Apocryphal gospels (Hastings' Dictionary)

i, Definition. fi. Origin. fii, Value. iv. Reception and influence, vy. Olassification. Literature. i. DEFINITION.—The history of the word ‘ Apo- oryphs ? accounts for its various uses, and its ety- mology explains its diverse meanings (see art. APOCRYPHA in vol. i. p. 112).

‘Apocryphal’ was a title of honour when it was app ied to writings which were hidden on account of the unique value of their contents; their secret doctrines im’ to them a special authority (awctoritas ert But ‘apocryphal’ was a term of reproach when it was applied to writings which were hidden on account of the heterodoxy of their contents; their heretical teaching rendered them specially harm- ful.

An approximation of the two opposite senses of ‘ apocryphal’ may, however, be traced ; for the secrecy which was originally a claim to peculiar regard soon became a mark of inferiority, owing to the suspicion which rests on books of hidden origin. From these differences in the application of the word it is not difficult to understand how it came to pass that Gospels which were held in high esteem, as, ¢.g.

, by Gnostic sects, were condemned by the Christian Church and declared to be un- worthy of a place in the Canon, notwithstanding that for some of them Apostolic authorship was claimed ; it is also not difficult to understand how Gospels, which were not condemned for their false teaching, were excluded from the Canon because of their inferiority to the writings of the four Evan- gelists.

Hence ‘apocryphal,’ whichjin the early Fathers means heretical, acquired the sense of wn- canonical, which it now most frequently bears.

Under the heading of ‘Apocryphal Gospels’ it is customary to include all extra-canonical writin; which claim to be Gospels, whether they are riv: of or supplements to the canonical Gospels, whether they are dependent on or independent of the writ- ings of the four Evangelists, whether the tradition they embody has the appearance of being authen- tic or is manifestly fictitious. But when the term ‘apocryphal’ has this wider denotation, it has a narrower connotation.

To Jerome this extension of the meaning of the word is generally ascribed, for he applies it to those Jewish writings which had a place in the LXX Greek version of the OT but were not included in the twenty-two books of the Hebrew Canon (Prologus Galeatus : ‘ Quidquid extra hos est, inter dmdxpypa esse ponendum’).

Nevertheless, Jerome held that some of the O apocryphal books might be read ‘ for the edifica- * These were sanctioned on condition that the ancient Greek text was printed in parallel columns with the modern Greek version.

But in 1901 ecclesiastical and patriotic La brine je were roused by a modern version or ‘paraphrase,’ circulated at the expense of queen Olga, and, in consequence, the Uebel Pre: any Greek version except; the ancient Greek nounced by the Synod and prohibited by the Government. APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS tion of the people, not for confirming the authority of Church dogmas’ (Prol.

to Books of Solomon) ; his description of these non-canonical books as apocryphal does not therefore imply that he condemned them as false and worthless. This must be borne in mind when ‘apocryphal’ is de- fined as wncanonical in its application to Gospels. pp pha Gospels are uncanonical Gospels; but all uncanonical Gospels are not necessarily apo- eryphal in the meaning which adheres to the word.

A Gospel may be neither spurious nor heretical, though it is apocryphal; it may be based upon a genuine fadition though it is un- canonical, ii. ORIGIN,, The resemblances and the varia- tions in the Synoptic Gospels furnish a problem which requires for its solution either an oral tra- dition which gradually became as stereotyped as though it had been written, or documentary sources modified by oral traditions.

Most critics recognize elements of truth in the oral as well as in the documentary theory of the origin of the Gospels. Those who adopt the documentary hypo- thesis allow for the influence of traditions current in the Church, though not committed to writing.

The problem presented by the apocryphal Gospels is to determine how far their additions to the nar- ratives of the four Evangelists are derived from au- thentic sources, also to decide how far the fictitious accretions are due to fraudulent intentions or the heretical tendencies of the respective writers.

The external evidence for the existence of an apocryphal Gospel must be weighed together with the evidence derived from a careful study of its contents before any judgment can be pronounced as to its origin. But no oom tart of the issue in any particular case is involved in the statement of some general considerations which must guide every such in- gery.

