The Apocryphal New Testament (1924)/Fragments of Gospels/Coptic Fragments
B. COPTIC
1. A fragmentary papyrus of the fourth or fifth century at Strasburg, edited by A. Jacoby in 1900. I follow the rendering in Hennecke’s Apokr. d. N.T., which seems better than Jacoby’s.
[front] that he may be known by his (hospitality to strangers) and be praised for his fruit: for...
...Amen. Give me now thy (strength) O Father, that (they) with me may endure the world. Amen. (I have) received the crown (or sceptre) of the kingdom.
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I am become king through thee, Father. Thou wilt subject all things unto me. (Amen.) Through whom shall (the last) enemy be destroyed? Through (Christ). Through whom shall the sting of death be (destroyed)? (Through the) only-begotten. Amen.
Unto whom belongeth the dominion? (Unto the Son.) Amen.
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[back] Now when he had ended all the (song of praise to his Father ?) he turned himself to us and said (unto us): The hour is come when I shall be taken from you.
The spirit (is) willing, but the flesh is weak: (stay) and watch with me. :
But we the apostles wept, saying:
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He answered and said unto us: Fear not (because of) the destruction (of the body) but (fear) much more ... the power of (darkness). Remember all (that I) have said unto you: (If) they have persecuted me, (they will) persecute you also. ... (Ye) rejoice because I (have overcome the world).
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Another fragment of the same.
[front] (that I) may reveal unto you all my glory and show you all your strength and the mystery of your apostleship. ...
[back] Our eyes penetrated through all places. We beheld the glory of his Godhead and all the glory of his dominion. He clothed us with the power of (our) apostleship.
We gain little from this. The scene is evidently the garden of Gethsemane. Our Lord utters a hymn to the Father: a faint resemblance to that in the Acts of John is perceptible. In it are clear reminiscences of 1 Cor. xv. Further reminiscences of St. John’s Gospel occur just after this. The second fragment implies a vision of the glorified Christ seen by the apostles. The writing of which these are fragments cannot have been a very early production. The apostles speak in the first person plural: but we need not infer that the book was a Gospel or the Gospel according to the Twelve (though this is Revillout’s view). As in other cases (e.g. the Gospel of Peter) a single apostle would most likely have figured as the author in some other part of it.
2. Bound up with the fifth-century manuscript which contains the Pistis Sophia is a slightly later leaf on which is the end of a book that may have been a Gospel. It has echoes of the last twelve verses of St. Mark.
the righteous man. They went forth by threes to the four regions of the heaven and preached the gospel of the kingdom in the whole world, Christ working with them by the word of strengthening and the signs and wonders which accompanied them. And so have men learned of the kingdom of God in all the earth and in the whole world of Israel for a testimony for all nations that are from the rising of the sun unto the going down thereof.
3. Similarly the remains of the ancient manuscript of the Acts of Paul include a single leaf of a Gospel narrative:
... the works ...
they wondered greatly and pondered
in their hearts. He said unto them:
Why marvel ye that I raise
the dead, or that I make the lame
to go, or that I cleanse the lepers
or raise up the sick, or that I have
healed the palsied and the possessed,
or that I have parted a few
loaves and satisfied many, or that I
have walked on the sea or that I
have commanded the winds? If ye
believe this and are convinced,
then are ye great. For verily I say
unto you: If ye say unto this mountain
Lift thyself and be cast into the sea_
without having doubted in your soul,
it shall happen unto you...
as one of them was convinced
whose name was Simon, and who
said: O Lord verily great are
the works which thou doest. For
we have never heard, nor have we seen
[2nd page] ever a man that hath raised
the dead, save thee.
The Lord said unto him: Ye shall
pray for the works, which I myself shall do
...But the other works will I
do straightway. For these I do
for the sake of (?) a momentary sal-
vation in time, in these places where
they are, that they may believe on him who
hath sent me. Simon said unto him:
O Lord, command me, that I may
speak. He said unto him: Speak, Peter.
For from that day he did
call them by name. He said:
What then is this work which is greater than these
...except the raising of the dead
and the feeding of such a multitude?
The Lord said unto him: There is somewhat that is greater
than this, and blessed are they, that have believed
with their whole heart. But Philip
lifted up his voice in wrath
saying: What manner of
thing is this, that thou wilt teach us?
But he said unto him: Thou
This again is not very instructive. The burden of it is, ‘Greater works than these will I do’. There is nothing in it which goes outside the sphere of the canonical Gospels, save Philip’s anger. We shall see that in the Acts of Philip his proneness to wrath is emphasized.