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Introductory.-1. ‘The Church,’ as Origen said-or rather, as the translator of Origen’s Homilies on Luke (1) said for him-‘the Church has four Gospels, heresy has many.’ This could be said by the middle of the 3rd century. A century earlier, with the rise of the Gospel canon, a sharp distinction had been drawn between the four Gospels of the NT and all other writings of this class. The present article deals with the latter, not in relation to the former but rather in the light of their own genesis and structure as products of early Christian literature. Still, two preliminary remarks must be made in connexion with the distinction drawn by Origen. One is, that while the Church had only four Gospels in the sense of Scriptures relating to the life of Jesus, which were authorized to be used in public worship and for purposes of doctrine, the early Christians did not by any means confine their reading to the canonical Gospels. Their piety was nourished upon some Gospels which found no place in the canon. And these Gospels were not always tinged with definite heresy. We can see, for example, from the evidence which Eusebius rather grudgingly furnishes for the repute of the Gospel of the Hebrews in certain circles, that an uncanonical Gospel like this had a vogue which was only partially affected by the necessity of excluding it from the canon. Also, before the canon gained its full authority, a Gospel like that of Peter could still keep some footing within a community. The Church might have its four Gospels as classical and standard documents for the life and teaching of Jesus; fortunately, it felt obliged to stamp these with the special mark of inspired authority. But Gospels already in circulation did not disappear at once, even when they were excluded from ecclesiastical use. Nor again-and this is the second remark to be made-did the fixing of the canon put a stop to the composition or the editing of such Gospel material. Literature of this kind continued to be produced, not only in circles which were more or less semi-Christian, but especially in the Egyptian Church. It belonged to the category of religious fiction for the most part. Still, it followed in the wake of the canonical Gospels, and what has survived the wreck, reaching us partly on the planks of versions and partly on broken pieces of the original, forms a considerable section of the material for our present survey.

To study these Gospels against the background of the canonical, and to measure them by the standards of the latter, is to do them too much honour. But it is also to do them, or some of them, an injustice. As we shall see, it is a mistake to speak of the uncanonical Gospels as if they were a homogeneous product. They vary widely, not only in age but in spirit. Some of them are documents of ‘heresy,’* ^{[Note: e. of ‘heresy’ which repudiated the name of ‘heresy’; cf. V. H. Stanton, The Gospels as Hist. Documents, i. [1903]} 244 f.] and were never meant to be anything else; the motive for their composition was to adapt one or more of the canonical Gospels to the tenets of a sect or party on the borders of the catholic Church. But others were written to meet the needs of popular Christianity; their aim was to supplement rather than to rival the canonical Gospels, and in some cases they can be shown to be almost contemporary with the latter-certainly prior to the formation of the canon itself. The problem is still further complicated by the probability that now and then a Gospel of un-heretical character was re-issued in the interests of later parties, while a Gospel originally Gnostic, for example, may occasionally have been pruned of its objectionable features and started on a career within the Church.† ^{[Note: A similar process went on in the case of some of the uncanonical Acts.]} Certain phenomena seem to point to both of these practices in early Christian literature. An uncanonical Gospel might experience either change; it might rise or fall in the world of the Church. And this would be all the more possible just because it was uncanonical. Neither its text nor its contents ensured it against degeneration or stood in the way of its appropriation by the hands of the orthodox. Either the Church or ‘heresy’ could drag over a document which lay close to the border, and fit it to strange uses. However this may be, recent phases of critical research in the uncanonical Gospels show us pretty plainly that within as well as without the early Church there was sometimes a good deal of what not only later generations but even contemporaries did not hesitate to call ‘heresy,’ that this ‘heresy’ assumed many forms, and that the un-canonical Gospels, as we now have them, often represent heterogeneous and varied interests of such Christian or semi-Christian piety.

2. The extant fragments, mainly Greek and Latin, were first collected in a critical edition by J. A. Fabricius (Codex Apocryphus Nov. Test.… editio secunda, emendatior, Hamburg, 1719 [1st ed., 1703]); A. Birch (Auctarium codicis Apocryphi Novi Testament i Fabriciani continens plura inedita alia ad fidem codd. mss. emendatius expressa, Copenhagen, 1804); J. C. Thilo (Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, Leipzig, 1832); and C. de Tischendorf (Evangelia Apocrypha², Leipzig, 1876). Later discoveries were mainly incorporated in the texts issued by E. Nestle (Novi Testamenti Supplementum, Leipzig, 1896); E. Preuschen (Antilegomena: die Reste der ausserkanonischen Evangelien und urchristlichen Ueberlieferungen, herausgegeben und uebersetezt², Giessen, 1905); and E. Klostermann (in H. Lietzmann’s Kleine Textet, 3, 8, and 11, Bonn, 1903-04). But Thilo and Tischendorf still form the basis for research, so far as the Greek and Latin texts of several important documents are concerned. In E. Hennecke’s Neutestamentliche Apokryphen (Tübingen and Leipzig, 1904) there are valuable translations, with introductions and notes, or the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Gospel of the Ebionites, the Protevangelium Jacobi, and the Gospel of the Thomas (by A. Meyer), of the Gospel of Peter (by A. Stülcken), of the Traditions of Matthias and some Coptic fragments, etc. (by the editor). The French edition in course of preparation by J. Bousquet and E. Amann (Les Apocryphes du Nouveau Testament, Paris), includes the original texts, but as yet only the Protevangelium Jacobi has appeared (1910).

