On the Life and the Passion of Christ


On the Life and the Passion of Christ or CPC 0113 is an apocryphal account of Jesus written in Sahidic. According to its written introduction, it is "a homily which the holy Apa Cyril delivered", meaning Cyril of Jerusalem. Scholars, however, assume the homily to be a Pseudo-Cyrillian work. It is dated no earlier than the 8th century AD and, according to the introduction, was delivered "in the early morning of the fourth day of the Great Pascha", making it an Easter homily focusing mostly on the passion of Christ.

Manuscripts

The homily can be found in its entirety in manuscript M610 of the Pierpont Morgan Library found in the Coptic Monastery of Saint Michael in Egypt in 1910, and in part as a palimpsest in manuscript E 16262 of the Museum of the University of Pennsylvania.

History

Content

Pseudo-Cyril claims his sources to be "the writings of our fathers, the apostles", most prominently the "Constitutions of the Apostles", found in the house of Mary, the mother of Mark, and read to Pseudo-Cyril by a priest named Bachius.
Some interesting elements and claims of the homily which elaborate on or deviate from the traditional gospel narrative are:
Pseudo-Cyril ends his homily with a promise to deliver another on the death and resurrection of Jesus at a later time.