CHAPTER XVI

THE CHRISTIAN APOCRYPHA Magic in the Bible—Apocryphal Gospels of the Infancy—Question of their date—Their medieval influence—Resemblances to Apuleius and Apollonius in the Arabic _Gospel of the Infancy_—Counteracting magic and demons—Other miracles and magic by the Christ child—Sometimes with injurious results—Further marvels from the _Pseudo-Matthew_—Learning of the Christ child—Other charges of magic against Christ and the apostles—The _Magi_ and the star—Allegorical zoology of Barnabas—Traces of Gnosticism in the apocryphal Acts—Legend of St. John—Legend of St. Sousnyos—Old Testament Apocrypha of the Christian era. [Sidenote: Magic in the Bible.] It is hardly necessary to rehearse here in detail the numerous allusions to, prohibitions of, and descriptions of the practice of magic, witchcraft, and astrology, enchantments and exorcisms, divination and interpretation of dreams, which are to be found scattered through the pages of the Old and New Testaments. Such passages had a profound influence upon Christian thought on such themes in the early church and during the middle ages, and we shall have occasion to mention many, if not most, of such scriptural passages, in connection with this later discussion of them by the church fathers and others. For instance, Pharaoh’s magicians and their contests with Moses and Aaron; Balaam and his imprecations and enchantments and prediction that a star would come out of Jacob and a scepter out of Israel; the witch of Endor or ventriloquist and her invocation of what seemed to be the ghost of Samuel; the repeated use of the numbers seven and twelve, suggestive of the planets and signs of the zodiac, as in the twelve cakes of showbread and candlestick with seven branches; the dreams and interpretation of dreams of Joseph and Daniel, not to mention the former’s silver divining cup;[1666] the wise men who saw Christ’s star in the east; Christ’s own allusion to the shaking of “the powers of the heavens” and the gathering of His elect from the four winds at His second coming; the accusation against Christ that He cast out demons by the aid of the prince of demons; the eclipse of the sun at the time of the crucifixion; the adventures of the apostles with Simon Magus, with Elymas the sorcerer, and with the damsel possessed with a spirit of divination who brought her master much gain by soothsaying; the burning of their books of magic by the vagabond Jewish exorcists; the prohibitions of heathen divination and witchcraft by the Mosaic law and by the prophets; the penalties prescribed for sorcerers in the Book of Revelation; at the same time the legalized practice of similar superstitions, such as the ordeal to test a wife’s faithfulness by making her drink “the bitter water that causeth the curse,”[1667] the engraved gold plate upon the high priest’s forehead,[1668] or the use of Paul’s handkerchief and underwear to cure the sick and dispel demons; the promise to believers in the closing verses or appendix of _The Gospel according to St. Mark_ that they shall cast out devils, speak with new tongues, handle serpents and drink poison without injury, and cure the sick by laying on of hands. The foregoing scarcely exhaust the obvious allusions or analogies to astrology and other magic arts in the Bible, to say nothing of less explicit passages[1669] which were later taken to justify certain occult arts, as Exodus XIII, 9, to support chiromancy, and the Gospel of John XI, 9, to support the astrological doctrine of elections. Suffice it for the present to say that the prevailing atmosphere of the Bible is one of prophecy, vision, and miracle, and that with these go, like the obverse face of a coin or medal, their inevitable accompaniments of divination, demons, and magic. [Sidenote: Apocryphal gospels of the infancy.] This is also the case in apocryphal literature of the New Testament which is now so much less familiar and accessible especially to English readers,[1670] but which had wide currency in the early Christian and medieval periods. We may begin with the apocryphal gospels and more particularly those dealing with the infancy and childhood of Christ. Of these two are believed to date from the second century, namely, the Gospel of James or “Gospel of the Infancy” (_Protoevangelium Iacobi_)[1671] and the Gospel of St. Thomas, which is mentioned by Hippolytus. However, he cites a sentence which is not in the present text—of which the manuscripts are scanty and for the most part of late date[1672]—and the gospel as we have it is not Gnostic, as he says it is, so that our version has probably been altered by some Catholic.[1673] Later in date is the Latin gospel of the Pseudo-Matthew—perhaps of the fourth or fifth century—and the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, which is believed to be a translation from a lost Syriac original. We are the worst off of all for manuscripts of its text and apparently there is no Latin manuscript of it now extant, although a Latin text has reached us through the printed editions. Tischendorf was, however, “unwilling to omit in this new collection of the apocryphal gospels that ancient and memorable monument of the superstition of oriental Christians,” and for the same reason we shall survey its medley of miracle and magic in the present chapter. Speaking of the flight into Egypt this gospel says, “And the Lord Jesus performed a great many miracles in Egypt which are not found recorded either in the Gospel of the Infancy or in the Perfect Gospel.”[1674] Tischendorf noted the close resemblance of its first nine chapters to the Gospel of James and of chapters 36-55 to the Gospel of Thomas, while the intervening chapters “contain especially fables of the sort you may fittingly call oriental, filled with allusions to Satan and demons and sorceries and magic arts.”