Beausobre suspected that the latter pai-t of the book (the descent into hell) was taken from the Gospel of Peter, a work of Lucius Charinus now lost. Thilo (Codex Apocryphiis') thinks that it is the work of a Jew- ish Christian, but it is uncertain wliether it was origi- nally written in Hebrew, Greek, or Latin. The onlj' Greek writer wlio cites it is the author of the Sijnaxa- rion, and the first of the Latins who uses it is the cele- brated Gregory of Tours (Bist. Franc, i, 20, 23).
The Gos])el of Nicodemus (in Latin) was one of the earliest books priuti>d, and there are subseciuent edi- tions in 1491), 151G, 1522, and 1538, and in 15G9 in the Orthodoxo<]rapha of Gryineus. It was afterwards pub- lished liy Fabricius (6W. yl/)oe.), who divided it into cha])trrs. Fabricius gives us no information respect- ing the age or character of his MS., which is extreme- ly defective and inaccurate. Mr. Jones republished this, with an English version.
The Greek Gos])el of Nicodemus was first published from an incorrect Paris MS. by Birch (Auctariuni), and subsciiuently from a collation of several valuable man- uscri])ts, tlie most ancient of which are of the 13th cen- tury, bj' Thilo, with the Latin text of the very ancient IMS. at Einsiedel, described by Gerbert in \ns-Iter Ale- Viannicum. It has been sh^wn bj-- Smidt (Bibl.fiir Cri/ik nnd Exegese) that the present ]\ISS. exhibit in their citations from the canonical books a text of the
6th century, and consequently that this gospel is axii tremely useful in a critical point of view.
The esteem in which this work was held in the Mid- dle Ages may be seen from the number of earlj' ver- sions which were in popular use, of which innumerable MSS. have descended to our times. The earliest of these is the Anglo-Saxon translation, printed at Ox- ford in 1698, from a Cambridge MS. ('Ihwaites's Hep- tuteuchiis). This is a translation from the Latin, as none of the Greek MSS. contain Pilate's letter to Clau- dius. There are also MSS. of the same in the IJodleian and Canterbury libraries. That in the Bodleian is di- vided into thirty -four chapters. There are several MSS. of the English version in the Bodleian, one in Sion College, and one in English verse in Pepys's col- lection. It was also translated b}' Wicklifle ; and there were versions printed in London, in 1507 and 1509, by Julian Notary and Wynkyn do Woide, which ran through several editions (Panzi's Annals). The latest published before Mr. Jones's work was by Joseph Wil- son in 1767. He says notliing of the age of his MS., but the following specimen from the prologue may not prove uninteresting : " It befel in the 18th year of the seigniory of Tiberius Cresar, emperor of liome, and in the seigniory of Herod, who was king of Galilee, the 8th kalend of April, which is the 25th day of March, the fourth year of the son of Vellum, who was coun- selor of Kome, and Olympias had been afore iuo hundred years and tiio ; at this time Joseph and Annas were lords above all justices of peace, mayors, and Jews. Nicodemus, who was a worthj' prince, did write this blessed history in Hebrew, and Theodosius the em- peror did translate it out of Hebrew into L;itin, and bishop Turpin did translate it out of Latin into French, and hereafter did ensue the blessed history called the Gospel of Nicodemus." The regard, indeed, in which this book was held in England will be understood from the fact that, in 1524, Erasmus acquaints us that he saw the Gospel of Nicodemus nflfixed to one of the col- umns of the cathedral of Canterbury.
Translations were also common in French, Italian, German, and Swedish. In the French MSS. and edi- tions it is united with the old romance of Perc forest, King of Great Britain. There was also a Welsh trans- lation (Lhuyd's .4 rchceologia, p. 256), and ths work was known to the Eastern Christians, and has been even supposed to be cited in the Coptic liturgy; but thif has been shown by Ludolf to be a mistake, as the les- son is from the historj' of Nicodemus, in John iii (see Brunn, De indol. ataie et iisu Evang. 'Siccd. Bcrl. 1794 ; Tischendorf, Pilati circa Chr. judicio quid liiiis affera- iur ex Actis Pilati, Lips. 1855). See Nicodemus.
II. Of the gospels no longer extant, we know little more than that they once existed. We read in Irenreus, Epiphanius, Origen, Eusebius, and other ecclesiastical writers, of tlie Gospels of Eve or of Perfection, of Bar- nabas (ancient and modern), of Bartliolomew, of Basi- lides, of Hesychius, of Judas Iscariot, of the Yalentini- ans, of Apollos, of Cerinthus, of the Twelve Apostles, and several others. Some of these were derived from the Gnostics and other heretics; others, as the Gospel of Matthias, are supposed by ]\Iill, Grabe, and most learned men to have been genuine gospels, now lost. Those of which we have the fullest details are the fol* lowing :
1. The Gospel of the Nazarenes. This is most probabh' the same with that of the Hebrew s, which was used by the Ebionites. It was supposed by St. Jerome to have been a genuine Gospel of Matthew, who, he says, wrote it in the Hel)rew language and letters. He copied it himself from the original in the librarj^ of Ca?sarpa, translated it into Greek and Latin, and has given many extracts from it. Grabe con- ceived this gospel to have been composed by Jewish converts soon after our Lord's ascension, before the compositi(ui of the canonical Gospel of Matthew. Ba- ronius, Grotius, father Simon, and Du Pin lock upon