Pseudo-Titus

The Letter now known as “Pseudo-Titus” is later than most of the other apocrypha included in this collection. It was unknown until discovered late in the nineteenth century in a very badly translated Latin manuscript produced some time in the eighth century, probably from a Greek original. The author claims to be Titus, the companion of Paul, to whom one of the letters of the New Testament itself is addressed. This alleged connection with the apostle provides the writer with the authority he needs to set forth his clear agenda: to promote chastity for all Christians, urging even those who are married to abstain from the pleasures of sex as detrimental to salvation. “Why,” asks the pseudonymous author, “do you strive against your own salvation to ﬁnd death in love?” The author quotes numerous sources, including the books of the Old and New Testaments, in support of his views. In particular, though, he appears to be familiar with the Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, which, as we have seen, are themselves ascetic and world-denouncing in their orientation. It is difﬁcult to date this strident attack against the pleasures of the ﬂesh, but most scholars place it some time in the ﬁfth century.

Epistle of Titus, the Disciple of Paul Great and honorable is the divine promise which the Lord has made with his own mouth to them that are holy and pure: He will bestow upon them “what eyes have not seen nor ears heard, nor has it entered into any human heart.” And from eternity to eternity there will be a

race incomparable and incomprehensible. Blessed then are those who have not polluted their ﬂesh by craving for this world, but are dead to the world that they may live for God! To whom neither ﬂesh nor blood has shown deadly secrets, but the Spirit has shone upon them and shown some better thing so that even in

Translation by Aurelio de Santos Otero, in Wilhelm Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, vol. 2 (rev. ed.; Cambridge/ Louisville: Lutterworth/Westminister/John Knox, 1991) 55–63; used with permission.

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this ⬍ . . . ⬎ and instant of our ⬍pilgrimage on the earth⬎ they may display an angelic appearance. As the Lord says, “Such are to be called angels.”1 Those then who are not deﬁled with women2 he calls an angelic host. Those who have not abandoned themselves to men, he calls virgins, as the apostle of Christ says: “the unmarried think day and night on godly things,”3 i.e. to act properly and to please Him alone, and not to deny by their doings what they have promised in words. Why should a virgin who is already betrothed to Christ be united with a carnal man? It is not lawful to cling to a man and to serve him more than God. Virgin! Thou hast cast off Christ, to whom thou wert betrothed! Thou has separated thyself from Him, thou who strivest to remain united to another! O beauteous maidenhood, at the last thou art stuck fast in love to a male being! O (holy) ascetic state, thou disappearest (when) the saints match human offences! O body, thou art put to the yoke of the law of God, and ever and again committest fornication! Thou art cruciﬁed to this world,4 and continuest to act up to it! If the apostle Paul forbade communion to a woman caught in an adulterous relation with a strange man,5 how much more when those concerned are saints dedicated to Christ! Thou art caught in the vile fellowship of this world, and yet regardest thyself as worthy of the blood of Christ or as united with his body! But this is not the case: if thou eat of the ﬂesh of the Lord unworthily, then thou takest vainly instead of life the ﬁre of thine everlasting punishment! O virgin: if thou strivest to please (another), then thou hast already committed a sin of volition, for the Evangelist says: “one cannot serve two masters, for he obeys the one, and despises the other.”6 O virgin! so is it also

with thee. Thou despisest God, whilst striving to please a man. Wherefore contemplate the footprints of our ancestors! Consider the daughter of Jephthah: willing to do what had been promised by her father and vowing her own self as a sacriﬁce to the Lord, she ﬁrst manifested her connection with God and took other virgins with her “that in the mountains throughout sixty days they might bewail her virginity.”7 O luminous secrets which disclose the future in advance! Virgin is joined with virgin, and in love to her she bewails the peril of her ﬂesh until the day of her reward comes! Rightly does he say “sixty days,” since he means the sixtyfold reward of holiness which the ascetic can gain through many pains, according to the teaching of the apostle: “Let us not lose courage, he says, in the hardest labours, in afﬂiction, in grief, in suffering abuse: we suffer persecution, but we are not forsaken, because we bear in our body the passion of Christ. Wherefore we are by no means overcome.”8 And again the same apostle left an example behind him, describing his own disasters and saying: “I have labored much, I have frequently been imprisoned, I have suffered extremely many ﬂoggings, I have often fallen into deadly peril. Of the Jews, he says, I have ﬁve times received forty stripes save one, three times have I been beaten with rods, once have I been stoned; thrice have I suffered shipwreck, a day and a night I have spent in the depth of the sea; I have often journeyed, often been in peril of rivers in peril of robbers, in peril among

