Page:The Apocryphal New Testament (1924).djvu/189

 10. Revillout no. 11, p. 1638. A further piece of a like dialogue, including long speeches of our Lord, and ending with Ecce homo.

The place and order of the two next is uncertain.

11. Revillout no. 13, p. 168. An address of our Lord (to Thomas) reminding him of the signs at the crucifixion, and exhorting him to touch him.

12. Revillout no. 14, p. 169. Mary (the Virgin) at the sepulchre. Jesus appears to her and addresses her, forbidding her to touch him. The scene is assimilated to that of the appearance to Mary Magdalene (as elsewhere in Coptic writings): see above on the 'XXth Discourse of Cyril', pp. 87, 88.

13. Revillout no. 15, p. 170. Lacau, p. 19. Two leaves with a gap of two between them.

This fragment has a definite attribution, to Gamaliel.

It is a narrative connected with the resurrection.

We find Pilate examining four soldiers as to their statement that the body of Jesus was stolen. One (the second: the testimony of the first is gone) says the eleven apostles took the body ; the third says, Joseph and Nicodemus; the fourth, 'we were asleep'. They are imprisoned, and Pilate goes with the centurion and the priests to the tomb and finds the grave-clothes. He says, 'If the body had been stolen, these would have been taken too'. They say, 'These grave-clothes belong to some one else'. Pilate remembers the words of Jesus, 'Great wonders must happen in my tomb', and goes in, and weeps over the shroud. Then he turns to the centurion, who had but one eye, having lost the other in battle.

Here is a gap, in which no doubt the centurion's eye is healed by touching the grave clothes, and he is converted. Also it is clear that Joseph and Nicodemus are sent for, and that the Jews point out to Pilate that in a well in the garden there is the body of a crucified man.

The other leaf begins with a dialogue between Pilate and the centurion. Then all go to the well. 'I, Gamaliel, followed them also among the band.' They see the body, and the Jews cry, 'Behold the sorcerer'.... Pilate asks Joseph and Nicodemus whether this is the body of Jesus. They answer, the grave-clothes are his, but the body is that of the thief who was crucified with him. The Jews are angry and wish to throw Joseph and Nicodemus into the well. . . . Pilate remembers the words of Jesus, 'The dead shall rise again in my tomb', and says to the Jews, 'You believe that this is truly the Nazarene'. They say, 'Yes'. 'Then', says Pilate, 'it is but right to lay his body in his own tomb.'...

Here the leaf ends; but we can see that when the body is laid in Jesus' tomb it will revive and declare the truth.

A detached sheet of an Ethiopic MS. which was in private