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
The Empress Helena favours the Christians against the Jews. Where three
crosses are found, a person suffering from “a grievous and incurable
disease” is applied to the crosses, and recovers on touching the true one.
Then the same experiment is tried with a dead body, with the same
success.(111) According to the Apocryphal Acts of St. Cyriacus, a Jew
named Judas was brought before the Empress, and ordered to point out where
the cross was buried. Judas resisted, but was starved in a well till he
revealed the secret. The resemblance between the stories consists in the
names of Helena and Judas, and the miracles of healing a leper, and
raising a dead man to life.
According to the Apocryphal Acts of St. Cyriacus, Judas was the grandson
of Zacharias, and nephew of St. Stephen the protomartyr.(112)
It is remarkable that Jeschu should be made to quote two passages in the
Psalms as prophecies of himself, both of which are used in this manner in
the New Testament: Ps. ii. 7, in Acts xiii. 33, and again Heb. i. 5, and
v. 5; and Ps. cx. 1, in St. Matthew xxii. 44, and the corresponding
passages in St. Mark and St. Luke; also in Acts ii. 34, in 1 Cor. xv. 25,
and Heb. i. 13.
The scene of the struggle in the air is taken from the contest of St.
Peter with Simon Magus, and reminds one of the contest in the Arabian
Nights between the Queen of Beauty and the Jin in the story of the Second
Calender.
The putting forth from land on a millstone on the occasion of the
miraculous draught of fishes is probably a perversion of the incident of
Jesus entering into the boat of Peter—the stone—before the miracle was
performed, according to St. Luke, v. 1‐8. In the Toledoth Jeschu there are
two millstones which our Lord sets afloat, and he mounts one, and then the
fishes are caught; in St. Luke’s Gospel there are two boats.
“He saw two ships standing by the lake.... And he entered into one
of the ships, which was Simon’s, and prayed him that he would
thrust out a little from the land. And he sat down and taught the
people out of the ship. Now when he had left speaking, he said
unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a
draught.”
It was standing on the swimming‐stone, according to the Huldrich version,
that Jeschu preached to the people, and declared to them his divine
mission.
The story goes on. The Sanhedrim, fearing to allow Jeschu to remain at
liberty, send Judas after him to Jordan. Judas pronounces a great
incantation, which obliges the Angel of Sleep to seal the eyes of Jeschu
and his disciples. Then, whilst they sleep, he comes and cuts from the arm
of Jeschu a scrap of parchment on which the Name of Jehovah is written,
and which was concealed under the flesh. Jeschu awakes, and a spirit
appears to him and vexes him sore. Then he feels that his power is gone,
and he announces to his disciples that his hour is come when he must be
taken by his enemies.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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