Mark 12: 25 par. 2Rev 14:4. 31 Cor 7:34. 4Cf. Gal 6:14. 5This happening is recorded in detail in the Actus Petri cum Simone. The name of the woman concerned is there given as Ruﬁna. 6Matt 6:24. 7 Jdg. 11:38. 82 Cor 4:8ff.

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unbelievers in manifold ways, in peril in cities, in peril among Gentiles, in peril in the wilderness, in peril among false brethren; in trouble and labor, frequently in sorrow, in many watchings, in hunger and thirst, in many fastings, in cold and nakedness, in inward anxieties, besides the cares which do not have direct reference to my personal suffering. And in all these I have not lost courage, because Christ was and still is with me.”9 Oh, through how much trouble does man attain to glory! Besides there is the word of the Lord, who says: “Whom I love, he says, I rebuke and chasten”10 that the righteous man may be tested as gold in the crucible. What bodily joy can there be then in the life to come if the word of the Lord runs: “Oh! as a virgin, as a woman, so is the mystery of resurrection (which) you have shown to me, you who in the beginning of the world did institute vain feasts for yourselves and delighted in the wantonness of the Gentiles and behaved in the same way as those who take delight therein.” Behold what sort of young maidens there are among you! But come and ponder over this, that there is one who tries the soul and a last day of retribution and persecution. Where then art thou now, thou who hast passed the time of thy youth happily with a sinner, the apostle testifying moreover that “neither ﬂesh nor blood will possess the kingdom of God?”11 And again the law runs: “let not a man glory in his strength, but rather let him trust in the Lord,”12 and Jeremiah says: “Accursed is he who puts his hope in man.”13 And in the Psalms it is said: “It is better to trust in the Lord than to rely on men.”14 Why then art thou not afraid to abandon the Lord and to trust in a man who in the last judgment will not save thee but rather destroy? Consider and take note of the happening about which

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the following account informs us: “A peasant had a girl who was a virgin. She was also his only daughter, and therefore he besought Peter to offer a prayer for her. After he had prayed, the apostle said to the father that the Lord would bestow upon her what was expedient for her soul. Immediately, the girl fell down dead. O reward worthy and ever pleasing to God, to escape the shamelessness of the ﬂesh and to break the pride of the blood! But this distrustful old man, failing to recognise the worth of the heavenly grace, i.e., the divine blessing, besought Peter again that his only daughter be raised from the dead. And some days later, after she had been raised, a man who passed himself off as a believer came into the house of the old man to stay with him, and seduced the girl, and the two of them never appeared again.” For the man who dishonors his own body makes himself like the godless. And therefore the dwelling-place of the godless cannot be found out, as David says: “I sought him but he was nowhere to be found,”15 as also in the (mentioned) case of death those two did not dare (to appear) any more. Thou oughtest then, O virgin, to fear the judgment of this law: “If,” says Moses, “a betrothed virgin is caught unawares with another man, let the two of them be brought before the court of the elders and be condemned to death.”16 These happenings have been recorded for us on whom the end of this age has come. One thing stands fast: should a virgin who is betrothed to Christ be caught unawares with another man, let them both be committed for ﬁnal sen-

2 Cor 11:23ff. 23. 13Jer 17:5. 23.

Rev 3:19. Ps 118:8.

