Page:Apocryphal Gospels and Other Documents Relating to the History of Christ.djvu/30

xxvi like those which poets sometimes feign and frame." After reading some of the Jewish pieces I have arrived at the conclusion that the Christian Apocrypha are often simply Christian Hagadoth, and so I would call them, as a far more appropriate name than the one which usage has attached to them. The Hagadah is written for instruction and not amusement merely, and so the Christian compositions generally have a didactic element underlying the narrative, or intercalated with it.

I will here exhibit in a summary form the details which in my opinion account for the origin, and indicate the intention of the apocryphal Gospels, and most of the other Christian Apocrypha.

I. The Evangelical narratives were simple and meagre in their mode of describing what (1) preceded, (2) attended, and (3) followed, the facts with which they are mainly concerned. This applies to