The Apocryphal New Testament (1924)/Lost Heretical Books
LOST HERETICAL BOOKS
Three such are quoted or described by Epiphanius which may be properly reckoned as New Testament Apocrypha. I exclude the Gospel of Eve and such books as the prophecies of Parchor and other mythical persons, and the book of Elxai.
First is a book called the Birth of Mary.
Epiphanius, Heresy xxvi. 12.
(The Gnostics have a book which they call the Birth (or Descent) of Mary, in which are horrible and deadly things.) For they say that the reason of Zacharias being slain in the Temple was this, because, say they, he saw a vision and in his fear, as he was about to tell the vision, his mouth was stopped. For, say they, he saw at the hour of incense, as he was burning incense, a man standing there who had the form of an ass. And when he went out, they say, and would have said: Woe unto you! what (or whom) do ye worship? he that was seen of him within the Temple shut his mouth, that he might not be able to speak. And when his mouth was opened, so that he could speak, then he revealed it to them and they slew him. And thus, say they, died Zacharias. For on this account the priest was commanded by the lawgiver himself to wear bells, that when he enters in to do his priestly office, he whom they worship may hear the sound of the bells and hide himself, that the likeness of his shape may not be detected.
This is the vulgarest expression of the hatred of the Old Covenant of which Marcion was the noblest exponent. I need not dwell here upon the prevalence of the belief among heathens that Jews and Christians worshipped a deity in the form of an ass. The Palatine graffito of the crucified figure with an ass's head will occur to many readers.
Another Gospel (?) of similar tendency was that which was used by the nameless 'Adversary of the Law and the Prophets' whom Augustine refutes, and from which the following is quoted:
The apostles having asked the Lord what they were to think about the Jewish prophets, who were thought in the past to have foretold his coming, he was troubled that they even yet had such thoughts, and answered: Ye have given up (let go) the living one who is before your eyes, and talk idly of the dead.
Epiphanius in Her. xxvi. 8 quotes the Lesser Questions of Mary: but I must be excused from repeating the passage.
In Her. xxx. 16 he tells of a book used by the Ebionites called the Ascents of James:
Certain supposititious Ascents, and Discourses, so called, do they produce in the Ascents of James, representing him as speaking against the Temple and the sacrifices, and the fire on the altar; and many other things full of empty sound. And there, too, they are not ashamed to indict Paul, with forged discourses full of the malice and error of their false apostles: calling him a man of Tarsus (which he confesses and does not deny), but asserting that he came of the Greeks; taking their occasion from the place, because of the words truthfully spoken by him: I am a man of Tarsus, a citizen of no mean city; they then say that he was a Greek, the child of a Greek mother and a Greek father, and that he went up to Jerusalem and remained there some time, and desired to take the daughter of the high priest to wife, and on that account became a proselyte and was circumcised, and when he failed to secure the maiden he was enraged, and wrote against circumcision and against the sabbath and the Law.
The book, as Lightfoot (Galatians, 330, n. 2) says, 'was so called doubtless as describing the ascents of James up the Temple stairs, whence he harangued the people'. Relics of it may probably be discerned in the latter chapters of the first book of the Clementine Recognitions. Lightfoot also suggests, very ingeniously (l.c. 367, n. 1), that the account of the death of James, quoted by Eusebius from Hegesippus, in which James is cast down from the pinnacle of the Temple, 'was the grand finale of these ascents'. In the Recognitions he addresses the people from the Temple steps, and is thrown down and left for dead by the enemy (Paul); in Hegesippus he speaks from the pinnacle, 'is hurled from the still loftier station, and this time his death is made sure'. It is an attractive conjecture.
Epiphanius mentions some other heretical apocrypha: a Gospel of Judas Iscariot (Irenaeus also speaks of this) and an heretical Ascension (Anabaticon) of Paul, used by the Caianites or Cainites. They are mere names to us.
We also hear of 'Gospels' of heresiarchs—Basilides, Valentinus, and others: but these we cannot think of as real Gospels. They are—if they are not mere ghost-books—the treatises in which these teachers set forth their views, and they were nicknamed Gospels. The Gospel of Marcion is of a different class: it was an edition of Luke, from which all that went counter to Marcion's views was removed. He made a similar text of the Pauline Epistles.
From a Latin writer, Orosius, comes our only fragment of another heretical apocryphon, the Memoria (? Memoirs) of the Apostles. It was current among the Priscillianists who had their head-quarters in Spain in the fourth century. It was evidently a dualist book, no doubt Manichaean in origin.
Orosius, Admonition of the errors of the Priscillianists and Origenisits. Priscillian delivered that the names of the Patriarchs are members (parts) of the soul: for that Ruben was in the head, Levi in the heart, Juda in the heart, Benjamin in the thighs, and the like. In the members of the body, on the other hand, the heavenly signs are arranged, viz. the Ram in the head, the Bull in the neck, the Twins in the arms, the Crab in the heart, &c. He would have it understood that the darkness is eternal, and that out of it the ruler of this world came forth. He confirms this. from a book called the Memoria of the Apostles, where the Saviour is represented as being questioned privately by the disciples, and explaining that in the parable of the Gospel which says: A sower went forth to sow his seed, the sower was not good: asserting, that had he been good, he would not have been careless, nor cast the seed by the wayside or on stony places or untilled ground: willing it to be understood that this (the ruler of the world?) was the sower, who scattered the souls he had caught into various bodies, as he pleased. In the same book much is said of the principle of moist things, and the principle of fire: he would have it understood that all good things happen in this world, not by the power of God, but by contrivance (art).
