Page:The Apocryphal New Testament (1924).djvu/155

 and Gestas on the left. At the end of cap. x, where the words of the thieves are narrated, two of the three manuscripts used by Tischendorf insert the story of the meeting with Dysmas in Egypt. First we have the incident of the palm-tree bowing to give its fruit. Then the Holy Family meet Dysmas, who is struck with the beauty of Mary and of the child in her arms, adores them, and says, ‘If God had a mother I would have said that thou art she’. He receives them into his house, and when he goes out hunting commends them to his wife’s care. He has a leprous child who is always crying, and is healed by the water in which Jesus was washed. Dysmas hearing of this on his return is moved to do all he can to help Mary: and on the return from Egypt he aids them again, and Mary promises him a reward for his goodness. ‘Therefore was he accounted worthy through the grace of the merciful ee and his Mother to bear witness upon the cross together with Christ.’

In cap. xi the episode of Joseph’s begging the body is expanded. The Virgin, in one copy, asks him to do this. In another he goes to Nicodemus, who will not accompany him to Pilate but is ready to help in the burial. There is a long address of Joseph to Pilate, every clause beginning with ‘Give me this stranger’.

At the burial there is a final lamentation of the Virgin and one of Mary Magdalene, who says: ‘Who shall make this known unto all the world? I will go alone to Rome unto Caesar: I will show him what evil Pilate hath done, consenting unto the wicked Jews.’ This story of Mary Magdalene’s going to Rome is one which appears in Byzantine chronicles and other late documents.

In cap. xii two of the copies mark a conclusion after the sealing of the tomb. In fact one of them actually ends here: the other has a doxology and colophon, but continues with xii. 2, ‘When the Lord’s day dawned the chief priests took counsel’, &c.

The remaining chapters, xiii–xvi, are most drastically abridged, containing 147 lines of print as against 333 of recension A. The concluding paragraph has been translated above, and the text runs on, as is there shown, into Part II, the Descent into Hell. Among the variations from the A narrative, of which the object is not clear, is this, that the three witnesses of the Ascension are here called ‘a priest named Phineës, a Levite named Aggaeus, and a soldier named Adas’.

This writing, or the nucleus of it, the story of the Descent into Hell, was not originally part of the Acts of Pilate. It is—apart from its setting—probably an older document. When it was first attached to the Acts of Pilate is uncertain. The object of this prefatory note is to say that we have the text in three forms.