The eighteenth century brought Augustin Calmet’s Dissertation sur les Evangiles apocryphes in his ‘Commentaire,’ Paris, 1709-16, vol. vii.; Jeremiah Jones’ New and Full Method of Settling the Canonical Authority of the New Testament, London, 1726-27 (written on the basis of Fabricius, along apologetic lines); and J. F. Kleuker’s similar Ueber die Apokryphen des NT, Hamburg, 1798; followed in the nineteenth century by Arens’ essay de Evang. apoc. in canonicis usu historico, critico, exegetico, Göttingen, 1835; K. F. Borberg’s Bibliothek der neutestamentlichen Apokryphen, gesammelt, uebersetzt, und erläutert, Stuttgart, 1841; J. Pons (de Négrépelisse), Recherches sur les Apocryphes du Nouveau Testament (thèse historique et critique), Montauban, 1850; and* ^{[Note: Tischendorf’s prize essay, De Evangeliorum Apocryphorum origine et usu, appeared in 1851; Hilgenfeld’s serviceable Evangelium sec. Hebraeos, etc., in 1866.]} R. Clemens’ Die geheimgehaltenen oder sog. apokryphen Evangelien, Stuttgart, 1850 (volume of German translations). A French translation of Thilo was issued in 1848 by G. Brunet (Les Evangiles apocryphes 2, paris, 1863), and a poor English compilation, based on Fabricius, Thilo, etc., was published four years later by J. A. Giles (Codex Apocryphus Novi Testamenti, London). W. Hone’s worthless and unworthy Apocryphal NT, London, 1820, included the protevangelium Jacobi. Useful volumes of English† ^{[Note: J. Ellicott’s ‘Dissertation on the Apocryphal Gospels’ in Cambridge Essays, 1856, is apologetic.]} translations were published, however, by A. Walker (in the Ante-Nicene Chr. Lib., xvi. [Edinburgh, 1873]); B. H. Cowper (The Apoc. Gospels, London, 1867, 4 1874); and B. Pick (paralipomena: Remains of Gospels and Sayings of Christ, Chicago, 1908), Two French treatises overshadowed any English criticism during this period, one a critical study by M, Nicolas (Études sur les évangiles apocryphes, Paris, 1865); the other a Roman Catholic counterpart by Joseph Variot (Las Evangiles apocryphes, Paris, 1878).

In W. Wright’s Contributions to the Apocryphal Literature of the New Testament, London, 1865, Syriac versions of the protevangelium Jacobi (a fragment) and the Gospel of Thomas the Israelite were published and translated with notes. Otherwise, the main contributions to the subject during the last century were monographs upon special points and aspects, like P. J. peltzer’s Historische und dogmenhistorische Elemente in den apok. Kindheits-Evangelien, Wurzburg, 1864; A. Tappehorn’s Ausserbiblische Nachrichten, oder die Apokryphen über die Geburt, Kindheit und das Lebensende Jesu und Mariä, Paderborn, 1885: and J. Hayer’s Die apokryphischen Evangelien, auch ein Beweis für die Glaubwürdigkeit der kanonischen, Halberstadt, 1898-99;‡ ^{[Note: A translation of the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, with notes.]} with S. Baring-Gould’s Lost and Hostile Gospels, London, 1874, p. 119f.; J. Chrzaszcz’s Die apokryphen Evangelien, insbesondere das Evangelium secundum Hebrœos, Gleiwitz, 1888; and C. Bost’s Les Evangiles apocryphes de l’enfance de J.C. avec une introduction sur les récits de Matthieu et de Luc, Montauban, 1894.

The older monographs upon their relation to the sources for the life of Jesus, by R. Hofmann (Das Leben Jesu nach den Apokryphen, Leipzig. 1851); J. de Q. Donehoo (Apoc. and Legendary Life Of Christ, London, 1903); and L. Couard (Altchristl. Sagen über das Leben Jesu, Gütersloh, 1905) have been largely superseded by the exhaustive work of W. Bauer (Das Leben Jesus im Zeitalter der neutest. Apokryphen, Tübingen, 1909).

An excellent survey of recent Oriental discoveries and discussion in this field is given in Felix Haase’s Literarische Untersuchungen zur orientalisch-apokryphen Evangelienliteratur, Leipzig, 1913; the Slavonic versions are chronicled by E. Kozak in JPTh ^{[Note: PTh Jahrbücher für protestantische Theologie.]} , 1892, p. 127f., as well as by Bonwetsch in Harnack’s Altchristl. Litt. i. [Leipzig, 1893], p. 907f.

The principal general articles on the subject are by G. Brunet in Migne’s Dict. des Apocryphes, i. [1856] 961f.; R. A. Lipsius in DCB ^{[Note: CB Dict. of Christian Biography.]} ii. [1880] 700-17; B. F. Westcott, Introd. to Study of the Gospel 6 London, 1881, p. 466f.; Movers in Wetzer-Welte ^{[Note: etzer-Welte Wetzer-Welte’s Kirchenlexikon.] 2}, i. [1882] 1036-84; T. Zahn, Gesch, des Kanons, ii. [Leipzig, 1892 621-97; A. Harnack, op. cit. i. 4-25, ii. 1. 589f.; R. Hofmann, in Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche ³ i. [1896] 653f. (Eng. translation i. [1908] 225-29); M. R. James in Encyclopaedia Biblica i. [1899] 258-59; Batiffol, in Vigouroux’s Dict. de la Bible, ii. [1899] 2114-18; A. Ehrhard, Altchristl. Lit., Frelburg i. B., 1900, pp. 123-47; O. Bardenhewer, Gesch. der altkirchl. Lit.², i. [do. 1913] § 31; J. G. Tasker in Hasting's Dictionary of the Bible (5 vols) v. [1904] 420-38; A. F. Findlay in Dict. of Christ and the Gospels i. [1906] 671-85; J. Leipoldt, Gesch. des neutest. Kanons, i. [Leipzig, 1907] § 21; R. Knopf in RGG ^{[Note: GG Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart.]} i. [1908-09] 543ff.; H. Jordan, Gesch. der altchristl. Lit., Leipzig, 1911, pp. 74-78; H, Waitz, in Realencyklopädie für protestantische Theologie und Kirche ³ xxxii. [1913] 79-93; and L. St. A. Wells, in Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics vi. [1913] 346-352. The discussions of Lipsius, Zahn, and Harnack are most important, together with the criticisms of Tasker and Waitz.

In several NT Introductions the uncanonical Gospels are included, especially by F. Bleek (Einleitung in das NT⁴, Berlin, 1886, p. 406f.); G. Salmon (Introd. to the NT⁹, London, 1899, pp. x-xi); and J. E. Belser (Einleitung in das NT, Freiburg i. B., 1905, p. 789f.); there is a chapter on them in E. Renan’s L’Eglise chrétienne, Paris, 1879, ch. 26, as well as in F. C. Burkitt’s Gospel Hist. and its Transmission, Edinburgh, 1906, p. 324f.; and a recent Spanish monograph by E. C. Carillo (Los Evangelíos Apócrifos, Paris, 1913); also the relevant paragraphs in Resch’s Agrapha (Texte and Untersuchungen v. 4, Leipzig, 1889) and in Histories of Christian literature, e.g. C. T. Cruttwell’s Lit. Hist. of Early Christianity, London, 1893, i. 160-174; G. Krüger’s Altchristl. Litt.², Freiburg, 1898, § 16; and P. Wendland’s Die urchritl. Literaturforomen², Tübingen, 1912, pp. 292-301.

3. Writing at the close of the 1st cent. a.d., St. Luke observes in the preface to his Gospel that ‘many’ had already undertaken to compose a narrative of the life of Jesus: πολλοὶ ἐπεχείρησαν ἀνατάξασθαι διήγησιν, κτλ. (1:1). He does not intend to convey any impression of disparagement by the term ἐπεχείρησαν. He is not satisfied with their work, but he does not dismiss his predecessors as unauthorized. Nor does he claim for himself any special inspiration. What others have done he proposes to do; only, it is to be in a more complete and orderly fashion.

The Muratorian Canon, in its extant form, does not happen to mention any uncanonical Gospels which are to be avoided by the faithful, unless we are meant to understand some of them as included in the obscure closing words. But more than a hundred years after St. Luke wrote his preface, Origen commented on it as follows: ‘Possibly the term ἐπεχείρησαν contains an implicit condemnation of those who betook themselves hastily and without any spiritual gift (χαρίσματος) to the composition of Gospels. Thus Matthew οὐκ ἐπεχείρησεν, but wrote under the impulse of the Holy Spirit; so did Mark and John, and similarly Luke. But those who composed the Gospel called Κατʼ Αἰγυπτίους and that entitled Τῶν Δώδεκα, they ἐπεχετίρησαν. There is also a Gospel Κατὰ Θωμᾶν current. Basilides has also ventured to write a Gospel Κατὰ Βασιλίδην. Many indeed ἐπεχείρησαν: there is the Gospel Κατὰ Μαθίαν and many others; but the Church of God accepts only the four.’ It is not certain whether Origen intended to suggest that the first two or three Gospels which he named were among the uninspired predecessors of Luke. Probably he did. But the interest of the passage for us lies in the names of the Gospels which his erroneous interpretation of ἐπεχείρησαν leads him to mention. They must have been among the most prominent of those known to him.

In the 4th cent. Eusebius (HE ^{[Note: E Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius, etc.).]} iii. 23) ends his catalogue of the canonical or accepted Scriptures with the remark that his object in drawing it up has been ‘that we may know both these works and those cited by heretics under the name of the apostles, including, for example, such books as the Gospels of Peter, of Thomas, of Matthias, or of any others besides them … They are not to be placed even among the rejected writings (ἐν νόθοις), but are all to be put aside as absurd and impious.’ Further down in the same century we come upon Ambrose (CSEL ^{[Note: SEL Corpus Script. Eccles. Latinorum.]} xxxii. p. 10f.), in his prologue to an exposition of Luke, following Origen almost verbatim. He admits that some of these un-canonical Gospels are read by orthodox Christians, e.g. the Gospel of the Twelve, the Gospel of Basilides, the Gospel of Thomas, and the Gospel of Matthias (‘novi aliud scriptum secundum Matthian’). But ‘we read, lest we should be ignorant; we read, not in order to keep but to repudiate them’!

In the prologue to his commentary upon Matthew, Jerome (a.d. 346-420) also mentions some of the uncanonical Gospels, but his information adds nothing to the data supplied by Origen, from whom he probably derived in the main his knowledge of those documents. After quoting Luke’s preface, he applies its language to Gospels ‘like that according to the Egyptians, and according to Thomas, and according to Matthias, and according to Bartholomew, also the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles, and of Basilides, and of Apelles, as well as others which it would take a very long time to enumerate.’ Following Origen, he interprets Luke’s ἐπεχείρησεν of unauthorized, uninspired attempts. To them the prophetic word of Ezekiel applies (Ezekiel 13:3; Ezekiel 13:6): ‘Woe to them that prophesy out of their own heart, who walk after their own spirit, who say, Thus saith the Lord, and the Lord has not sent them.’ Also, the word of John 10:8 : ‘all who came before me were thieves and robbers.’ Note, says Jerome, ‘they came’; not ‘they were sent’!

