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APOCRYPHA
APOCRYPHA
kingdom were disclosed by its realisation. Yet this faith gained a slow and hard victory. In two ways the love of mysteries and of tlie books that contained thera was fostered.
(a) The Christian religion made its start in the Jewish world in close connexion with the Messianic ideas as they had been developed, esp. in the apoca- lypses, from Dn onwards. Jewish Christians clung to the Jewish apocalyptic literature, modifying indeed its references to the person of the Messiah, making room for His earthly life and death, but feeling the less need of radical changes because the proper fulfilment of the Messianic hopes was con- nected, not with the first, but with the second coming of Christ. This led, naturally, less to the production of new Christian revelations than to the keeping and Christian editing of the old. Jewish patriarchs and prophets were in this way made to testify to the truth, and to forecast the future, of Christianity. Thus the Book of Enoch and the Apoc. of Ezra were used as authentic revelations by many Church Fathers. Jewish apocalypses of Abraham, Moses, Elijah, Is, Jer, Barueh, and others in great numbers, in part extant, but chiefly known to us only by name, were treasured by early Christianity.
Even when apocalypses in the names of Christian apostles were put forth, their material was of necessity largely traditional and Jewish in origin.
These books, then, Jewish and Christian, are the earliest apocrypha of Christianity (cf. the lists below). They are books usually put forth as having been hidden (the pseudepigraphic form), and always contain accounts of hidden things miraculously disclosed. In the latter sense even the Apoc. of St. John is called ' a*" ' by Gregory of Nyssa {Or. de Ordin. ii. 44) and by Epiplianius {Hair. 51). The cultivation of such 'hidden' books by no means belonged at first to heretical sects, but was characteristic of early Christianity in general. It was opposed chiefly by those who fell under Gr. influence ; but among them another sort of mystery took the place of the Jewish apocalyptic, namely, the Gr. gnosis.
\b) As Je'vrish Christians made Christianity less tho fulfilment than the reaffirmation of Jewish hopes, so Hel. Christians made it less the solution of the mystery of existence than a new, supreme mystery. Christ was made the central figure — in one case in Je^vish eschatology, in the other m Greek cosmology.
St. Paul's lan^age in 1 Co 1 and 2 discloses the existence in Corinth of those who valued a hidden wisdom more than his gospel of the crucified Christ. Aj>d later, at Colossas, St. Paul urges, against an essentially Gnostic tendency, as the word of God, 'the mystery which hath been hidden from the a{,'es and from the generations, but now hath been mitni/ested to his saints' (1^). The mystery of G'ld is ' Christ, in whom are all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge hidden ' (awiKpvipot, 2*). The special Colossian gnosis, with its worship of angels, it* asceticism, its visions, and its secret doctrines, reminds us of Essenism. The strongest influence ou the development of a secret Christian gnosis came, however, from Alexandria : Gnosticism being indeed 'nothing but a Christian Hellenism' (Har- nack).
As the Jeisnsh Apocalypse furnished one way of uinnecting the new faith with the old, Hel. allegorical interpretation supplied another ready means of finding Christ and Christianity in the OT ; thus making of it, as PhUo did, a hidden book. But the allegorical method was capable of a further nse. The Gr. Christian was less concerned to find Christianity in the OT than to find Gr. philosopliy in Christianity. It wa." not an unnatural eflort, af(er St. Paul, and in apparent connexion with him.
to set the OT wholly aside, and to apply allegory to the person and history of Christ. Gnosticism, indeed, based and pushed its claims on the ground of apostolic authority, and, with its rejection o! the OT, it was even the first to feel the need of new authoritative scriptures. But it established its position (1) by requiring an allegorical inter- pretation of the commonly received apostolic writings, making them books of hidden import ; (2) by claiming to possess, besides the open apos tolic writings, a secret apostolic tra.lition (Basilides and Valentinus claim to derive their secret gnosis from pupils of St. Paul ; the Ophites, from a pupil of St. James, etc.); (3) by the production of grea,t numbers of books, chiefly gospels and acts of the various apostles ; * (4) by the claim (like that of Hel. Judaism) to immediate prophetic inspiration, so that prophets and apocalypses played in some Gnostic communities an important part, though few traces of Gnostic apocalypses remain.
Hel. Gnosticism stands as the extreme con- trast to the Jewish apocalyptic tendency. It re- nounced the OT on which the Apocalypse rests, and rejected the coming of Christ, the resurrection, and tne earthly kingdom, in which the Apoc. centres. Yet both make of Christianity a mystery, and claim for the books that unfold the mystery especial sanctity. From these two sources came multitudes of a*" books into Christian use. They were called A. by those who valued them, for the word contained no necessary disparagement, but described the character of the books ; and they were by no means condemned at the outset as heretical. The Book of Enoch is directly cited by Jude (w."""), who also uses the Assumption of Moses (v.^). From such books may have come other citations and references which are not found in known books (see Origen's view below). The Book of Enoch was used as a genuine and sacred book by the Ep. Barnabas, Irena^us, Tertullian, and Clement of Alex. Tertullian says, indeed, that it was not received by some Christians. He, however, defends its reception {i.e. among the books of sacred Scripture) by appealing to Jude ; and explains its absence from the Heb. scriptures by saymg that the Jews rejected it, as they did other books, because it spoke of Christ, — an explanation not, indeed, wholly unhistorical.