1 Cor 15:50. 12Jer 9: Ps 37:36. 16Deut 22:

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tence before the court of the elders, i.e., of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, whose charge it is to investigate the case of their children. Then will the fathers disown their own children as evildoers. And ﬁnally the malefactors will cry amidst the torment of their punishment: Hear us, O Lord God, for our father Abraham has not known us, and Isaac and Jacob have disowned us! Thus then let the children conduct themselves that (some day) they may ﬁnd themselves in the bosom of father Abraham. That is to say, that they may remain praiseworthy in his remembrance and be not as the daughters of Zion whom the Holy Spirit reproaches through Isaiah: “They moved together through the streets, dancing with their heads erect. And they engaged themselves to men in the villages of Jerusalem, and heaped up iniquity to the sky, and the Lord was angry and delivered them up to king Nebuchadnezzar to slavery for seventy years.”17 You also are disobedient and undisciplined, you who do something even worse than the ﬁrst committed. In the end you also will be delivered up to the wicked king Nebuchadnezzar, as he says, i.e., to the devil who will fall upon you. And as they (the Jews), after they had spent seventy years in anguish, returned to their own places of abode, so a period of seven years is (now) appointed under Antichrist. But the pain of these seven years presents eternal anguish. And as, after their return to their homeland, they henceforth experienced much evil, so is it also now with (these): after death the soul of each one will be tormented unto the judgment day. And again, after the slaughter of the beast, the ﬁrst resurrection will take place; and then will the faithless souls return to their dwellings; and according to the increase of their (earlier) evil-doings will their torment

(now) be augmented beyond the ﬁrst punishment. Therefore, beloved, we must combat the works of the ﬂesh because of the coming retribution. In order then that ye may escape eternal torment, ye must struggle, daughters, against ﬂesh and blood so long as a period for that continues and a few days still remain wherein ye may contend for life. Why should the man who hast renounced the ﬂesh be held fast in its lust? Why, O virgin, thou who has renounced a man, dost thou hug this physical beauty? Why (ascetic) givest thou up to a strange woman (i.e., one belonging to Christ) the body which was not made for that? Why strivest thou against thine own salvation to ﬁnd death in love? Hear the apostle who says to you: “See,” he says, “that ye give not place to the ﬂesh through the liberty of God.”18 And again: “Fulﬁll not the lusts of the ﬂesh. For the ﬂesh lusteth against the Spirit and the Spirit against the ﬂesh. These are opposed to one another. Therefore, he says, do not what ye would. Otherwise the Spirit of God is not in you.”19 O inherently false one, to despise the commandments of the holy law and (through) a deceitful marriage to lose in secret the life everlasting! O honeyed cheat, to draw on torment in the future! O unbridled passion for glory, to offend against the devotion that has been vowed to God! O steps that lead astray from the way, that a virgin is fond of the ﬂesh of another! O faith(less) craving, theft of ﬁre, honor entangled in crime! O broken promise, that the mind blazes up for a stranger! O pledge of lust, beauty inclined to crime! O alluring symbol of vice that brings disdain! O seminari da

The source of this apocryphal quotation cannot be traced. 18Gal. 5:13. 19Gal. 5:16.

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membra vicinacio tenebrarum! O concealed thievery, to give an appearance of humility and chastity! O gloom of the dark deed which plunders the glory of Christ forever! O ﬂeeting remembrance of holiness which strives after death in the name of beauty! O “silver that has been refused,” which according to the saying of Isaiah “is not worthy of God!”20 O dishonored Sabbath in which the works of the ﬂesh come to light in the last days and times! O foot, that failest on the way to holiness and dost not arrive at a sure habitation! O ship burst open by pirates, thou that gettest away empty and miserable! O house that is undermined by burglars whilst the watchmen sleep and lose the costly treasure! O maidenly youth, thou that fallest off miserably from right conduct! O enlargement of trust in this world which turns into desolation in eternity! O consequence of unchastity which brings down upon itself the malady of melancholy! O fountain of sweet poison which springs up from the ﬂesh as inextricable entanglement! O wretched house founded on sand! O despicable crime of (this) time, that corruptest not thine own members but those of a stranger! O ﬂeeting enjoyment on a brink of collapse! O parcel of deceit! O unsleeping ardour for the perdition of the soul! O tower that is in building to be left unﬁnished! O shameful work, thou art the scorn of them that pass by! Why, O virgin, dost thou not ponder over it and estimate the heavenly charges before laying the foundation? In the beginning thou hast acted too hastily, and before the house was completed, thou hast already experienced a terrible collapse!21 In your case the saying of the law has been fulﬁlled, the prophecy has come to pass: Many a tract of land, it says, is built upon and soon it grows old; temples and cities are built in the land and soon they are abandoned!22