In pope Innocent’s Epistle (a.d. 405) to Jerome’s friend. Bishop Exsuperius of Toulouse, the canonical list is followed by a note of ‘cetera autem quae uel sub nomine Mathiae siue Iacobi minoris; uel sub nomine Petri et Iohanuis, quae a quodam Leucio scripta sunt; uel sub nomine Andreae, quae a Xenocaride et Leonida philosophic;* ^{[Note: For a defence of the genuineness or this clause, which refers to the Acts of Andrew, See JThSt xiii. [1911-12]} 79-80.] uel sub nomine Thomae; et si qua sunt alia; non solum repudianda uerum etiam noueris esse damnanda.’ This is a fair specimen of the opinions held by the authorities of the Western Churchy; but the official view did not represent the popular, and, as Leipoldt observes.† ^{[Note: Geschichte des neutest. Kanons, i. p. 179 (cf. below, p. 482).]} ‘such opponents of the apocryphal Gospels were doubtless in the minority. The majority of theologians treated books like the Gospels of James and Thomas not indeed as canonical but still as genuinely apostolic.’

Finally, the so-called ‘Decretum Gelasianum de libris recipiendis et non recipiendis’‡ ^{[Note: von Dobschütz, TU xxxviii. 4 [1912]}. He argues for its pseudonymous character, and dates it between a.d. 519 and 535.] includes a list of apocryphal§ ^{[Note: ‘Apocryphum’ (‘apocrypha’), which is appended to each title, has its later opprobrious meaning.]} Gospels which, by the 6th cent., were supposed to have been in existence:

‘Evangelium nomine Mathiae

Evangelium nomine Barnabae|| ^{[Note: | If there ever was a Gnostic Gospel of Barnabas, it may have Supplied part of the basis for the Muhammadan (Italian) Gospel of Barnabas-a curious, docetic production (ed. L. and L, Ragg, Oxford, 1907). Cf. W. E. A. Axon in JThSt. iii. [1901-02]} 441-451. The Gospel of Barnabas and Matthias appear also at the end of the list of the 60 books in Cod. Barocc. 206.]

Evangelium nomine Jacobi minoris

Evangelium nomine Petri apostoli

Evangelium nomine Thomae quibus Manichei utuntur

Evangelia nomine Bartholomaei

Evangelia nomine Andreae

Evangelia quae falsavit Lucianus

Evangelia quae falsavit Hesychius

Liber de infantia salvatoris

Liber nativitate salvatoris et de Maria vel obstetrici.’

By a gross blunder, arising perhaps from a misreading of Jerome’s prologue to the Gospels, the writer mistakes the textual recensions of the Gospels made by Lucian and Hesychius for apocryphal Gospels. This does not encourage hopes of accurate information with regard to the other works, particularly when this blunder is regarded as a misunderstanding of what Jerome had written. Thus the writer appears to have had no independent knowledge of the Gospels of Bartholomew and Andrew; his allusion to the former, as well as to the Gospel of Mathias (=Παραδόσεις Ματθία), is probably drawn from Origen, his reference to the latter from Innocent. He also confines himself to Gospels bearing apostolic names.

It is not necessary to go further down for ecclesiastical strictures upon uncanonical Gospels. Those already mentioned will suffice to give a fair idea of the principal writings belonging to this class which were from time to time banned by the authorities. Some, no doubt, were not Gospels at all;* ^{[Note: Tatian’s ‘Gospel,’ e.g., was simply the Diatessaron; the Gospel of Andrew was probably the Gnostic Περίοδοι of that apostle; the Gospel of Nicodemus was part of the Acts-literature of the 2nd cent.; and several so-called Gnostio ‘Gospels’ were no more than treatises on religion, as, for example, the Valentinian ‘Gospel of the Truth’ (Iren. iii. 11. 9).]} some were only censured from hearsay; others, as we shall see, existed and flourished in a more or less provincial or surreptitious fashion. But the point is that they had to be banned, and that the ban was often ineffective,

4. We now pass from verdicts upon the uncanonical Gospels to an outline of the information yielded by their extant fragments. But before turning into this rank undergrowth of popular literature in early Christianity, we must state and define one or two general principles and methods of criticism which are essential to any survey of the position.

