NEUENTDECKTE APOKRYPHEN UND DIE FOLKLORE. DER GEBRATENE HAHN KRÄHT
New Invented Apocriphes and the Folklore. The Roast Cock Crows

Summary/Abstract: “It happened on the day of the Holy Supper, that Lord Christ was served a roast cock, and when Judas left to sell the Lord, he ordered the cock to rise and follow Judas, and the cock did accordingly, then reported to Lord Christ how Judas betrayed him, and because of this it is said to be allowed to follow him to Paradise.” A miracle-story of apocryphal origin (supposedly Act of Peter), transformed into a subject with a typical paradoxical element, became popular in the oriental Christianity and in medieval Europe: this is how it got into the apocryphal New Testament narratives; among others into the newly discovered Ethiopian Book of the Cock, some early Coptic fragments and the medieval manuscripts of the Gospel of Nicodemus as well. The purpose of the present study is to document this unusual process (a story from an apocryphal source is transformed during traditional transmission, and finds its way into some versions of other apocryphal texts). The data attesting to the presence of the characteristic motif in orality are especially valuable. Conscious fieldwork and records from the 19th and 20th centuries reveal the oral variations, which take the form of an origin legend, aiming at an explanation of the world.

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