The Apocalypse of John Chrysostom, also called the Second Apocryphal Apocalypse of John, is a Christian text composed in Greek between the 6th and 8th centuries AD.[1] Although the text is often called an apocalypse by analogy with the similarly structured First Apocryphal Apocalypse of John,[1][2] the text is not a true apocalypse.[3] In the manuscripts, it is called "a word of teaching" or "a treatise".[4] It is usually classified as part of the New Testament apocrypha because it describes an apocryphal encounter between John of Patmos and Jesus.[1][5] In a number of manuscripts, it is presented as a sermon of John Chrysostom, who, rather than the apostle, is Jesus's interlocutor.[4][5]
The basic structure, which it shares with the First Apocalypse, is erotapocritic (question-and-answer), but, whereas in the First Apocalypse the questions deal with eschatology, in the Apocalypse of John Chrysostom they mostly concern earthly matters.[2][5] John asks Jesus about sin, Sundays, fasting, the meaning of the liturgy, deference to priests, baptism, the proper length of hair and love.[2]
François Nau first published the text with a French translation based on the 16th-century manuscript Parisinus Graecus 947, where it is found at folios 276–282, at the end of a collection of miscellaneous texts. There it is written in garbled Cypriot Greek, probably a translation from an earlier vernacular Greek original. Nau believed that the original was also written on Cyprus.[6] There is an English translation.[7]
