iii, CONTENTS.—The passages from this Gospel quoted by Clement of Alexandria are taken from the discourse of Jesus with Salome. (For the Greek text, see Harnack, Geschichte, i. 13; Preus- chen, Antilegomena, p. 2f.). To Salome’s ques- tion, ‘How long shall Death reign?’ Jesus re- plies, ‘So long as ye women give birth; for I came to destroy the works of the female.’ Salome says, ‘Then should I have done well, if I had borne no children?’ and the Lord makes answer, ‘Hat every herb, but the bitter one eat not.’ [Salome’s words are kad@s ody érolnoa ph TeKodca; Lightfoot proposes ‘an easy change of reading’ (av érolnoa) to avoid the contradiction to the can- onical narratives implied in the rendering ‘then I did well that I bare not.’ But, as Zahn points out, this rendering would require od in place of uy; all ditticulty is removed by adopting Harnack’s note of interrogation]. To a further question of Salome, ‘ When shall these things be known?’ the Lord replies, ‘When ye tread underfoot the gar- ment of shame, and when the two become one, and the male with the female neither male nor female.’ (Cf. ii. 4 above for pseudo - Clement's version of this saying).
Another extract from this Gospel is given by
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Hippolytus in his refutation of the Naassene heresy (Philos. v. 7): ‘They affirm that the soul is very difficult to discover, and hard to under- stand ; for it does not remain in the same figure or the same form invariably, or in one passive con- dition, that either one could express it by a sign or comprehend it substantially. But they have these varied changes [of the soul] set down in the Gospel inscribed ‘* according to the Egyptians.”’
Epiphanius (Her. lxii. 2) states that this Gospel was a chief source of Sabellian heterodoxy ; but, although he asserts that in it many such things are ascribed to the Saviour ‘with a mystical signifi- cance’ (“voTnpiwds), he mentions only one: ‘the same [person] is Father, the same is Son, the same is Holy Spirit.’
In Harnack’s judgment, three more passages found in the homily of pseudo-Clement (£p. c. 4, c. 5, ¢. 8) are quotations from this Gospel, viz. : ‘The Lord said, Though ye be gathered together with me in my bosom and do not my command- ments, I will cast you away, and will say unto you, Depart from me, [ know you not whence ye are, ye workers of iniquity.’ (Cf. Lk 13”, Mt 7%). ‘For the Lord saith, Ye shall be as lambs in the midst of wolves. But Peter answered and said unto him, What then, if the wolves should tear the lambs? Jesus said unto Peter, Let not the lambs fear the wolves after they are dead ; and ye also, fear ye not them that kill you and are not able to do anything to you; but fear him that after ye are dead hath power over soul and body, to cast them into the gehenna of fire.’ (Cf. Lk 10°, Mt 1078, and Lk 124-5). ‘For the Lord saith in the Gospel, If ye kept not that which is little, who shall give unto you that which is great? For I say unto you that he which is faithful in the least, is faithful also in much.’ (Cf. Lk 16%, Mt 257! 2%),
iv. ORIGIN AND CHARACTER. — There is great divergence of opinion in regard to the character of this Gospel. All are agreed that it circulated amongst various heretical sects or schools; but was it, therefore, a heretical Gospel as regards its origin? or was it, as Harnack believes, ‘part of the original Evangelic literature in the strict sense of the word ?’
The facts of which any satisfactory solution of the problem must take account are these: 1. Clement of Alexandria’s statements (Strom. iii. 9, 13, 91) that the Gospel was used (a) by Cassian, the Gnostic leader (6 7s Soxjcews dpxnyss) of the Encratites who were ascetics and condemned mar- riage, and (b) by Theodotus, the Egyptian pupil of the Gnostic Valentinus. 2 Hippolytus asserts that the Naassenes, who were also Gnostics, quoted it in support of their speculations about the soul of man, 3. Epiphanius says that the Sabellians found passages in it which taught a modalistic doctrine of the Trinity. 4. Clement of Alex- andria classes it apart from ‘the four Gospels.’ 5. Origen puts it at the head of the list of heretical Gospels.—Is Origen’s judgment confirmed by the extant fragments of this Gospel? To this question Lipsius (Dict. Christ. Biog. ii. 712) replies: eThe Gospel was a product of pantheistic gnosis’; un- questionably, it contains traces of the teaching that the true gnosis imparts ‘ insight into the un- substantial character of all the distinctions which prevail among, and separate one from another, the things of this visible world’; it reflects also the practical as well as the mystical aspect of Gnosti- cism, for the Encratite prohibition of marriage was the natural consequence of insight into the vanity of the distinctions of sex. Some amount of Encratism is recognized by Harnack, but he con- tends that it is not present to such an extent as to justify those who describe the Gospel as heretical and Gnostic. He is right in maintaining that the
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ascetic tendency of some of the sayings has been exaggerated, and in urging that the entire Gospel may have contained material derived from_purer sources than the fragments known to us. But to establish the non-heretical character of this Gospel more conclusive evidence is required than its use by pseudo-Clement, which, as we have seen, cannot be regarded as a certainty. The least convincing part of Harnack’s investigation is that in which the inference that this Gospel bears the Synoptic stamp, and is closely akin to Matthew and Luke, is made to rest upon the insutfliciently attested asser- tion that it was used by pseudo-Clement. ‘It contained nothing heretical,—if it had, the Church at Rome in 170 would certainly not have read it’ (Chron. i. 619). But if pseudo-Clement drew from the same source as this Gospel, the phenomena of the text would be satisfactorily explained, especi- ally the expanded and less credible form given in this Gospel to the words of Jesus. Moreover, this solution of the problem is quite consistent with Harnack’s view that this Gospel is not dependent on the Synoptics, but ‘derives from the sources of the Synoptics.’ The strongest argument adduced to prove that this Gospel must have contained much orthodox teaching, is based upon the fact that Clement of Alexandria held it in good esteem and gave a different, if mystical, interpretation to those passages which the Encratites quoted in support of their ascetic practices. The most prob- able conclusion which the evidence now avail- able warrants is that the Gospel according to the Egyptians is a Gnostic writing derived, it may be, from a good source ; but if its unknown author had access to material as valuable as that of which the Evangelists made use, he treated it more freely, and both added to and modified the Evangelic tradition.