc. John having the same titles is that they both shared the same readers. Finally, this article argues that, in line with recent research on the use of pseudepigraphy in Jewish, Christian, and Roman contexts, the author of 1 Apocr. Apoc. John wanted to be read by CR’s readers because he wanted to expand, criticize, rework, and update CR’s eschatological discourse, exemplified by a close reading of how 1 Apocr. Apoc. John criticized, reworked, and updated CR’s presentation of the resurrection to bring it in harmony with late Christian reflection on the subject.