[6300] St. Matt. xxviii. 17.
[6301] 1 Cor. xv. 6.
[6302] The word immediately' in St. John xxi. 3 is spurious.
[6303] St. Luke v. 1, 11.
[6304] Yet St John must have been acquainted with this narrative, recorded as it is by all three Synoptists.
[6305] This notice also seems specially indicative that the narrator is himself from the Lake of Galilee.
[6306] About 200 cubits.
[6307] Canon Westcott gives, from St. Augustine, the points of difference between this and the miraculous draught of fishes on the former occasion (St. Luke v.). These are very interesting. Not so the fanciful speculations of the Fathers about the symbolic meaning of the number 153.
[6308] This seems implied in the absence of the article in St. John xxi. 9.
[6309] St. John could not have meant His third appearance in general, since himself had recorded three previous manifestations.
[6310] St. Matt. xxvi. 33; St. John xiii. 37.
[6311] Christ asks: gaps me, and Peter answers: s odas ti phl se.
[6312] ginskeis.
[6313] So Canon Westcott renders the meaning. The coming' might refer to the second Coming, to the destruction of Jerusalem, or even to the firm establishment of the Church. The tradition that St. John only slept in the grave at Ephesus is mentioned even by St. Augustine. __________________________________________________________________ __________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________
(See vol. i. pp. 37, 38, and other places.)
ONLY the briefest account of these can be given in this place; barely more than an enumeration.
I. The Book of Enoch. - As the contents and the literature of this remarkable book, which is quoted by St. Jude (vv. 14, 15), have been fully described in Dr. Smith's and Wace's Dictionary of Christian Biography (vol. ii. pp. 124-128), we may here refer to it the more shortly.
It comes to us from Palestine, but has only been preserved in an Ethiopic translation (published by Archbishop Laurence [Oxford, 1838; in English transl. 3rd ed. 1821-1838; German transl. by A. G. Hoffmann], then from five different MSS. by Professor Dillmann [Leipzig, 1851; in German transl. Leipzig, 1853]). But even the Ethiopic translation is not from the original Hebrew or Aramaic, but from a Greek version, of which a small fragment has been discovered (ch. lxxxix. 42-49; published by Cardinal Mai. Comp. also Gildemeister, Zeitschr. d. D. Morg. Ges. for 1855, pp. 621-624, and Gebhardt, Merx' Arch. ii. 1872, p. 243).
As regards the contents of the work: An Introduction of five brief chapters, and the book (which, however, contains not a few spurious passages) consists of five parts, followed by a suitable Epilogue. The most interesting portions are those which tell of the Fall of the Angels and its consequences, of Enoch's rapt journeys through heaven and earth, and of what he saw and heard (ch. vi.-xxxvi.); the Apocalyptic portions about the Kingdom of Heaven and the Advent of the Messiah (lxxxiii-xci.); and, lastly, the hortatory discourses (xci.-cv.). When we add, that it is pervaded by a tone of intense faith and earnestness about the Messiah, the last things,' and other doctrines specially brought out in the New Testament, its importance will be understood. Altogether the Book of Enoch contains 108 chapters.
From a literary point of view, it has been arranged (by Schürer and others) into three parts: - 1. The Original Work (Grundschrift), ch. i.-xxxvi.; lxxii.-cv. This portion is supposed to date from about 175 b.c. 2. The Parables, ch. xxxvii.- liv. 6; lv. 3-lix.; lxi.-lxiv.; lxix. 26-lxxi. This part also dates previous to the Birth of Christ - perhaps from the time of Herod the Great. 3. The so-called Noachian Sections, ch. liv. 7-lv. 2; lx.; lxv.-lxix. 25. To these must be added ch. cvi., and the later conclusion in ch. cviii. On the dates of all these portions it is impossible to speak definitely.
II. Even greater, though a different interest, attaches to the Sibylline Oracles, written in Greek hexameters. [6314] In their present form they consist of twelve books, together with several fragments. Passing over two large fragments, which seem to have originally formed the chief part of the introduction to Book III., we have (1) the two first Books. These contain part of an older and Hellenist Jewish Sibyl, as well as of a poem by the Jewish Pseudo-Phocylides, in which heathen myths concerning the first ages of man are curiously welded with Old Testament views. The rest of these two books was composed, and the whole put together, not earlier than the close of the second century, perhaps by a Jewish Christian. (2) The third Book is by far the most interesting. Besides the fragments already referred to, vv. 97-807 are the work of a Hellenist Jew, deeply imbued with the Messianic hope. This part dates from about 160 before our era, while vv. 49-96 seem to belong to the year 31 b.c. The rest (vv. 1-45, 818-828) dates from a later period. We must here confine our attention to the most ancient portion of the work. For our present purpose, we may arrange it into three parts. In the first, the ancient heathen theogony is recast in a Jewish mould - Uranus becomes Noah; Shem, Ham, and Japheth are Saturn, Titan, and Japetus, while the building of the Tower of Babylon is the rebellion of the Titans. Then the history of the world is told, the Kingdom of Israel and of David forming the centre of all. What we have called the second is the most curious part of the work. It embodies ancient heathen oracles, so to speak, in a Jewish recension, and interwoven with Jewish elements. The third part may be generally described as anti-heathen, polemical, and Apocalyptic. The Sibyl is thoroughly Hellenistic in spirit. She is loud and earnest in her appeals, bold and defiant in the tone of her Jewish pride, self-conscious and triumphant in her anticipations. But the most remarkable circumstance is, that this Judaising and Jewish Sibyl seems to have passed - though possibly only in parts - as the oracles of the ancient Erythræan Sibyl, which had predicted to the Greeks the fall of Troy, and those of the Sibyl of Cumæ, which, in the infancy of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus had deposited in the Capitol, and that as such it is quoted from by Virgil (in his 4th Eclogue) in his description of the Golden Age.