vii. COMPOSITION AND INFLUENCE.—The com- position of the first part (15 and 1°) is not par- ticularly HAREY = the continual leading in and out of the accused, the accumulated testimonies by persons who had been healed, the twice-repeated entrance of the three men from Galilee, all go to show that the author lacked the art of moulding his material aright. On the other hand, the second part (2) is not ee in itself well constructed, but it contains here and there—for instance, in the de- scription of the conflict between Satan and Hades— passages of poetic value which have found their paral els in Milton and Klopstock. Here, too, the
iction attains a higher level, whereas elsewhere the style is that of dry, at times almost weari- some, narrative, and the language, in imitation of the canonical Gospels, flows on in a series of short sentences without any attempt at a periodic structure. Yet, in spite of —or perhaps just because of—this readily intelligible kind of nar- ration, our Guspel exercised from an early poe onwards enormous influence. We have already apes of its wide diffusion in manuscripts and the frequent use made of it in literature, especially subsequent to the 13th cent. The Passion plays of the 15th cent. show that the contents of the Gospel of Nicodemus had passed into the popular consciousness as an ποτ element of the Life of Jesus. Plastic art also has found its motives here: not pay are we acquainted with two miniature series illustrating the Evangel. Nicod. in a Toledo and a Milan MS of the 13th cent., but already upon the sculptures (probably of the 6th cent.) of the Ciborium of St. Mark’s at Venice, the so-called columne cochleate (Garrucci, Storia dell’ arte crist. vi. tav. 4972), there is found a scene which formerly was wrongly taken to represent the
Petri εἰ Pauli, ed. Lipsius, i. 135 ff., 196 ff., and in Evang. Nicod. ch. 29 (so Lipsius), or, if one prefers to see in this letter an excerpt from Tertullian (so Harnack), Tertullian derived the notion of Acts of Pilate from the Apology of Justin, with which he was acquainted. As yet it has not been possible to prove the existence of any literary connexion whatever between what Justin and Tertullian, appealing to such Acts of Pilate, relate, and what is contained in the Gospel of Nicodemus.
The requisite ae appeared, on another side, to be supplied by the discovery of the Evangel. Petri, whose contents, in so far as they go beyond the canonical tradition, some, notably H. v. Schubert, would trace back to the ancient Acta Pilati, a merely hypothetical Grundschrift of our Evangel. Nicod.; od spe on the other hand, Th. Zahn (Das Evangelium des Petrus, 1893) holds the later Pilate literature to be influenced by the Evangelium Petri. As a matter of fact, the parallels cited from the ‘ Pilate literature’ by no means suffice to prove that the Evangel. Petri utilizes traditions that had been committed to writing, and that these coincided with the Grundschrift of our Evangel. Nicodemi. The points of contact find their com- olete explanation on the assumption that the ashion of embellishing and interpreting the his- tory of the Passion, as this comes out clearly in Justin, was known both to the author of the Evangel. Petri in the 2nd, and of the Evangel. Nicod. in the 4th (5th) cent.
Finally, J. Rendel Harris has started the hypo- thesis that the Gospel of Nicodemus, as we possess it, is only the reproduction in prose of a version of the Gospel in Homeric centones, and that it was this last-named work, dating as early as the 2nd cent., that Justin and Tertullian had in view—an ingenious suggestion, which, however, is exposed to the serious objection that the existence of such Christian Homeric centones cannot be proved earlier than the 4th (5th) century.
y. SourcEs.—The author uses, first of all, our four canonical Gospels, for the history of whose text certain passages of the Evangel. Nicod. are not without importance. The question as to the source of the other matter has not yet been suffi- ciently investigated. In details concerning the trial of Jesus, such as the form of summons and that used in pronouncing sentence behind the velum, the usage of the 4th (5th) cent. is reflected ; the scattered Hebrew words with their Greek rendering appended we should be disposed to trace back to Origen’s Hexapla. In the miracle of the standard lowering itself before Jesus, Miinter has seen a parallel to the mark of honour paid by Pompey to the philosopher Posidonius. The de- tails invented in chs. 12-17 (4° above) find their , explanation for the most part in the motives of the Gospel narrative and the evidence of prophecy. Only for 2 does the external garb, to speak of nothing else, make it probable that we should have recourse to a written source, current pre- sumably under the name of Leucius Charinus, the alleged author of various apocryphal Acts of the Apostles. The Gnostic character which has been claimed for the latter by Miinter, Lipsius, v. Schubert, and others, is denied by Harnack. The point requires fresh examination in connexion with the whole history of the Descensus conceptions.
vi. PURPOSE.—The Gospel of Nicodemus in its present form is aT meant only for religious edification. In this way wide currency was given to two apologetic ideas, which already in the canonical Gospels show themselves with increasing clearness: (1) that the heathen judge, being per- fectly convinced, after examination, of the inno- cence of Jesus, was compelled only by the obstinate wickedness of the Jews to pass sentence of death ;