• Die Entstehung des Jnhannesevangelfums. t J. Wellhausen, Eriveiterungi-n und Knderungen im vierten Evangelium, Berlin, 1907, Dan Erangelium' Jahaiinis, do. 1908;
F. Spitta, Das Johannes-Eoangdium als Quelle dcr Geschichle Jesu, Gottingen, 1910; Bacon, The Fourth Gospel in Jiesearch and Debate, London, 1910.
always tinged with definite heresy. We can see, for example, from the evidence which Eusebius rather grudgingly furnishes for the repute of the Gosjjel of the Hebrews in certain circles, that an uncanonical Gospel like this had a vogue which was only partially all'ected by the necessity of ex- cluding it from tlie canon. Also, befvire the canon gained its full authority, a Gospel like that of Peter could still keep some footing within a com- munity. The Church might have its four Gospels as classical and standard documents for the life and teaching of Jesus ; fortunately, it felt obliged to stamp these with the special mark of inspired authority. But Gospels already in circulation did not disappear at once, even when they were ex- cluded from ecclesiastical use. Nor again— and this is the second remark to be made — did the fixing of the canon put a stop to the composition or the editing of such Gospel material. Literature of this kind continued to be produced, not only in circles which were more or less semi-Christian, but especially in the Egyptian Church. It belonged to the category of religious fiction for the most part. Still, it followed in the wake of the canoni- cal Gospels, and what has survived the wreck, reaching us partly on the planks of versions and partly on broken pieces of the original, forms a considerable section of the material for our present survey.
To study these Gospels against the background of the canonical, and to measure them by the standards of the latter, is to do them too much honour. But it is also to do them, or some of them, an injustice. As we shall see, it is a mistake to speak of the uncanonical Gospels as if they were a homogeneous product. They vary widely, not only in age but in spirit. Some of them are docu- ments of 'heresy,'* and were never meant to be anything else ; the motive for their composition was to adapt one or more of the canonical Gospels to the tenets of a sect or party on the borders of the catholic Church. But others were written to meet the needs of popular Christianity ; their aim was to supplement rather than to rival the c.inoni- cal Gospels, and in some cases they can be shown to be almost contemporary with the latter — certainly prior to the formation of the canon itself. The problem is still further complicated by the probability that now and then a Gospel of un- heretical character was re-issued in the interests of later parties, while a Gospel originally Gnostic, for example, may occasionally have been pruned of its objectionable features and started on a career within the Church. f Certain phenomena seem to point to both of these practices in early Christian literature. An uncanonical Gospel might experi- ence either change ; it might rise or fall in the world of the Church. And this would be all the more possible just because it was uncanonical. Neither its text nor its contents ensured it against degeneration or stood in the way of its appropria- tion by the hands of the orthodox. Either the Church or 'heresy' could drag over a document which lay close to the border, and fit it to strange uses. However this may be, recent phases of critical research in the uncanonical Gospels show us pretty plainly that within as well as without the early Church there was sometimes a good deal of what not only later generations but even contem- poraries did not hesitate to call ' heresy,' that this 'heresy' assumed many forms, and that the un- canonical Gospels, as we now have them, often re- present heterogeneous and varied interests of such Christian or semi-Christian piety.
• i.e. of 'heresy' which repudiated the name of 'heresy'; of. V. H. Stanton, The Gospels as Hist. Documents, i. [1903] 244 f .
t A similar process went on in the case of some of the un- canonical Acts.
GOSPELS (UNCA1^"0NICAL)
GOSPELS (UNCANONICAL) 479
2. The extant fragments, mainly Greek and Latin, were first collected in a critical ediDion by J. A. Fabricius (Codez Apoc- ryphus Hov. Test. . . . editio secunda, emendatior, Hamburg, 1719 [1st ed., 1703]); A. Birch {Aiictarium codicis Apocryphi Ji'oui Testamenti Fabriciani continens plura inedita alia ad fidem codd. mss. emendatixis expressa, Copenhagen, 1804) ; J. C. Thilo (Codex Apocri/phus i\ovi Testamenti, Leipzig, 1832) ; and C. de Tischendorf (Evangelia Apocrypha'^, Leipzig, 1876). Later discoveries were mainly incorporated in the texts issued by E. Nestle (Xovi Testamenti Supplementum, Leipzig, 1896); E. Preuschen (Antilegomena : die Reste der ausserkanonischen Evangelienuad urchristlichen Ueberlieferungen, herausgegeben und uebersetzf-, Giessen, 1905); and E. Klostermann (in H. Lietzmann's Kleine Texte, 3, 8, and 11, Bonn, 1903-04). But Thilo and Tischendorf still form the basis for research, so far as the Greek and Latin texts of several important documents are concerned. In E. Henn&ck.&'s NetUcstamentliche Apokryphen (Tiibingen and Leipzig, 1904) there are valuable translations, with Introductions and notes, of the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Gospel of the Ebionites, the Protevangelium Jacobi, and the Gospel of Thomas (by A. Meyer), of the Gospel of Peter (by A. Stiilcken), of the Traditions of Matthias and some Coptic frag- ments, etc. (by the editor). The French edition in course of preparation by J. Bousquet and E. Amann {Les Apocryphes du ±\'oui-eaji Testament, Paris), includes the original texts, but as yet only the Protevangelium Jacobi has appeared (1910).