1. =Complete Gospels= existed in considerable numbers,
_i.e._ embracing the period of Christ’s earthly
labours, more or less corrupted in the interests of
Gnostic or Ebionitic heresy, or independently composed
Gospels; but only of a few of these do we possess any
knowledge.[84] The most important of these are the
following: _The Gosp. of the Egyptians_, esteemed by
the Encratites, according to Origen one of the writings
referred to in Luke i. 1; also _the Gosp. of the XII.
Apostles_, generally called by the Fathers Εὐαγγ. καθ’
Ἑβραίους originally written in Aramaic; and finally,
_the Gosp. of Marcion_ (§ 27, 11). The most important
of these is the Gospel of the Hebrews, on account of
its relation to our canonical Gospel of Matthew, which
is generally supposed to have been written originally
in Aramaic.[85] Jerome who translated the Hebrew Gospel
says of it: _Vocatur a plerisque Matthæi authenticum_;
but this is not his own opinion, nor was it that of
Origen and Eusebius. The extant fragments show many
divergences as well as many similarities, partly in
the form of apocryphal amplifications, partly of changes
made for dogmatic reasons.
2. Gospels dealing with particular Periods--referring to
the days preceding the birth of Jesus and the period of
the infancy or to the closing days of His life, where
the heretical elements are wanting or are subordinated
to the general interests of Christianity. Of these
there was a large number and much of their legendary or
fabulous material, especially about the family history
of the mother of Jesus (§ 57, 2), has passed over into
the tradition of the Catholic Church. Among them may be
mentioned;
a. _The Protevangel. Jacobi minoris_, perhaps the
oldest, certainly the most esteemed and most widely
spread, written in Greek, beginning with the story
of Mary’s birth and reaching down to the death of
the children of Bethlehem;
b. The _Ev. Pseudo Matthæi_, similar in its contents,
but continued down to the period of Jesus’ youth,
and now existing only in a Lat. translation;
c. The _Ev. de nativitate Mariæ_, only in Lat.,
containing the history of Mary down to the birth of
Jesus;
d. The _Hist. Josephi fabri lignarii_ down to his death,
dating probably from the 4th cent., only now in an
Arabic version;
e. The _Ev. Infantiæ Salvatoris_, only in Arabic, a
compilation with no particular dogmatic tendency;
f. Also the so-called _Ascension of Mary_ (§ 57, 2)
soon became the subject of apocryphal treatment,
for which John was claimed as the authority (John
xix. 26), and is preserved in several Greek, Syriac,
Arabic and Latin manuscripts;
g. The _Ev. Nicodemi_ (John xix. 39) in Greek and Lat.
contains two Jewish writings of the 2nd century.
The first part consists of the _Gesta_ or _Acta
Pilati_. There can be no doubt of its identity with
the _Acta Pilati_ quoted by Justin, Tert., Euseb.,
Epiph. It contains the stories of the canonical
Gospels variously amplified and an account of
the judicial proceedings evidently intended to
demonstrate Jesus’ innocence of the charges brought
against Him by His enemies. The second part,
bearing the title _Descensus Christi ad inferos_,
is of much later origin, telling of the descent
of Christ into Hades along with two of the saints
who rose with him (Matt. xxvii. 52), Leucius and
Carinus, sons of Simeon (Luke ii. 25).[86]
§ 32.5.
II. The numerous =Apocryphal Histories and Legends of the
Apostles= were partly of heretical, and partly of Catholic,
origin. While the former have in view the establishing of
their heretical doctrines and peculiar forms of worship,
constitution and life by representing them as Apostolic
institutions, the latter arose mostly out of a local
patriotic intention to secure to particular churches the
glory of being founded by an Apostle. Those inspired by
Gnostic influences far exceed in importance and number
not only the Ebionitic but also the genuinely Catholic.
The Manichæans especially produced many and succeeded in
circulating them widely. The more their historico-romantic
contents pandered to the taste of that age for fantastic
tales of miracles and visions the surer were they to find
access among Catholic circles.--A collection of such
histories under the title of Περίοδοι τῶν ἀποστόλων was
received as canonical by Gnostics and Manichæans, and even
by many of the Church Fathers. Augustine first named as
its supposed author one Leucius. We find this name some
decades later in Epiphanius as that of a pupil of John and
opponent of the Ebionite Christology, and also in Pacianus
of Barcelona as that of one falsely claimed as an authority
by the Montanists. According to Photius this collection
embraced the Acts of Peter, John, Andrew, Thomas and Paul,
and the author’s full name was Leucius Carinus, who also
appears in the second part of the _Acta Pilati_, but in
quite other circumstances and surroundings. That all the
five books were composed by one author is not probable;
perhaps originally only the Acts of John bore the name of
Leucius, which was subsequently transferred to the whole.
