CHAPTER III

THE APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS

THE word apocryphal has had a long and interesting history through which it has gained several distinct and widely unlike meanings. Uncanonical is one meaning; and any gospel that failed to gain a place in the list (canon) of the New Testament books may for that reason be called an apocryphal gospel. Spurious and, therefore, untrustworthy, is another meaning; and a gospel that is a mere fabrication with no historical value may for that reason be called an apocryphal gospel. This gives rise to confusion and unfair treatment when apocryphal gospels are discussed. All of them are uncanonical, but only some of them are worthless; yet they are spoken of sometimes as if they all were beneath serious attention, and at other times as if they all stood on a level with the canonical gospels, and had been kept out of the New Testament by accident or prejudice. We may avoid this confusion, and understand what basis there is for each of these opinions, by dividing the apocryphal gospels into two classes, and considering each separately.

I. The Rejected Gospels

There are certain chapters in the history of Jesus that are passed over in partial or complete silence by the New Testament writers, which appeal deeply to human curiosity. We should like to know more about Mary and Joseph, and the home in Nazareth, and the years which Jesus as a boy and man spent there; and we should like to know something about the mysterious period between his death and resurrection, when, though his body was lying in the new sepulchre, his spirit must have been active somewhere and in some way. Reverence and a recognition of the hopelessness of the task keep us from any serious attempt to fill in these unwritten chapters. But there were early writers who were not thus restrained; and they set forth in the form of gospels their ideas as to what these portions of the life of Jesus must have been. Such gospels are, of course, apocryphal in the sense of wholly untrustworthy; and because intelligent readers never took them seriously, we may call them rejected gospels. Still, as religious romances-the Ben Hurs of their day -they had a wide circulation; and ignorant people undoubtedly gave them more or less credence. A number of them are preserved and will be found in any collection of the writings of the Ante-Nicene Fathers. A list of them, with a hint of their contents, is as follows:

The Protevangelium of James—a history of the Virgin Mary from the incidents connected with her birth to Herod's murder of the babes at Bethlehem.

The Gospel of Thomas-incidents in the boyhood of Jesus in the years from five to twelve.

The Gospel of Nicodemus-in two parts, usually known as The Acts of Pilate and The Descent into Hades; the former gives various incidents of the trial, death, and resurrection of Jesus, and the latter describes the scenes in the world of the dead when he appeared there after his death.

The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew—a history of Mary and of Jesus' boyhood.

The Gospel of the Nativity of Mary-practically an orthodox revision of the first part of Psuedo-Matthew.

The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy-partly a reproduction of the Protevangelium of James and the Gospel of Thomas, and partly wild legends resembling the tales in the Arabian Nights.

The History of Joseph the Carpenter—an account of his life, and more fully of his death, supposed to be told by Jesus to his disciples.

The Passing of Mary-an account in several forms of the death and assumption of Mary.

Of the above works the first two were probably written between the middle and the end of the second century; part of the Acts of Pilate may be of as early a date, though the evidence is weak; the other books are

a century or two later. They are directly valuable as the storehouse from which popular thought and pictorial art drew largely in the Middle Ages, especially as regards the Virgin Mary. To understand the story of the Madonna, as portrayed by the great artists, one must study these gospels. They are indirectly even more valuable as a proof of the trustworthiness of our Four Gospels. When it is said that what the New Testament tells us about Jesus is mainly the invention of later days, we have only to turn to these rejected gospels if we would know what the invention of later days would produce. Their stories of Jesus' boyhood, for example, are either silly or monstrous. The Gospel of Thomas tells how he made pigeons of clay, and by a miracle caused them to fly; how he overwhelmed his school teachers with shame by displaying his superior knowledge; how he was angry with Joseph when he corrected him; how he cursed his playmates, causing one to become impotent, and another to fall dead, so that "no one dared to make him angry"; and the other gospels contain stories equally or even more repulsive. If such things are what Christians of the second century would invent, when they tried their imagination upon the life of Christ, we may rest assured that the story told in the Four Gospels is not of their invention.

II. The Discarded Gospels

The preface to the Gospel of Luke begins with the statement that “many have taken in hand to draw up a narrative concerning those matters which have been fulfilled among us, even as they delivered them unto us who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word." As we shall see later on, Luke probably knew of Mark's gospel and of some writing by Matthew, but these alone would not be enough to justify his statement that "many" were writing gospels. Evidently Luke lived at a time when there was a general demand for some written account of Christ's words and deeds, and when authors who could draw up such an account were busy in doing so. It is worth while to consider briefly just how such a demand arose.

In the early part of the Apostolic Age there was little incentive to write a biography of Jesus. He was expected to return very soon; his spiritual presence was deeply realized; and his brief earthly ministry seemed only a necessary preliminary of the glorious Kingdom of God. To dwell upon the Jesus of the past would be disloyalty to the Jesus of the present, and disbelief in the Jesus of the glorious future. Nevertheless, there were many inducements to tell something about his earthly life. In preaching to the Jews that Jesus was the Messiah, any events fulfilling prophecy would be rehearsed; in preaching to the Gentiles that Jesus