Page:Apocryphal Gospels and Other Documents Relating to the History of Christ.djvu/235

Rh, putting my hands to his eyes, I arranged them, and I closed his mouth. And I said to Mary the virgin, O, my mother, where is his trade, which he professed all the time he lived in this world? Behold it is now perished, and is as if it had never existed. When his children heard me speaking thus with my pure virgin mother, they knew that he had now expired; and, mingling their tears, they wailed. But I said to them, Surely the death of your father is not death, but life eternal; for he is delivered from the sorrows of this world, and hath passed away to rest which is perpetual and will endure for ever. When they heard this, they rent their garments, weeping.

the inhabitants of the city of Nazareth and of Galilee, when they knew of their mourning, flocked unto them, and wept from the third hour till the ninth. And at the ninth hour, they all went together to the bed of Joseph. And they took up his body after they had anointed it with excellent ointments. But I prayed to my Father with the prayer of the heavenly ones: it was the same which I wrote with my hand before I was borne in the womb of Mary, my virgin mother. Now as soon as I had finished it, and uttered Amen, an immense