Zahn’s view, on the other hand, is, that the Περίοδοι τῶν
ἀποστόλων, especially the _Acts of John_, was written under
the falsely assumed name of John’s pupil Leucius, about
A.D. 130, at a time when the Gnostics had not yet been
separated from the Church as a heretical sect, was even at
a later period accepted as genuine by the Catholic church
teachers notwithstanding the objectionable character of much
of its contents, its modal docetic Christology and encratite
Ethics with contempt of marriage, rejection of animal food
and the use of wine and the demand of voluntary poverty, and
held in high esteem as a source of the second rank for the
Apostolic history. Lipsius considers that it was composed in
the interests of the vulgar Gnosticism (§ 27) in the second
half of the 2nd, or first half of the 3rd cent., and proves
that from Eusebius down to Photius, who brands it as πασῆς
αἱρέσεως πηγὴν καὶ μητέρα, the Catholic church teachers
without exception speak of it as heretical and godless,
and that the frequent patristic references to the _Historiæ
ecclesiasticiæ_ do not apply to it but to Catholic
modifications of it, which were regarded as the genuine
and generally credible original writing of Leucius which
were wickedly falsified by the Manichæans.--Catholic
modifications of particular Gnostic Περίοδοι, as well as
independent Catholic writings of this sort in Greek are
still preserved in MS. in great numbers and have for the
most part been printed. The _Hist. certaminis apostolici_ in
ten books, which the supposed pupil of the Apostles Abdias,
first bishop of Babylon, wrote in Hebrew, was translated by
his pupil Eutropius into Greek and by Julius Africanus into
Latin.[87]--They are all useless for determining the history
of the Apostolic Age, although abundantly so used in the
Catholic church tradition. For the history of doctrines and
sects, the history of the canon, worship, ecclesiastical
customs and modes of thought during the 2nd-4th cents., they
are of the utmost importance.
§ 32.6.
From the many apocryphal monographs still preserved on the
life, works and martyrdom of the biblical Apostles and their
coadjutors, in addition to the Pseudo-Clementines already
discussed in § 28, 3, the following are the most important.
a. The Greek =Acta Petri et Pauli=. These describe the
journeys of Paul to Rome, the disputation of the
two Apostles at Rome with Simon Magus, and the Roman
martyrdom of both, and constitute the source of the
traditions regarding Peter and Paul which are at the
present day regarded in the Roman Catholic Church as
historical. These Acts, however, as Lipsius has shown,
are not an original work, but date from about A.D. 160,
and consist of a Catholic reproduction of Ebionite
or Anti-Pauline, _Acts of Peter_, with additions from
Gentile-Christian traditions of Paul. The _Acts of Peter_
take up the story where the Pseudo-Clementines end, as
may be seen even from their Catholic reproduction, for
they make Simon Magus, followed everywhere and overcome
by the Apostle Peter, at last seek refuge in Rome,
where, again unmasked by Peter, he met a miserable end
(§ 25, 2). As the Κηρύγματα Πέτρου which formed the
basis of the Pseudo-Clementine writings combats the
specifically Pauline doctrines as derived from Simon
Magus (§ 28, 4), so the Acts of Peter identify him
even personally with Paul, for they maliciously and
spitefully assign well-known facts from the Apostle’s
life to Simon Magus, which are _bona fide_ in the
Catholic reproduction assumed to be genuine works
of Simon.--The Gnostic _Acts of Peter_ and _Acts
of Paul_ had wrought up the current Ebionite and
Catholic traditions about the doings and martyr deaths
of the two Apostles with fanciful adornments and
embellishments after the style and in the interests of
Gnosticism. A considerable fragment of these, purified
indeed by Catholic hands, is preserved to us in
the _Passio Petri et Pauli_, to which is attached
the name of Linus, the pretended successor of
Peter. The fortunes of the two Apostles are related
quite independently of one another: Paul makes his
appearance at Rome only after the death of Peter. Of the
_non-heretical Acts of Paul_ which according to Eusebius
were in earlier times received in many churches as holy
scripture (§ 36, 8), no trace has as yet been discovered.
b. Among the Greek =Acts of John=, the remnants of the
Leucian Περίοδοι Ἰωάννου preserved in their original
form deserve to be first mentioned. According to
Zahn, they are one of the earliest witnesses for
the genuineness of the Gospel of John, and give the
deathblow to the theory that with and after the Apostle
John, there was in Ephesus another John the Presbyter
distinct from him (§ 16, 2). Lipsius, on the other
hand, places their composition in the second half of
the 2nd cent., and deprives them of that significance
for the life of the Apostle, but admits their great value
for a knowledge of doctrines, principles and forms of
worship of the vulgar Gnosticism then widely spread. The
Πράξεις Ἰωάννου, greatly esteemed in the Greek church,
and often translated into other languages, written
in the 5th cent. by a Catholic hand and ascribed to
Prochoros [Prochorus] the deacon of Jerusalem (Acts
vi. 5), is a poetic romance with numerous raisings from
the dead, exorcisms, etc., almost wholly the creation
of the writer’s own imagination, without a trace of any
encratite tendency like the Leucian Περίοδοι and without
any particular doctrinal significance.
