It is advisable, if not necessary, for me, by way of preface, to explain certain topics treated of in this book, which do not come under its title, and which, at first thought, may be taken to have but a remote connection with the ostensible subject of this treatise. These are: 1. The outbreak of Antinomianism which disfigured and distressed primitive Christianity. 2. The opposition of the Nazarene Church to St. Paul. 3. The structure and composition of the Synoptical Gospels. The consideration

Josephus wrote at Rome his “History of the Jewish War,” in seven books, in his own Aramaic language. This he finished in the year A.D. 75, and then translated it into Greek. On the completion of this work he wrote his “Jewish Antiquities,” a history of the Jews in twenty books, from the beginning of the world to the twelfth year of the reign of Nero, A.D. 66. He completed this work in the year A.D. 93, concluding it with a biography of himself. He also wrote a book against Apion on the antiquity

The Essenes arose about two centuries before the birth of Christ, and peopled the quiet deserts on the west of the Dead Sea, a wilderness to which the Christian monks afterwards seceded from the cities of Palestine. They are thus described by the elder Pliny: “ On the western shore of that lake dwell the Essenes, at a sufficient distance from the water's edge to escape its pestilential exhalations—a race entirely unique, and, beyond every other in the world, deserving of wonder; men living among

It is remarkable that Celsus, living in the middle of the second century, and able to make inquiries of aged Jews whose lives had extended from the first century, should have been able to find out next to nothing about Jesus and his disciples, except what he read in the Gospels. This is proof that no traditions concerning Jesus had been preserved by the Jews, apart from those contained in the Gospels, Canonical and Apocryphal. Origen's answer to Celsus is composed of eight Books. In the first Bo

The Orders of Kodaschim and Taharoth are incomplete. The Jerusalem Talmud consists of only the first four, and the tract Nidda, which belongs to the Order Taharoth. Now it is deserving of remark, that many of the Rabbis whose sayings are recorded in the Mischna lived in the time of our Lord, or shortly after, and yet that not the smallest reference is made to the teaching of Jesus, nor even any allusion to him personally. Although the Mischna was drawn up beside the Sea of Galilee, at Tiberias,

The Talmud in the Tract. Sanhedrim 99 says, “It is not lawful to name the name of a false God.” On this account the Jews, rejecting the mission of our Saviour, [pg 068] refused to pronounce his name without mutilating it. By omitting the Ain , the Cabbalists were able to give a significance to the name. In its curtailed form it is composed of the letters Jod, Schin, Vau, which are taken to stand for ימח שמו וזכרונו jimmach schemo vezichrono, “His name and remembrance shall be extinguished.” This

It is remarkable that the author begins with the very phrase found in Josephus. He calls the appearance of our Lord “a great misfortune which befel Israel.” Josephus, after the passage which has been intruded into his text relative to the miracles and death of Christ, says, “About this time another great misfortune set the Jews in commotion;” from which it appears as if Josephus regarded the preaching of Christ as a great misfortune. That he made no such reference has been already shown. The aut

As has been already said, Papus Ben Jehuda was a contemporary of Rabbi Akiba, and died about A.D. 140. In the Wagenseil Toledoth Jeschu, Mirjam is betrothed to a Jochanan. In the latter, Mary lives at Bethlehem; in the Toledoth of Huldrich, she resides at Jerusalem. Many years after, the place of the retreat of Mirjam and Joseph Pandira having been made known to Herod, he sent to Bethlehem orders for their arrest, and for the massacre of the children; but Joseph, who had been forewarned by a kin

We have now considered all the fragments of the Gospel of the Hebrews that have been preserved to us in the writings of Justin Martyr, Origen, Jerome and Epiphanius. But there is another storehouse of texts and references to a Gospel regarded as canonical at a very early date by the Nazarene or Ebionite Church. This storehouse is that curious collection of the sayings and doings of St. Peter, the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies. That the Gospel used by the author or authors of the Clementin

