* These were sanctioned on condition that the ancient Greek text was printed in parallel columns with the modern Greek version. But in 1901 ecclesiastical and patriotic prejudices were roused by a modern version or ‘paraphrase,’ circulated at the expense of queen Olga, and, in consequence, the circulation of any Greek version except the ancient Greek text has been de- nounced by the Synod and prohibited by the Government.
APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS
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APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS 421
tion of the people, not for confirming the authority of Church dogmas’ (Prol. to Books of Solomon) ; his description of these non-canonical books as apocryphal does not therefore imply that he condemned them as false and worthless. This must be borne in mind when ‘apocryphal’ is de- fined as wncanonical in its application to Gospels. Apocryphal Gospels are uncanonical Gospels; but all uncanonical Gospels are not necessarily apo- cryphal in the bad meaning which adheres to the word. A Gospel may be neither spurious nor heretical, though it is apocryphal; it may be based upon a genuine tradition, though it is un- canonical.
li, ORIGIN.—The resemblances and the varia- tions in the Synoptic Gospels furnish a problem which requires for its solution either an oral tra- dition which gradually became as stereotyped as though it had been written, or documentary sources modified by oral traditions. Most critics recognize elements of truth in the oral as well as in the documentary theory of the origin of the Gospels. Those who adopt the documentary hypo- thesis allow for the influence of traditions current in the Church, though not committed to writing. The problem presented by the apocryphal Gospels is to determine how far their additions to the nar- ratives of the four Evangelists are derived from au- thentic sources, also to decide how far the fictitious accretions are due to fraudulent intentions or the heretical tendencies of the respective writers. The external evidence for the existence of an apocryphal Gospel must be weighed together with the evidence derived from a careful study of its contents before any judgment can be pronounced as to its origin. But no pre-judgment of the issue in any particular case is involved in the statement of some general considerations which must guide every such in- quiry. The author of Supernatural Religion thinks that ‘apologetic critics’ are prejudiced by ‘can- onical glamour’; but there may be an unreason- able bias against as well as a reasonable presump- tion in favour of the canonical Gospels. The rever- ence they enjoyed for centuries is a significant fact, and is not satisfactorily accounted for by the state- ment that they were ‘more fortunate’ than the Gospels which were never included in the Canon of Scripture (The Gospel according to Peter, p. 182). The claim of an uncanonical Gospel to represent an early form of the Christian tradition cannot be dismissed on @ priort grounds, nor can it be admitted without the most thorough investigation. The author may have derived the narratives of unrecorded incidents in the life of Jesus, or the reports of His unwritten sayings, from sources unknown to the four Evangelists. Jesus did ‘many other things’ (Jn 21”) than those which the canonical Gospels relate; before St. Luke wrote the Third Gospel many had ‘taken in hand to draw up’ similar, if less complete, narratives (Lk 11). Moreover, the manufacture of fanciful traditions is not always to be ascribed to the zeal of heretics, but sometimes to an eager desire to satisfy — without critical discrimination between the nucleus of fact and the embellishments of fiction—curiosity in regard to those periods in our Lord’s life about which the four Evangelists tell us nothing. Pseudo-Matthew had persuaded himself that the motive which impelled him to write was love for Christ (Liber de infantia Marv: ‘amor ergo Christi est, cui satisfecimus’). But before any apocryphal Gospel is assumed to contain an earlier and purer form of the Evangelic tradition it must
be examined in the light of indisputable evidence |
that writers of Gnostic tendencies (cf. Epiph. Her. xxvi. 8, 12) published fictitious and pseudepigraphic works to support their peculiar tenets, claiming that their works imparted knowledge, secretly
handed down to them, of the things hidden by Jesus from the multitude to whom He spoke in riddles which none but His most favoured disciples understood. Origen (c. 240) says: ‘ There are some believers exactly like drunken people who treat with violence their own body, for they falsify and alter the text of the Gospels three or four times, in order that they may evade its remonstrances’ (contra Celsum, ii. 27. See Harnack, Chron. 1. 590).
The variations in the texts of such apocryphal Gospels as are extant in different recensions can- not, in the judgment of Tischendorf, be explained as unintentional alterations; often the sense of a passage is completely altered, these Gospels being treated with a freedom which is inconceivable on the supposition that they were held in as high esteem as the canonical Gospels (de Evv. Apocr. origine et usu, p. 121: ‘ Fraudis apocrypha (evan- gelia) convincuntur ex mira qua laborant textus ambiguitate, a qua immensum canonica differunt, quamquam et ipsa haud exigua lectionunr varie- tate premuntur’). The authors of the apocryphal Gospels, whether they were influenced by dogmatic motives or by a desire to satisfy curiosity, adopted, as Hofmann points out, similar methods of com- position. In both classes of writings there are some stories which are pure inventions, but there are others in which a causa media may be dis- covered. Sometimes elaborate narratives are de- veloped out of a mere allusion in the canonical Gospels, sometimes words of Jesus are transformed into deeds, sometimes a slavishly literal fulfilment of an OT prophecy is recorded, and sometimes Jesus is represented as working maryels closely resembling and frequently surpassing OT miracles (Herzog, PRE* i. 655).