My LORD’s BibleThe Book of the Resurrection of Christ by Bartholomew the Apostle 1
Presented as Bartholomew's own account, written for his son Thaddaeus, of what he saw at the resurrection: Death and his six sons coming to the tomb and the dead Christ laughing at them, the harrowing of Amente (the underworld), the cursing of Judas, the women at the garden of the gardener Philogenes, Christ blessing His mother, the hymns of the angels at Adam's forgiveness, the Father blessing the Apostles, and Thomas raising his son Siophanes before meeting the risen Lord. A Coptic (Egyptian) work, not the Greek Questions of Bartholomew; usually dated to the 5th or 6th century AD. This is E.A. Wallis Budge's translation (1913) of British Museum MS. Oriental 6804, which has lost its first five leaves, so it opens mid-sentence, and whose surviving leaves are torn in places. Chapter numbers are the manuscript's leaves (Budge's "Fol."), each paragraph is a verse. Where lines are lost Budge printed dots, shown here as "…"; where he replaced lost lines with his own summary, the summary is left out and the next paragraph opens with "[…]". Square brackets are his restorations. Not part of any church's canon.
2Now when they had crucified the Saviour, they laid Him in a tomb, [and] He rose from the dead upon the third day, [and] He carried the soul of the holy man Apa Anania with Him into heaven forthwith, and he ate and drank with our Saviour at the table of His kingdom. And Joseph of Arimathea made ready for burial the Body of the Son of God, and when large quantities of most precious scents and unguents had been poured out upon It, he laid It in a new sepulchre. Then Death came into Amente saying, 'Where is this soul which hath come forth from the body newly? It hath not been brought unto me to Amente. For behold, I have sought for it for two days, but have not found it. What then is [the meaning of] this mighty and wonderful thing? I know not, neither do I know what is [the meaning of] this terrible disturbance [which taketh place] this day. The whole world, and everything which is therein, is in a state of violent commotion. Never before have I known anything like unto this.' And Death called his minister and said unto him, 'Let us go unto every place, and see if we can find this newly dead body, and this new soul which hath hidden itself, for I know not whither it hath departed.'
See also: Matthew 27:57
3Then Death came into the tomb of the Saviour, and he found it lighted up with the light of life, and he went into the back of the tomb, and seated himself there with his ministers. Now Abbatôn, who is Death, and Gaios, and Tryphon, and Ôphiath, and Phthinôn, and Sotomis, and Komphion, who are the six sons of Death, wriggled into the tomb of the Son of God on their faces in the form of serpents (?), wriggling in with their great thief in very truth. These robbers and evil-doers were lying in wait for the moment wherein the Saviour would go down into Amente, so that they might enter with Him, and know what it was that He would do. And the Saviour made Himself manifest unto them in the form of a dead body, in the hinder part of the tomb; He was lying upon the ground in their midst—now it was the second day that He was in the heart of the earth—and there was a napkin bound round His face, and another one bound round His head. Gaze thou thyself, O my son, at what His eye doth gaze at, how that the sun doth stand still, and doth not rise upon the earth, for He hath covered His face with a napkin.
4And Death said unto his son, that is to say, the Pestilence (or, Plague), 'Hath this soul which hath died recently been brought unto thee to Amente? Hath any one brought it to thy mind, (or, hath any one mentioned it) to thee? Hast thou numbered it in the great number? Shew me, for I am disturbed greatly by this terrible quaking, and I do not know what hath happened this day. The place here hath quaked under me, the atmosphere hath been agitated, the foundations of the heavens are disturbed, the hours have been shortened, the nights are put out of course, the days have lengthened …'