(The cause of rain is then expounded in a manner best not repeated.)
In the Gelasian Decree 'Of Books to be received and not to be received' are the titles of many Apocryphal books. The date and source of this Decree are matters of dispute, but it cannot be later than the sixth century. Many of the titles that occur in it are derived from the works of Church writers, especially Jerome: the books had not been seen by the author of the Decree. Its list of New Testament Apocrypha is remarkable alike for omissions and insertions. It runs thus:
The Itinerary under the name of the apostle Peter which is called of Saint Clement, nine books.
( = the Clementine Recognitions: in ten books.)
Acts under the name of Andrew the apostle.
Acts under the name of Thomas the apostle.
Acts under the name of Peter the apostle.
Acts under the name of Philip the apostle.
(These will be found in their place in this collection.)
Gospel under the name of Matthias (see p. 12).
Gospel under the name of Barnabas.
(Both the above occur in the Greek list of the Sixty Books, but the existence of a Gospel of Barnabas is most doubtful. The extant book under that name (ed. Ragg, 1907) is in Italian, a forgery of the late fifteenth or sixteenth century, by a renegade from Christianity to Islam.)
Gospel under the name of James the Less.
(Probably the Protevangelium: but a lesson on the Circumcision of Christ (printed by Bannister in Journal of Theol. Studies, 1908, p. 417), in a fragment of a tenth-century service book in an Irish hand, is headed: Lesson of the Gospel according to James son of Alphaeus. It is hardly worth translating.)
Gospel under the name of Peter the Apostle (fragments exist).
Gospel under the name of Thomas which the Manichaeans use (extant).
Gospel under the name of Bartholomew (extant).
Gospels under the name of Andrew (non-existent: a confusion with the Acts).
Gospels which Lucianus falsified.
Gospels which Hesychius falsified.
(These are recensions of the text of the canonical gospels, of which we know little.)
Book concerning the Infancy of the Saviour (Pseudo-Matthew's Gospel).
Book concerning the birth of the Saviour, and Mary, or the midwife (the same as the last, or the Protevangelium).
The book called of the Shepherd (of Hermas).
All the books which Leucius the disciple of the devil made.
(Leucius is really the name attached to the Acts of John only; the entry is quite a vague one).
The book called the Foundation.
The book called the Treasure.
(Writings attributed to Manes, founder of the Manichaean sect.)
I omit, in what follows, the titles of Old Testament Apocrypha and patristic writings. The book called the Acts of Thecla and Paul (an episode from the Acts of Paul, current separately).
The Revelation called of Paul (extant).
The Revelation called of Thomas (extant).
The Revelation called of Stephen (see under Apocalypses).
The book called the Passing of Saint Mary (probably Pseudo-Melito's narrative).
The book called the Lots of the Apostles (a system of divination).
The book called Lusa apostolorum (an unexplained title).
The book called Canons of the Apostles (extant, but not given in this collection).
Epistle of Jesus to Abgarus. Epistle of Abgarus to Jesus (extant).
I may append to this the portions of the leading Greek lists of biblical books which mention New Testament Apocrypha.
a. The Text of the Sixty Books
It is as old as the seventh century. The Sixty Books are those of the Bible. Then follow lists of those 'outside the sixty' (nine) and of 'such as are Apocryphal'.
Nos. 1-14 of these are Old Testament.
15. History of James ( = Protevangelium).
16. Apocalypse of Peter.
17. Travels and Teachings of the Apostles (the Apocryphal Acts in general).
18. Epistle of Barnabas.
19. Acts of Paul.
20. Apocalypse of Paul.
21. Teaching (Didascalia) of Clement (Apostolic Constitutions).
22. Teaching of Ignatius ( = his letters).
23. Teaching of Polycarp ( = his letter).
24. Gospel according to Barnabas (see p. 22).
25. Gospel according to Matthias (see p. 12).
b. Stichometry of Nicephorus.
Thought to have been drawn up in Jerusalem: possibly as old as the fourth century: appended ultimately to the ninth-century Chronography of Nicephorus.
Such of the New Testament books as are disputed.
1. Apocalypse of John lines 1,400
2. Apocalypse of Peter lines 3800
3. Epistle of Barnabas lines 1,360
4. Gospel according to the Hebrews lines 2,200
Such of the New Testament as are Apocryphal.
1. Travels of Paul ( = Acts) lines 3,600
2. Travels of Peter lines 2,750 3. Travels of John (=Acts) lines 2,600
4. Travels of Thomas lines 1,600
5. Gospel according to Thomas lines 1300
6. Teaching (Didache) of the Apostles lines 200
7. Of Clement (two Epistles) lines 2,600
8. Of Ignatius, Polycarp, and Hermas.
c. The Synopsis of Scripture 'of Athanasius'.
Extant in but one manuscript, at Eton. In the list of Old Testament Apocrypha it is identical with the last, only it does not give the number of lines. In the New Testament list it is confused, calling the obviously apocryphal books 'disputed' only, and omitting the real 'antilegomena'. Thus:
Of the New Testament again these are disputed. Travels of Peter, Travels of John, Travels of Thomas, Gospel according to Thomas, Teaching of the Apostles, Clementine writings: out of which the truer and inspired portions have been selected and paraphrased.