Page:Apocryphal Gospels and Other Documents Relating to the History of Christ.djvu/24

xx copy, and sometimes alter and contradict; that they are inconsistent with themselves, and with one another, with reason, and with sound doctrine; and that they have no claim upon our belief, and, as literary productions, are quite contemptible.

I think both Jones and Lardner have overlooked some probable traces of the Apocryphal Gospels, but I am quite ready to receive their judgment as to the real character and claims of these productions.

In the compilation of the present volume, I have necessarily come into contact with a great many books, but I do not propose to fill pages with lists of titles which the learned may find elsewhere, and which the unlearned could not use if they found them here. I only mention that the first great collector of Christian Apocrypha was John Albert Fabricius, early in the last century; that a second was J. C. Thilo, whose book came out in 1832; and that the third and chief is Dr. Tischendorf, of whom more will be found in the following pages. It is, in fact, his edition of the Apocryphal Gospels which I have translated, though with additions from other sources, and a few variations from his texts.

There are two or three other books that I should, perhaps, not omit. The first is the "Codex