The Acts of John, like most of the apocryphal acts of the apostles (Apostles, Apocryphal Acts of the), is fragmentary and has a complicated text history. For the most part, the “early” or “primitive” Acts of John – to the extent that an “early” text can be reconstructed – is preserved only in sections that were incorporated into later compositions, above all the Acts of John by Pseudo-Prochorus.

Only two sections of the Acts of John are extant independently:

1. The “metastasis” (i.…