Page:Notes and Queries - Series 9 - Volume 9.djvu/489

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

9* s. ix. JUKE 2i, HUB.] NOTES AND QUERIES.


481


LONDON, SATURDAY, JUNE tl t 1902.


CONTENTS. No. 234.

NOTES r-Miraculous Likenesses of Jesus, 481 Additions to the ' N.E D.,' 482 " From the lone shieling," 483 Sir llichard Rede Cromwelliana' " Breechin," 484 "Ploughing his lonely furrow " "Rampant" ' How to Make an Index 'Westminster City Motto National Flag, 485.

QUBRIBS : Edwardian Charter, 485 St. Edward's Shrine Lord Frederick Markham J. H. Eyre Gillespie Grua mach W. Baxter, of Australia J. Quant " Mallet " or " Mullet," 4H6 Queen's or King's Bounty Mont Pelee Royal Household " Arrived Milbourne Family Heraldic Trent.ham and Gower Families" Le FSzgert," 487 Rimes in Moore and Campbell Authors Wanted Dead Sea Level R. Foote, 489.

HBPLIES: Chocolate, 488 Introduction of Trousers, 489 " Mase " " Cadaver" Marriage Licences Castle Carewe, Pembroke -Bibliography of the Bicycle Green Unlucky " Chic," 490 Death of Trumpet-Major Spiera's Despair" Cradel grass ' Arthur's Crown, 491 Newton Old Songs Browne Family Arms Duttons,492 Wren's Mallet Heartsease Darcy of Harverton. 493 Oliver and Arthur 'Black Malibran Curious Word- CoinagesShakespearian Manners and Customs Honor i- ficabilitudinitas, 494 Gordon as Russian Surname Fashionable Slang Royal Personages, 495 " Paschal ": M Pascua " The Mitre Disappearing Chartists San Sebastian, Spain "Pack" Snodgrass, 496 St. Paul and Seneca Mourning Sunday, 497 Fountain Family Haines Shorthand in the Fourth Century Canterbury Records, 498.

NOTES ON BOOKS: 'The Encyclopedia Britannica,' Vol. II. Harvey's 'The Coming Unity Cambrian Notes and Queries ' ' L'IntermSdiaire. 1

Notices to Correspondents.


MIRACULOUS LIKENESSES OF JESUS AT

TIBERIAS AND AT BERITHUS. AMONGST the mass of apocryphal literature circulating in the early ages of Christianity was a Syriac document respecting the history of a painting of Christ at Tiberias, and of the miraculous events connected therewith. The text of this curious specimen of early Christian literature has been edited and translated by Dr. E. A. Wallis Budge, and published in Luzac's " Semitic Series."* ' The History of the Likeness of Christ ' professes to be written by Philotheus, the Deacon of the Country of the East, and to embody information given to him by a " messenger of God." According to this angelic communi- cation, the document refers to the Jews of Tiberias in the reign of "the God -loving emperor Zeno." The events recorded are thus said to have happened in the last quarter of

  • ' The History of the Blessed Virgin Mary,' and
  • The History of the Likeness of Christ which the

Jews of Tiberias made to mock at.' The Syriac texts, edited, with English translations, by E. A. Wallis Budge, M.A., Litt.D., D.Lit., Keeper of the Egyptian and Assyrian Antiquities in the British Museum. London, Luzac & Co., 1899.


the fifth century. The Jews of Tiberias, we are told, hired an artist to paint a likeness of Christ on a panel of wood, and set it up in the Temple and mocked at it. One of them pierced it with a spear, and straightway blood and water flowed from the wood. This whilst convincing them that Christ was the bon of God, only excited in them a desire to conceal the miracle. Whilst they were whispering a blind man came, and, having obtained admission, smeared his eyes with some of the blood and water, and so regained his sight. The oriests tried to bribe him to conceal the truth, but he gave information to a paralytic, who was also cured by the appli- cation of the blood and water applied to him by the erewhile blind man. At his prayer the door of the room in which the likeness was placed, and which had been sealed by the priests, opened spontaneously. The door- keeper was now also converted. They prayed to God to "let the likeness be taken away from here and given to a holy nation, and let these doors be shut fast again, and let the seals be found sealed in their proper places." Then the angel of the Lord came down and removed the likeness, "and no man hath ever seen it since." The doorkeeper and the ex-paralytic had a horn full of the blood and water, and with this they worked many miracles, arid, persecuted by the Jews, finally went to Cilicia, where they built a monastery, dwelling there all the days of their life. Such, in brief outline, is the story of the miraculous Christ of Tiberias.

There is another story of a miraculous like- ness of Christ, which is referred to by Durant in the following passage :

" Erat et altera Christi imago, quam Nicodemus Gamaliel! dono dederat, qua? cum Berithi, post multa secula pervenisset ad Iuda?os, earn ludrei in eorum Synagoga sputis fcwdarunt, arundine percusserunt, crucifixerunt, lancea latus perfor- averunt. Vnde sanguis et aqua coepit decurrere. Quod pluribus persequitur Athanas. in libello de passione imaginis Domini, qui turn coepisse Eccleaias extrui et consecrari in honorem Saluatoris affirmat. Tolosae exstat et Basilica suburbana abhinc multis annis sancti Saluatoris nomine edificata. Festum ver6 feria 5. post festum Paschae annis sinpulis cele- bramus. Porro eadem historia in Synodo 7. iisdem fer6 verbis Act. 4. exaratur." Joannis Stephani Duranti ' De Ritibus Ecclesite Catholicje,' libn trea (Paris, 1631), lib. i. cap. v. p. 33.

This apocryphal tract, attributed to Athana- sius, is included in the edition of the works of that saint printed at Cologne in 1686. Whilst the underlying idea is the same, its development is quite different. Nicodemus made an image of Christ, which he gave to Gamaliel, and it passed through a succession of inheritors. At the fall of Jerusalem it was