Giday, I'm Gary Stevens.

And welcome to the third season of the History in the Bible podcast.

In this final season, I explore how the Jews and the Christians constructed new religions when they

were sent spinning into the void after the destruction of the temple.

All of the history, about all of the books beyond the Bible. Episode 3.25.

Remaking Paul Part 2, Luther and Beyond.

In the last episode, I discussed how Irenaeus liberated Paul from the Marcionites and Gnostics.

I also introduced one of the most popular Christian books

of the early medieval period,

the acts of Paul and his virtuous acolyte Thethekla.

Before I continue, let me present a lengthy sidebar

and introduce you to some of the tricks of the historical trade.

Bear with me.

A century ago, most scholars doubted the existence of a single unified work called the Acts of Paul.

The professors possessed a number of separate Greek-language chunks

from medieval times that seemed to be related.

Works called the Acts of Paul and Theclin,

the martyrdom of Paul, and Paul's third letter to the Corinthians.

Were all these fragments one single big book?

Through the 20th century scholars uncovered more manuscripts, several Greek papyri

and a Coptic papyrus from late antiquity. All were considerably older than the medieval works. These fragments confirmed that

there was indeed once a single document incorporating all the medieval pieces, the Acts of Paul.

...