Agrapha (Hastings' Dictionary)

i. Name. ii, Certain Sayings not to be included. fii, Method and Results of criticism of the Agrapha. iv. List of Agrapha. (a) 1-15: Agrapha from the NT or from some NT manuscripts. (6) 16-25: from Gospel according to the Hebrews ; 26; from Gospel according to the Egyptians. ©) 27-83: the Oxyrhynchus ‘ Logia.’ 84-46: from various ancient documents, Catholic and heretical. @ 47-48: 49-66 : from the Mishna. St) from early Christian Writers. ay Agrapha from very late sources.

(A) Agrapha from Mohammedan sources (1-51). Literature. i Name.—The name Agrapha was first used in 1776 (J. G. Korner, De sermonibus Christi dypddois, Leipzig) for the Sayings purporting to come from Jesus Christ but transmitted to us outside of the canonical Gospels, The term was suggested by the idea that these Sayings are stray survivals from an unwritten tradition, orally preserved and running parallel with the written Gospels.

It is now re- cognized that this description does not strictly apply to many Sayings which must be included in any collection of such material; but the name has proved convenient, and since the publica- tion of Resch’s elaborate monograph (‘ Agrapha: Aussercanonische Evangelienfragmente in méglich- ster Vollstiindigkeit zusammengestellt und unter- sucht,’ in Texte und Untersuchungen, v. 4, 1889), has passed into general use. * Ct.

, further, on various points dealt with in this article, the following art. AeRarHa. AGRAPHA 343 ii, CERTAIN SAYINGS NOT TO BE INCLUDED.— In a collection of Agrapha it is, however, neither customary nor advisable to include all that falls under the definition just given.

The long dis- courses ascribed to Jesus in such works as the Didascalia, or to the Risen Christ, as in the Pistis Sophia,* have no claim to authenticity, and are profitably studied only in their original context, The same is to be said of most of the compara- tively few Sayings of Jesus found in the religious romances known as Apocryphal Gospels, whether Gnostic or Catholic, and in the Apocryphal Acts, as well as of the Letter of Christ to Abgar (Euseb. HE i, 13).

And of some of the Sayings now usually and rightly included in the lists it must be said that if their full context were known it would probably at once appear that they were of this same sort, and were better omitted. Of a different character are the Sayings preserved from those uncanonical Gospels which were designed, like the canonical Gospels, to embody Evangelical tradition for serious public or private use.

To this class of writings belong the Gospel according to the Hebrews, together with the (far less valuable) Gospel according to the Egyptians, and the Ebionite Gospel (mainly based upon the canonical Gospels) known to Epiphanius.

With these would be plac also the Gospel according to Peter; but the only fragment of it extant contains no Saying of Jesus excepting a peculiar form of the word from the cross of Mk 15*4, Mt 27%, It is also to be remarked that in nearly all the published collections of Agrapha a considerable number of Sayings will be actually found which for various reasons have no right to be included as independent oe ep (a) Some of these are obviously mere parallel forms or expansions or combinations of Sayings found in the canonical Gospels.

For instance— Ephr. Syr. Testamentum (Opp. Grace, ed. Assemani, vol. ii. 232), rod yap dyabod Oidackddov #eovea év trois Oelas evarryerlors pi- gayTos Tots éavrov pabnrats* pnddv éxl yijs xrh- onoOe: ‘For 1 heard the Good Teacher in the divine Gospels saying to his disciples, Get you nothing on earth.’ Cf.

Mt 6” 10°, Lk 12%, With regard to such cases, the process of altera- tion of some of the Sayings of Jesus to be seen ‘within the Synoptic Gospels themselves, whether as shown by the parallel forms in the several Gos- pels, or by the variant readings of Greek MSS and the renderings of early Versions, should be a warning against assuming too easily the presence of an independent Saying.

There is a strong pre- sumption in favour of accounting for half-strange Sayings of Jesus from the universally current canonical Gospel tradition. But, in determining whether or not a Saying is to be regarded as an independent Agraphon, individual judgments will necessarily vary. For other Sayings which might be classed here, see below, ‘ List of Agrapha,’ Nos. 38, 49. (6) In other cases, by a mere slip a passage from Scripture has been wrongly ascribed to Jesus by an ancient writer.

For instance— Didascalia Apostolorum Syriace (ed. La- garde, p. 11, I. 12), ‘For the Lord saith, Wrath destroyeth even wise men.’ From Pr 151.—De aleatoribus, iii.

, ‘Monet Dominus et dicit : Nolite contristare Spiritum Sanctum qui in vobis est, et nolite exstinguere lumen quod in vobis effulsit’: ‘ The Lord also warneth * For certain Sayings found in the Pistis Sophia, which have a somewhat different character from the mass of that work, but are not included in the List of Agrapha given below, see Harnack, ‘Uber das gnostische Buch Pistis-Sophia’ (7'U vii. 2), me fies Ropes, Spriiche Jesu, pp. 68f., 117-119, 1354 v1. Pp.

AGRAPHA and saith, Grieve not the Holy Spirit which is in you, and quench not the light which has shone in you.” From Eph 4, 1 Th 5%, (c) In another class of cases the ancient writer never intended to give the impression that he was setae a Saying of Jesus, but has merely paren irased in homiletical fashion Jesus’ thought. aus— _ Hippolytus, Demonstratio adv. Judeos, vii., 8Oev Eyer’ yernOjTw, & warep, 6 vads abrdv jpnuw- pévos: ‘Whence he says, Let their temple, Father, be desolate.

’ ere the context shows that the apparent quotation is meant simply as an explanatory paraphrase of Ps 69%, of which the writer is giving a connected exposition. Petrus Siculus, Historia Manicheorum, 34 (ed. Mai, Nova Patr. Bibl. iv. 2), éraipe, ov GdiKd oe, dwéhaBes ra oh ev TH Sw cou’ viv Gpov 70 ody kal Uraye: ‘Friend, I do thee no wrong, thou receivedst thy reward in thy lifetime ; take up that which is thine and go thy way.

’ The context shows that this is an address to certain specific errorists, made up by combining Mt 20% with Lk 16%, and put by the author into the mouth of the Judge at the Last Assize. (d) Other Sayings have occasionally been included through sheer mistake of some kind, as— Epist. Barnabe, iv. 9, ‘Sicut dicit filius Dei, Resistamus omni iniquitati et odio habeamus eam’; ‘As the Son of God says, Let us resist all iniquity and hold it in hatred.’ Here the Greek text (first published from Cod.

® in 1862) ws mpérea vlots Oeot dvticrGpev, K.T.d., makes it apparent that sicut dicit filius Det is a textual corruption of sicut decet filios Dei. (e) Still another class of Sayings to be found in the lists owe their places only to the guess of some modern scholar trying to discover the source of an ancient quotation.

Resch, especially, has in a number of cases been led by his theory about the origin of the whole body of Agrapha to assume without sufficient ground that a quotation of un- known origin is from the words of Jesus. Examples of this will be found in his treat- ment of 1 Co 2°, Eph 54, Ja 45, or such a case as the following :— Clemens Alex. Strom. i. 8.

41 (Potter, 340), obra ol ra Kardpria KaTacravres Kal wnOev dpaly- ovres, pyoly » ypady): ‘ These are they who ply their looms and weave nothing, saith the Scrip- ture’ (cf. Resch, Agrapha, p. 226 f.) A more plausible suggestion is that Rev 16% (Resch, Agrapha, p. 310; Ropes, Spr. Jesu, No. 145) is an Agraphon. iii, METHOD AND RESULTS OF CRITICISM OF