The Apocryphal New Testament (1924)/Preface
PREFACE
It is a matter of common knowledge that there exist such things as Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles, Revelations—in fact apocryphal representatives of every one of the classes of writings which form the New Testament. Bible dictionaries, encyclopaedias, manuals, and text-books have made the fact familiar. Moreover, without much trouble it is possible for the less incurious to get hold of translations of a good many of these books. But I do not think I am speaking inaccurately when I say that there is at present no one book in existence which will supply the English reader—or for that matter any reader, of Latin, Greek, or Oriental languages—with a comprehensive view of all that is meant by the phrase, ‘the apocryphal literature of the New Testament’.
The object of the present volume is to give that comprehensive view. It contains fresh versions of all the really important texts, and full summaries, with extracts, of those which do not need to be translated word for word. Further, it attempts to put the reader in possession of the results of the very fruitful researches of the last generation. In those thirty years a great mass of material has been added to the available stock, and, what is not less important, there has been a sifting of what is early from what is late, and an order and chronology of the writings, which is not likely to be seriously disturbed, has been settled.
From the historical and the literary point of view, then, it is worth while to present the apocryphal literature of the New Testament afresh; but it is also worth while from the religious point of view. People may still be heard to say, ‘After all, these Apocryphal Gospels and Acts, as you call them, are just as interesting as the old ones. It was only by accident or caprice that they were not put into the New Testament’. The best answer to such loose talk has always been, and is now, to produce the writings and let them tell their own story. It will very quickly be seen that there is no question of any one’s having excluded them from the New Testament: they have done that for themselves.
Interesting as they are—and I will try to show later why they are interesting—they do not achieve either of the two principal purposes for which they were written, the instilling of true religion and the conveyance of true history. As religious books they were meant to reinforce the existing stock of Christian beliefs: either by revealing new doctrines—usually differing from those which held the field; or by interpreting old ones—again, usually in a fresh sense; or by extolling some special virtue, as chastity or temperance; or by enforcing belief in certain doctrines or events, e. g. the Virgin birth, the resurrection of Christ, the second coming, the future state—by the production of evidence which, if true, should be irrefragable. For all these purposes the highest authority is claimed by the writings; they are the work, they tell us, of eyewitnesses of the events, or they report the utterances of the Lord himself. As books of history they aim at supplementing the scanty data (as they seemed) of the Gospels and Acts, and in this they resemble many of the Jewish Midrashim and apocrypha. Like these, they sometimes bear testimony to the currency of a tradition which has other and better evidence to support it, as when the Acts of John assume John’s residence at Ephesus, and the Acts of Peter and Paul the martyrdom of those apostles at Rome.
But, as I have said, they fail of their purpose. Among the prayers and discourses of the apostles in the spurious Acts some utterances may be found which are remarkable and even beautiful: not a few of the stories are notable and imaginative, and have been consecrated and made familiar to us by the genius of mediaeval artists. But the authors do not speak with the voices of Paul or of John, or with the quiet simplicity of the three first Gospels. It is not unfair to say that when they attempt the former tone, they are theatrical, and when they essay the latter, they are jejune. In short, the result of anything like an attentive study of the literature, in bulk and in detail, is an added respect for the sense of the Church Catholic, and for the wisdom of the scholars of Alexandria, Antioch, and Rome: assuredly in this case they were tried money-changers, who proved all things and held fast that which was good. Many a book, like the venerable Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Preaching of Peter, which we should dearly have liked to possess for the light they would throw on primitive Christian history, has perished as a consequence of their unfavourable verdict, and we regret the loss—no one more keenly than myself: but with the verdict that consigned them first to obscurity and then to destruction I cannot quarrel.
But, it may be said, if these writings are good neither as books of history, nor of religion, nor even as literature, why spend time and labour on giving them a vogue which on your own showing they do not deserve? Partly, of course, in order to enable others to form a judgement on them; but that is not the whole case. The truth is that they must not be regarded only from the point of view which they claim for themselves. In almost every other aspect they have a great and enduring interest.
If they are not good sources of history in one sense, they are in another. They record the imaginations, hopes, and fears of the men who wrote them; they show what was acceptable to the unlearned Christians of the first ages, what interested them, what they admired, what ideals of conduct they cherished for this life, what they thought they would find in the next. As folk-lore and romance, again, they are precious; and to the lover and student of mediaeval literature and art they reveal the source of no inconsiderable part of his material and the solution of many a puzzle. They have, indeed, exercised an influence (wholly disproportionate to their intrinsic merits) so great and so widespread, that no one who cares about the history of Christian thought and Christian art can possibly afford to neglect them.