(a) The present state of research offers almost as many problems as results. In five directions, especially, further inquiry is necessary before the materials which are now accessible can be critically arranged and assimilated. (i.) The Coptic, Sahidic, and Ethiopic fragments, which are being still recovered, require to be sifted. In some cases, as e.g. with regard to the Gospel of Bartholomew, they may prove to furnish data for reconstructing Gospels which hitherto have been mere names in early Church history; in other cases, they may compel the re-valuation of material already known. (ii.) The entire problem of the Jewish Christian Gospels has been re-opened by the researches of critics like Schmidtke and Waitz; the relevant factors are mainly supplied by the higher criticism of writers like Origen, Jerome, and Epiphanius, but the outcome of the discussion seriously affects the estimate of primitive Gospels like that of the Hebrews or of the Egyptians. The subject-matter here is not so much new material as allusions and quotations which require, or seem to require, fresh study. (iii.) Several uncanonical Gospels are still unedited, from the standpoint of modern critical research; even the extant Greek and Latin Manuscripts are not properly collated, in many cases. The Gospels of Thomas and of Nicodemus are instances in point. There is some prospect of these defects being remedied systematically by French scholars, but English investigation has been sadly indifferent to such pressing needs in the field of early Christian literature. (iv.) Even where texts have been edited thoroughly, problems of higher criticism arise. In the case of Gospels, e.g., like the Protevangelium Jacobi, we are confronted with composite productions whose sources go back to different circles and periods; literary problems of structure have to be solved. The numerous versions of some uncanonical Gospels might seem to compensate for the fragmentary condition of others, but in reality the versions are often equivalent to fresh editions rather than to translations, and in this way the recovery of the primitive nucleus is sometimes rendered more difficult than ever. (v.) Finally, the form and the content of the uncanonical Gospels open problems of their own. The stories occasionally show the naïve popular imagination working upon the Old Testament, but their methods are wider. There is more in them than merely Haggadic fancy. ‘Les évangiles apocryphes,’ says Renan, ‘sont les Pouranas du christianisme; ils out pour base les évangiles canoniques. L’auteur prend ces évangiles comme un thème dont il ne s’écarte jamais, qu’il cherche seulement à délayer, à compléter par les precédés ordinaires de la légende hébraïque.’ But it was not simply Semitic methods of compiling a midrash that were followed by the authors of the uncanonical Gospels. Allowance has also to be made for the influence of Hellenistic romances, particularly in the light of recent investigations by Norden and Reitzenstein.* ^{[Note: L. Radermacher’s Das Jenseits im Mythos der Hellenen, 1903.]} This line of inquiry has not yet been followed up; it will lead probably to valuable conclusions with regard to the literary texture of certain strata in these Gospels. More attention has been paid to the influence of Buddhistic and Egyptian religion upon the matter of Gospels like those of the Egyptians, of Thomas, and of Peter. Here also problems are emerging which require careful scrutiny, in view of contemporary research into the syncretistic religious situation of the 2nd cent., particularly but not exclusively with regard to the elements of Gnosticism. In the edifying romance of Barlaam and Ioasaph a later writer adapted boldly the story of Buddha to the ends of Christian monasticism. The Indian traits in our uncanonical Gospels are less plain, but they are probably present under passages which at first sight are almost covered with Christian fancy and doctrine.

(b) The close connexion between the extant fragments and the agrapha renders it necessary to lay down a special† ^{[Note: But not, of course, an exceptional one. It bears also upon the criticism of the synoptic Gospels, particularly in the differentiation of Mark and Q.]} principle of criticism, viz. that when the same saying, in slightly different versions, recurs in more than one fragment, three possibilities are open to the critic. (i.) The early Christian writer who quotes the saying as part of some Gospel may be quoting loosely from memory, and, either for that reason or for some other, confusing one Gospel with another. (ii.) On the supposition that the quotation is correctly assigned, it may have been preserved in more than one Gospel; it is unlikely that certain sayings were monopolized by one document. Or, when this possibility is set aside, (iii.) one Gospel may have borrowed from another. There has been a tendency to ignore the second of these possibilities, in particular. What we know of certain Gospels may be enough to show that a given quotation is incompatible with their idiosyncrasies, but not all quotations possess this characteristic quality, and room should be left for the hypothesis that, some allied Gospels contained a good deal of common matter.

One illustration of this may be quoted, for the sake of clearness. Take the well-known saying, ‘He who seeks shall not cease till he finds, and when he has found he shall wonder, and wondering he shall reign, and reigning he shall rest.’ The last two clauses are cited by Clement of Alexandria as part of the Gospel according to the Hebrews (Strom. ii. 9. 45), but elsewhere (Strom. v. 14. 96) he quotes the whole saying, without mentioning its origin, in order to illustrate Plato’s aphorism that wonder is the beginning of philosophy. Independently, the entire saying has turned up among the agrapha of the Oxyrhynchite Papyri, apparently as part of a collection of words addressed by Jesus to some disciples, including Thomas. In the later Acts of Thomas (ed. Bonnet, 1883, p. 243) an echo of the saying also recurs: ‘Those who partake worthily of the good things there [i.e. in the treasury of the holy King] rest, and resting they shall reign,’ and, as if this were not enough, the problem is further complicated by what sounds like an echo in 2 Clem. v. 5 (‘know, brothers, that the sojourning of the flesh in this world is little and for a brief time, whereas the promise of Christ is great and wonderful, is rest in the kingdom to come and in eternal life’), and by a very faint echo in the Traditions of Matthias, if we can trust Clement of Alexandria (Strom. ii. 9. 45), who cites from the latter, ‘Wonder at what is before you,’ to illustrate again the Platonic doctrine of wonder.

Now it is tempting to deduce from this, among other indications, that the common source of the Oxyrhynchite Logia and the quotations in 2 Clem. was the Gospel according to the Egyptians, or that this saying is a water-mark of some Thomas Gospel. The former hypothesis would be corroborated if the source of the quotations in 2 Clem. could be proved to be the Gospel of the Egyptians, for the echo in 2 Clem. follows close upon one of these quotations (see p. 495), and upon the whole this is the least improbable hypothesis. But the second of the possibilities (ii.) is as feasible as the third (iii.). It is at any rate hasty to assume that such a saying was only accessible in a single document.

