PUBLIC-DOMAIN CHRISTIAN BOOK
Dictionary of the Apostolic Church — Volume 1
James Hastings · 1,014,604 words · 1012 reading sections
Section 661
The First Gospel is, as is well known, the most apocalyptically coloured of the Synoptic Gospels. But there are many who do not realize how deeply the apocalyptic element penetrates the book. It is, e.g., urged by E. Buckley * that the presence of passages like 24^^'^'* does not presuppose an early date for the Gospel,…
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The trinitarian formula in 28'^ need not be late. St. Paul, saj-s Harnack, did not create it (op. cit. p. 108 ; cf. also The Constittition and Law of the Church, Eng. tr., London, 1910, p. 259 ft'.). The narratives peculiar to St. Matthew are, as Harnack recognizes, of a very archaic character. If then we are right i…
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(c) The authorship of the Third Gospel is bound up with the question of the authorship of Acts. Critics, like Jiilicher, who date Gospel and Acts about A.D. 100 and deny that the writer of the ' we ' sections in Acts can be identified with the writer of the whole book of Acts, cannot of course accept the tradition that…
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(c) In the Third Gospel we come at last to a pro- fessed biography or history of a life. It is best treated when taken as the first part of a great his- torical work of which Acts is the second volume, and some of the following features characterize both works: (1) if in the First Gospel Jesus is ' He who fulfils' and …
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The conception of the Christology of the book as being the work of a writer strongly influenced by Alexandrian philosophy is probably a false one due to the fact that modern writers on the Gospel know something about Alexandrian philosophy because Philo wrote in Greek, but little or nothing about Jewish theology in the…
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• Die Entstehung des Jnhannesevangelfums. t J. Wellhausen, Eriveiterungi-n und Knderungen im vierten Evangelium, Berlin, 1907, Dan Erangelium' Jahaiinis, do. 1908; F. Spitta, Das Johannes-Eoangdium als Quelle dcr Geschichle Jesu, Gottingen, 1910; Bacon, The Fourth Gospel in Jiesearch and Debate, London, 1910. always …
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The eighteenth century brought Augustin Calmet's Disser- tation sur les Evangiles apocryphes in his ' Commentaire," Paris, 1709-16, vol. vii. ; Jeremiah Jones' Sew and Full Method of Settling the Canonical Authority of the Neiv Testament, London, 1726-27 (written on the basis of Fabricius, along apologetic lines); and …
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3. Writing at the close of the 1st cent. A.D., St. Luke observes in the preface to his Gospel that 'many' had already undertaken to compose a narrative of the life of Jesus : ttoWoI iirexelprjffav dvaTd^aaOai dirjy-qcnv, kt\. (1'), He does not intend to convey any impression of disparagement by the term iirexelp-riffav…
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Liber de infantia salvatoris ,, nativitate salvatoris et de Maria vel obstetrici.' By a gross blunder, arising perhaps from a mis- reading of Jerome's prologue to the Gospels, tlie writer mistakes the textual recensions of the Gospels made by Lucian and Hesychius for apoc- ryphal Gospels. This does not encourage hope…
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(b) The close connexion between the extant frag- ments and tiie agraplia renders it necessary to lay down a special t principle of criticism, viz. that wlien the same saying, in slightly diflerent versions, recurs in more than one fragment, three possibili- ties are open to the critic, (i.) The earlj' Christian writer …
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482 GOSPELS (UNCAXONICAL) GOSPELS (UNCANONICAL) being produced as late as the Muhammadan era, and as early as the 1st cent. A.D. But, with one or two exceptions, we cannot do justice to them unless we set them not over against the Gospel literature of the first hundred years after the Death of Jesus but among the cur…
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This involved not only a dissatisfaction with the canonical Gospels, on the score of what they contained as well as of what they omitted, but a certain dependence upon them, in several cases. The unknown authors, as Renan neatly puts it, ' font pour les dvangiles canoniques ce que les auteurs des Post-homerica out fait…