c. To the same age and the same Gnostic party as the Leucian
Acts of John, belong the =Acts of Andrew= preserved
in many fragments and circulated in various Catholic
reproductions. Of these latter the most esteemed were
the _Acts of Andrew and Matthew_ in the city of the
cannibals.
d. The Catholic reproductions in Greek and Syriac that
have come down to us of the Leucian =Acts of Thomas= are
of special value because of the many Gnostic elements
which, particularly in the Greek, have been allowed to
remain unchanged in the very imperfectly purified text.
The scene of the Apostle’s activity is said to be India.
The central point in his preaching to sinners is the
doctrine that only by complete abstinence from marriage
and concubinage can we become at last the partner of
the heavenly bridegroom (§ 27, 4). A highly poetical
hymn on the marriage of Sophia (Achamoth) is left
in the Greek text unaltered, while the Syriac text
puts the church in place of Sophia. Then we have two
poetical consecration prayers for baptism and the
eucharist, in which the Syriac substituted Christ
for Achamoth. But besides, even in the Syriac text,
a grandly swelling hymn, which is wanting in the Greek
text, romances about the fortunes of the soul, which,
sent from heaven to earth to fetch a pearl watched by
the serpent forgets its heavenly origin and calling,
and only remembers this after repeated reminders from
heaven, etc. Gutschmied has shown it to be probable
that the history groundwork of the Acts of Thomas is
borrowed from older Buddhist legends (§ 68, 6).
e. =The Acta Pauli et Thecla=, according to Tertullian and
Jerome, were composed by a presbyter of Asia Minor who,
carried away by the mania for literary forging, excused
himself by saying that he had written _Pauli amore_,
but was for this nevertheless deprived of his office.
According to these Acts Thecla, the betrothed bride
of a young man of importance at Iconium, was won to
Christianity by a sermon of Paul on continence as a
condition of a future glorious resurrection, forsook
her bridegroom, devoted herself to perpetual virginity,
and attached herself forthwith to the Apostle whose
bodily presence is described as contemptible,--little,
bald-headed, large nose, and bandy legs,--but lighted
up with heavenly grace. Led twice to martyrdom she was
saved by miraculous divine interposition, first from
the flames of the pile, then, after having baptized
herself in the name of Christ by plunging into a pit
full of water, from the rage of devouring animals;
whereupon Paul, recognising that sort of baptism in an
emergency as valid, sent her forth with the commission:
Go hence and teach the word of God! After converting
and instructing many, she died in peace in Seleucia.
Although Jerome treats our book as apocryphal, the
legends of Thecla as given in it were regarded in the
West as genuine, and St. Thecla was honoured throughout
the whole of the Latin middle ages next to the mother
of Jesus as the most perfect pattern of virginity.
In the Greek church where we meet with the name first
in the Symposium of Methodius, the book remained
unsuspected and its heroine, as ἡ ἀπόστολος and ἡ
πρωτομάρτυς, was honoured still more enthusiastically
than in the West.
f. The Syriac =Doctrina Addæi Apost.= was according to
its own statement deposited in the library of Edessa,
but allusions to later persons and circumstances show
that it could not have been written before A.D. 280
(according to Zahn about A.D. 270-290; acc. to Lipsius
not before A.D. 360). It assigns the founding of the
church of Edessa, which is proved to have been not
earlier than A.D. 170, according to local tradition
to the Apostle Addai [Addæi] (in Euseb. and elsewhere,
Thaddeus: comp. Matt. x. 3; Mark iii. 18), whom it
represents as one of the seventy disciples and as
having been sent by Thomas to Abgar Uchomo in accordance
with Christ’s promise (§ 13, 2).[88]
§ 32.7.
III. =Apostolic Epistles.= The apocryphal _Epistle of Paul to
the Laodiceans_ (Col. iv. 16), and that to the _Corinthians_
suggested by the statement in 1 Cor. v. 9, are spiritless
compilations from the canonical Epistles. From the
_Correspondence of Paul with Seneca_, quotations are made by
Jerome and Augustine. It embraces fourteen short epistles.
The idea of friendly relations between these two men
suggested by Acts xviii. 12, Gallio being Seneca’s brother,
forms the motive for the fiction.
IV. =The apocryphal Apocalypses= that have been preserved are of
little value. An _Apocalypsis Petri_ was known to Clement of
Alexandria. The _Apoc. Pauli_ is based on 2 Cor. xii. 2.