(d) Other Sayings have occasionally been included through sheer mistake of some kind, as—
Epist. Barnabe, iv. 9, ‘Sicut dicit filius Dei, Resistamus omni iniquitati et odio habeamus eam’: ‘As the Son of God says, Let us resist all iniquity and hold it in hatred.’ Here the Greek text (first published from Cod. & in 1862) ws mpéme: viots Oeod dvrisTrOuev, K.7.D., makes it apparent that sicut dicit jilius Det is a textual corruption of sicut decet jilios Dei.
(e) Still another class of Sayings to be found in the lists owe their places only to the guess of some modern scholar trying to discover the source of an ancient quotation. Resch, especially, has in a number of cases been led by his theory about the origin of the whole body of Agrapha to assume without sufficient ground that a quotation of un- known origin is from the words of Jesus.
Examples of this will be found in his treat- ment of 1 Co 29, Eph 5%, Ja 4°, or such a case as the following :—
Clemens Alex. Strom. i, 8, 41 (Potter, 340), oro of Ta Kardpria KaracmOvres Kal bnbev dhaty- ovres, dnolv h ypadh: ‘These are they who ply their looms and weave nothing, saith the Serip- ture’ (cf. Resch, Agrapha, p, 226 i)
A more plausible suggestion is that Rev 16% (Resch, Agrapha, p. 310; Ropes, Spr. Jesu,
_,,No. 145) is an Agraphon.
ii, METHOD AND RESULTS OF CRITICISM OF THE AGRAPHA. — The criticism of the Agrapha has first to determine the source or sources by which, independently of other sources known to us, the Saying in question has been preserved. The Agrapha were much copied by ancient writers from one another, and even an imposing array of attesting authorities is in most cases reducible to one. This genealogical criticism of the sources accomplished, the next question is whether the earliest authority for the Saying is of such date and character that he might reasonably have had access to trustworthy extra -canonical tradition, For Papias or Justin Martyr this will be admitted : for a writer of the 4th cent. it will not. Finally, a third question must be considered, viz. whether the Saying is conceivable in the mouth of Jesus, in view of what the canonical Gospels make known to us of His thought and spirit. On the answer to this question will depend the ultimate decision ag to the probable genuineness of the Agraphon. But even if a negative conclusion is here reached, the proof is not complete until a fair explanation of the actual rise of the Agraphon has been furnished,
The criticism of the Agrapha is in most cases more difficult and less satisfactory than that of the Sayings of Jesus contained in the Gospels, because the history of their preservation and early trans- mission is, as a rule, utterly obscure, and because of their isolated character, lacking, as they often do, all context. The setting of the canonical Say- ings in a great body of material all of the same general character, touching on the same topics, and transmitted to us by the same process, is a factor of unspeakable significance and value in Gospel criticism.
For detailed criticism of the Agrapha the reader must be referred to the literature of the subject. Here only a general summary can be furnished.
(a) Of the following list of Agrapha, Nos. 1, 17, 19, 21, 34, 35, 38, 39, 42, 43, 44, 46, 48, 59, 60 are, for various reasons, certainly not genuine Sayings of Jesus.
(6) Of most of the others so positive a statement cannot be made, but to the present writer Nos. 2, 3,5, 6, 9, 22, 28, 40, 41, 45, 50, 54, 56, 63, 64, 65, 66 seem decidedly to lack the marks of genuineness ; while in favour of Nos. 7, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 23, 26, 27, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 36, 37, 49, 51, 52, 53, 61, 62 a better, though not a conclusive, case can be made out. Some of them may have concealed within them a genuine kernel.
(c) Nos. 4, 11, 13, 15, 24, 25, 47, 55, 57, 58 (distin- guished by an asterisk) all seem with considerable probability to possess historical value. At the head in trustworthiness stands No. 13 (Ac 20*), which possesses the same right to be accepted as any Saying in the Gospel of Luke. The others vary in the strength of their claim.
The fact that after all Christian literature has been thoroughly searched there can be found out- side of the New Testament only a bare handful of Sayings of Jesus which can possibly be thought to convey trustworthy tradition of His words, is stril- ing and important. Its significance is increased by the comparatively trifling intrinsie interest which attaches even to these few Agrapha. The cause of this state of things seems to be that the authors of the First and Third Gospels gathered up practically all that the Church in general possessed of traditions of the life and teaching of Jesus Christ. Any tradition embodied in the Fourth Gospel seems to have belonged to a com- paratively small circle, if to more than one person. Living tradition may have persisted for a time in Palestine (possibly leaving a trace in the Gospel according to the Hebrews), but it was cut off by the destruction of Jerusalem and the withering of Jewish Christianity. The treasures that the earliest tradition had brought to the Gentile Churches were collected and arranged in our Synoptic Gospels; and the Evangelists did their work so well that only stray bits here and there, and these of but slight value, were left for the gleaners,