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(1) Gospels relating to the Birth and Infancy of Jesus ; (2) general Gospels, covering His entire life and ministry, from the Birth to the Resurrection, either on the type of Matthew-Luke or of Mark- John ; (3) Gospels of the Passion and Resurrection. I. Gospels relatisg to the Birth and In- fancy of Jesus.— (a) The P…
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484 GOSPELS (U]S"CAN"ON"ICAL) GOSPELS (UNCANONICAL) there.' Her pai-ents, in a transport of wonder at her, depart. They vanish from the story,* which at once (8) hurries on to describe the action taken by the priests when this wonder-child reached the age of puberty (twelve or fourteen years — the MSS vary). An angel…
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Here the line of the narrative is again broken abruptly. Joseph is never mentioned again. 21'- 22- re-tells Mt 2"-, with elaborations. The magi have seen ' a star of enormous size, shining among these stars and eclipsing their light.' The star conducts them to the cave, where the magi .see ' the infant with his mother …
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Here, too, as in the Oxyrhynchite fragment (cf. p. 499), the attempt to describe the conditions of Jewish ritual shows the writer's ignorance. That Joachim should be repelled from his right to offer in the Temple on the score of childlessness (P), and that girls could remain within the Temple like vestals, are only two…
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(b) The Gospel of Thomas.— The UaiSixd, or Gospel of Thomas, survives in two Greek re- censions, one (A) longer than the other (B),* but the MSS are not earlier than the 14th or 15th century. The Latin version (L), however, survives in a Vienna palimpsest as yet undeciphered, and the Syriac (S) in a MS of the 5th or 6…
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There is no ground for denying that some Gnostic Gospel of Thomas existed during the 2nd century. The quotation preserved by Hippolytus does not occur in any of the extant recensions of the Thomas Gospel which afterwards sprang up ; but even these, for all their size, cannot have corresponded to the entire work, which …
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1 L covers the childhood of Jesus from his second year, A from Iiis fifth to his twelfth year, and B from his fifth to his eighth. B4-5 Some days later, when Jesus was passing through the town, a boy threw a stone at him and struck him on the shoulder. Jesus said to him, 'Thou shalt not go thy way.' And at once he fe…
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him, he did to him nothing more but stretched out his hand to him and blew upon the bite, and it was healed' (from Ac 28^-'?). A closes with quite a sober version of Lk 2^^'^'*, which substitutes for v.*" the following passage : 'The scribes and Pharisees said, "Are you the mother of this child ? " She said, " I am." …
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* Except in one point. He makes Jerome plead love for Christ as the motive for his translation. Did he forget that the author of the Acts of Paul and Thecla had been condemned in spite of his plea that he had invented the Acts out of love for St. Paul? Protev. 7 Mary, aged three, dances when set down on the third step…
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{d) The History of Joseph the Carpenter. — One of the latest developments of the legends relating to the Infancy of Jesus is represented by the History of Joseph the Carpenter, which purports to be the story, told by Jesus to the disciples on the Mount of Olives, of the life and death of Joseph. It is a genuinely nativ…
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There were Jewish Christians, according to Justin (Dial. 88) who maintained that Jesus was born in the ordinary way. Whether all the JeAvish Christians whom Justin knew held this position, * There is a monograph by R. Beinsch on Die Pseudo-Evan- gelien von Jesu und Marias Eindhcit in der romanischen und germanischen L…
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tinctly above Gospels like those of Peter, Thomas, and Matthias ! The suspicion that Ka9' "E^patovs * was being used loosely to describe more than one Gospel t is con- firmed by two other lines of evidence. (1) The first of these runs parallel to the refer- ences already quoted, and is derived from the statements of …
