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§Luke’s Prologue

1.1 Inasmuch as many have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished among us,

1.2 just as they were delivered to us by those who from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word,

1.3 it seemed good to me also, having followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account for you, most excellent The-oph’ilus,

1.4 that you may know the truth concerning the things of which you have been informed.

1.5 In the days of Herod, king of Judea, there was a priest named Zechari’ah, of the division of Abi’jah; and he had a wife of the daughters of Aaron, and her name was Elizabeth.

1.6 And they were both righteous before God, walking in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless.

1.7 But they had no child, because Elizabeth was barren, and both were advanced in years. 1.8 Now while he was serving as priest before God when his division was on duty,

1.9 according to the custom of the priesthood, it fell to him by lot to enter the temple of the Lord and burn incense.

1.10 And the whole multitude of the people were praying outside at the hour of incense.

1.11 And there appeared to him an angel of the Lord standing on the right side of the altar of incense.

§ John the Baptist

1.1 The beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God.

1.2 As it is written in Isaiah the prophet, “Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way;

1.3 the voice of one crying in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight–”

1.4 John the baptiser appeared in the wilderness, preaching a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins.

1.5 And there went out to him all the country of Judea, and all the people of Jerusalem; and they were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins.

1.6 Now John was clothed with camel’s hair, and had a leather girdle around his waist, and ate locusts and wild honey.

§ The Genealogy of Jesus

1.1 The book of the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the son of David, the son of Abraham

1.2 Abraham was the father of Isaac, and Isaac the father of Jacob, and Jacob the father of Judah and his brothers,

1.3 and Judah the father of Perez and Zerah by Tamar, and Perez the father of Hezron, and Hezron the father of Ram,

1.4 and Ram the father of Ammin’adab, and Ammin’adab the father of Nahshon, and Nahshon the father of Salmon,

1.5 and Salmon the father of Bo’az by Rahab, and Bo’az the father of Obed by Ruth, and Obed the father of Jesse,

1.6 and Jesse the father of David the king. And David was the father of Solomon by the wife of Uri’ah,

1.7 and Solomon the father of Rehobo’am, and Rehobo’am the father of Abi’jah, and Abi’jah the father of Asa,

1.8 and Asa the father of Jehosh’aphat, and Jehosh’aphat the father of Joram, and Joram the father of Uzzi’ah,

1.9 and Uzzi’ah the father of Jotham, and Jotham the father of Ahaz, and Ahaz the father of Hezeki’ah,

1.10 and Hezeki’ah the father of Manas’seh, and Manas’seh the father of Amos, and Amos the father of Josi’ah,

AFTER THE LORD HAD DANCED WITH US, my beloved, he went out. And we were like men amazed or fast asleep, and we fled this way and that. And so I saw him suffer, and did not wait by his suffering , but fled to the Mount of Olives and wept at what had come to pass. And when he was hung upon the cross on Friday, at the sixth hour of the day there came a darkness over the whole earth.

And my Lord stood in the middle of the cave and gave light to it and said, “John, for the people below in Jerusalem. I am being crucified and pierced with lances and reeds and given vinegar and gall to drink. But to you ¡ am speaking, and listen to what i speak. I put into your mind to come up to this mountain so that you may hear what a disciple should learn from his teacher and a man of God.”

And when he had said this he showed me a cross of light firmly fixed, and around the cross a great crowd, which had no single form; and in the cross was another form and the same likeness. And I saw the Lord himself above the cross, having no shape but only a kind of voice; yet not that voice that we knew, but one that was sweet and gentle and truly the voice of God, which said to me: “John, there must be one man to hear these things from me: for I need one who is ready to hear.

This cross of Light is sometimes called logos by me for your sakes, sometimes Mind, sometimes Jesus, Sometimes Christ, Sometimes a door, sometimes a way, sometimes bread, sometimes seed, sometimes resurrection, sometimes Son, sometimes Father, sometimes Spirit, sometimes Life, sometimes Truth, Sometimes Pistis (Faith), sometimes Charis(grace); and so is it called for man´s sake.”

Narrative of Joseph of Arimathaea, That Begged the Lord’s Body; in Which Also He Brings in the Cases of the Two Robbers.

CHAP. I.–I am Joseph of Arimathaea, who begged from Pilate the body of the Lord Jesus for burial, and who for this cause was kept close in prison by the murderous and God-fighting Jews, who also, keeping to the law, have by Moses himself become partakers in tribulation and having provoked their Lawgiver to anger, and not knowing that He was God, crucified Him and made Him manifest to those that knew God. in those days in which they condemned the Son of God to be crucified, seven days before Christ suffered, two condemned robbers were sent from Jericho to the procurator Pilate; and their case was as follows:–

The first, his name Gestas, put travellers to death, murdering them with the sword, and others he exposed naked. And he hung up women by the heels, head down, and cut off their breasts, and drank the blood of infants limbs, never having known God, not obeying the laws, being violent from the beginning, and doing such deeds.

And the case of the other was as follows: He was called Demas, and was by birth a Galilaean, and kept an inn. He made attacks upon the rich, but was good to the poor–a thief like Tobit, for he buried the bodies of the poor. And he set his hand to robbing the multitude of the Jews, and stole the law itself in Jerusalem, and stripped naked the daughter of Caiaphas, who was priestess of the sanctuary, and took away from its place the mysterious deposit itself placed there by Solomon. Such were his doings.
And Jesus also was taken on the third day before the pass over, in the evening.

THE REVELATION WHICH ADAM TAUGHT HIS SON SETH IN THE SEVEN HUNDRETH YEAR, SAYING:

Listen to my words, my son Seth. When God had created me out of the earth, along with Eve, your mother, I went about with her in a glory which she had seen in the aeon from which we had come forth. She taught me a word of knowledge of the eternal God. And we resembled the great eternal angels, for we were higher than the god who had created us and the powers with him, whom we did not know.

