Page:Apocryphal Gospels and Other Documents Relating to the History of Christ.djvu/78

lxxiv to a tumult at the death of Herod, Pseudo-Thomas mentions the commotion caused by Herod's search after the infant Jesus. The whole of the first three chapters of Pseudo-Thomas in the Latin are wanting in the other texts, and look like an independent composition: they may, however, embody another fragment of the book in its original form. The fourth chapter consists of an introduction like that which appears in the two Greek texts, but is not in the Syriac. The editor treated his original with a good deal of freedom, paraphrasing and altering the phraseology. As in the case of the two Greek texts, the document appears to have received a certain tinge of orthodoxy. I imagine that it is less ancient than the first Greek copy, (probably less ancient than the second,) and that it is not earlier than the end of the seventh century (very likely not quite so early).

This Latin Thomas has a special conclusion, which pretends to be a declaration made by Thomas the Israelite, and is meant to have a practical tendency. It can hardly be accepted as representing anything contained in the original writing, but is, most likely, the afterthought of the Latin editor.

It would be useless to speculate who "Thomas the