Page:The Apocryphal New Testament (1924).djvu/124

 water and the sea of demons cease vexing.' Address to the apostles on the terrors of death.

XXIII. When I had said Amen, my mother answering me in the language of the inhabitants of the heavens, Michael, Gabriel, and the choir of the angels came. Numbness and panting seized on Joseph. Death seeing me dared not enter. I arose and went outside and bade him go in and do his appointed work, but deal gently. Then Abbaton went in and took the soul, at sunrise on 26th Epep. Michael and Gabriel put the soul into a precious silken napkin and the angels took it away, singing. (The passage about Death (Abbaton) is only in Sahidic: the Bohairic shortens the section.)

XXIV. I sat down by the body and closed the eyes and mouth; and comforted Mary and the rest.

XXV. The people of Nazareth came and mourned till the ninth hour. Then I put all forth, anointed and washed the body. 'I prayed to my Father with heavenly prayers which I wrote with my own fingers on the tables of heaven before I took flesh in the holy Virgin Mary.' Angels came and shrouded the body.

XXVI. I blessed it from all corruption; pronounced blessings on all who celebrate his memory by good deeds or write the story of his death.

XXVII. The chief men of the place came to prepare the body, and found it already shrouded. The burial. I wept.

XXVIII. The lament of Jesus.

XXIX. The body was laid in the tomb beside Jacob his father.

XXX. We the apostles rejoiced to hear all this. We asked why Joseph should not have been exempted from death like Enoch and Elias.

XXXII. Jesus speaks of the inevitableness of death, and tells how Enoch and Elias still have to die, and are in trouble until their death is over. Antichrist will shed the blood of two men (Arab. four) like a cup of water, because of the reproaches they will heap upon him.

XXXII. We asked: Who are the two whom he will slay? Answer: Enoch and Elias. (Arabic has, 'Who are the Four whom he will slay? Answer: Enoch, Elias, Schila, and Tabitha.' Mr. W. E. Crum has shown that for Schila we ought to read Sibylla. This gives two men and two women. Nothing is known of stories in which the Sibyl is killed by Antichrist, but in the Coptic Apocalypse of Elias, Tabitha figures prominently, withstanding Antichrist and being slain by him.)

The book ends with a doxology of the apostles.