The author of Supernatural Religion thinks that ‘apologetic critics’ are prejudiced by ‘can- onical glamour’; but there may be an unreason- able bias against as well as a reasonable presump- tion in favour of the canonical Gospels. e rever- ence they enjoyed for centuries is a significant fact, and is not satisfactorily accounted for by the state- ment that they were ‘more fortunate’ than the Gospels which were never included in the Canon of Scripture (The Gospel according to Peter, p. 132).

The claim of an uncanonical Gospel to represent an early form of the Christian tradition cannot be dismissed on a@ priori grounds, nor can it be admitted without the most thorough investigation. The author may have derived the narratives of unrecorded incidents in the life of Jesus, or the reports of His unwritten sayings, from sources unknown to the four Evangelists. Jesus did ‘many other things’ (Jn 21%) than those which the canonical Gospels relate; before St.

Luke wrote the Third Gospel many had ‘taken in hand to draw up’ similar, if less complete, narratives (Lk 1!) oreover, the manufacture of fanciful traditions is not always to be ascribed to the zeal of heretics, but sometimes to an eager desire to satisfy — without critical discrimination between the nucleus of fact and the embellishments of fiction—curiosity in regard to those periods in our Lord’s life about which the four Evangelists tell us nothing.

Pseudo-Matthew had persuaded himself that the motive which impelled him to write was love for Christ (Liber de infantia Marie: ‘amor ergo Christi est, cui satisfecimus’). But before any apocryphal Gospel is assumed to contain an earlier and purer form of the Evangelic tradition it must be examined in the light of indisputable evidence that writers of Gnostic tendencies (cf. Epiph. Her. xxvi.

8, 12) publisued fictitious and pseudepigraphic works to support their peculiar tenets, claiming that their works imparted knowledge, secretly APOCRYPHAL GOSFELS 421 handed down to them, of the things hidden by Jesus from the multitude to whom He spoke in riddles which none but His most favoured disciples understood. Origen (c.

240) says: ‘ There are some believers exactly like drunken people who treat with violence their own body, for they falsify and alter the text of the Gospels three or four times, in order that they may evade its remonstrances’ (contra Celsum, ii. 27. See Harnack, Chron. i. 590).

The variations in the texts of such apocryphal Gospels as are extant in different recensions can- not, in the judgment of Tischendorf, be explained as unintentional alterations; often the sense of a passage is completely altered, these Gospels being treated with a freedom which is inconceivable on the supposition that they were held in as high esteem as the canonical Gospels (de Evv. Apocr. origine et usu, p.

121: ‘ Fraudis apocrypha (evan- gelia) convincuntur ex mira qua laborant textus ambiguitate, a qua immensum canonica differunt, quamquam et ipsa haud exiqua lectionum varie- tate premuntur’). The authors of the apocryphal Gospels, whether they were influenced by dogmatic motives or by a desire to satisfy curiosity, adopted, as Hofmann points out, similar methods of com- position.

In both classes of writings there are some stories which are pure inventions, but there are others in which a causa media may be dis- covered. Sometimes elaborate narratives are de- veloped out of a mere allusion in the canonical Gospels, sometimes words of Jesus are transformed into deeds, sometimes a slavishly literal fulfilment of an OT prophecy is recorded, and sometimes Jesus is represented as working marvels closely resembling and frequently surpassing OT miracles (Herzog, PRE* i. 655).

ili. VALUE.— The revival of interest in the apocryphal writings of the NT is due partly to the discovery of new documents, and partly to the attraction exerted upon the minds of many scholars by the fascinating and complex problem of the literary origin of the Gospels. Amongst the questions upon which light is sought are the following: Do these uncanonical Gospels impart any additional knowledge of the words and works of the Lord Jesus?

In this respect it is generally agreed that their value is slight. Do they help to establish any theory of the origin of the Gospels? In this respect their value differs greatly: until more complete and more accurate texts of some of these Gospels are accessible it is impossible to ex- press any positive judgment in regard to their relation to the canonical Gospels.

It may, how- ever, be said that the theory of a common oral tradition deserves more careful consideration than it has received from some modern critics, whose arguments are valid only on the assumption that priority to the canonical Gospels and direct depend- ence on them are the only possible alternatives. The apocryphal Gospels contain information which is of considerable value to the student of the manners and customs of the Jews in early Christian times.

