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Abdias of Babylon

Feast October 28

Abdias of BabylonFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Abdias, first bishop of Babylon (Obadiah) was said to have been

one of the Seventy Apostles mentioned in the Gospel of Luke 10:1-20

(http://bibref.hebtools.com?book=%20Luke&verse=10:1-20&

src=KJV). Abdias was said to have been the first Bishop of Babylon,

and consecrated by Sts. Simon and Jude.[1]

Nothing certain is known about him. He is commemorated with a feast day ofOctober 28.

[citation needed]

History of the Apostolical Contest

Main article: Pseudo-Abdias

An apocryphal work in ten books calledHistoria Certaminis Apostolici ("History of the Apostolical Contest")[2]

was

traditionally ascribed to an Abdias, assumed to be this bishop of Babylon. It is a major collection of New Testament

apocrypha, which tells of the labors and miracles, persecution and deaths of the Apostles, exhibiting 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," Matthew B. Riddle noted in his Introductory Notice toApocrypha of the New Testament(1870).

[3]

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 Julius Africanus, the friend of Origen, or as reported in Legenda Aurea by his

disciple Tropaeus Africanus.[4]

Later scholarship determined the book was originally written in Latin, probably around 910 AD, long after the death of

the Abdias who served as Bishop of Babylon.[5]

The most obvious clues are the book's citations of, with the Vulgate of

St Jerome, theEcclesiastical History of Rufinus and his Latin translation of theRecognitiones of Clement.

An earlier date of composition is given by R. A. Lipsius, who theorizes the work was compiled during the latter half ofthe sixth century, in an unidentified Frankish monastery, for the purpose of satisfying the natural curiosity of Western

Christians. At the same time the author of thisHistoria used much older pseudo-Apostolic materials that he abridged or

excerpted to suit his purpose, and often revised or expurgated to conform them to Catholic teaching, for not a few of the

writings that he used were originally Gnostic compositions, and abounded in Gnostic speeches and prayers.

The interest of the work is due to what the author claims to have drawn from the ancientActa of the Apostles, and to

many ancient legends which have survived in this collection. 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.[5]

There are also parallel texts of single books printed in the Bollandists'Acta Sanctorum.

Notes^ A'Becket, John Joseph. "Abdias of Babylon." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 1. New York: Robert Appleton Company,

1907. 19 Sept. 2012

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"Abdias of Babylon". Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.

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ias of Babylon - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdias_of_Babylon

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