(c) It is also fair to remember that some of the early uncanonical Gospels are known to us only in fragments and quotations made usually for the purpose of proving their outré character. This easily gives a wrong impression of their contents. Suppose, for example, that all we knew of the canonical Matthew amounted to a few passages like Matthew 2:23; Matthew 5:18-19; Matthew 7:6; Matthew 17:24-27; Matthew 19:12; Matthew 27:52-53, suppose that Luke’s Gospel was preserved in stray quotations of Luke 2:42-49, Luke 6:20-21; Luke 8:10, Luke 16:9, Luke 18:8 b and Luke 24:42-43 -would our impression of the Gospels in question be very much more misleading than may be the case with Gospels like those of the Hebrews or of the Egyptians or of the Nazarenes? It is possible that some of the uncanonical Gospels may not have been as eccentric as they seem to us. But, even when allowance is made for this possibility of an error in our focus, the general character of most of the uncanonical Gospels must be recognized (cf. § 1). When Archbishop Magee preached before the Church Congress at Dublin, an Irish bishop is reported to have said that the sermon did not contain enough gospel to save a tom-tit. An evangelical critic might say the same about the uncanonical Gospels, for the most part, and he would not be saying it in haste. It is rare, upon the whole, to come across any touches or traditions which even suggest that by their help we can fill out the description of the Synoptic Gospels. As we read Marlowe’s Faustus or Goethe’s Faust for reasons quite other than a wish to ascertain the facts about the real Faustus of the 16th cent., so it is with the majority of the uncanonical Gospels. Their interest for us is not in any fresh light which they may be expected to throw upon the character of the central Figure, but in the evidence they yield us for ascertaining the popular religion of the early Christian Churches, the naïve play of imagination upon the traditions of the faith, and the fancies which the love of story-telling employed to satisfy the more or less dogmatic or at any rate the pious interests of certain circles in Syria and Egypt especially. The large majority of the uncanonical Gospels belong to Church history rather than to NT criticism, and to a period of Church history which is mainly post-apostolic. Their varying background covers several centuries and soils. They were being produced as late as the Muhammadan ea, and as early as the 1st cent. a.d. But, with one or two exceptions, we cannot do justice to them unless we set them not over against the Gospel literature of the first hundred years after the Death of Jesus but among the currents and movements which occupy the subsequent two hundred years of Christianity in the Mediterranean basin. The interests which led to their composition were sometimes doctrinal. There was a constant desire* ^{[Note: Which, as we learn from Clement of Alexandria (Eus. HE ii. 1), was by no means confined to Gnostic Christians (see W. Wrede, Des Messiasgeheimnis in den Evangelien, 1901, p. 246 f.).]} to convey esoteric teaching under the guise of revelations made by the risen Christ to His disciples, between the Resurrection and the Ascension, for example; there was also a desire to recast or amplify the Synoptic traditions in order to express certain views of the Christian gospel. Furthermore, dogmatic interests led to the elaboration of stories about the birth of Mary as well as of Jesus, and to the composition of tales which filled up the childhood of Jesus. But the latter were as often due to naïve curiosity as to dogmatic aim, and a much larger part must be assigned to the former motive (if it can be called a motive) than is usually allowed. Here the influence of Oriental folk-lore and mythology would naturally operate, in addition to the desire to mark the fulfilment of OT prophecies. And it would operate not as a purely literary motive but as one result of preaching and teaching. The same interests which led to the rise of midrashic literature among the Jews led to the rise of uncanonical Gospel-stories among the early Christians. The popularity of the latter was too strong to be put down by ecclesiastical decisions. Not even the strict use of the canonical Gospels in the worship of the Churches was able to check the popular appetite for such tales and traditions as survive in the uncanonical Gospel literature; they were read for private edification† ^{[Note: There is a significant indication of this in Jerome’s letter to Laeta, advising her how to bring up her daughter (Ep. cvii. 12). The girl is to read ‘the Gospels, which are never to be laid aside … Let her eschew all apocryphal writings; if she desires to read them not for the truth of their doctrines but out of reverence for their miracles, let her understand that they are not the work of those whose names they bear, that many faulty things are mixed up in them, and that it requires great discretion to look for gold among mud.’ This was written in a.d. 403.]} even when they were not used in worship; and recent discoveries have proved how numerous and wide-spread were the versions of such Gospels even when the term ‘apocryphal’ in its opprobrious sense was being applied to them by the authorities. The historical critic has something better to do than look in these Gospels for primitive, authentic traditions about the teaching and ministry of Jesus, which may correct or supplement the nucleus preserved in the canonical Gospels; if he does so, he will be likely as a rule to look for a kingdom and find asses. On the other hand, he has something better to do than to pour indiscriminate ridicule on these popular documents. Their ends and motives, however little they may appeal to a modern mind, were not always perverse. For example, in one of the extant sahidic Gospel-fragments (Texts and Studies iv. 2 [1896], pp. 165, 237), the narrator, after describing (partly as in the Protevangelium Jacobi, 21; see below, p. 484) how the star of Bethlehem had ‘the form of a wheel, Its figure being like a cross, sending forth flashes of light; letters being written on the cross. This is Jesus the Son of God,’ anticipates an objection. ‘Some one will say to me, Art thou then adding a supplement to the Gospels?’ Unfortunately, the fragment breaks off here, and we have no means of knowing how the writer answered his critic, unless from a Coptic sermon of Euodius, who praises such supplements-evidently as justified by John 20:30; John 21:25. It is not often that we come upon any such self-consciousness in the writers of the uncanonical Gospels. Usually we have to infer their spirit and aim from the contents of their work. But even so, the naïve temper which characterizes several of the leading uncanonical Gospels is as noteworthy as the theological tendencies which dominate others.