The remainder of this Preface will be devoted to the explanation of several matters: the word apocryphal and my use of it: the misleading character of the last ‘Apocryphal New Testament’ and the fallacies which dominate it: the contents of the present one: and, lastly, some notice of the writings which are not included in it.
First as to the title—the Apocryphal New Testament.
The words apocrypha and apocryphal, particularly the latter, have come to mean, oftener than not, in common speech, that which is spurious or untrue. They do not mean that in themselves, nor did they in the minds of those who first applied them to books. They began by being terms of dignity and respect: they have degenerated into terms of something like abuse. An apocryphal book was—originally—one too sacred and secret to be in every one’s hands: it must be reserved for the initiate, the inner circle of believers. But, in order to enlist respect, such books were almost always issued under venerable names which they had no true right to bear. We hear of apocryphal books of Adam, Moses, and so forth. The pretence was that these had lately been brought to light, after ages of concealment by pious disciples. I do not intend to write a history of the gradual degradation of the words: I need only say that the falsity of the attributions was soon recognized: and so (to pass over three centuries of transition), in the parlance of Jerome, who has influenced posterity more than any one else in this matter, apocryphal means spurious, false, to be rejected and, probably, disliked.
The application of the word Apocrypha to that Appendix to the Old Testament which we have in our Bibles is a new departure, due to the reformers of the sixteenth century, and it is not consistent either with the original sense of the word or with Jerome’s usage of it, for that Appendix contains no books of secret lore (unless 2 Esdras be so reckoned), but several books which are not spurious, besides some that are. There is, then, some confusion here, and the existence of that confusion has led scholars in recent years to use the long word pseudepigraphic (= falsely entitled) when they wish to describe a really spurious book, as distinct from those contained in our ‘Apocrypha’.
But, though all the writings in the present collection could be called pseudepigrapha, the old word apocrypha is good enough for my purpose, and I employ it here in the sense of false and spurious, even when I am dealing with writings which may contain ancient and truthful elements. This book, then, I call the Apocryphal New Testament.
It is not the first of its name. Just over a hundred years ago, in 1820, an Apocryphal New Testament was issued by William Hone, best remembered as the author of the Everyday Book, the Year Book, the Table Book, Ancient Mysteries Explained.
Hone’s book has long held the field: it is constantly being reprinted, and it has enjoyed a popularity which is in truth far beyond its deserts. For it is a misleading and an unoriginal book.
Misleading, because all its externals suggest that it is a supplement to the New Testament. Printed in double columns, with all the books divided into chapters and verses, with a summary prefixed to each chapter in italic type, with head-lines of the same character on every page, with an ‘Order of Books’ beginning ‘Mary hath Chapters 8’, it presents the familiar aspect of the English Bible to any one who opens it. Misleading, again, because about half the volume is occupied by the writings of the Apostolic Fathers—the Epistles of Clement of Rome, Barnabas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, and the Shepherd of Hermas—which are not apocryphal. Misleading also in a more serious way, because title-page and preface tell us that it contains the writings which were ‘not included in the New Testament by its compilers’ when it was first ‘collected into a volume’.
Unoriginal, because the whole contents of the book except the prefaces are borrowed bodily from two books about a hundred years older than Hone’s. All the apocryphal writings are taken—I think without any acknowledgement —from Jeremiah Jones’s New and Full Method of Settling the Canonical Authority of the New Testament, published in 1736, while the version of the Apostolic Fathers is that of Archbishop Wake—whose footnotes, by the way, recording various readings of the manuscripts in Greek and Latin, have suffered sadly at the hands of Hone’s, and subsequent, compositors.
It is, in fact, to speak frankly, a very bad book; and I should be justified in criticizing its composition and particularly its prefaces much more sharply than I do. Only I cannot forget that it was the first book on the New Testament Apocrypha which fell into my hands, and that it then exercised a fascination which has never lost its hold upon me. I feel, therefore, that if I could consign it to a more or less honourable grave by providing a better substitute for it, I should in some sort be paying a debt of gratitude and at the same time doing a service to the reading public.
