A fragment from 'the Wisdom of Jesus Christ' then begins. 'After his resurrection from tlie dead, his twelve disciples and seven women, his women-disciples, repaired to Galilee, to the moun- tain which . . .* Tlie Lord's appearance is de- scribed as 'not in his earlier form but in the invisible spirit ; his form was that of a great angel of light.' The disciples question him on topics of Gnostic speculation, and receive answers.
The third fragment is an episode from the * She is evidently with them, as in Ac l^^.
miraculous career of Peter. As he is healing the sick on the day after the Sabbath (i.e. the KvpiaK-rj or Lord's Day), a man taunts him with failing to cure his own daughter, who had been for long paralyzed. Peter then heals her. The story closes Avith an account of the conversion of a pagan, Ptolemoeus.
The Gnostic work from which these fragments are preserved was, according to Schmidt, an Egyptian 'Gospel of Mary' (j). 842 f.), and its evident use by Irenseus proves its existence prior to A.D. 130.
(d) The Gospel of Bartholomew.— When Bar- tholomew evangelized India, according to the tradition preserved by Eusebius (HE v. 10. 3), he took with him Matthew's Gospel in Hebrew. This is not what Jerome and the Gelasian Decree mean by the Gospel of Bartholomew, which they rank among the apocrypha. The latter may now be recovered, in stray fragments from Latin, Greek, and even Coptic sources, although the same kind of problem emerges here as in the case of the Gospel of Peter, viz. how far it is possible to separate the extant fragments from a Gospel and from an Apocalypse, and to assign them to either.
The Latin fragments are preserved in a Vatican MS of the 9th cent. (Reg. lat. 1050), in which a compiler of the 7th or 8th cent, has written three episodes from that Gospel, containing con- versations between Jesus and Bartholomew. Thus Bartholomew asks Jesus to tell him who the man was whom he saw carried in the hands of angels and sighing heavily when Jesus spoke to him. Jesus replies, ' He is Adam, on account of whom I came down from heaven. I said to him, "Adam, on account of thee, and on account of thy sons, I have been hung on the cross." Sighing, he said to me with tears, "Thus it pleased thee, 0 Lord, in heaven."' Bartholomew then asks why one angel refused to ascend with the other angels who preceded Adam, singing a hymn, and why, on being bidden ascend by Jesus, a flame shot from his hands as far as Jerusalem. Jesus explains that the flame struck the synagogue of the Jews, in token of the Crucifixion. 'Afterwards Jesus said, " Await me in yonder place, for to-day the sacrifice is offered in paradise." Bartholomew said, " What is the sacrifice * in paradise ? " Jesus said, " The souls of the just enter the presence of the just to-day." Bartholomew said, " How many souls leave the body every day?" Jesus said, "Truly, I tell thee, 12,873 souls t leave the body daily." ' The second fragment describes Jesus reluctantly allowing Bartholomew and the other apostles, with Mary, to see the devil, or Anti- christ. Jesus places them on Mount Olivet, and after a blast of Michael's trumpet and an earth- quake, the Evil One appears, in chains of fire, under a guard of 6,064 angels. He is 600 cubits high and 300 broad. Jesus then encourages Bartholomew to strike Satan's neck with his feet, and to ask him about his ways and means of tempting men. Bartholomew kicks the devil, but returns in terror to ask Jesus for something to protect him during the conversation. Encouraged by Jesus, he makes the sign of the cross, kicks Satan again, and forces the furious creature to tell who he is. The tliird fragment runs : ' Then Bartholomew approached Satan, saying, "Go to thine own place witii all like thee." And the devil said, "Wait till I tell thee how I was caught when God made man. I was then in the second heaven . . ." '
The extant Greek fragments, four in number, are much larger than the Latin, but their character-
* For munus the Greek has Ovcria, and, in the reply of Jesus, ' Unless I am present, thev do not enter paradise.'
t The editors Wilmart-Tisserant {llli, 1913, pp. 161 ff., 321 fl.) add M between XII and D, to approximate to the 3U,000 of the Greek.
GOSPELS (Uls^CANOA^ICAL)
GOSPELS (UNCANONICAL) 503
istica are the same. In the first, Bartholomew asks the Lord after the Resurrection to show him the mysteries of heaven. The apostle explains that when he followed Jesus to the Crucifixion, he saw the angels descend and worship Him, but that, when the darkness came, He (Jesus) had vanished from the Cross ; all that Bartiiolomew could hear was a sound from the under world, loud wailing and gnashing of teeth. Jesus explains, 'Blessed art thou, my beloved Bartholomew, that thou didst see this mystery. And now I shall tell thee all thou hast asked me. When I vanished from the Cross, then I went down to Hades to bring up Adam, and all who are with him, thanks to (Kark T^v TrapdK'\7j(nv) the archangel Michael.' The sound was Hades calling to Beliar, 'God comes here, as I see.'* Beliar thinks it may be Elijah or Enoch or one of the prophets, and en- courages Hades to bar the gates. Hades wails that he is being tortured ; it must be God. ' Then,' says Jesus, ' I entered, scourged him and bound him with unbreakable chains, and took out all the patriarchs,! and so returned to the Cross.' A Greek replica of the first Latin fragment follows, after which Bartholomew asks, ' Lord, when thou wast teaching the word with us, didst thou receive the sacrifices in paradise?' Jesus replies, 'Truly, I tell thee, my beloved, when I was teaching the word with you, I was also sitting with my Father.' Bartholomew then seems to ask how many of the souls who leave the world daily are found just (the text is corrupt at this point) ; Jesus replies, 'Fifty.' And how many souls are born into the world every day? 'Just one more than those who leave the world.' Then the conversation ends. 'And when he said this, he gave them peace and vanished from them.'