•Thcprolinliilitv i^ 1h.it mn-it of tliciii .li«n]iiieared earl.V, lieinK iiiiali!.. t.. iiD.int.tiii 1 1 1. II p. .'.ill. in ;.!. .iijm.I. ..1 the Gospels which
GOSPELS (APOCRYPHAL)
GOSPELS (APOCHYPHAL)
As an example of the way in which the Christian hajfijadisl workedj it may suffice to mention his treatment of OT l«xts. Pa 1487 reads: 'Praise the Lord from the earth, ye dragons'; accordingly, in pseudo-Matthew dragons are represented as coming out of a cave and worshipping the child Christ. The picture of Paradise regained in Is IV''^- suggested the legend that all kinds of wild beasts accompanied the Holy Family on the way to Egj-pt (Cowper, Apocr. Gosp. lix f.)
JBut although the Apocryphal Gospels abound in legendary accretions of this kind, the mistake should not be made of assuming that there is no authentic material in the additions to the nana- tives in the four Gosjiels. Oral tradition main- tained itself for a time after our present Gospels were reduced to A\Titing, and it is not improbable that genuine sayings of Christ and authentic details about His life have been preserved in uncanonical books. On this point see further in § iii.
(2) A much more powerful motive than the desire to satisfy curiosity, leading to the produc- tion of Gospel ■wTitings, was the dogmatic interest, the desire to find support for beliefs which were held in various sections of the Church. This was especially marked in Gnostic circles, where niimer- oiLs Evangelic writings (running into thousands, Epiphanius .says [Beer. 26]) were produced, claiming the authority of a secret tradition for their peculiar doctrines. Even in the earlier Apocryphal Gospels, which are of the
canonical Gospels. Thus, in the Gosprl according to the Hebrews the conception of Christ has an Ebionitic tinge, and in the Gospel of Peter there are expressions which betray Docetic sympathies on the part of the writer. The dogmatic motive is prominent as well in those writings which fill up with fictitious details the empty spaces of the Gospel narrative, and thus have generally been regarded as due to the desire to gratify the irrepressible longing for fuller knowledge. It is doubtful if this latter motive, although it was certainly operative, would have led to the in- vention of such a mass of fictitious matter, had it not been
story of Mary's antece- Christ's birth was due not 0 the imperati\'e dogmatic
dents and of the circumstances merely to any horror vacui, but t necessity, as the WTiter conceived it, alike the true Divinity and the tnu .SimUarly, the Childhood Gospel of
Thorn
would never have found acceptance
not been for the witness which the miracles were supposed to
bear to Christ's supernatural origin.
iii. KfXATioN "TO Canonical Gospels. — Tlie fr.T,'iiiriit:ir\- condition and the uncertain text of iii:uiy nf 111.- A|iocrvphal (iospels render a conKdent iu.lL'iiH-iit ,1-^ to tlieir relation to the canonical (iii.-]ieU exceedingly difficult. Where the question of affinity is raised, the problem to be solved is whether the uncanonical Gospels are dependent on the canonical, or draw from a common oral source. The latter possibility is one not to Ije dismissed without careful consideration ; but, on the whole, the evidence points in almost every ca.se to the use of some or all of the four Gospels by the authors of the apocryphal writings. Only in the case of one Gospel, the Gospel according to the Hebrews, is there a strong consensus of opinion in favour of indejiendence (see, however, vii. A. 1). Where there is an appearance of independence, tills is frequently to be accounted for by a free manipulation and em- bellishment of old material, to bring it into line with the writer's peculiar \m\at of view, or to suit it to the character of his surroundings.
While a laifje degree of dependence on the canonical Gospels must in general be maintained in regard to the Apociyphal Gospels, this must not be pressed so far a,s to e.xclude the possibility of their embodying details drawn from reliable oral sources. The fact must steadily be borne in mind that the stream of living oral tradition continued to flow for several generations, though in ever decreasing vol- ume, alongside of tlie ^^Titten Gospels ; ' aceord-
* Traces of the influence of oral tradition on Gospels, after they were reduced to tcritnuf, are to l>e foinid i the wellknomi additions to John (S'") and Mark {!(?*■-'»).
ingly, where the uncanonical Gospels deviate from the canonical record, either by slight interpolations into common matter or by additions peculiarly their own, the possibility Is always open that in these additions we have early and reUable tradi- tions, either unknown to the four Evangelists or passed over by them as unsuitable for their pur- pose.
Two Important considerations must, however, Ije kept m mind in estimating the trustworthi- ness ot aU such additions. In the first place, the authoritative position which the canonical Gospels early reached as authentic sources of the life and teacbing of Jesus entitles them to be used as a touchstone of the probable authenticity of the additional matter contained in the Apocryphal Gospels. No saying of Christ or detail about His life has any title to be regarded as genuine if it does not fit into the conception wliich the four Evangelists have given us of the teaching and personality of Jesus. Secondly, when we keep in view the un- doubted fact that fictitious TN-ritings were common in which the life and teaching of Christ were freely handled m the interest of heretical sects, it is dear that extreme caution must be observol in nceivini; as authentic any addition to the canonical n.i-..r,i. If it would be less than just to say that all the Apocryphal Gospels stand in the position of suspect witnesses, ■nath a presumption of imreliability against them in respect of their peculiar matter, it is nevertheless true that their exclusion from the Canon, as well as the notoriously tainted origin of some of them, render it imperative that their claim to embody a Genuine tradition must be care- fully sift«d, and allowed only after the clearest proof.