I have said, and I think proved, that Hone’s is a quite unoriginal book: I have also said that it is misleading in several ways, but this latter assertion I have not as yet sufficiently supported. In doing so, I shall attempt to present a truth as well as expose an error.
The key-note of the book, the animus of it, comes out in the phrase which I have quoted from its title-page, and which speaks of writings ‘not included in the New Testament by its compilers’. The words call up a picture of a number of men—probably bishops in mitres—seated round a table piled with rolls and books. One pile is labelled ‘Gospels’, another ‘Epistles’, and so on. The members of this committee examine each volume with more or less care: most of them are put aside with gestures of disapproval. Finally a small selection is made, and entrusted to the chairman, who draws up a careful list of its contents, and subsequently, no doubt, hands it over to a publisher with a proper authorization. In due time the New Testament ‘collected into a volume’ is disseminated throughout the Christian world. I really believe that something not very unlike this fable is fairly deducible from Hone’s prefaces.
The fallacy which dominates it is the notion that the writings which comprise our New Testament were ‘collected into a volume’ at a given moment by a definite act of the authorities of the Church. Those who have read any modern elementary account of the formation of the Canon are aware that the processes of inclusion and exclusion were gradual: that by the end of the second century we find the Four Gospels in a secure position, and Irenaeus arguing from the analogy of nature that there could be no more and no fewer than four: that the Pauline Epistles are already formed into a collection: that the authority of the Acts is not doubted. Doubt, indeed, really attaches only to some of the lesser Epistles, and the Revelation: and the grounds of doubt are various, the Revelation, for instance, being disliked for its teaching about the millennium or its obscurity, and some of the minor Epistles failing to find recognition from their shortness and relative unimportance. Exceptional (within the Church) is the attitude of a party (so obscure is its history that we are not sure whether it was a group of people or a single writer) who in the second century rejected the Johannine writings in bulk.
The details of all this must be sought in professed histories of the Canon: only the most general statements can find a place here. The point is this, that when Hone or any one else speaks in terms which suggest that our New Testament is the result of a selection made by a council of the Church or any similar body, from among a number of competing books which might just as well have been included in it as not, he is very much astray.
Yet, as is usually the case, there is a grain of truth underlying the fallacy. There were a few books which attained a measure of recognition and eventually lost it.
Let us say that the best external test of the canonicity of a writing is whether or not it was read in the public worship of Christian congregations which were in communion with the generality of other Christian congregations. We know that there were such congregations, or churches, all over the ancient world, and that there were others which were not in communion with these, but could be labelled as adherents of some teacher whose doctrine differed from that of the majority—were he Marcion, Valentinus, Montanus, or any other.
Now what books do we find, outside those of the New Testament, which we can be sure were so used by what we will call normal or Catholic Christians? The best evidence we can get, apart from definite statements by early writers (of which there are not many), is that of our oldest manuscripts of the complete Bible, made for public use. One of these, the Codex Sinaiticus, of the fourth century, adds to our books the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. Another, the Codex Alexandrinus, of the fifth century, adds the Epistle of Clement of Rome to the Corinthians, and what is called his Second Epistle, which is really a sermon by another person unknown. We are definitely told that the First Epistle was read in many churches.
Then (turning to some facts we gather from other sources) the ‘Muratorian fragment’ (late in the second century?) tells us that the Revelation of Peter was received, not unanimously, at Rome: and a fifth-century Church historian, Sozomen, records that in his time it was read annually on Good Friday in some churches in Palestine.
A manuscript at Constantinople, which perhaps was copied from a supplement to a large Bible, gives us, tegether with the Epistles of Clement, Barnabas, Ignatius, and Polycarp, another writing called the Teaching (Didache) of the Apostles. This book Eusebius|, in the fourth century, classes among those that were not certainly spurious or certainly canonical, but disputed. We cannot say that it was used publicly by any Church.
A list of Biblical books in a sixth-century manuscript of the Epistles (Codex Claromontanus, Paris) includes among Biblical books, Barnabas, Hermas, the Revelation of Peter, and the Acts of Paul. But it is impossible to maintain that these Acts enjoyed a reputation equal to that of the other books.[1]
So our list is a very short one. We may fairly say that the only books which had a real chance of being included in the Canon of the New Testament were the Epistles of Clement and Barnabas, the Revelation of Peter, and the Shepherd of Hermas; for I do not think we need reckon in the Didache or the Acts of Paul. And we may be thankful that the Church at large finally declared against them; for the first Epistle of Clement is the only one of them which we should have found tolerable now.
