Some Notes on Andrápolis, the Royal CityApocryphal Acts of Thomas 3

Resum

The following paper aims to explore the meaning and significance of the so-called royal city Andrápolis (Ἀνδράπολισ) within the narrative of the Apocryphal Acts of Thomas’s (3.2). The identification of this toponym and the attempt to extract the few reliable historical traces supposedly transmitted by the apocryphal text have attracted the attention of many scholars during the last century, as well as recently. After a short introduction, in this paper, we deal with the alleged historicity of the text. We then assess the different variants of the location in the Syriac or Greek transmission of the Acts of Thomas and propose a new interpretation. Finally, we check the remaining Greek variants among the manuscripts –collating new discoveries and those of by Bonnet –, in an attempt to explain the differences between them and the better attested Andrapolis. We close with some final remarks.