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{)liesthat Jerome had an extremely superficial know- edge of NG, and this is on other grounds unlikely. It is true that Jerome required an expert to trans- late the Chaldee or Aramaic text of Tobit into Hebrew, that he might render it into Latin ; and his acquaintance with the original of NG must have been equally seco…
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* EG (see below) was also a Greek composition, but, unlike HG and like NG, it was allied to Matthew, though not so closeli' as NG. t Bede, in the beginning of the 8th cent., made the fact of Jerome having quoted and translated the Hebrew Go.spel the reason for holding that the latter was to be ranked ' not among apocr…
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Kal WKTOi, {b) The extant quotations may best be classified according to the source : Clbmbnt op Alexandria cites HG twice — Strom, ii. 9. 45 : 'as it is written also in the Gospel according to the Hebrews, " He who wonders shall reign, and he who reigns shall rest."' Strom. V. 14. 96 : 'He who seeks shall not rest…
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In addition to corroborating the reading of the 'Jewish' Gospel in Mt 4S \&7 and 26'?'i, and repeating (on Mic 76) Origen's argument from and citation of the Tabor saying, Jerome affirms that in Mt 25 it* read'Judah' not 'Judaea'; in the narrative of the Baptism it contained the following conversation : ' Behold the mo…
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went to James and appeared to him ; for James had sworn he would not eat bread from the hour when the Lord had drunk the cup until he saw him rise from those who sleep. . . . "Bring a table and bread," the Lord says. He took bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to James the Just, and said to him, " My brother,…
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• Even after Zahn'a (Gesch. des Kanons, ii. 731 f.) argrument that Epiphaniu8'9 statement is correct, and that since Origen the Ebionitic Christians had begun to appropriate for their own Gospel the honorific title of the Church's HO. t The religious vegetarianism of the Ebionite Christians (Epiph. xxx. 15) made them …
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Origen (see p. 479) calls it t6 iTnyeypa/j.jj.ii>ov tCjv dddeKa eiayyiXiov, instead of using Kara, as he does in describing the other Gospels on his list, and as the Latin translator renders it ( ' iuxta * duodecim apostolos '). The probability is that a saying like (3) gave rise to this title ; it would suggest, and p…
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The Gospel of the Egj-ptians was probably used by the author of the homily ( + A.D. 150) known as 2 Clement. This is not beyond question (cf. Zahn ; Haase, p. 3 ; and Batiffol's plea in his study of the Gospel in Vigouroux's Dictionnaire de la Bible, ii. 162.5-1627), but the evidence points strongly in favour of such a…
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Special Literature. — M. Schneckenburgrer, Ueber das Evanrjelium, der Aegypter, Bern, 1834 (edition of the Gospel of the Hebrews, in the interests of an Ej;yplian Ebionitic sect) ; Hilgenfeld, Ketzergesch. des Urchristenthums, Leipzig, 1884, p. 546 f. ; D. Volter, Petrusevanqelium oder Aegypterevangelium) Tubingen, 189…
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• But Theodoret's evidence is not above suspicion. How could 'Nazarene' Jewish Christians make so anti-Jewish a book their favourite Gospel ? Theodoret's reference, like several other references of the same kind, may be to a different volume from our ' Peter.' t But it is difficult to understand why the writer did not…
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The traces of Gnostic speculation confirm the hypothesis of a date early in the 2nd cent, if not within the 1st. They are too incipient and naive to be described as related to the system of Valentinus ; neither the personification of the Cross nor the allusion to Christ's Divine Power is much more than the popular sett…
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• Besides an earlier study, Evangelii secundum Petrum et Petri Apocalypseot qua supersunt . . . cum latina versions et dissertatione critica, Paris, 1892. t A smaller pamphlet by this writer (Das Petrusevangelium. f^ynoptische Tabelle nebst Uebersetzung und kritischem Apparat, Berlin, 1893) was translated by J. Macphe…