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O ﬂames of lust! The unclean profane with their lust the temple of God and by Him are condemned to destruction! Oh, a contest is entered upon in the stadium, and when it has hardly come to grappling, the shields fall to the ground! O city captured by enemies and reduced to a wilderness! Against this whorish behaviour the Lord turns through Ezekiel saying: “Thou hast built thee thy brothel, thou hast desecrated thy beauty and thy comeliness in every by-way, thou hast become an unclean woman, thou who hast heaped up shamelessness for thyself. Thy disgrace in the unchastity which thou hast practised with thy lovers will yet come to light. And again, As I live, saith the Lord, Sodom has not so done as thou Jerusalem and thy daughters. But the iniquity of Sodom, they sister, is fulﬁlled. For Samaria has not committed the half of thy sins. Thou hast multiplied iniquities beyond thy sisters in all that thou hast done. Wherefore be ashamed and take thy disgrace upon thy head.”23 O how frequently the scourgings and beatings of God are not spared, and yet no one takes to heart the word of the Lord to be concerned about the future life! Has not Jerusalem, possessing the law, sinned more than Sodom and Gomorrah, which possessed no law? And have not the crimes of Jerusalem, whose sons and daughters have stood under the banner of faith, outweighed those of Samaria, which already from the beginning was worldly-minded? On the unprecedented crime of this new people the apostle says: “One hears commonly of unchastity among you and

Isa 1:22 or the Apocryphon of Isaiah. 21Cf. Luke 14:28ff. 22The source of this apocryphal quotation cannot be determined. 23Cf. Ezek 16:24, 25, 31, 36, 48, 49, 51, 52.

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indeed of such unchastity as is never met with among the Gentiles, that one lives with his father’s wife. And ye are yet puffed up, and do not rather mourn, that such an evil-doer may be removed from your midst. I am indeed absent in the body, but in the spirit am among you and already, as if I were present, I have passed sentence of on the evil-doer: to hand over that man to Satan in the name of Christ.”24 O invention of the devil, sport for those about to perish! Oh poison instead of honey, to take a father’s wife in the same way as any bride dedicated to Christ whom in thine heart thou hast craved for! O man, thou hast lent no ear to the wisdom that says to thee: the lust of the ascetic dishonors the virgin.25 So also did the ﬁrst created man fall because of a virgin: when he saw a woman giving him a smile, he fell. His senses became tied to a craving which he had never known before, assuredly he had not experienced earlier its ﬂavour and the sweetness that proved his downfall. O man who fearest not the face of this criminal person, passing by whom many have lost their lives. The disciple of the Lord, Judas Jacobi, brings that to our remembrance when he says: “Beloved, I would bring to your remembrance, though ye know, what happened to them who were oppressed by the corruption of the ﬂesh, as for instance the genuine persons (veraces) who did not preserve their dignity, but abandoned their heavenly abode and, enticed by lust, went to the daughters of men to dwell with them.”26 Today also they forfeit the angelic character who crave to dwell with strange daughters, according to the word of the Lord who proclaimed by Isaiah: “Woe unto you who join house to house and add ﬁeld to ﬁeld that they may draw nigh one another.”27 And in Micah it is said:

“Bewail the house which you have pulled on yourselves and endure of yourselves the punishment of indignation.”28 Does the Lord mean perhaps the house or the ﬁeld of this time when he warns us against pressing them together? (No) rather it is a matter here of warnings in reference to holiness, in which the separation of man and woman is ordered. So the Lord also admonishes us through Jeremiah, saying, “It is an excellent thing for a man that he bear the yoke in his youth; he will sit alone when his hope is real; he will keep quiet and have patience.”29 “To bear the yoke” is then to observe God’s order. And in conclusion the Lord says: “Take my yoke upon you.”30 And further, “in his youth” means in his hope. Thus he has commanded that salvation be preserved in lonely celibacy, so that each one of you may remain as a lonely tower according to the saying of the Evangelist that house should not remain upon house, but should come down at once. Why then, O man, dost thou make haste to build you a ruin upon a strange house and thus to occasion not only your own destruction but also that of the bride of Christ who is united to you? And also if thou art free from unchastity, already thou committest a sin in keeping up connections with women; for ﬁnally, thus says the Lord in the Gospel: “He who looks upon a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.”31 On this account a man must live for God sincerely and free from all lust. In Daniel also we read: “As these false old men, who had craved for the beauty of Susanna, were unable to practise any unchastity with her, they slandered her. Susanna was 24

1 Cor 5:1ff. 25Ecclus 20:4? 26Gen 6:2 (cf. Jud. 1: 5f.) 27Isa 5:8. 28Mic 1:11 (?) 29Lam 3:27–28. 30 Matt 11:29. 31Matt 5:28.

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brought before their court, and these rogues had her stand before them with her head uncovered so that they might satisfy their craving at least in looking on her beauty.”32 And thus they were unable to escape capital punishment. How much more when the last day comes! What, thinkest thou, will Christ do to those who have surrendered their own members to rape? The apostle has already shown the future in advance, saying: “Let no temptation take hold of you, he says, save what is human!”33 O temptation to sensuality! Man is not able to control himself, and inﬂicts on himself the predicted fatal wounds! O exhalations of the ﬂesh! The glowing ﬁre hidden deep in the heart nourishes a conﬂagration! O ignoble ﬁght, to strike root in a dark night! O tree of seducing fruit that shows thick foliage! O false lips, out of which honey drops and which in the end are as bitter as poison! O charming eloquence, the words of which shoot arrows into the heart! O madness of love: death fetters the young as a chain, whilst wisdom announces the future, that is, what it always orders: “Avoid, my son, every evil and everything that resembles it.”34 And further: “And every man who takes part in a footrace abstains from all things that he may be able to obtain the crown that is prepared for him.”35 Why takest thou, O man, a woman as a servant? Consider the conduct of (our) holy ancestors. Thus Elias, a noble man who still lives in the body, took a young man as servant, to whom also he left his mantle as a holy keepsake when he was taken up into paradise in a chariot of ﬁre.36 There Enoch also lives in the body, who was carried away (there) in the ﬁrst age. O holy dispensation of God, who has provided for the coming age! Enoch, the righteous, from among the ﬁrst people, was commissioned to commit to

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writing the history of the ﬁrst men, and the holy Elias (was given the task) of registering the new deeds of this later people! All that has thus to be construed according to the condition of (our) time: each of the two springs from his own age, Enoch (as a symbol) of righteousness and Elias (as a symbol) of holiness. But we must comply with the rule of our holiness, as the apostle says: “In body and spirit genus must resemble genus and the disciple the master.”37 And the spirit of Elias rested ﬁnally on Elisha. He also begged of him that he might immediately receive from him a double blessing like the one which (later) the Lord gave to his advanced disciples, saying, “He that believes on me will also do the works that I do, and will do greater works than these.”38 But such grace is granted only to those who fulﬁl the commandments of the Master. What should we now say? If Elisha served in the house of Elias to comply with the rule of propriety and the boy Gehazi assisted the (prophet) Elisha as Baruch (the prophet) Jeremiah, in order to leave us an (instructive) remembrance, why does a man today take a woman as servant under a semblance of holiness? If it is a matter of a close relative, then that will do; but not if she is a strange woman. After the ﬂood the sons of Noah looked for places for themselves where they might build cities, and they named them after their wives. Precisely so do these (men) now behave who are united (to women). O ascetics of God who look back at women to offer them gifts, to give them

Cf. Dan 13:32 (‘Susanna’ in Apocrypha). 33Cf. 1 Cor 10:13. 34Didache 3:1 351 Cor 9:25. 362 Kings 2:15. 37The source of this Paul-saying is unknown. 38 John 14:12