It is true that their statements are sometimes in flagrant contradiction to history ; but it is, as a rule, not difficult to discover the dogmatic bias which led to a perversion of the facts. When no such motive is discernible, and the details given violate neither psychological nor historical probability, the writer's source may be an authentic tradition.

For example, the setting of some of the fabulous stories of our Lord’s child- hood has an interest for the antiquarian who regards the fantastic miracles as quite incredible.

It is also probable that, in the near future, these Gospels will prove of even greater value to his- torians as they strive to disperse the gloom which still hangs over the first two centuries of the Christian era,—the period when heretical ten- 422 APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS dencies appeared within the Church, and heretical sects were formed outside it. In the controversy which has arisen on this question there has been on the one side a tendency to forget that in the 4th cent.

opinions might be regarded as heterodox which were not so regarded in the 2nd cent. ; but on the other side there has been a tendency to claim the sanction of the early Church for later forms of asceticism and Gnosticism, on the in- sufficient ground that some of these Gospels which originated in heretical circles found some favour amongst Christians.

Von Dobschiitz, who has studied these writings from this point of view, has called attention to facts which have an im- portant bearing on the discussion, as, e.g.

, that the adherents of Gnosticism who claimed to belong to the Christian Church, and sought to propagate their peculiar views within its borders, did not of their own accord leave the Church,—it was the Church that excluded them; also that the Docetic type of Christianity current in Egypt at the end of the Ist and at the beginning of the 2nd cent. was at a very early date discredited as heretical, though it long continued to dominate Christian thought as expressed in Christian art (Theol. Zit.

- Zeitung, 1903, No. 12). In this article the contents of the various apo- cryphal Gospels are given, sometimes in full, but always in sufficient detail to enable the reader to judge of their worth.

This course has been taken in the belief that first-hand acquaintance with these writings establishes, by contrast, the unique value of the canonical Gospels, and furnishes the most conclusive refutation of the theories which seek to lift these extravagant stories to the same level as the narratives of the four Evangelists. To pass from the NT to these apocryphal Gospels, in so far as they embody independent traditions, in- volves a complete change of psychological climate.

The wisdom of Westcott’s words is confirmed b recent research: ‘The completeness of the anti- thesis which these spurious stories offer to the Divine record appears at once—if we may beallowed for a moment to compare light with darkness—in relation to the treatment of the three great ele- ments of the Gospel history—Miracles, Parables, and Prophecy, the lessons of power, of nature, and of providence.

In the apocryphal miracles we find no worthy conception of the laws of providential interference ; they are wrought to supply personal wants, or to gratify private feelings, and often are positively Umer Nor, again, is there any spiritual element in their working. . he apo- cryphal Gospels are also entirely without parables ; they exhibit no sense of those deeper relations between nature and man— between corruption and sin—which are so frequently declared in the Synoptic Gospels. .

Yet more, they do not recognize the office of Prophecy. History in them becomes a mere collection of traditions, and is regarded neither as the fulfilment of the past nor as the type of the future’ (Introd. to Study of the Gospels, Append D). iv. RECEPTION AND INFLUENCE. —In tracing the influence of these writings no question arises, as in regard to the OT Apocrypha, of their recep- tion by any section of the Church as canonical or deutero-canonical books. In the 2nd cent.

four Gospels, and only four, were recognized. There is also ample evidence, as will hereafter be manifest, that most of the apocryphal Gospels have always been condemned by orthodox Christians. A few, ' however, had an extensive and early circulation amongst Christians in the East: for example, the Protevangelium of James was read in churches in the 4th cent., and was translated into the Syriac, Arabic, and Coptic languages.

Details of such usage will be given in the notes on the several APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS Gospels; but in general it may be said that these writings were condemned by the Western Church until the Middle Ages, when a sufficient period of time had elapsed for their origin to be forgotten. Pseudo-Chrysostom (c. 600) is said to have made use of the apocryphal Gospels of the Childhood of Jesus, and from the 10th cent.

onwards pes formed the material for legendary poems an iniracle-plays, whilst some of their traditions were embodied in paintings and other works of art. The first of a series of Latin poems by Hroswitha (d. 968), a Saxon nun, is based on the fictitious accounts given in these Gospels of the perpetual virginity of Mary. Vincent of Beauvais, a Do- minican, did much to popularize these apocry- hal stories by including many of them in his peculum Majus (c.

