The Lost and Hostile Gospels: An Essay on the Toledoth Jeschu, and the Petrine and Pauline Gospels of the First Three Centuries of Which Fragments RemainBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
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The Lost and Hostile Gospels: An Essay on the Toledoth Jeschu, and the Petrine and Pauline Gospels of the First Three Centuries of Which Fragments Remain
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Apocryphal Gospels
James the Just, according to Hegesippus, “neither drank wine nor fermented
liquors, and abstained from animal food;”(218) and though the account of
Hegesippus is manifestly fabulous in some of its details, still there is
no reason to doubt that James belonged to the ascetic school among the
Jews, as did the Baptist before him, and as did the orthodox Ebionites
after him. The oath to abstain from food till a certain event was
accomplished was not unusual.(219)
What is meant by “the Saviour giving the napkin to the servant of the
priest,” it is impossible to conjecture without the context. The napkin
was probably that which had covered his face in the tomb, but whether the
context linked this on to the cycle of sacred sindones impressed with the
portrait of the Saviour’s suffering face, cannot be told. The designation
of “the Just” as applied to James is for the purpose of distinguishing him
from James the brother of John. He does not bear that name in the
Canonical Gospels, but the title may have been introduced by St. Jerome to
avoid confusion, or it may have been a marginal gloss to the text.
The story of this appearance found its way into the writings of St.
Gregory of Tours,(220) who no doubt drew it from St. Jerome; and thence it
passed into the Legenda Aurea of Jacques de Voragine.
If the Lord did appear to St. James on Easter‐day, as related in this lost
Gospel, then it may have been in the morning, and not after his appearance
to the Twelve, or on his appearance in the evening he may have singled out
and addressed James before all the others, as on that day week he
addressed St. Thomas. In either case, St. Paul’s version would be
inaccurate as to the order of manifestations. The pseudo‐Abdias, not in
any way trustworthy, thus relates the circumstance:
“James the Less among the disciples was an object of special
attachment to the Saviour, and he was inflamed with such zeal for
his Master that he would take no meat when his Lord was crucified,
and would only eat again when he should see Christ arisen from the
dead; for he remembered that when Christ was alive he had given
this precept to him and to his brethren. That is why he, with Mary
Magdalene and Peter, was the first of all to whom Jesus Christ
appeared, in order to confirm his disciples in the faith; and that
he might not suffer him to fast any longer, a piece of an
honeycomb having been offered him, he invited James to eat
thereof.”(221)
Another fragment of the lost Gospel of the Hebrews also relates to the
resurrection:
“_And when he had come to [Peter and] those that were with Peter, he said
unto them, Take, touch me, and see that I am not a bodiless spirit. And
straightway they touched him and believed._”(222)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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