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)
History
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
The Beatitudes, or some of them, were in it. “He said, _Blessed are the
poor_; and promised earthly rewards; and promised that those who maintain
righteousness shall be satisfied with meat and drink.”(317) “Our Master,
inviting his disciples to patience, impressed on them the blessing of
peace, which was to be preserved with the labour of patience.... He
charges (the believers) to have peace among themselves, and says to them,
_Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the very sons of
God_.”(318) “The Father, whom only those can see who are pure in
heart.”(319) Again strong similarity with slight difference. “He said, _I
am not come to send peace on earth, but a sword; and henceforth you shall
see father separated from son, son from father, husband from wife, and
wife from husband, mother from daughter, and daughter from mother, brother
from brother, father‐in‐law from daughter‐in‐law, friend from
friend_.”(320) This is fuller than the corresponding passage in St.
Matthew.(321)
“_It is enough for the disciple to be as his master._”(322) “He mourned
over those who lived in riches and luxury, and bestowed nothing upon the
poor; showing that they must render an account, because they did not pity
their neighbours, even when they were in poverty, whom they ought to love
as themselves.”(323) “In like manner he charged the Scribes and Pharisees
during the last period of his teaching ... with hiding the key of
knowledge which they had handed down to them from Moses, by which the gate
of the heavenly kingdom might be opened.”(324) The key of knowledge occurs
only in St. Luke’s Gospel. Had the author of the Clementines any knowledge
of that Gospel? I do not think so, or we should find other quotations from
St. Luke. St. Matthew says, “Woe unto you, Scribes and Pharisees,
hypocrites! for ye shut up (κλείετε) the kingdom of heaven.”(325) St. Luke
says, “Ye have taken away the key (τὴν κλεῖδα) of knowledge.”(326) The
author of the Clementines says, “Ye have hidden the key,” not “taken
away.” I do not think, when the expression in St. Matthew suggests the
“key,” that we need suppose that the author of the Recognitions quoted
from St. Luke; rather, I presume, from his own Gospel, which in this
passage resembled the words in St. Luke rather than those in St. Matthew,
without, however, being exactly the same.(327)
“_Every kingdom divided against itself shall not stand._”(328) “_Seek ye
first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things shall
be added to you._”(329) The writer knew, in the same terms as St. Matthew,
our Lord’s sayings: “_Give not that which is holy to dogs, neither cast
your pearls before swine._”(330) “_Whosoever shall look upon a woman to
lust after her, hath committed adultery with her in his heart.... If thy
right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee; for it is
profitable for thee that one of thy members perish, rather than thy whole
body be cast into hell‐fire._”(331)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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