5. The very fact that such Gospels were composed is significant, in view of the fact that ‘Gospel’ in the 2nd cent. began to be limited to the sayings and deeds of Jesus.* ^{[Note: Harnack’s Constitution and Law of the Church, 1910, p. 308 f.]} It proves the steady interest in Jesus, even in circles where the interest was due to tendencies more or less, semi-Christian in character. No doubt, several of the uncanonical ‘Gospels,’ as we shall see,† ^{[Note: g. the Gospels of Nicodemus and of Andrew (p. 480), besides the later ‘Eternal Gospel’ of Abbot Joachim (beg. of 13th cent.) based on} Revelation 14:6^{. The Gospel of Thaddaeus owes its existence apparently to a variant reading of ‘Mathiae’ as ‘Matthaei’ in the text of the Decretum Gelasianum (cf. von Dobschütz’s note in TU xxxviii. 4 [1912]} p. 293).] were not originally called Gospels at all, while even those which professed to be such should be rather described as religious handbooks or treatises; still, even after we make such qualifications, we must recognize that, whether an uncanonical Gospel wished to make Jesus more or less of a human being than the Synoptic or Johannine tradition presented, there was a wide-spread desire to convey new ideas by means of a tradition about His personality. Acts of various, apostles were not sufficient; even apocalypses did not meet the demand. Gospels were necessary, and Gospels were supplied.‡ ^{[Note: The literary form of ‘Gospel’ came to be indistinguishable more than once from that of ‘Acts’ (cf. the ‘Gospel of Mary’) as well as from that of ‘Apocalypse.’]}

This involved not only a dissatisfaction with the canonical Gospels, on the score of what they contained as well as of what they omitted, but a certain dependence upon them, in several cases. The unknown authors, as Renan neatly puts it, ‘font pour les évangiles canonizes ce que les auteurs des Post-homerica ont fait pour Homère, ce que les auteurs relativement modernes de Dionysiaques ou d’Argonautiques ont fait pour l’épopée grecque. Ils traitent les parties que les canoniques ont avec raison négligées; ils ajoutent ce qui aurait pu arriver, ce qui paraissait vraisemblable; ils développent les situations par des rapprochements artificiels empruntés aux textes sacrés.’ For a certain class of the uncanonical Gospels, this is fairly accurate, but others make remarkably little use of the canonical narratives except as points of departure. Renan’s subsequent remark also requires modification: ‘Comme le catholicisme dégénéré des temps modernes, les auteurs d’évangiles apocryphes se rabattent sur les côtés puérils du christianisme, l’Enfant Jésus, la sainte Vierge, saint Joseph. Le Jésus véritable, le Jésus de la vie publique, les dépasse et les effraye.’ Renan is thinking here of the Gospels of the Infancy.§ ^{[Note: An admirable account of their motives and characteristics is given by Meyer in Hennecke’s Neutest. Apok., pp. 96-105.]} But since his day discoveries of papyri and manuscripts have shown that even the Mission and Manhood of Jesus did not entirely escape the notice of the uncanonical Gospels.

This enables us to fix upon a principle of arrangement for these Gospels. It is open to the critic at this point to follow one or other of three paths. One is to group them on a principle which partly estimates their form and partly takes into account their character, viz. Gospels of the Synoptic type which have some claim to represent early tradition; Gospels which are Gnostic or heretical; and Gospels which aim at supplementing the gaps in the canonical stories especially of the Birth and Resurrection. This is the usual method since Harnack. Another is (cf. Nicolas, op. cit. p. 17f.) to divide them into (a) pro-Jewish; i.e. Gospels mainly practical, in which Christianity is presented as the renovation of the OT; (b) anti-Jewish; and (c) unsectarian. But there are serious difficulties in carrying out this arrangement, and it is best, upon the whole, to classify them according to their subject-matter, viz. those devoted to the parents and birth of Jesus, those which cover the course of His life, and those which narrate the Passion and Resurrection. Tischendorf’s plan was different: ‘Quod ita instituam ut tria liberorum horum evangelicorum genera diatinguam, quorum primum comprehendit qui ad parentes Jesu atque ipsius ortum, alterum qui ad infantiam eius, tertium qui ad fata eius ultima spectant.’ But materials have accumulated since Tischendorf wrote, which show that the middle part of the life of Jesus was not left untouched by the authors of this literature. It used to be argued, indeed, that the uncanonical Gospels showed next to no interest in the central part of the life of Jesus, between His Baptism and the Passion. Even if this were the case, it would not be quite so remarkable as might appear. Such a concentration of interest upon the beginning and end of the life was natural to the early Church. For example, after finishing an account of the origin of the four Gospels, the author of the Muratorian Canon proceeds: ‘Consequently, although various elements are taught in the several books of the Gospels, this makes no difference to the faith of believers, inasmuch as by one controlling Spirit all things are announced in all of them with regard to the Nativity, the Passion, the Resurrection, His intercourse with His disciples (conversatione cum discipulis suis), and His two-fold advent.’ Here the salient points selected lie outside the central part of the life of Jesus, unless we admit a partial exception in the allusion to intercourse with the disciples. But the uncanonical Gospels do not entirely ignore this section. Even apart from the famous correspondence of Jesus* ^{[Note: For traces of similar epistles of Jesus, cf. Augustine, de Consensu evang. i. 9-10. For the ‘epistle of Christ which fell from heaven,’ cf. G. Morin in Revue Bénédictine (1899), P. 217 f., and a monograph on its Eastern version and recension by M. Bittner in the Denkschriften der kais. Akad. der Wissenschaften (Philos. Hist. Klasse, vol. li. Abth. 1) for 1906.]} and Abgar (Eus. HE ^{[Note: E Historia Ecclesiastica (Eusebius, etc.).]} i. 13), or-in the form which it assumes in the Doctrina Addœi-His oral message to that monarch, we possess several Gospels which must have covered the ministry of our Lord, and the Oxyrhynchite fragment (see below, p. 499) now swells their number. Any classification has its own drawbacks, owing to the heterogeneous and fragmentary character of the extant materials; but the triple arrangement proposed had, upon the whole, fewer obstacles than either of its rivals. In the following discussion, therefore, the uncanonical Gospels will be treated as follows:

(1) Gospels relating to the Birth and Infancy of Jesus; (2) general Gospels, covering His entire life and ministry, from the Birth to the Resurrection, either on the type of Matthew-Luke or of Mark-John; (3) Gospels of the Passion and Resurrection.

