“A Syriac Original for the Acts of Thomas? The Theory of the Syriac Priority Revisited, Evaluated and Rejected”

According to general consensus, the Acts of Thomas (ATh) were composed in third-century Eastern Syria. This theory not only relies on a rather shaky foundation but also places the ATh in a very discordant position within the context of the Apocryphal Acts of Apostles (AAA), all of them written in Greek in the second century and with which the ATh shares important features. The present paper provides an overview of the project in progress at the University of Groningen, which, on the basis of a new approach to the testimonies, reevaluates the textual evidence with a view to claiming not only that the ATh was originally written in Greek but that it also should be dated to the second rather than to the third century.