Page:The Apocryphal New Testament (1924).djvu/25

Rh the Secondary Gospels, of none of which do we possess a complete text, and of one only, the Gospel of Peter, so much as a few pages. With these I have put a selection of the most important Agrapha (a rather clumsy name for the non-Biblical sayings of, and traditions about, our Lord). Notices of lost heretical books, and lists of apocrypha, are collected in the same section.

These fragments are followed by the complete texts, among which what have been called Gospels come first: and first among them is a group of Infancy Gospels and stories of the birth of the Virgin. Two of them, the Book of James (or Protevangelium), and the Gospel of Thomas, are second-century books. The first we have with comparatively slight alterations; the second has been drastically expurgated. The short prefatory notices prefixed to the several books give, I hope, enough details to guide the reader.

The later texts are summarized, not translated word for word. This plan I have adopted in order to avoid repetition, and to place the more important books in relief. The reader loses nothing by it, and is spared a vast deal of verbiage.

Of the Ministry we have no apocryphal narratives, except some rather late Coptic fragments, which I have classed with the Passion stories.

The Passion Gospels or narratives which are really important are two: the fragment of the Gospel of Peter, and the Acts of Pilate (Gospel of Nicodemus). The first is of the second century (about A.D. 150), the other of the fourth. There are old elements, perhaps, in the Report of Pilate. This, and the mass of later texts which deal with the Passion and Resurrection are, as before, summarized.

To these I append what is now called the Gospel of Bartholomew, probably a late réchauffé of a second-century book; a summary of a Coptic Book of Bartholomew, and a version of an heretical book attributed to John.

Between Gospels and Acts I place the famous legend of the Death and Assumption of the Virgin, translating the two leading narratives, and summarizing the rest. I cannot regard any of the texts as older than the fourth century, but the nucleus of the story may be—I think must be— at least as old as the third.

Of the Acts it will be useful to say a little more here: