Mary and her three virgins return to holy Bethlehem ; in answer to her prayers the Apostles are summoned to her deathbed. John is ‘ snatched up by a cloud from Ephesus’ and assures Mary — that her ‘holy and precious body will by no means see corruption.’ By a whirlwind the Holy Spirit brings ‘Peter from Rome, Paul from Tiberias, Thomas from Hither India, James from Jeru- salem.’ The Apostles who have fallen asleep are raised from their tombs, but the Holy Spirit says: ‘Do not think that it is now the resurrection ; but on this account you have risen out of your tombs, that you may go to give greeting to the honour and wonder-working of the mother of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, because the day of her departure is at hand, of her going up into the heavens.’
Mary, sitting up in bed, asks the Apostles to tell her how they had been summoned. John says, ‘I was going in to the holy altar in Ephesus to perform Divine service’; Mark says, ‘I was finishing the canon of the third [day] im the city of Alexandria’; Matthew says, ‘I was in a boat and overtaken by a storm, the sea raging with its waves; ona sudden a cloud of light overshadowing a stormy billow, changed it to a calm, and having snatched me up, set me down beside you.’ Similar experiences are narrated by the other Apostles.
Marvels accompany Mary’s departure: the sun and the moon suddenly appear about the house ; all who are ‘ under disease and sickness’ are cured, if they touch ‘ the outside of the wall of the house’ where Mary was lying. The Jews, ‘ boiling with rage,’ say to the Procurator, ‘The nation of the Jews has been ruined by this woman; chase her from Bethlehem and the province of Jerusalem.’ The Procurator refuses, but yields to importunity and ‘sends a tribune of soldiers against the Apostles to Bethlehem.’ The Apostles leave the house ‘carrying the bed of the Lady, the mother of God’; they are ‘lifted up by a cloud’ and transported to ‘the house of the Lady’ in Jeru- salem, The priests and the people ‘being the more moved with hatred’ take the wood and fire, ‘wishing to burn the house where the Lord’s mother was living with the Apostles’ ; but many Jews are burnt up by ‘a power of fire suddenly coming forth from within by means of an angel.’
The Holy Spirit reminds the Apostles that ‘on the Lord’s day’ Gabriel made the Annunciation to the Virgin ; ‘on the Lord’s day’ the Saviour was born; ‘on the Lord’s day’ the children of Jeru- salem welcomed Him with palm-branches and Hosannas; ‘on the Lord’s day’ He rose from the dead ; and ‘on the Lord’s day’ He will come to judgment. ‘On the Lord’s day’ Christ comes with a host of angels and says to His mother, ‘Thy precious body will be transferred to Paradise.’ Mary kisses and adores the right hand of the Lord ; she beseeches Him as ‘ God, the King of the
APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS
Ages, the only-begotten of the Father,’ to bestow His aid ‘upon every man calling upon, or praying to, or naming the name of, thine handmaid.’ The Lord replies, ‘Every soul that calls upon thy name shall not be ashamed, but shall find mercy, and comfort, and support, and confidence, both in the world that now is, and in that which is to come, in the presence of my Father in the heavens.’
Whilst the Apostles sing a hymn, and the powers of the heavens respond with Alleluia, the blame- less soul of Mary departs. When Jephonias puts his hands upon the couch on which her holy body lies, ‘an angel of the Lord by invisible power, with a sword of fire, cut off his two hands from his shoulders, and made them hang about the couch, lifted up in the air.’ At the word of Peter the hands are ‘ fixed on again.’
Different accounts are given of the transference of Mary’s ‘spotless and precious body’ to Para- dise, One describes the translation as taking place after the body had lain for three days in Gethsemane in a new tomb; another represents ‘twelve clouds of light’ as snatching up the Apostles with the couch and ‘the body of our Lady’ into Paradise; and another narrates the miraculous resuscitation of the Virgin’s body. ‘Anna, the mother of the Lady,’ is one of the heavenly choir that sing the Alleluia and adore ‘the holy relics of the mother of the Lord.’
lii. CHARACTERISTICS AND DATE. — Although, as Lipsius points out (Dict. Christ. Biog. ii. 707), “a comparison of the various texts proves that the original narrative was now abbreviated and now enlarged in manifold ways with all manner of foreign additions and strange ornaments,’ yet, in all the various forms in which this work is ex- tant, the Departure of Mary (xolwnos tis Mapias, Transitus Marie) contains many evidences of a desire to furnish Apostolic sanction for Mary- worship of an advanced type. Traces of the Prot- evangelium Jacobi and of Gnostic apocryphal writings are found in some texts, but the narra- tive common to all versions is undoubtedly ‘a Catholicizing recast of an heretical work.’ Such phrases as ‘the holy altar,’ ‘the canon of the third day,’ i.e. a part of the Church service con- sisting of nine odes, ‘cast incense and pray,’ are internal evidence of a Catholic development of ecclesiastical ritual. Lipsius says: ‘The Catholic 1ecast plainly belongs to a time when the worship cf the Virgin is already flourishing, 7.¢c. at the earliest, the close of the 4th, and most probably the beginning of the 5th century.’ Proof of the wide circulation of this work is afforded by the number of extant versions of it ; in Catholic circles it has had great influence. Orr and Wright quote with well-merited approval the judgment of Ewald: ‘This book has become from the first the firm foundation for all the unhappy adoration of Mary, and for a hundred superstitious things, which have intruded with less and less resistance into the Churches, and have contributed so much to the degeneration and to the crippling of all better Christianity.’