Egypt, in our days, ceasing to be any more the land of bondage, has, in more senses than one, become a veritable Land of Promise. It is a rich mine of historical and literary wealth, alas! most inadequately worked, and in that fine climate, with its clear dry air, the footprints of Time, leaving scarcely a trace, the treasures of an ancient civilisation, even of the most delicate texture, have been preserved to us with wonderful perfection. The habits of the peoples that have occupied the land h

(6) And he delivered him to the people before the first day of the Unleavened bread of their feast. And taking the Lord they pushed him hurrying along, and said: “Let us drag along the Son of God as we have power over him.” (7) And they clad him with purple and set him on a seat of judgment, saying: “Judge justly, King of Israel.” (8) And one of them brought a crown of thorns and set it upon the head of the Lord. (9) And others standing by spat upon his eyes, and others smote him on the cheeks;

There is little or no doubt that the writing before us is a fragment of this “Gospel according to Peter” of which Serapion writes. 7 It must always be remembered, as we examine the evidence for the work, that we have here only a short fragment, and that it would not be reasonable to expect to find in it materials for a perfect identification of the work with references to it in writings of the Fathers. Within the few pages which we possess, however, there is sufficient justification for concludi

It is obvious that the name “Memoirs” cannot with any degree of propriety be applied to our canonical Gospels; but the discovery of this fragment, which is distinctly written as a personal narrative, throws fresh light upon the subject, and the title “Memoirs of Peter,” would exactly describe the form in which the Gospel is written. It may further be suggested whether it does not give us reason for conjecturing that the earlier documents, from which our Gospels were composed, were similarly pers

There are three suppositions as the possible explanation of this similarity: (1) that the author of the Epistle derived his statement from the Gospel; (2) that the author of the Gospel derived it from the Epistle, or (3) that both drew it from a third and earlier source. Assigning as we do the later date to the Epistle of Barnabas, the first of these hypotheses seems to us the most natural and the correct one, although, of course, it is impossible to prove that both did not derive it from anothe

Not content with the conclusion that the Gospels, narrating the very same history, might have furnished the incidents which they have in common, Dr. Swete proceeds “to compare the ‘Diatessaron’ with our fragment, with the view of ascertaining whether Tatian would have provided the Petrine writer with the words which he seems to have adopted from the Four Gospels.” 59 This is not the place to discuss again the identity of the supposed “Diatessaron,” but it will be sufficient to point out that we

The principal phrase upon which weight is laid by those who assign to the Gospel according to Peter, from this fragment, a later date than our canonical works, is the use of ἡ κυριακή without ἡμέρα to designate “the Lord's day” —Sunday; Dr. Swete calls it “the most decisive indication of the relatively late composition of our fragment.” 76 After giving some instances of a similar expression, he states the case as follows: It is not quite clear what Dr. Swete means when he says that Peter “uses i

At this point, Peter represents the request for the body of Jesus as having been made but, before considering this part of his narrative, we must note the portions of the canonical account which he altogether omits. The first of these to which we must refer is the preference of Barabbas, which all of our four Evangelists carefully relate. Considering that his main object in writing this Gospel, according to some critics, was animosity to the Jews and a desire to cast upon them the whole guilt an

That a writer who had our canonical Gospels before him should so depart from their lines, alter every representation without dogmatic purpose, insert contradictory statements, and omit episodes of absorbing interest and passages which would have enriched his narrative, is a theory which cannot be established. It is obvious that the feeling of the writer is one of intense devotion and reverence, and it is unreasonable to suppose that he could have passed over, altered, and contradicted so many po

But, whilst frankly admitting the application of this fundamental principle of the prophetic gnosis, more or less throughout all early Christian literature, Mr. Harris wishes to limit its influence upon works received into the canon, into which the two-edged weapon, however, pierces in spite of him to the sundering apart of soul and body. He says: The immediate object here, of course, is to lay the basis of an indictment against the fragment; but in this clear and excellent statement, a principl

This need not be further pursued, however, though the principle applies quite as much to the other Gospels. Only one passage may be quoted from the last chapter of the third Synoptic. Jesus, when he appears to the disciples, after the episode of the fish to prove that he is not a spirit, but himself with flesh and bones (xxiv. 36 f.), is represented as saying: This is a direct justification of the gnosis, and it is no wonder that we find St. Sylvia, some centuries later, recording the concrete p