The Quarterly Journal of St. Philaret’s Institute

This study investigates the phenomenon of so-called “Hebrew” prayers in several late antique Christian texts: the Acts of Pilate, the Finding of the True Cross (Inventio Crucis), the Martyrdom of St. Judas Cyriakos, and the Acts of the Apostle Philip. These texts incorporate fragments of purported Hebrew or Aramaic, whose meanings were largely lost or distorted in transmission. Contextual analysis reveals that the inclusion of these elements served multiple purposes: to lend the narrative an aura of antiquity and authenticity, to suggest the Jewish origins of the tradition and to highlight the ethnic and religious identities of pivotal characters, particularly Judas Cyriacus and the Apostle Philip. Linguistic analysis reveals that the authors or copyists of these texts were unfamiliar with Semitic languages and reproduced “Jewish” elements in a distorted form. They perceived them as possessing a special holiness, antiquity, and divine power. At the same time, the inclusion of such elements may have reflected the sacred status of the Hebrew language as the language of revelation, an idea that persisted in the early Christian circles.  
This study allows us to conclude that the existence of such traditions in Christian texts reflects real cultural and religious contacts between Jews and Christians in Palestine and Asia Minor in the 4th–5th centuries and shows that the boundaries between Christianity and Judaism remained relatively permeable during this period. The results also open up new perspectives for studying the role of the Hebrew language and Jewish liturgical tradition in Christian culture in late antiquity, as well as the mechanisms of perception and transformation of Jewish elements in the Christian narrative.