Page:The Apocryphal New Testament (1924).djvu/59

 thrown down and left for dead by the enemy (Paul); in Hegesippus he speaks from the pinnacle, 'is hurled from the still loftier station, and this time his death is made sure'. It is an attractive conjecture.

Epiphanius mentions some other heretical apocrypha: a Gospel of Judas Iscariot (Irenaeus also speaks of this) and an heretical Ascension (Anabaticon) of Paul, used by the Caianites or Cainites. They are mere names to us.

We also hear of 'Gospels' of heresiarchs—Basilides, Valentinus, and others: but these we cannot think of as real Gospels. They are&mdash;if they are not mere ghost-books&mdash;the treatises in which these teachers set forth their views, and they were nicknamed Gospels. The Gospel of Marcion is of a different class: it was an edition of Luke, from which all that went counter to Marcion's views was removed. He made a similar text of the Pauline Epistles.

From a Latin writer, Orosius, comes our only fragment of another heretical apocryphon, the Memoria (? Memoirs) of the Apostles. It was current among the Priscillianists who had their head-quarters in Spain in the fourth century. It was evidently a dualist book, no doubt Manichaean in origin.

, Admonition of the errors of the Priscillianists and Origenisits. Priscillian delivered that the names of the Patriarchs are members (parts) of the soul: for that Ruben was in the head, Levi in the heart, Juda in the heart, Benjamin in the thighs, and the like. In the members of the body, on the other hand, the heavenly signs are arranged, viz. the Ram in the head, the Bull in the neck, the Twins in the arms, the Crab in the heart, &c. He would have it understood that the darkness is eternal, and that out of it the ruler of this world came forth. He confirms this. from a book called the Memoria of the Apostles, where the Saviour is represented as being questioned privately by the disciples, and explaining that in the parable of the Gospel which says: A sower went forth to sow his seed, the sower was not good: asserting, that had he been good, he would not have been careless, nor cast the seed by the wayside or on stony places or untilled ground: willing it to be understood that this (the ruler of the world?) was the sower, who scattered the souls he had caught into various bodies, as he pleased. In the same book much is said of the principle of moist things, and the principle of fire: he would have it understood that all good things happen in this world, not by the power of God, but by contrivance (art).

(The cause of rain is then expounded in a manner best not repeated.)