The observance of times is also insisted on—times at which the procreation of children is lawful or unlawful; and disease and death result from neglect of this distinction. “In the beginning of the world men lived long, and had no diseases. But when through carelessness they neglected the observance of the proper times ... they placed their children under innumerable afflictions.” 292 It is this doctrine that is apparently combated by St. Paul. 293 He relaxes the restraints which Nazarene tradit

This book unfortunately has been lost, so that we are not able to learn much more about the Gospel. What was its origin? Was it a forgery from beginning to end? This is by no means probable. The Gospel of St. Mark, as we have seen, was due to St. Peter, and by some went by the name of the Gospel [pg 220] of St. Peter. It was a Gospel greatly affected by the Docetae and Elkesaites. “Those who distinguish Jesus from Christ, and who say that Christ was impassible, but that Jesus endured the sufferi

The Gospel cited by the author of this Epistle, except in two or three phrases which are not found in any of our Canonical Gospels, recalls that of St. Matthew. Nevertheless, it is certain that the quotations are from the Gospel of the Egyptians, for one of the passages cited in this Epistle is also quoted by Clement of Alexandria, who tells us whence it comes—from the Egyptian Gospel. We may conclude from this that the Gospel of the Egyptians presented great analogy to our first Canonical Gospe

The Gospel, in the eyes of Marcion and the extreme followers of St. Paul, represented free grace, overflowing goodness, complete reconciliation with God. But such goodness stood contrasted with the stern justice of the Creator, as revealed in the books of the Old Testament; infinite, unconditioned forgiveness was incompatible with the idea of God as a Lawgiver and a Judge. The restraint of the Law and the freedom of the Gospel could no more emanate from the same source than sweet water and bitte

Valentine taught that in the Godhead, exerting creative power were manifest two motions—a positive, the evolving, creative, life-giving element; and the negative, which determined, shaped and localized the creative force. From the positive force came life, from the negative the direction life takes in its manifestation. The world is the revelation of the divine ideas, gradually unfolding themselves, and Christ and redemption are the perfection and end of creation. Through creation the idea goes

Mark possessed a Gospel, and “an infinite number of apocryphal Scriptures,” says Irenaeus. The Gospel contained a falsified life of Christ. One of the stories from it he quotes. When Jesus was a boy, he was learning letters. The master said, “Say Alpha.” Jesus repeated after him, “Alpha.” Then the master said, “Say Beta.” But Jesus answered, “Nay, I will not say Beta till you have explained to me the meaning of Alpha.” 482 The Marcosians made much of the hidden mysteries of the letters of the al

Baur thinks that the Gospel of Perfection was the same as the Gospel of Eve. 492 But this can hardly be. The words of St. Epiphanius plainly distinguish them: “Some vaunt the Gospel of Perfection ... others boast ... the Gospel of Eve;” and elsewhere he speaks of their books in the plural. 493 This Gospel belonged to the same category as those of Perfection and of Eve, and belonged, if not to the Ophites, to an analogous sect, perhaps that of the Prodicians. St. Philip passed, in the early ages

“ The Lord has revealed to me the words to be spoken by the soul when it ascends into heaven, and how it has to answer each of the celestial powers. The soul must say, I have known myself, and I have gathered myself from all parts. I have not borne children to Archon (the prince of this world); but I have plucked up his roots, and I have gathered his dispersed members. I have learned who thou art; for I am, saith the soul, of the number of the celestial ones. But if it is proved that the soul ha

Epiphanes, the son of Carpocrates, a youth of remarkable ability, who died young, exhausted by the excesses to which his solifidianism exposed him, wrote a work on Justification by Faith, in which he said: “ All nature manifests a striving after unity and fellowship; the laws of man contradicting these laws of nature, and yet unable to subdue the appetites implanted in human nature by the Creator himself—these first introduced sin. ” 504 With Epiphanes, St. Epiphanius couples Isidore, and quotes