[1675] We find, however, the same sort of fables in the other three apocryphal gospels; there are simply more of them in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy. It appears to be a compilation and may embody other earlier sources no longer extant as well as passages from the pseudo-James and pseudo-Thomas. [Sidenote: Question of their date.] There is a tendency on the part of orthodox Christian scholars to defer the writing of apocryphal works to as late a date as possible, and they seem to have a notion that they can save the credibility or purity of the miracles of the New Testament[1676] by representing such miracles as those recorded of the infancy of Christ as the inventions of a later age. And it is probably true that all these marvels were not the invention of a single century but of a succession of centuries. On the other hand, I know of no reason for thinking Christians of the first century any less credulous than Christians of the fifth century; it was not until the latter century that Pope Gelasius’ condemnation of apocryphal books was drawn up, but apocryphal books had long been in existence before that time; nor for thinking the Christians of the thirteenth century any more credulous than those of the other two centuries. It is only in our own age that Christians have become really critical of such matters. Moreover, these unacceptable miracles, whenever they were invented, were presumably invented by and accepted by Christians, who must bear the discredit for them. Whatever the century was, the same men believed in them who believed in the miracles recorded in the New Testament. If the plant has flowered into such rank superstition, can the original seed escape responsibility? The Arabic Gospel of the Infancy is no doubt an extreme instance of Christian credence in magic, but it is an instance that cannot be overlooked, whatever its date, place, or language. [Sidenote: Their medieval influence.] These apocryphal gospels of the Infancy, which are in part extant only in Latin, continued to be influential in the medieval period. At the beginning of it we find included in Pope Gelasius’ list of apocryphal works, published at a synod at Rome in 494,[1677] besides apocryphal gospels of Matthew and of Thomas—which last we are told, “the Manicheans use”—a _Liber de infantia Salvatoris_ and a _Liber de nativitate Salvatoris et de Maria et obstetrice_. There are numerous manuscripts of such gospels in the later medieval centuries but it would not be safe to attempt to identify or classify them without examining each in detail. As Tischendorf said, the Latins do not seem to have long remained content with mere translations of the Greek pseudo-gospel of James but combined the stories told there with others from the Pseudo-Thomas or other sources into new apocryphal treatises. Thus the extant Latin apocrypha in no case reproduce the Gospel of James accurately but rather are imitated after it, and include some of it, omit some of it, embellish some of its tales, and add to it.[1678] Mâle states in his work on religious art in France in the thirteenth century that _The Gospel of the Pseudo-Matthew_ and _The Gospel of Nicodemus_ or _Acts of Pilate_ were the two apocryphal gospels especially used in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.[1679] [Sidenote: Resemblances to Apuleius and Apollonius in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy.] That the fables of the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy were at least not fresh from the orient is indicated by the way in which some of the incidents in the stories of Apuleius and Apollonius of Tyana are closely paralleled.[1680] In the parlor of a well furnished house where lived two sisters with their widowed mother stood a mule caparisoned in silk and with an ebony collar about his neck, “whom they kissed and were feeding.”[1681] He was their brother, transformed into a mule by the sorcery of a jealous woman one night a little before daybreak, although all the doors of the house were locked at the time. “And we,” they tell a girl who had been instantly cured of leprosy by use of perfumed water in which the Christ child had been washed and who had then become the maid-servant of the virgin Mary,[1682] “have applied to all the wise men, magicians, and diviners in the world, but they have been of no service to us.”[1683] The girl recommends them to consult Mary, who restores their brother to human form by placing the Christ child upon his back. This romantic episode is then brought to a fitting conclusion by the marriage of the brother to the girl who had assisted in his restoration to his right body. As the demon, who in the form of an artful beggar was causing the plague at Ephesus and whom Apollonius had stoned to death, turned at the last moment into a mad dog, so Satan, when forced by the presence of the Christ child to leave the boy Judas, ran away like a mad dog.[1684] The reviving of a corpse by an Egyptian prophet in the _Metamorphoses_ in order that the dead man may tell who murdered him is paralleled in both the Arabic Infancy and the gospels of Thomas and the Pseudo-Matthew by the conduct of Jesus when accused of throwing another boy down from a house-top. The text reads: “Then the Lord Jesus going down stood over the dead boy and said with a loud voice, ‘Zeno, Zeno, who threw you down from the house-top?’ Then the dead boy answered, ‘Lord, thou didst not throw me down, but so-and-so did.’”[1685] [Sidenote: Counteracting magic and demons.] Many were the occasions upon which the Christ child or his mother counteracted the operations of magic or relieved persons who were possessed by demons. Kissing him cured a bride whom sorcerers had made dumb at her wedding,[1686] and a bridegroom who was kept by sorcery from enjoying his wife was cured of his impotence by the mere presence of the holy family who lodged in his house for the night.