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(i) Three Oxyrhynchite (Greek) fragments. — (i. ) A small fragment of a Gospel in a papyrus roll is as- signed by Grenfell-Hunt (Oxyrhijnchus Papyri, iv. [1904], pp. 22-28) to a period not iater than A.D. 250. The mutilated opening reads like a short para- plirase of Mt G^^^Lk \^-^, Mt 6-8- ^e^Lk \2-^- ^\ Mt 627- 31-33…
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Like the four scraps recentlj' discovered (op. cit. x. [1913] 1224), this extract cannot be assigned to any of the 2nd cent, uncanonical Gospels. That it belonged to this century is questioned by the editors, who point out that the ecclesiastical vogue of the canonical Gospels, which became strong to- Avards the close …
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• This would not of itself mean much ; the same title occurs in the earlier Oxyrhynchite fragment (cf. p. 499). t ayivvTiTOi also occurs in the lacunae. t In The Oxyrhynchus Loqia and the Apocryphal Gospels, 1899, C. Taylor connects the first series with the Gospel of Thomas ; cf. Scott-Moncrieflf, Paganism and Chris…
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The fragment reflects the Gnostic idea (of. Bousset's essay in Archiv fur Religionsvnssen- schaft, 1901, p. 155 f.) of the ascent of the soul through the heavens, and the magic pass-words re- quired for the journey, but the characteristic feature is the antipathy to marriage, which agrees with the 2nd cent, conception …
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Since Matthias was elected an apostle after the Resurrection (Ac 123-26)^ i^ would be natural to use his name and tradition as the vehicle of more or less secret revelations made by the Risen Lord to the disciples. Hence we may provisionally rank his Gospel in our third class. In a Coptic fragment, assigned by Revillo…
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A fragment from 'the Wisdom of Jesus Christ' then begins. 'After his resurrection from tlie dead, his twelve disciples and seven women, his women-disciples, repaired to Galilee, to the moun- tain which . . .* Tlie Lord's appearance is de- scribed as 'not in his earlier form but in the invisible spirit ; his form was th…
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The second Greek fragment introduces Mary. The apostles are in a place called Cheltura, when Bartholomew proposes to Peter, Andrew, and John that they ask Mary about the virgin-birth. None of them cares to put the question ; Bartholo- mew reminds Peter that he is their leader, but Peter turns to John, as the beloved ap…
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The contents of these fragments correspond partly with what we know elsewhere * of the ' questions of Bartholomew ' (for the Ethiopia and Coptic versions and recensions of this litera- ture, cf. Lichtenhan in ZNTW, 1902, p. 234 f., and Haase, p. 22 f.). They also throw some light upon what lies behind the remark of Epi…
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(g) The Gospel of Perfection. — ' Some of them,' says Epiphanius (xxvi. 2), speaking of the Nico- laitans or Ophite Gnostics, ' bring in a manufactured sort of adventitious work (iyiiiycfidv ri iroliifxa) called The Gospel of Perfection,' which, he adds ironically, is the very perfection of diabolic mischief ! This not…
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(j) Coptic fragments. — (i.) A Coptic Akhmim MS (4th-5th cent. ) contains two fragments, which may have belonged to an uncanonical Gospel of the 2nd century. The second is a fragment of pro- phetic discourse by Jesus, predicting Ac 12^'- (?). The first opens with Mary, Martha, and Mary Magdalene going to the sepulchre …
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The fragments are evidently based upon the Gospels of Matthew and John ; so much is clear even from Avhat can be deciphered. Possibly they belonged to some uncanonical Gospel current in Egypt during the 3rd or even the 2nd cent., but the internal data are too slender to support any hypothesis which would connect them w…
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J. MOFFATT. GOVERNMENT, GOVERNOR — (1) The term 'government' occurs twice in the AV of tiie NT, in neither case with reference to civil government. In the first passage, 1 Co 12-^ it occurs in the plural, being a translation of the Greek Kv^epvriaeis, which, like the English ' government,' is a metaphor from steersman…
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(6) The Christian experience. — The apostolic doctrine of grace presupposes the distinctive Chris- tian experience. The NT teaching falls into three groups : Synoptic, Pauline, Johannine. The first reproduces the most immediately and literally faithful picture of Christ's sayings ; the second and third present the earl…
