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tions and changes; others emphasize it as completely independent of our gospels and of equal value with them (e. g., Holtzmann, "Life of Jesus," 51). An early tradition says that Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew (probably Aramaic); and an attempt has been made to prove that the Gospel according to the Hebrews was Matthew's Hebrew gospel; but this is now abandoned. To-day scholars are fairly well agreed that in its original form this gospel may be as early as those in the New Testament; and if we had it in this form, it would be a valuable source for the life of Christ. But as we only have a couple of dozen quotations, and no means of telling whether these are from an early or a late form of the book, the gospel is of little value. Nevertheless, its fragments are interesting, if only to show why the church finally refused to accept it as an authoritative work. Some of them are as follows:

(Before the Baptism.) "Behold the Lord's mother and brothers said to him, John the Baptist is baptizing for remission of sins; let us go and be baptized by him. But he said to them, What sin have I done that I should go and be baptized by him-unless, perhaps, what I have now said is ignorance."

(At the Baptism.) "It came to pass when the Lord had ascended out of the water, the whole fountain of the Holy Spirit came down and rested upon him, and said to him, My son, in all the prophets I was looking for thee, that thou shouldst come, and that I should

rest in thee. For thou art my rest; thou art my firstborn son, who reignest to eternity."

(At the Temptation?) "The Holy Spirit, my mother, took me just now by one of my hairs, and carried me away to the great Mount Tabor."

(The appeal to Jesus by the man with a withered hand, Mark 3: 1-6.) "I was a builder, seeking my living with my hands; I pray thee, Jesus, restore to me my health, that I may not basely beg my bread."

(After the Resurrection.) "The Lord, after handing over the linen cloth to the servant of the high-priest, went to James and appeared to him; for James had sworn he would eat no bread from the hour at which the Lord had drunk the cup till he should see him rising again from those who are asleep. Bring, the Lord says, a table and bread. . . . He took bread and blessed and broke it, and gave it to James the Just, and said to him, My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of Man is risen from those who are asleep."

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(In the Lord's Prayer.) "Give us to-day bread for to-morrow."

In the parable of the talents the man who had hid his talent is simply rebuked; and it is another servant, one who has spent his talents upon harlots and fluteplayers, that is cast into the outer darkness.

Eusebius (329) tells us that the Gospel according to the Hebrews contained the story of a woman who was accused of many sins before the Lord. Possibly

this was the story of the woman taken in adultery, which certainly does not belong in John's Gospel, where we now have it.

The Gospel according to the Egyptians is first mentioned about A. D. 200, and is named by only three writers, though possibly others may have quoted from it. One theory about the new-found sayings of Jesus (see p. 17) is that they are extracts from this gospel. The Gnostics were fond of it; but whether it originated among them, or was adapted by them from an earlier source, cannot be determined. The few quotations we have from it are not worth citing.

The Gospel of Peter is a work about which we knew but little until a fragment of it was discovered in Upper Egypt in the tomb of a monk a few years ago. Judging from this fragment, which begins with Pilate's washing his hands and breaks off with Simon Peter's going afishing, the book was written in the second century, using our gospels as its basis, and was intended to support certain forms of heretical thought which then flourished. The fragment is too long to quote; and its numerous variations from the gospel story, while interesting as a revelation of later thought, are of no historical value.

There are references in early writings to other gospels about which we know little or nothing more than the names, e. g., Gospel of Andrew, Gospel of Barnabas, Gospel of Bartholomew, Gospel of the Twelve, and

possibly twenty others. Any conjecture concerning their contents, and any attempt to classify them as rejected or discarded, would be idle.

This completes our examination of the sources other than the canonical gospels, and we cannot fail to be impressed with the meagreness of its results. "It is a significant fact," says Keim, "that, as far as can be discovered from these [apocryphal] gospels and from the untenable notices in the writings of the Fathers, at the end of a hundred years after Christ, every independent and really valuable tradition concerning this life, outside of our gospels, was extinguished; and that nothing more than a growing mass of fables runs, as a pretended supplement, by the side of the latter" (Jesus of Nazara, 1 : 45).

CHAPTER IV

THE CANON OF THE GOSPELS

OUR examination of the sources has shown us that practically all our knowledge of the life of Jesus must be derived from the New Testament, and also that the other books of the New Testament simply confirm and to some extent repeat the story given in the Four Gospels. Accordingly our investigation must henceforth centre upon these gospels; and every problem presented by them becomes most important. Do we have them in their original form, or-if they have been altered-can we recover that original form? When were they written and by whom? What were the sources from which the authors gained their information? Do they give us authentic history, or history mixed with later legends and myths, or almost nothing that is historical? How far are they trustworthy?—that is the supreme question.

It is worth while to notice, however, that the question whether we shall believe in Christ does not depend altogether upon the question whether the gospels and the whole New Testament are trustworthy. Unlike Mohammedanism, Christianity is not a religion

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