I. Gospels Relating to the Birth and Infancy of Jesus

(a) The Protevangelium Jacobi.-A certain element of romance. attaches to this uncanonical Gospel. Daring his travels in the East, William Postel, a French humanist of the 16th cent., who devoted himself to Oriental languages and comparative philology, came across an edifying treatise which was read in several churches. He procured a copy of the work, and cherished great expectations about his find.* ^{[Note: Hallam describes his as ‘a man of some parts and more reading, but chiefly known … for mad reveries of fanaticism’ (Introd. to the Literature of Europe3, 1847, i. 468).]} Here was the original prologue to Mark’s Gospel, ‘evangelii ad hunc diem desiderata basis et fundamentum, in quo suppletur summa fide quicquid posset optari.’

Postel’s Latin version was published in 1552 by Theodore Bibliander (Proteuangelion seu de natalibus Jesu Christi et ipsius matrix virginis Mariae sermo historicus divi Jacobiminoris …). The Greek text was first published by M. Neander (Apocrypha; hoc e st narrationes de Christo, Maria, Josepho, cognations et familia Jesu Christi extra Biblia … inserto etiam Protevangelio Jacobi grœce, in Oriente nuper reperto, necdum edito hactenus … 1563, re-issued in 1567), who did not share Pastel’s or Bibliander’s enthusiasm† ^{[Note: Henry Stephen, in his Introduction au traité de la conformité des merveilles anciennes avec les modernes, ou traité préparatif à l’apologie pour Hérodote (1566), openly expressed his disgust at Postel’s production, whose origin and popularity he could explain only as a deliberate manœuvre of Satan!]} for the treatise. One of Tischendorf’s Manuscripts (A) was edited by C. A. Suckow in 1840 (Protevangelium Jacobi ex codice ms, Venetiano descripsit, prolegomenis, varietate lectionam, notis criticis instructum edidit), and a Fayyûm parchment fragment containing 7:2-10:1 was published in 1896 by B. P. Greufell (An Alexandrian Erotic Fragment and other Greek Papyri, pp. 13-19). In spite of these and other contributions, however, ‘the Greek Manuscripts -the oldest of which is a Bodleian fragment from Egypt of cent. v-vi-are very numerous and very incompletely known; the version have not been exhaustively studied; and many important questions, especially those affecting the integrity of the book, must still be regarded as open’ (M. R. James, in Journal of Theological Studies xii. [1910-11] 625).

The work itself professes to be a ἱστορία or διήγησις (25:1), and the narrative runs as follows.

The first part (1-18:1) opens by describing how the wealthy Joachim and Ms wife Anna lamented over the fact that they had no child. Joachim is told, to his chagrin, by Reuben (the high priest?) that his childlessness disqualifies him from presenting his offerings to God. Anna, praying in the garden and looking up to heaven, is reminded afresh of her childlessness by the sight of a sparrow’s nest in a laurel hush; she breaks into the following lament (3: spoiled in the Syriac, and omitted in the Armenian, version):

‘Woe is me! who begat we, and what womb produced me?

For I was born accursed before the sons of Israel,

I am reproached, and they have driven me with jeers from the Lord’s temple.

Woe is me! what am I like?

l am not like the birds of heaven,

or the birds of heaven are fruitful before thee, O Lord.

Woe is me! what am I like?

I am not like the beasts of the earth,

for even the beasts of the earth are fruitful before thee, O Lord.

Woe is me! What am I like?

I am not like these waters,

for even these waters are fruitful before thee, O Lord.

Woe is me! what am I like?

I am not like this earth,

for even this earth bears its fruits in season and blesses thee, O Lord.’

An angel assures her that God will give her a child, and eventually Mary is born-the idea of the story corresponding thus to that of John the Baptist’s birth in Luke 1:5 f. Anna now proceeds to fulfil her vow of consecrating the child to God.‡ ^{[Note: Anna’s song of praise (}Luke 6:3^{) is more appropriate than is usually the case with such songs in the Bible:}

^{‘I will sing a song to the Lord my God,}

^{for he has visited me and taken from me the reproach of my enemies;}

^{the Lord has given me fruit of righteousness, a single fruit but many-sided in his sight.}

^{Who will tell the sons of Reuben that Anna is suckling?}

^{Hearken, hearken, ye twelve tribes of Israel: Anna is suckling.’]}

The baby is not allowed to walk on the common earth till her parents take her, at the age of three, to Jerusalem, where she is welcomed by the priest and left in the temple, ‘like a dove nestling there.’ Her parents, in a transport of wonder at her, depart. They vanish from the story,* ^{[Note: The Armenian version (3) kills them both off ‘in one year’ at this point.]} which at once (8) hurries on to describe the action taken by the priests when this wonder-child reached the age of puberty (twelve or fourteen years-the Manuscripts vary). An angel bids Zechariah, the high priest, summon the widowers (‘bachelors,’ in the Armenian version) of Israel: ‘let each bring his rod, and whoever has a sign shown him by the Lord, his shall the woman be.’ Joseph is then suddenly introduced (9:1, ‘And Joseph, throwing aside his axe’-It is assumed that the readers know he was a carpenter or joiner-went out to meet the heralds (or, the widowers). A dove emerges from his rod, and he is reluctantly assigned the charge of Mary. He protests, ‘I have sons, and I am an old man,† ^{[Note: In his vehement attack on Helvidius, Jerome insists that Joseph as well as Mary was a virgin. The Protevangelium is content to show how he could not have been the real father of Jesus.]}