The Gospel of the Twelve Apostles, Together with the Apocalypses of Each One of Them 1593330081, 9781593330088

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THE GOSPEL OF

THE T W E L V E

APOSTLES

THE

GOSPEL OF

THE

TWELVE TOGETHER

THE

APOSTLES WITH

APOCALYPSES OF

E A C H ONE OF

THEM

EDITED

FROM THE SYRIAC MS. WITH

A TRANSLATION

AND

INTRODUCTION

BY

J. R E N D E L

HARRIS,

(D.LITT.

Dubl.)

FELLOW OF CLARE COLLEGE

A

M GORGIAS PRESS 2002

M.A.

First Gorgias Press Edition, 2002. The special contents of this edition are copyright €> 2002 by Gorgias Press LLC. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States of America by Gorgias Press LLC, New Jersey. This edition is a facsimile reprint of the original edition published by Cambridge University Press, London, 1900.

ISBN 1-59333-008-1

GORGIAS PRESS

46 Orris Ave., Piscataway, NJ 08854 USA www.gorgiaspress.com

Printed and bound simultaneously in the United States of America and Great Britain.

PREFACE. rpHE

scries of tracts contained in the following pages, from

which a selection has already appeared in the

Contemporary

Review for December, 1899, may seem to some to be of too small importance to be honoured with a further publication; but the matter contained in them is new, the

Syriac appears to be

original rather than, a,s is so often the case, translated, and the historical situations, which can clearly be made out, have a value of their own in the record of the decline of Eastern Christianity. M y especial thanks are due to Prof. Nestle of

Maulbronn,

whose acute criticisms and careful proof-reading have added much to the accuracy of the volume. J. R E N D E L

H.

HARRIS.

b

INTRODUCTION.

T

H E MS. from which the text in this volume is taken is Descripnumbered 85 in my private collection (Cod. Syr. Harris 85). M S In the form in which it reached me it consisted of a pile of damaged and ill-arranged leaves, out of which by much pains I have reconstructed, as far as possible, the order of the book of which they formed a part. The handwriting is a fine Estrangelo, which I should, apart from the internal evidence, have attributed to the eighth century, at the latest, and as we shall see by and bye that there is internal evidence for bringing the time of the composition of parts, at least, of the volume, down into the seventh or perhaps the eighth century, it is extremely probable that the ancestry of the book is not a long one, and it is even conceivable that it is altogether without genealogy, and is the copy produced by him who first threw together the matters of which the volume treats. The volume itself might be described in some such way as Lagarde denotes one of his collections as Reliquiae luris Ecclesiastici, with which work of Lagarde it has much in common, as we shall see from the detailed table of contents. It is of Jacobite, or West Syrian origin, as may be seen from certain anti-Nestorian extracts taken from the writings of the Patriarch Severus; nor should we be likely to have erred seriously, if we were to describe it as an Edessan document; for, although the colophon of the book is lost, and the earliest pages are also missing, the frequency and prominence with which writings attributed to Jacob of Edessa, and to his friend and correspondent John the Stylite, occur, as well as the extracts taken from the Edessan Doctrine of Addai etc. will probably convince us that the volume was produced in the neighbourhood of Edessa. As Jacob of Edessa died in A.D. 708, the extracts which our MS. gives from his works must be almost,

8

INTRODUCTION.

if not quite, contemporary. We shall, therefore, say tentatively that the MS. before us is an Edessan volume of the middle of the eighth century, and if subsequent examination gives us a closer determination of time and place, we may be sure that it will not be one that diverges widely from what we have suggested as probable. The extent and contents of the volume are as follows: quires ^ and quires ^

are lost,

to \ are intact, and are quinions,—they occupy

ff. 1—50 of the MS., quire

M

is imperfect after the first eight leaves, which occupy

ff. 51—58, and from this point on there are numerous lacunae in the MS. There is no quire mark again until the fifteenth (en») which apparently occupies ff. 84 onward. There are therefore six quires to be accounted for, more or less completely by the 25 leaves which remain, from which it is clear that a great part of the middle of the MS. is gone. Now as to the actual contents. They are as follows: Fol. 1. The questions of Addai the priest to Jacob of Edessa (see Lagarde, Reliquiae juris ecclesiastici p. vau)- Our text begins on p. - ^ a j a , 1. 25 of Lagarde, and follows Lagarde until his text breaks off, near the end of Jacob of Edessa's reply to the 71st question of Addai, after which the text continues to the end of the 129th question and answer, so that it appears that Lagarde's text of these questions is not much more than the half of the extant matter. Nor is this all, for there follows another series of questions addressed to Jacob, which clearly belong to the same collection ; viz. fol. 34. Questions of the priest Thomas to Jacob, with the answers of the latter. This series ends on f. 37 recto; and then comes, on fol. 37 v, another series addressed to Jacob by John the Stylite. This is followed on fol. 44 v by a series of short chapters, containing replies of the holy fathers to questions which had been sent to them by the Orientals ( r t l j j j j ' . v » ) . They end at the top of f. 47 recto, and are immediately followed on

9

INTRODUCTION.

fol. 47 r by the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles; with which is incorporated, fol. 51 v, the Revelation of Simeon K e p h a ; and on fol. 53 r, the Revelation of James the Apostle ; and on fol. 54 r, the Revelation of John the little, the brother of James, and they [two] are the sons of Zabdai. This Apocalypse ends on fol. 58 r. Fol. 58 r contains an extract from the Teaching of Addai, as it was spoken in the city of Edessa. As the text varies a good deal from that published by Phillips, I give the two side by side for purpose of comparison. ed. Phillips (p. o=n)

Cod. Harris

iuui
V i/3' airoaToXwv Sid M a r d a i o v . Now it is not necessary for us to discuss over again the various questions which have arisen with regard to these Gnostic Gospels. W h a t we have to decide is the relation which subsists between our Gospel which has turned up in Syriac and the Gospel from which Epiphanius quotes. Is there any connexion between them, or are 1 2 3

liner. 30. 13. The passages will be found collected in Hilgenfeld, Nov. Test, extra Canon. Harnack, Geschichte der altchr. LUteratur i. 208.

12

INTRODUCTION.

they the same ?

The Syriac writer has certainly led us to expect

something ancient, for he affirms that the work which he is going to transcribe has been done out of Hebrew into Greek and out of Greek into Syriac.

This certainly looks as if it was meant that

we had here an original Hebrew Gospel of the Twelve Apostles, such as we find traces of in Epiphanius. However, according to the same Epiphanius, the beginning of the book was as follows: 'liiyevero iv reus rj/xepais 'HpwSov rov /3ai r d j ^ o r ^ o K1.! w A r ^

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