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 absence of the account of the Galilaeans, whose blood Pilate had
mingled with their sacrifices, and of those on whom the tower in Siloam
fell, which occurs in the received text, removes a difficulty. St. Luke
says, “There were present at that season some that told him of the
Galilaeans, whose blood,” &c., as though it were a circumstance which had
just taken place, whereas this act of barbarity was committed when
Quirinus, not Pilate, was governor, twenty‐four years before the
appearance of Jesus. And no tower in Siloam is mentioned in any account of
Jerusalem. The mention of the Galilaeans in the canonical text has the
appearance of an anachronism, and probably did not exist in the Gospel
which Marcion received, and was a late addition to the Gospel of Luke.
The parable of the fig‐tree which follows may, however, have been removed
by Marcion lest the Supreme God should appear as a God of judgment against
those who produced no fruit, _i.e._ did no works. But it is more probable
that this parable, which has an anti‐Pauline moral, was not in the
original edition of Luke’s Gospel.
22. Luke xii. i 28: “There shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when ye
shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, and all the prophets, in the
kingdom of God, and you yourselves thrust out,” altered into, “when ye
shall see all the righteous in the kingdom of God, and ye yourselves cast
and held back without.”(463)
The change of “the righteous” into “Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob,” in the
deutero‐Luke, clearly disturbs the train of thought. Ye Jews shall weep
when ye see the δικαίοι, those made righteous through faith, by the
righteousness which is _not_ of the Law, Gentiles from East and West, in
the kingdom, and ye yourselves cast out.
Hilgenfeld thinks that the account of the Judgment by St. Matthew and St.
Luke is couched in terms coloured by the respective parties to which the
evangelists belonged, and that the sentences on the lost are sharpened to
pierce the antagonistic party. Thus, in the Gospel of St. Luke, Christ
dooms to woe those who are workers of unrighteousness, ἐργάται
ἀδικίας,(464) using the Pauline favourite expression to designate those
who are cast out to weeping and gnashing of teeth, as men who have not
received the righteousness which is of faith; whereas, in St. Matthew it
is the workers of anomia, οἱ ἐργαζόμενοι τὴν ἀνομίαν,(465) by which
Hilgenfeld thinks the Pauline anti‐legalists are not obscurely hinted at,
who are hurled into outer darkness. In St. Luke it is curious to notice
how the lost are described as Jews: “We have eaten and drunk in thy
presence, and thou hast taught in our streets;” whereas the elect who “sit
down in the kingdom of God” come “from the east and from the west, and
from the north and from the south,” that is to say, are Gentiles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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