The manuscript was discovered in an abandoned monastery at Qasr el-Wizz-a settlement in Nobadia, the northernmost of the three medieval Christian kingdoms of Nubia-during rescue excavations in the 1960s (the site is now under Lake Nasser near the southern borders of Egypt). “New” evidence has complicated this picture, namely the recent publication of a Coptic manuscript (see image above), dated to approximately the ninth century, containing a very similar dance scene. Indeed, a clear allusion to the dance scene from the Acts of John is found in the psalms of the Manichaeans, archetypical heretics who were liable to capital punishment and the burning of their books. Like the Eucharist, it is instituted on Jesus’ last night with the apostles, and the event is described as a “mystery.” Because the apostles are enjoined to keep silent about their dance, and terms such as “Ogdoad” (the eighth heaven) are used in the corresponding hymn, some have argued that the ritual was “gnostic,” and that its disappearance was linked to the persecution and eventual disappearance of such groups under the Christian Roman Empire. Most scholars agree that this fascinating text functioned as an etiology (a foundational narrative) for a ritual of dance. Where was he really born-Bethlehem or Nazareth? Did he marry? Is there evidence outside of the Bible that proves he actually walked the earth?
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In one section, the apostle John recalls how, on the night before his arrest and crucifixion, Jesus commanded the apostles to form a circle around him, and to dance as he sang a hymn to which they responded in a series of “Amens.” Perhaps the most famous of these “alternative” rituals is the dance of Jesus and the apostles as portrayed in the Acts of John, a vivid and imaginative second-century description of the apostle’s missionary journey.
Thus, the ritual of the Bridal Chamber, as practiced by Valentinians, can only be reconstructed through brief and uncertain references in texts such as the Gospel of Philip. Other ancient Christian rituals are less familiar, sometimes because they were associated with groups eventually labeled as heretical and persecuted. Some groups, for example, used water rather than wine in the Eucharist, in keeping with a broader emphasis on moderation in food and abstention from sex. Yet even these core rituals encompassed radically different practices and meanings. Some aspects, such as the charisms (“spiritual gifts”) described by Paul in 1 Corinthians 12, might take on very different forms from meeting to meeting others, such as baptism and the Eucharist, developed more standardized forms even as the movement spread. Credit: Péter Hubai, A Megváltó a keresztről: Kopt apokrifek Núbiából (A Kasr El-Wizz kódex) (Cahiers Patristiques, Textes Coptes Budapest: Szent István Társulat, 2006) from (accessed ).Įarly Christian worship was diverse and frequently intense.
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