Acts, Spurious or Apocryphal, ancient writings purporting to have been written by or respecting our Saviour, his disciples, etc. Of these several are still extant; others are only known by the accounts in an- cient authors (Hase, Hist, of Chr. Church, p. 90, 102). See Canon {of Scripture).
ACTS OF'CHRIST, Spurious. Several sayings attributed to our Lord, and alleged to be handed down by tradition, may be included under this head, as they are supposed by some learned men to have been de- rived from histories no longer in existence (comp. Luke i, 1). See Apocrypha.
(1.) The only saying of this kind apparently genuine is the beautiful sentiment cited by Paul (Acts xx, 35), " It is more blessed to give than to receive," to which the term apocryphal has been sometimes applied, inas- much as it is not contained in any of the Gospels ex- tant (so Gausen, in his Thcopnenstia, Engl. tr. 1842). Heinsius is of opinion that the passage is taken from some lost apocryphal book, such as that entitled, in the Recognitions of Clement, " the Book of the Sayings of Christ, " or the pretended Constitutions of the Apostles. Others, however, conceive that the apostle does not re- fer to any one saying of our Saviour's in particular, but that he deduced Christ's sentiments on this head from several of his sayings and parables (see Matt. xix, 21 ; xxv ; and Luke xvi, 9). But the probabili- ty is that Paul received this passage by tradition from the other apostles.
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(2.) There is a saying ascribed to Christ in the Epistle of Barnabas, a work at least of the second cen- tury: ''Let us resist all iniquity, and hate it;'' and again, "So they who would see me, and lay hold on my kingdom, must receive me through much suffering and tribulation;" but it is not improbable that these passages contain merely an allusion to some of our Lord's discourses.
(3.) Clemens Romanus, the third bishop of Rome after St. Peter (or the writer who passes under the name of Clement), in his Second Epistle to the Corin- thians, ascribes the following saying to Christ : " Though ye should be united to me in my bosom, and yet do not keep my commandments, I will reject you, and say, Depart from me, I know not whence ye are, ye workers of iniquity." This passage seems evi- dently to be taken from Luke's gospel, xiii, 25, 26, 27.
There are many similar passages which several em- inent writers, such as Grabe, Mill, and Fabricius, have considered as derived from apocryphal gospels, but which seem, with greater probability, to be nothing more than loose quotations from the Scriptures, which were very common among the apostolical Fathers.
There is a saying of Christ's, cited by Clement in the same epistle, which is found in the apocryphal Gospel of the Egyptians : "The Lord, being asked when his kingdom should come, replied, When two shall be one, and that which is without as that which is within, and the male with the female neither male nor female." See Gospels (Spurious).
We may here mention that the genuineness of the Second Epistle of Clement is itself disputed, and is rejected by Eusebius, Jerome, and others; at least Eusebius says of it, "We know not that this is as highly approved of as the former, or that it has been in use with the ancients" {Hist. Eccles. iii, 38, Cruse's tr. 1842). See Clement.
{4.) Eusebius, in the last chapter of the book just cited, states that Papias, a companion of the apostles, "gives another history of a woman who had been ac- cused of many sins before the Lord, which is also con- tained in the Gospel according to the Nazarenes." As this latter work is lost, it is doubtful to what woman the history refers. Some suppose it alludes to the history of the woman taken in adultery ; others, to the woman of Samaria. There are two discourses ascribed to Christ by Papias preserved in Irenaeus (Adversus Hares, v, 33), relating to the doctrine of the Millen- nium, of which Papias appears to have been the first propagator. Dr. Grabe has defended the truth of these traditions, but the discourses themselves are un- worthy of our blessed Lord.
(5.) There is a saying ascribed to Christ by Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho, which has been supposed by Dr. Cave to have been taken from the Gospel of the Nazarenes. Mr. Jones conceives it to have been an allusion to a passage in the prophet Ezekiel. The same father furnishes us with an apoc- r3rphal history of Christ's baptism, in which it is as- serted that "a fire was'kindled in Jordan." He also acquaints us that Christ worked, when he was on earth, at the trade of a carpenter, making ploughs and yokes for oxen.
(6.) Thera are some apocryphal sayings of Christ preserved by Irenams, but his most remarkable ob- servation is that Christ "lived and taught beyond his fortieth or even fiftieth year." This he founds partly on absurd inferences drawn from the character of his mission, partly on John viii, 57, and also on what he alleges to have been John's own testimony delivered to the presbyters of Asia. It is scarcely necessary to refute this absurd idea, which is in contradiction with all the statements in the genuine gospels. There is also an absurd savins; attributed to Christ by Athe- nagoras (Jsgat. pro Christian's, cap. 28).