A queen loaded her with money, she modified her dress to look like a man, travelled to meet Paul, and lived to old age.  Sir W.M.  Ramsay has written an interesting study of these Acts (The Church in the Roman Empire, Ch.  XVI).  He is of opinion that the Acts are based on a first century document, and is able to disentangle many elements of truth from the story.  He states that it is the only evidence we possess of the ideas and actions of women during the first century in Asia Minor, where their position was so high and their influence so great.  Thekla represents the assertion of woman’s rights, and she administered the rite of baptism, though in the existing versions of the Acts these features are toned down or eliminated.

Some of the most typical of these early Christian romances are described as Gnostical in origin, with something of the germs of Manichaean dualism which were held in the rich and complex matrix of Gnosticism, while the spirit of these romances is also largely Montanist, with the combined chastity and ardor, the pronounced feminine tone due to its origin in Asia Minor, which marked Montanism.  It cannot be denied, however, that they largely passed into the main stream of Christian tradition, and form an essential and important part of that tradition. (Renan, in his Marc-Aurele, Chs.  IX and XV, insists on the immense debt of Christianity to Gnostic and Montanist contributions).  A characteristic example is the story of “The Betrothed of India” in Judas Thomas’s Acts (Wright’s Apocryphal Acts).  Judas Thomas was sold by his master Jesus to an Indian merchant who required a carpenter to go with him to India.  On disembarking at the city of Sandaruk they heard the sounds of music and singing, and learnt that it was the wedding-feast of the King’s daughter, which all must attend, rich and poor, slaves and freemen, strangers and citizens.  Judas Thomas went, with his new master, to the banquet and reclined with a garland of myrtle placed on his head.  When a Hebrew flute-player came and stood over him and played, he sang the songs of Christ, and it was seen that he was more beautiful than all that were there and the King sent for him to bless the young couple in the bridal chamber.  And when all were gone out and the door of the bridal chamber closed, the bridegroom approached the bride, and saw, as it were, Judas Thomas still talking with her.  But it was our Lord who said to him, “I am not Judas, but his brother.”  And our Lord sat down on the bed beside the young people and began to say to them:  “Remember, my children, what my brother spake with you, and know to whom he committed you, and know that if ye preserve yourselves from this filthy intercourse ye become pure temples, and are saved from afflictions manifest and hidden, and from the heavy care of children, the end whereof is bitter sorrow.  For their sakes ye will become oppressors and robbers, and ye will