There was, then, a serious claim for the recognition of four or five books. But when we have said this much, we have by no means exhausted the list of writings for which the same claim was made and was not so seriously entertained: books which in larger or smaller circles were placed on a level with those of our Canon, but were regarded by the Church at large as the Book of Mormon or the writings of Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy are now. Outside the ranks of these, too, there is an immense crowd of smaller writings which claim, indeed, to supplement the Bible in one way or another, but of which it is difficult to say that any one was ever looked upon as ‘Scripture’. Such are many of the lesser Passion-narratives, or again those of the Death of the Virgin. Documents of this kind may be said to shade off gradually into the category of the Lives of the Saints.
Of all these classes is the present collection composed. A brief survey of the arrangement will make this clear.
I have placed first the remains of the oldest books, mainly the Secondary Gospels, of none of which do we possess a complete text, and of one only, the Gospel of Peter, so much as a few pages. With these I have put a selection of the most important Agrapha (a rather clumsy name for the non-Biblical sayings of, and traditions about, our Lord). Notices of lost heretical books, and lists of apocrypha, are collected in the same section.
These fragments are followed by the complete texts, among which what have been called Gospels come first: and first among them is a group of Infancy Gospels and stories of the birth of the Virgin. Two of them, the Book of James (or Protevangelium), and the Gospel of Thomas, are second-century books. The first we have with comparatively slight alterations; the second has been drastically expurgated. The short prefatory notices prefixed to the several books give, I hope, enough details to guide the reader.
The later texts are summarized, not translated word for word. This plan I have adopted in order to avoid repetition, and to place the more important books in relief. The reader loses nothing by it, and is spared a vast deal of verbiage.
Of the Ministry we have no apocryphal narratives, except some rather late Coptic fragments, which I have classed with the Passion stories.
The Passion Gospels or narratives which are really important are two: the fragment of the Gospel of Peter, and the Acts of Pilate (Gospel of Nicodemus). The first is of the second century (about A.D. 150), the other of the fourth. There are old elements, perhaps, in the Report of Pilate. This, and the mass of later texts which deal with the Passion and Resurrection are, as before, summarized.
To these I append what is now called the Gospel of Bartholomew, probably a late réchauffé of a second-century book; a summary of a Coptic Book of Bartholomew, and a version of an heretical book attributed to John.
Between Gospels and Acts I place the famous legend of the Death and Assumption of the Virgin, translating the two leading narratives, and summarizing the rest. I cannot regard any of the texts as older than the fourth century, but the nucleus of the story may be—I think must be— at least as old as the third.
Of the Acts it will be useful to say a little more here: The series was begun by the man who called himself Leucius—that being the name (traditional or invented) of a companion and disciple of St. John. ‘Leucius’ writes the Acts of John not later than the middle of the second century, taking the Canonical Acts as his model, but infusing into his work more romantic elements. His presentation of the Person of our Lord, and his use of Gnostic terminology, cannot in my mind be reconciled with the view that he was an orthodox Christian. A generation later, a priest of Asia Minor writes the Acts of Paul, with the object of doing honour to the apostle. His authorship of the book is detected, his book is regarded as an imposture, and he is degraded from his office. So Tertullian tells us,[2] placing the event in his own time.
This writer also takes St. Luke’s Acts for his model. There is little imitation of Leucius, but enough to show that he knew the Acts of John. Next, not later than A. D. 200, come the Acts of Peter: orthodox, as are those of Paul, but written by a very close imitator of Leucius. So servile, indeed, is his imitation, that I have tried before now to prove that he was Leucius. I am, however, no longer of that opinion. This author was an Asiatic, probably: at any rate he knew very little about Rome.
The Acts of Andrew and of Thomas both belong to the third century. It is contended (I must refer the reader to the notice prefixed to Thomas) that the latter were composed in Syriac. Imitation of Leucius is very apparent in both books; but while Andrew may be regarded at a pinch as orthodox, Thomas certainly oversteps the line.
These five books were collected into a corpus, probably by the Manichaean sect. These, the disciples of Mani, who blended Christianity with the old Magian religion of Persia, teaching that the powers of Good and Evil were coeternal, and that the material world was of the Evil side, welcomed these books, in which asceticism is constantly superexalted, and marriage condemned (at least by Leucius) as an institution of the devil. In the fourth century, the Manichaeans upheld these as the true Acts of the Apostles, and most likely rejected the Canonical Acts in their favour. Photius, learned patriarch of Constantinople at the end of the ninth century, read all five books as the work of Leucius, whose name had by that time come to be attache to the whole. But it is to be kept in mind that though they all came to be lumped together as the work of one heretical author, they are by five different writers, and three out of the five are, speaking somewhat generously, orthodox.
They were followed by a host of legends of the apostles, of which enough is said in the body of this book.
The Epistles are few. The famous correspondence of Christ with Abgarus is probably of the third century, the dull Epistle to the Laodiceans may be of the second, the letters of Paul and Seneca, equally poor, are not older than the fourth. But the Epistle of the Apostles, now first appearing in English, is dated by its editor at about A.D. 160, and the ‘Third Epistle to the Corinthians’ (which is part of the Acts of Paul) is also of that date.
The Apocalypses are headed by that of Peter, which I would assign to the first quarter of the second century. It has distinct resemblances in language and in matter to the Second Epistle of Peter. For instance, that book alone among the canonical scriptures speaks of the destruction of the world by fire; and this is prominent in the Apocalypse of Peter. For the first time, all the remains we have of this early book are brought together.
The Apocalypse of Paul follows. Though only of the fourth century, it is extremely interesting as a direct descendant of Peter, and as the parent of innumerable later visions of the next world.
That of Thomas—of uncertain date—appears (in a very ragged guise, it is true) for the first time in English. For the Virgin’s Apocalypse and that of Stephen (a very doubtful item) summaries are enough. I have excluded, as not sufficiently interesting, the late Apocalypse of John which Tischendorf prints.
In translating my texts I have employed a style meant to remind the reader of the Authorized Version of the Bible. In introducing them I have not attempted to record every mention of them which is to be found in Church writers. Where the date and character of a book is sufficiently established, it is not important to know that Augustine or even Eusebius names it. It is only when such writers tell us something that we do not learn from other sources that I quote them. And I have reduced the explanatory notes, the mention of previous editions, and the record of various readings, to an absolute minimum. In so doing I have followed the example set in Hennecke’s recent (1904) German collection of New Testament Apocrypha. The first volume of that excellent work contains only introductions and texts: the notes on language, text, and interpretation fill a second volume as large as the first. But it is for the specialist that this second volume is meant: the first is intended for the general reader, and it is for him that my work also is designed.
Numerous as are the texts which appear here, the collection is not an absolutely complete corpus of the apocryphal literature of the New Testament. Several whole groups of writings do not find a place in it: I hope, for sufficient reasons. Of these some notice must now be given.
The first class of books which I have found it impossible to include is that of the Gnostic Apocrypha. We have a considerable mass of this literature, all in Coptic. As a rule it is safe to assume that the Coptic is a version from Greek: but in the case of some of these books it may possibly be the original language.
The oldest of the extant Gnostic treatises have not yet been published. They are contained in a manuscript of the fifth century at Berlin, which is almost complete. The first of them is a Gospel of Mary, in which the risen Saviour instructs the apostles, and Mary then describes a vision in which she was shown the progress of the ‘gnostic’ (enlightened) soul through the seven planetary spheres.
The second is an apocryphon of John, which we know to be earlier than a. d. 180, since Irenaeus used it for his account of a particular school of Gnostics, in Book I, 29–31, of his refutation of heresies. It begins with a dialogue between John and a Pharisee, but quickly merges into Gnostic technicalities.
The third is a Wisdom of Jesus Christ: revelations made after the resurrection to the Twelve and to seven holy women, on a mountain in Galilee.
The last thing in the manuscript is an episode from the Acts of Peter, which has been published and will be found in its proper place among the Acts.
A manuscript, probably of the fifth century, in the British Museum, called Codex Askewianus from a former owner Askew, contains a bulky work, or works (for not all the treatises of which it is composed are of one date) known as the Pistis Sophia (Faith(ful) Wisdom) from the spiritual being of that name with whose progress through the universe it is largely concerned. This also is in the form of revelations given to the apostles and holy women after the resurrection. It is of the third century, has been more than once edited, and has been translated into English.
A very mutilated papyrus manuscript in the Bodleian Library, brought from Egypt by the famous traveller Bruce, and called the Codex Brucianus, contains two Gnostic treatises. One is the Two Books of Jeû (a spiritual being), the other, which is older, has lost its title. These are somewhat earlier in date than the Pistis Sophia. The whole manuscript has been finely edited by C. Schmidt.
While the Pistis Sophia is just readable, the Books of Jeû are not. The revelations they contain are conveyed in mystic diagrams, and numbers, and meaningless collections of letters, and it requires a vast deal of historical imagination and sympathy to put oneself in the place of anybody who could tolerate, let alone reverence, the dreary stuff.
A second large group of books omitted here consists of those which deal with Church order and with liturgy.
The earliest of these is the Teaching of the Apostles or Didache already mentioned, discovered about forty years ago and repeatedly edited and translated since.
Ultimately this short book was incorporated into a large work, the Apostolic Constitutions, in eight books, compiled by an Arian of Palestine in the fourth century. These eight books are compounded, with additions, out of the Didascalia (extant in Syriac and partly in Latin, and of the third century), which underlie Books I–VI of the Constitutions; the Didache and other early material (Book VII): the Church Order of Hippolytus, and additions by the compiler (Book VIII). With these eight books should be reckoned the Canons of the Apostles, in the form of a code of rules.
All these books are occupied with prescribing rules for Church government, and for the order of divine service; and books of the same kind, purporting to emanate from the apostles and (very usually) to be recorded by Clement, were current all over Eastern Christendom: we have them in Syriac, Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopic. One, called the Apostolic Church Order, is couched in a series of speeches each pronounced by an apostle. This we have in Greek. Another notable member of the group is the Testament of the Lord (Syriac) which is a fairly recent discovery. It differs from the rest in beginning with an apocalyptic portion—a prophecy uttered by Christ—part of which is embodied in another Testament of the Lord which is prefixed, in the Ethiopic version, to the Epistle of the Apostles.
The attribution of many of these books to the Lord or the apostles is a very transparent fiction: one hardly knows how seriously the writers themselves expected or wished it to be taken. The same is true of the numerous Liturgies (i.e. Communion offices) which are current under the names of apostles.
A third group is known as the Clementine literature. We have, in Greek, Latin, and Syriac, a work in two forms. The setting is derived from secular romance; it is the ancient theme of the members of a family parted from one another by a series of accidents for many years, and in the end reunited: in this case it is Clement’s family. His parents, his brothers, and himself are brought together by the agency of St. Peter. This setting is filled in, and indeed completely overlaid, by the matter which conveys the real purpose of the book, namely, the discourses of Peter; partly his debates with Simon Magus, and partly his unopposed expositions of doctrine.
The body of doctrine thus set forth is not orthodox. It is, in fact, eccentric. At one time it was contended that these books were precious monuments of a condition of the Church in primitive times, when the Twelve were in opposition to Paul; it being doubtless the case that Simon Magus in these books is to some extent Paul under a mask. But it is now recognized that the books are not only rather late in date (not earlier than the end of the third or beginning of the fourth century), but also that they do not represent the views of a large school of thought, but of a small and obscure sect.
The Greek form of the romance consists of twenty socalled Homilies—the Clementine Homilies. The Latin is a version of another form, expurgated and translated by Rufinus in the fourth century. It is in ten books, and is called the Clementine Recognitions. The Syriac, never yet translated, mingles the two forms together.
There are Epitomes and other off-shoots of this literature much later in date, which need not detain us. But with this same Clement’s name are associated certain Revelations made to him by Peter which deserve a passing notice. Of these, again, there are several forms, extant in Syriac, Arabic, and Ethiopic, and not yet discriminated nor edited fully. Some of them treat of the whole history of the world from its creation to its end, with prophecies of such late events as the rise and progress of Islam. In one of the Ethiopic recensions the old Apocalypse of Peter was found embedded. Others are wholly devoted to ordinances for Church government.
A fourth group should perhaps just be mentioned, the works ascribed to Dionysius the Areopagite, Paul’s Athenian convert. They consist of treatises on mystical theology, and letters: there is also a long Epistle to Timothy on the deaths of Peter and Paul. None of these are older than the fifth century. The theological treatises have had a great influence on Christian speculation: but they need a great deal of exposition by a specialist to make them intelligible.
