50. ‘Jesus, son of Mary, said to John, son of Zacharias, If any one in speaking of thee says the truth, praise God; if he utters a lie, praise God still more, for thereby shall thy treasure be in- creased in the list of thy works, and that without any labour of thine, that is, his good works are carried to thy list.’
Finally, we have the following Saying :—
51. Koran, Sur. 5 fin., “Remember, when the apostles said, O Jesus, Son of Mary, is thy Lord able to cause a table to descend unto us from heaven? he answered, Fear God, if ye be true believers. They said, We desire to eat thereof, and that our hearts may rest at ease; and that we may know that thou hast told us the truth; and that we may be witnesses thereof. Jesus, the son of Mary, said, O God our Lord, cause a table to descend unto us from heaven, that the day of its descent may become a festival-day unto us, unto the first of us, and unto the last of us; and a sign from thee ; and do thou provide food for us, for thou art the best provider. God said, Verily I will cause it to descend unto you; but whoever among
ou shall disbelieve hereafter, I will surely punish
him with a punishment wherewith I will not punish any other creature.’
LiteratoRE.—Much of the material relating to the Agrapha was collected by the older editors of Patristic texts. Especially the notes of Cotelier (Patres apostolici2, Antwerp, 1698; Eccle- sie Greece monumenta, Paris, 1677-86) have been quarries of erudition for later workers. In recent years important con- tributions have been made by Anger (Synopsis Evangeliorwm, Leipzig, 1852); Hilgenfeld (NZ eatra Canonem Receptum 2, Leipzig, 1884); and Zahn (Gesch. d. newtest. Kanons, 1888-92), as well as by the writers who have discussed the fragments of the Gospel according to the Hebrews (notably Nicholson, Handmann, Zahn). Collections of Agrapha have been fre- quently made since those of Grabe (in his Spicilegitwm, Oxford, 1698) and Fabricius (in his Codex apocr, NT, Hamburg, 1703). See, among others, R. Hofmann, Leben Jesu nach den Apokry- phen, 1851; Westcott, Introduction to the Study of the Gospeis, Appendix O, 1860, 81894 ; J.T. Dodd, Sayings Ascribed to Our Lord, Oxford, 1874; Schaff, History of the Christian Church, vol. i., 1882, pp. 162-7 ; Nestle, V7’ supplementwm, Leipzig, 1896, pp. 89-92; Preuschen, Antileyomena, 1901, pp. 48-47, 138 f. ; J. de Q. Donehoe, Apocryphal and Legendary Life of Christ,
we vee
1903. Resch brings together a vast amount of material relat- ing to the whole subject, and uses the Agrapha as a leading argument for his theory (founded on that of B. Weiss) of the origin of the Synoptic Gospels. He holds to an original Gospel, called in ancient times +& Adyiw, and composed in Hebrew by Matthew shortly after the death of Christ. This document is supposed to have been the main source of the three Synoptic Gospels (its matter constituting four - fifths of Matthew, three-fourths of Luke, and two-thirds of Mark), to have been used by St. Paul and St. John, and to have been known for many centuries to the writers of the Church. From it are derived the Agrapha, and to varying translations of it are due not only the variations of the Synoptic Evangelists, but also many of the countless textual variants in the Gospels, especially those of the ‘Western Text,’ as preserved both in MSS and in Patristic quotations. A reconstruction of the ‘Logia’ is attempted in Resch, Die Logia Jesu nach dem griechischen und Leprdheelen Teaut wiederhergestelit, 1898 ; see also his ‘Aussercanonische Paralleltexte zu den Evangelien’ (TU x. 1-5), 1893-96.
Resch’s contention that 75 Agra ar are probably genuine Sayings of Jesus would, if accepted, furnish some reason for supposing a single common source of such material. In fact, however, most of Resch’s Agrapha do not commend themselves to other scholars as probably genuine; and his solution of the Synoptic Problem has been generally rejected. See J. H. Ropes, ‘Die Spriiche Jesu die in den kanonischen Evangelien nicht tberliefert sind: eine kritische Bearbeitung des von D. Alfred Resch gesammelten Materials’ (TU xiv. 2), 1896. For criticism of Resch’s views, see also Jiilicher in TALZ, 1890, col. 321-330; Church Quarterly Review, Oct. 1890, pp. 1-21; Knowling, Witness of the Epistles, 1892 ; Rahlfs in ThLZ, 1893, col. 377f.; C. O. Torrey in AJTh, Oct. 1899, pp. 698-703.
Blomfield Jackson (7'wenty-jive Agrapha, annotated, London, 8.P.C.K., 1900) offers sensible and interesting discussions, with some fresh illustrative material. More complete notices of literature in Resch, Agrapha, and Ropes, Spriiche Jesu.
On the Oxyrhynchus ‘Sayings of Our Lord,’ see the editio princeps, Grenfell and Hunt, AOTIA IHOOY, Sayings of Our Lord, London, 1897; Lock and Sanday, Two Lectures on the ‘Sayings of Jesus,’ Oxford, 1897 (with full bibliography); Grenfell and Hunt, The Oayrhynchus Papyri, pt. i., 1898, pp. 1-3.
On the Sayings from the Talmud, see Laible, Jesus Christus im Thalmud, 1891 [Eng. tr. by Streane, 1893]; and Literature given in Ropes, Spriiche Jesu, pp. 115, 151.
On the Sayings of Jesus in Mohammedan writers, see J. A. Fabricius, Codex apocr. NT, iii, Hamburg, 1719, pp. 394-7; Jeremiah Jones, New and Full Method of Settling the Canonical Authority of the NT, i., Oxford, 1798, pp. 451-71; R. Hofmann, Leben Jesu nach d. Apokryphen, 1851, pp. 327-9; D. 8. Mar- goliouth in Eapository Times, vol. vy. pp. 59, 107, 177f., Nov., Dec. 1893, Jan. 1894; W. Lock in Eapositor, 4th ser. vol. ix,