Date of composition

• Late 100s or early 200s.
• Part of it is mentioned in the Manichean Psalm-book of the late 200s. To have reached this level of popularity, parts of the Acts of John would have been written much earlier, and the book compiled in the 200s.
• [Manichean Psalm-book: A Manichaean book written in Coptic and compiled in the late 200s/early 300s. Manichaeism was a religion founded by Mani (d. 274). He accepted Jesus as a prophet and not the Son of God, and some Christian books circulated amongst the Manicheans. That is how some of the NT Apocrypha found their way into the Manichean Psalm-book. None of the 27 NT books are in the Manichean Psalm-book.]

Type of Apocrypha (heretical or in error (made up))

• Heresy and error.

Length

• 27 double-spaced pages. This is a compilation of different sources which led to different versions.

Summary

• One source of the book describes Jesus gathering his Apostles plus telling stories of John and Jesus not found in the Four Gospels.
• The book skips sixty-five years since Jesus ascended to heaven in AD 30 and begins soon after John was released from Patmos in AD 96.
• John left Patmos (not mentioned, but it is assumed) and headed to Ephesus. Once there, he raised people from the dead and healed many people. He prayed and caused the altar of Artemis (or perhaps the temple itself) and many other objects to fall into ruin. John traveled to Smyrna and Laodicea and returned. Next follows a long discourse about a young man who wanted to sleep with a married woman and how he died. The story ends with the death of John: He preached and then died naturally. When his friends came to see his body the next day, it was gone, having been taken to heaven.

Noteworthy from the book

1. John was bothered by bugs in his bed. He asked them to give him peace, and they lined up at the door. The next morning, he permitted them to go back to the bed.
2. John mentioned that sometimes Jesus had a physical body and sometimes he was only a spirit.
3. Jesus did not leave footprints when he walked.
4. Jesus never winked (his eyes were open constantly).
5. Immediately after Jesus's crucifixion, Jesus appeared to John and gave him secret knowledge. [This is an indication that the book was Gnostic, which was a heresy that taught that Jesus came to bring a secret knowledge to people instead of spiritul salvation.]
6. John angered a chief priest of idols. He asked the chief priest what he could do to encourage the chief priest to believe in God. The chief priest told John that he would believe him if John drank poison yet lived. John agreed to drink the poison. The chief priest thought that John would trick him and stated that two other people had to drink the poison also and die so that he would know that the poison was real. Two condemned men were brought to the chief priest and, drinking the poison, died. John drank the same poison and lived. The chief priest still did not believe John and asked that John raise to life the two dead men, which John did.
7. Noteworthy, extra: The following comment is not from the Acts of John, but the reader may enjoy it since it provides additional apocryphal information about the Apostle John: Tertullian (d. 202) mentioned that John was placed in a cauldron of boiling oil but was unharmed.