Then God, the ruler of the aeons and the powers, divided us in wrath. Then we became two aeons. And the glory in our heart(s) left us, me and your mother Eve, along with the first knowledge that breathed within us. And it (glory) fled from us; it entered into […] great […] which had come forth, not from this aeon from which we had come forth, I and Eve your mother. But it (knowledge) entered into the seed of great aeons. For this reason I myself have called you by the name of that man who is the seed of the great generation or from whom (it comes). After those days, the eternal knowledge of the God of truth withdrew from me and your mother Eve. Since that time, we learned about dead things, like men. Then we recognized the God who had created us. For we were not strangers to his powers. And we served him in fear and slavery. And after these things, we became darkened in our heart(s). Now I slept in the thought of my heart.

And I saw three men before me whose likeness I was unable to recognize, since they were not the powers of the God who had created us. They surpassed […] glory, and […] men […] saying to me, “Arise, Adam, from the sleep of death, and hear about the aeon and the seed of that man to whom life has come, who came from you and from Eve, your wife.”

OUR EARLIEST GREEK TEXT OF THESE -which are found in many forms- is that given by Eusebius in his Ecclesiastical History (i. 13), extracted, as he says, by him from the archives of Edessa relating to Abgar and translated from Syriac word for word:

A copy of a letter written by Abgarus the toparch to Jesus, and sent to him by means of Ananias the runner, to Jerusalem.

Abgarus Uchama the toparch to Jesus the good Saviour that hath appeared in the parts (place) of Jerusalem, greeting. I have heard concerning thee and thy cures, that they are done of thee without drugs or herbs: for, as the report goes, thou makest blind men to see again, lame to walk, and cleansest lepers, and castest out unclean spirits and devils, and those that are afflicted with long sickness thou healest, and raisest the dead. And having heard all this of thee, I had determined one of two things, either that thou art God come down from heaven, and so doest these things or art a Son of God that doest these things. Therefore now have I written and entreated thee to trouble thyself to come to me and heal the affliction which I have. or indeed I have heard that the Jews even murmur against thee and wish to do thee hurt. And I have a very little city but (and) comely (reverend), which is sufficient for us both.

Gospel of Peter

From-The Apocryphal New TestamentM. R. James-Translation and NotesOxford: Clarendon Press, 1924

Introduction

THE EARLY TESTIMONIES ABOUT THIS BOOK HAVE BEEN SET FORTH ALREADY. The present fragment was discovered in 1884 in a tomb at Akhmimin Egypt. The manuscript in which it is a little book containing a portion of the Book of Enoch in Greek, this fragment on the Passion and another, a description of Heaven and Hell, which is either (as I now think) a second fragment of the Gospel, or a piece of the Apocalypse of Peter. It will be given later under that head.

We have seen that the Gospel of Peter is quoted by writers of the latter end of the second century. It has been contended that Justin Martyr also used it soon after the middle of that century, but the evidence is not demonstrative. I believe it is not safe to date the book much earlier than A. D. 150.

It uses all four canonical Gospels, and is the earliest uncanonical account of the Passion that exists. It is not wholly orthodox: for it throws doubt on the reality of the Lord’s sufferings, and by consequence upon the reality of his human body. In other words it is, as Serapion of Antioch indicated, of a Docetic character.

Another characteristic of it is its extremely anti-Jewish attitude. Blame is thrown on the Jews wherever possible, and Pilate is white-washed.

Apocalypse of Peter
 
From “The Apocryphal New Testament”M. R. James-Translation and Notes Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1924
 

Introduction

WE HAVE NOT A PURE AND COMPLETE TEXT OF THIS BOOK, which ranked next in popularity and probably also in date to the Canonical Apocalypse of St. John.

We have, first, certain quotations made by writers of the first four centuries.

Next, a fragment in Greek, called the Akhmim fragment, found with the Passion-fragment of the Gospel of Peter in a manuscript known as the Gizeh MS. (discovered in a tomb) now at Cairo. This is undoubtedly drawn from the Apocalypse of Peter: but my present belief is that, like the Passion fragment (see p. 90), it is part of the Gospel of Peter, which was a slightly later book than the Apocalypse and quoted it almost in extenso. There is also in the Bodleian Library a mutilated leaf of a very tiny Greek MS. of the fifth century which supplies a few lines of what I take to be the original Greek text.

ACTS OF THOMAS

From “The Apocryphal New Testament”M. R. James-Translation and NotesOxford: Clarendon Press, 1924

Introduction
THIS IS THE ONLY ONE OF THE FIVE PRIMARY ROMANCES WHICH WE POSSESS IN ITS ENTIRETY. It is of great length and considerable interest. The Stichometry (see p. 24) gives it only 1,600 lines: this is far too little: it may probably apply only to a portion of the Acts, single episodes of which, in addition to the Martyrdom, may have been current separately. We do, in fact, find some separate miracles in some of the oriental versions.
There is a consensus of opinion among Syriac scholars that our Greek text of these Acts is a version from Syriac. The Syriac original was edited and translated by Wright in his Apocryphal Acts, and older fragments have since been published by Mrs. Lewis (Horae Semiticae IV, 1904. Mythological Acts of the Apostles).
Certain hymns occur in the Syriac which were undoubtedly composed in that language: most notable is the Hymn of the Soul (edited separately by A. A. Bevan, and others) which is not relevant to the context. It has been ascribed to Bardaisan the famous Syrian heretic. Only one Greek MS. of the Acts (the Vallicellian, at Rome, Bonnet’s MS. U, of the eleventh century) contains it; it is paraphrased by Nicetas of Thessalonica in his Greek rechauffe of the Acts.