THE ROASTED COCK CROWS: APOCRYPHAL WRITINGS (ACTS OF PETER, THE ETHIOPIC BOOK OF THE COCK, COPTIC FRAGMENTS, THE GOSPEL OF NICODEMUS) AND FOLKLORE TEXTS*

A miracle story of apocryphal origin (supposedly the Act of Peter), transformed into a plot 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 ver- sions of other apocryphal texts). The data attesting to the presence of the char- acteristic motif in orality are especially valuable. Conscious fieldwork and records from the 19th and 20th century reveal the oral variations, which take the form of an origin legend, aiming at an explanation of the world.