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property, to promise them houses, to make them presents of clothes, to surrender to them their own souls and yield to their name all that belongs to them! If thou then, O man, behavest rightly and innocently, why dost thou not take thine own sister with thee? Why doest thou not give her all that belongs to thee, and thou wilt possess every thing? Further and further thou separatest thyself from her: thou hatest her, thou persecutest her. And yet they greatest safety is in her. Nay, separated from her thou attachest thyself to another. And thus dost thou think to remain wealthy in body and not be controlled by any lust, and dost say that thou possessest the heavenly hope. Hear a word that holds good for thee. Consider what the Lord in the Gospel says to Mary: “Touch me not, says he, for I am not yet ascended to my Father!”39 O divine examples which have been written for us! And Paul, the chosen vessel (of the Lord) and the impregnable wall among the disciples, admonishes us when in the course of his mission the virgin Thecla, full of innocent faithfulness to Christ, wished to kiss his chain—mark thou what the apostle said to her: “Touch me not, he said, because of the frailty of (this) time.”40 Thou dost see then, O young man, what the present Lord and the recorded testament of the disciple have said against the ﬂesh. For they did not order the women to withdraw for their own sakes, for the Lord cannot be tempted and just as little can Paul, his vicar, but these admonitions and commands were uttered for the sake of us who are now members of Christ. Above all the ascetic should avoid women on that account and see to it that he does (worthily) the duty entrusted to him by God. Consider the rebuilding of Jerusalem: at the time of this laborious work every man was armed and mailclad, and with one hand he built whilst in the

other he held fast a sword, always ready to contend against the enemy. Apprehend then the mystery, how one should build the sanctuary of celibacy: in ascetic loneliness one hand must be engaged in the work that an extremely beautiful city may be built for God, whilst the other grasps the sword and is always ready for action against the wicked devil. That is then to be interpreted in this way: both hands, i.e. the spirit and the ﬂesh, have in mutual harmony to bring the building to completion, the spirit being always on the lookout for the enemy and the ﬂesh building on the bedrock of good conduct. Therefore it is said in the Gospel: “Let your works shine before men that they may glorify your Father in heaven.”41 Behold what a splendid structure is built in the heavenly Jerusalem. In this city one contends rightly in a lonely position, without any intercourse with the ﬂesh, as it stands in the Gospel: “In the coming age,” says the Lord, “they will neither marry nor be given in marriage, but will be as the angels in heaven.”42 Thus we must endeavour through blameless conduct to gain for ourselves everlasting honor in the future age. O man, who understandest nothing at all of the fruits of righteousness, why has the Lord made the divine phoenix and not given it a little wife, but allowed it to remain in loneliness? Manifestly only on purpose to show the standing of virginity, i.e., that young men, remote from intercourse with women, should remain holy. And its resurrection points ﬁnally to life. In this connection David says in the Psalms: “I will lay me down and sleep in peace for thou, O Lord, makest me to dwell lonesome in hope.”43 O peaceful rest given

John 20:17. 40The scene is described in the surviving Acts of Paul and Thecla c. 18. 41Matt 5:16. 42 Mark 12:25 and pars. 43Ps 4:8. 44Cf. Prov 6:27.

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without interruption! O great security, when a man lives lonesome in the body! Thou canst not expect to bind glowing coals on thy garment, and not set the robe alight.44 Should you do such a thing, then you will remain naked and your shame will be manifest. Add to this the word of the prophet: “All ﬂesh is grass.”45 That a man then may not go up in ﬂames, let him keep far from ﬁre. Why exposest thou thine eternal salvation to loss through a triﬂe? Hast thou not read in the

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law this word that holds good for thee: The people sat down to eat and to drink; and they rose to make merry; and of them 23,000 fell there? For they had begun to have intercourse with the daughters of men, i.e. they allowed themselves to be invited by them to their unclean sacriﬁces, and the children of Israel dedicated themselves to Baalpeor. . . .

Is. 40:6

Exod. 32:6, 28.

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