1250); the third part of this work, the Speculum Historiale, contains twelve chapters from the Gospel of pseudo-Matthew, and several from the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary. In the 14th cent. the Speculum Historiale was translated into French and other European lan- ages. In his Speculum Sanctorum de Voragine (d. 1298) made use of almost the whole of the Gospel of the Nativity of Mary, and of a few chapters from the Gospel of pseudo, Matthew.

This work, better known as the Legenda Aurea, and the Speculum Historiale of Vincent were amongst the earliest printed books in the 15th cent.; they are the chief sources from which many popular Roman Catholic compilations of these stories are derived. Yet Vincent put the tee he made use of into the yen cs of ‘doub‘ ful’ writings; and amongst Roman Catholic divines who have denounced them as unauthoritative, Tappenhorn mentions Alcuin (d. 804), St. Bernard of Clairvaux (d.

1153), and Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274). As recently as 1884, Pope Leo xmI. reaffirmed the judgment of the learned Pope Benedict XIv., wide declares the Pree re of James and other works on the Nativity of M to be ‘impure sources of tradition’ (de Festes B.M.V. lib. ii. cap. 9: ‘Cum plures scribere voluerint, ex turbidis fontibus, que tradiderunt, hausisse videntur’).

Tappenhorn, whose work is published with episcopal authority, laments that these fictions are often accepted as bigeye ‘ancient and pious traditions.’ ‘The veil whic the Holy Spirit in the Gospels has drawn over the birth and early life of the Mother of God, we ought not to try to remove by means of untrust- worthy, apocryphal narratives’ (Ausserbiblische Nachrichten, p. 18 f.) Some of the fables of these Gospels are found in the Koran, as, ¢.g.

, the vow of Mary’s mother to consecrate her virgin daughter to the temple- service, the feeding of Mary by an angel, the use of rods to discover by lot a guardian for Mary, the making by the boy Jesus of twelve sparrows out of clay, etc. Kessiius, the famous commen- tator on the Koran, refers in his notes to more of these stories (cf. Forbes Robinson, Coptic Apocr. Gospels in ‘Texts and Studies,’ Iv. ii. ; 1896). y. CLASSIFICATION.—There is an article on the GOSPEL OF NICODEMUS in vol. iii. p.

544 ff., and an account of the Gospel of Marcion in art. LUKE (GOSPEL OF), ib. p. 168f. Separate articles on the GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS (see above, p. 338 ff.), and on the Gospel of Tatian (see art. DIATESSARON, below, p. 451 ff.), appear in the present volume. In the present article the most important of the apocryphal Gospels, other than those above mentioned, will be treated in the following order :— A.

Gospels (or fragments of Gospels) which, in the opinion of some critics, embody an early tradi- tion, and rival the canonical Gospels. In regard to the date, character, and tendencies of these APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS 423 Gospels there has, however, been much contro- versy ; they are known as— 1. Gospel according to the Egyptians. 2, Gospel according to Peter. 8. Fayam Gospel Fragment. B.

Gospels which claim to fill up the gaps in our knowledge of the parents of Jesus, or of His infancy and childhood, viz.— 1, Protevangelium of James, including the Latin recensions known as— (a) Gospel of pseudo-Matthew, (8) Gospel of the Nativity of Mary. 2. Gospel according to Thomas. 8, Arabic Gospel of the Childhood. 4. Arabic History of Joseph the Carpenter. 5. The Departure of Mary (Transitus Marie). Cc. Gospels whose heretical origin is universally acknowledged, viz.

— 1, Gospel of the Twelve Apostles. 2. Gospel according to Philip. 8. Gospel according to Matthias. 4. Gospel according to Basilides. D. Gospels of which almost nothing is known ex- cept their name. These will be mentioned in alpha- _betical order, and, as far as possible, described.