Mention of a good many later books will be found under various heads in the body of this work. The names of a few which have escaped other notice may be given here.
There are Lives of St. John Baptist, by Mark, and by a supposed disciple, Eurippus, which have been edited by F. Nau in the Patrologia Orientalis with a French version.
An account of the death of Zacharias, and his being raised in order to be baptized by Christ, along with John, exists in Slavonic, and was translated by Berendts (Zacharias-Apokryphen). I have summarized it in my Lost Apocrypha of the Old Testament.
A document called the ‘Priesthood of Jesus’ is given by the twelfth-century lexicographer Suidas, s.v. Jesus. It was rendered into Latin by Robert Grosseteste, Bishop of Lincoln, in the thirteenth century. It is a late production, telling how Jesus was appointed to fill a vacancy in the priesthood; how his pedigree had to be investigated, and how the Virgin was summoned (Joseph being dead) and gave an account of the Conception. All this purports to be taken from the Jewish archives.
A long book, a discussion of Christianity at the Persian court, contains a narrative of signs and wonders which took place in a Persian temple at the birth of Christ, and started the Magi on their journey. It was last edited by Bratke in Texte und Untersuchungen.
A Dispute between Christ and the Devil exists in Greek. Vassiliev prints two forms of it in his Anecdota Graeco-Byzantina. It has some slight affinities with the Gospel of Bartholomew, but it is very late and not very interesting.
A Revelation of Lazarus describing the torments of Hell is perhaps the latest of the apocryphal Apocalypses. I have only seen it in Old French. It occurs in the ‘Calendrier des Bergers’, is described by Nisard in his Histoire de la littérature populaire, and is also to be found, illustrated by paintings of the early part of the sixteenth century, at the west end of the cathedral of Albi.
All Rabbinic and Mohammedan traditions about Jesus are excluded: among the latter is the very lengthy Gospel of Barnabas (well edited by Canon Ragg in 1907) which is a forgery of the fifteenth century at earliest, written in Italian by a renegade from Christianity to Islam.
It is, I hope, obvious that I ought not to have included in an apocryphal New Testament the Christian or Christianized books which bear the names of Old Testament worthies; but I shall be right in recording that there are such books: notably the Vision (perhaps the whole book known as the Ascension) of Isaiah; the two first (and two last) chapters of 4 Esdras (2 Esdras of our Apocrypha); the Apocalypses of Elijah, Daniel, and Zephaniah: two books of Baruch: an Apocalypse of Esdras edited by Tischendorf, and another, in Latin, printed by Mercati: the Apocalypse of Sedrach: probably the lost apocryphal Ezekiel: the Testaments of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Job: and not a few more. Under this heading, too, may be placed many portions of the Sibylline Oracles and the lost Prophecy of Hystaspes. Again I may refer readers to my Lost Apocrypha of the Old Testament.
I have not even now enumerated all the writings, printed and unprinted, fragmentary or complete, which might be considered by some one to have a claim to appear in an Apocryphal New Testament. I have rather aimed at showing what manner of books those are which I have set aside, and at suggesting the reasons why they do not figure in this volume.
I am greatly indebted to Professor C. H. Turner, F.B.A., who has been so good as to read through the proofs of this book, and to call my attention to a number of doubtful points: he must not be held responsible for the errors which survive. To the Bishop of Ripon, who last year suggested to me the desirability of providing a substitute for Hone’s Apocryphal New Testament, and who has also read through many of the sheets, my cordial thanks are likewise offered; and to Professor F. C. Burkitt, D.D., F.B.A., for his valuable note on a passage of the Acts of Thomas.[3]
Eton, August 1923.
- ↑ One writing of the fifth century uses them, and cannot be proved to use the Canonical Acts; but it is an exception, and an eccentric one in itself—a book called the Supper of (pseudo-)Cyprian, a cento of Bible tags, made perhaps for use in schools.
- ↑ A difficulty as to date has to be noted. Jerome, who repeats Tertullian’s story, adds something to it (we know not on what authority), namely, the detail that the priest was convicted ‘in the presence of John’ (‘apud Ioannem’). This is not possible historically, but the words stand for something. My conjecture that we ought to read ‘at Iconium’ (‘apud Iconium’) has met with some approval, and I believe it may be right. It certainly agrees with all else that we know of the provenance of these Acts.
- ↑ See p. 378.