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Kerson is only inasmuch as he is living, growing. Ian is, as he lives in God ; and his capture ** and surrender are achieved not in a thing but in a person, and not to a thing but to the One Person, whose right to claim him and renew his life con- sists precisely in this, that He is Himself absolutely, infinitely, and …
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GKACE GRACE 509 we find ? — At once a continuity of experience and an identity of essential fact. (a) Supernatural principle of life. — To begin with, we find the life of grace to be constituted by the supernatural principle, and to be an indivisible entity. The life of the believer is by a new birth from above,* t…
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• 2 P 318. t Jn 117. t Ro 117 104, 1 Co 130, 2 Co 521, Ph $9, etc. § Cf. Jn 19 319 1236, 1 Jn 15. 7 23 56, Rev 225. 6, etc. II We take St. Paul's mind to be little influenced, the Johannine writings to be much influenced, by Greek thought. ■1 Jn 146 1125, 1 Co Ib*^- 17, 2 Co 317, 1 Jn li-3. •» 1 Co 1515. ft 1 Co 1…
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St. Paul gives two ' sums ' of grace, the one in 1 Co P", the other in Ro 8^*, to Avhich elsewhere are added 'adoption' and 'reconciliation' (Gal 4^-'', Ro 511, 2 Co 5'3). We may tabulate thus : A. Predestination and Election. Justification Adoption Sanctification B. and and and Bedeniption. Reconciliation. Bighteou…
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Hence His indwelling manifests itself in the par- ticular dispositions and graces of character** which He calls into existence, called 'the fruits of the Spirit.' We need not trace the forms in which the spiritual principle unfolds or the spheres within which it operates. ft We point only to the infinite variety and in…
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• Eph 210. t 1 P 13^. t ' The Spirit of glory and of God rests upon us now ' (1 P 4W). § The believer who has the Spirit thus has Him as ' a seal ' (2 Co 123, Eph 113 430). II The Greek Fathers teach that the Greek philosophers are I under the influence of the Holy Spirit. of grace. In both St. John and St. Paul the…
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[d] Grace and the Church and sacraments. — In apostolic thought the Church is a visible and Divine institution : the Body and Bride of Christ. It is the appropriate social environment for the sanctified soul, wherein at once the gifts of each are available for the profit of all and the spii'itual atmosphere conduces to…
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* The point is not how Christ acts upon us by His Divine Humanity in the Church ordinances, whether by transubstantia- tion or spiritual power, but the fact that He does so act really and trulv, whatever the mode. t Eph 525, Tit 2". t Cf. Ritschl, Rechtfertigung und Versohnung, ii. 217 fif. § Cf. H. B. Swete, Holy S…
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So, in the Cliurch, gravity is the opposite of disorder, of shamelessness of behaviour. It is the opposite of dirdvoLa (see Theophrastus, Char. xiii.). In 1 Ti 2'-, the Apostle inculcates gravity as a Christian attitude towards the State, and for this end prayer is to be made for kings and all in authority. Christians …
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A question of considerable interest has been raised regarding tlie pro])er reading in Ac IP". Are we to read here 'Grecians' or 'Greeks'? Were those to whom the men of Cyprus and Cyrene ))reached Jews or Gentiles, Grecians or Greeks? Internal evidence and the mass of MS autiiority seem to conflict. The reading 'EXXijct…
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Neither the Macedonians nor the Romans ever treated the conquered Greeks as ordinary subjects. The sacred land of art and poetry was not ruled like Egypt or Gaul. There was a province iof Achaia, but never of Hellas. Such cities as Athens and Sparta were spared the humiliation of being placed under the fasces of a Roma…
919 wordsSource & rights
Public-domain historical reference work (1915–1916); OCR text from Internet Archive. Historical scholarship and terminology reflect its era; OCR may contain errors. Verify quotations and current scholarly claims independently.
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Historical Christian writing; not Scripture.