Apocalypse of Paul
The text, which is pseudepigraphal, purports to present a detailed account of a vision of Heaven and Hell experienced by Paul the Apostle.
While the work was not accepted among Church leaders, it was quite commonly read in the Middle Ages and helped to shape the beliefs of many Christians concerning the nature of the afterlife.
According to the Apocalypse, Christians will be judged immediately after their death and sent to either heaven or hell based on a report of their deeds from a guardian angel.
Monastics such as monks and ascetics receive special attention, with the possibility of both much better and much worse fates than the average Christian based on whether they kept the correct theology, kept to their appointed fasts, practiced what they preached, and so on.
At the end of the text, Paul or the Virgin Mary (depending on the manuscript) manages to persuade God to give everyone in Hell a day off every Sunday.
(The Christian author Sozomen wrote that he investigated this claim, and an elderly priest of Tarsus had no recollection of such a bizarre event occurring; rather, it was transparently an attempt to explain how a "new" work of Paul could be published.)
[4] Constantin von Tischendorf, M. R. James, Bart Ehrman, Jan N. Bremmer, and others all date it to the late 4th century, perhaps c. 388–400 CE.
The Apocalypse of Peter was written during a period when Christians were a minority struggling to gain adherents, and tensions with pagans and Jews were a major issue.
The Apocalypse of Paul can be seen as something of a Christian update to the trope, although it is far more confident in the truth of its revelations than the less-certain stance of the Greek predecessor works.
[9] The author was likely familiar with the Pauline epistles, most clearly 2 Corinthians due to its mention of someone visiting the third heaven, but also other letters of Paul.
Paul then turns to the gates and is led by the angel into the third heaven, where he meets the prophets Elijah and Enoch, and is given a tour.
Outside the city are wailing ascetics who were too proud of their asceticism, and are forced to wait for entry until Christ returns and their pride is appropriately chastened.
Those who deny themselves physical pleasure in the mortal world are rewarded wildly in the afterlife with better places in the City of Christ, closer to the center.
It is possible that this account was originally from a separate story that was combined into the Apocalypse of Paul, as it does not entirely cohere with the earlier vision of Heaven.
Christians who failed to pay attention as the word of God was read in Church are forced to gnaw on their tongues eternally.
Failed ascetics are also punished; those who ended their fasts before their appointed time are taunted by abundant food and water just out of reach as they lie parched and starving in hell.
[6][13][4] Sozomen wrote that the text was popular with monks, which makes sense given the work's sharp focus on them and how their fates differ from ordinary Christians.
[6] Compared to many apocryphal works, the Apocalypse of Paul has an unusually large number of manuscripts to draw from, evincing its popularity.
From these diverse Latin texts, many subsequent vernacular versions were translated, into most European languages, prominently including German and Czech.
Augustine called it a fraud that the true church does not accept; Sozomen wrote he investigated it personally and also found it inauthentic; and the 6th-century Gelasian Decree lists it as an apocryphal writing to be rejected.
[19] The Legend of the Purgatory of St. Patrick seems to draw from the Apocalypse of Paul, which itself then influenced the works of Geoffrey Chaucer.
The fourth book of it shares a number of motifs with the Apocalypse of Paul and similar structure, discussing the otherworldly fates of famous people, meetings with prophets, struggles by angels over the good and bad sides of a human soul, and so on.
