An apocryphal work in ten books called Historia Certaminis Apostolici ("History of the Apostolical Contest")[2] was traditionally ascribed to an Abdias, assumed to be this bishop of Babylon.
It exhibits a taste for the marvelous that places the narratives in the genre of heroic romances, of which "these stories came at length to form a sort of apostolic cycle" [4][5] This compilation purports to have been translated from Hebrew into Greek by "Eutropius", a disciple of Abdias, and, in the third century, from Greek into Latin by Sextus Julius Africanus, the friend of Origen, or as reported in Golden Legend by his disciple Tropaeus Africanus.
[7] The most obvious clues include the book's citations of the Vulgate of St Jerome, of the Ecclesiastical History of Rufinus and of his Latin translation of the Recognitiones of Clement.
An earlier date of composition is given by R. A. Lipsius, who theorizes the work was compiled during the latter half of the sixth century, in an unidentified Frankish monastery, for the purpose of satisfying the natural curiosity of Western Christians.
The text of the compiler who may then be called the Pseudo-Abdias may be found in Constantin von Tischendorf, and in the Codex Apocryphus Novi Testimenti of Johann Albert Fabricius.