[1687] Mary’s pitying glance was sufficient to expel Satan from a woman possessed by demons.[1688] Another upright woman who was often vexed by Satan in the form of a serpent when she went to bathe in the river,[1689] which reminds one somewhat of Olympias and Nectanebus,[1690] was permanently cured by kissing the Christ child. And a girl, whose blood Satan used to suck, miraculously discomfited him when he appeared in the shape of a huge dragon by putting upon her head and about her eyes a swaddling cloth of Jesus which Mary had given to her. Fire then went forth and was scattered upon the dragon’s head and eyes, as from the blinking eyes of the artful beggar who caused the plague in the _Life of Apollonius of Tyana_, and he fled in a panic.[1691] A priest’s three-year-old son who was possessed by a great multitude of devils, who uttered many strange things, and who threw stones at everybody, was likewise cured by placing on his head one of Christ’s swaddling clothes which Mary had hung out to dry. In this case the devils made their escape through his mouth “in the shape of crows and serpents.”[1692] Such marvels may offend modern taste but have their probable prototype in the miracles wrought by use of Paul’s handkerchief and underwear in the New Testament and illustrate, like the placing of spittle on the eyes of the blind man, the great healing virtue then ascribed to the perspiration and other secretions and excretions of the human body. [Sidenote: Other miracles and magic by the Christ child.] Sick children as well as lepers were cured by the water in which Jesus had bathed or by wearing coats made of his swaddling clothes,[1693] while the child Bartholomew was snatched from the very jaws of death by the mere smell of the Christ child’s garments the moment he was placed on Jesus’ bed.[1694] On the road to Egypt is a balsam which was produced “from the sweat which ran down there from the Lord Jesus.”[1695] The Christ child cured snake-bite, in the case of his brother James by blowing on it, in the case of his playfellow, Simon the Canaanite, by forcing the serpent who had stung him to come out of its hole and suck all the poison from the wound, after which he cursed the snake “so that it immediately burst asunder and died.”[1696] When the boy Jesus took all the cloths waiting to be dyed with different colors in a dyer’s shop and threw them into the furnace, the dyer began to scold him for this mischief, but the cloths all came out of the desired colors.[1697] Jesus also miraculously remedied the defective carpentry of Joseph, who had worked for two years on a throne for the king of Jerusalem and made it too short. Jesus and Joseph took hold of the opposite sides and pulled the throne out to the required dimensions.[1698] [Sidenote: Sometimes with injurious results.] The usual result of the Christ child’s miracles was that all the bystanders united in praising God. But when his little playmates went home and told their parents how he had made his clay animals walk and his clay birds fly, eat, and drink, their elders said, “Take heed, children, for the future of his company, for he is a sorcerer; shun and avoid him, and from henceforth never play with him.”[1699] Indeed, if the theory of the fathers is correct that the surest hall-mark by which divine miracles may be distinguished from feats of magic is that the former are never wrought for any evil end while the latter are, it must be admitted that his contemporaries were sometimes justified in suspecting the Christ child of resort to magic. After his playmates had been thus forbidden to associate with Jesus, they hid from him in a furnace, and some women at a house near by told him that there were not boys but kids in the furnace. Jesus then actually transformed them into kids who came skipping forth at his command.[1700] It is true that he soon changed them back into human form, and that the women worshiped Christ and asserted their conviction that he was “come to save and not to destroy.” But on several subsequent occasions Jesus is represented in the apocryphal gospels of the infancy as causing the death of his playmates. When another boy broke a little fish-pool which Jesus had constructed on the Sabbath day, he said to him, “In like manner as this water has vanished, so shall thy life vanish,” and the boy presently died.[1701] When a third boy ran into Jesus and knocked him down, he said, “As thou hast thrown me down, so shalt thou fall, nor ever rise;” and that instant the boy fell down and died.[1702] When Jesus’ teacher started to whip him, his hand withered and he died. After which we are not surprised to hear Joseph say to Mary, “Henceforth we will not allow him to go out of the house; for everyone who displeases him is killed.”[1703] [Sidenote: Further marvels from the _Pseudo-Matthew_.] As has been indicated in the footnotes many of the foregoing marvels are recounted in the Pseudo-Matthew and Latin Gospel of Thomas as well as in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy. The Pseudo-Matthew also tells how lions adored the Christ child and were bade by him to go in peace.[1704] And how he “took a dead child by the ear and suspended him from the earth in the sight of all. And they saw Jesus speaking with him like a father with his son. And his spirit returned unto him and he lived again. And all marveled thereat.”[1705] When a rich man named Joseph died and was lamented, Jesus asked his father Joseph why he did not help his dead namesake. When Joseph asked what there was that he could do, Jesus replied, “Take the handkerchief which is on your head and go and put it over the face of the corpse and say to him, ‘May Christ save you.’” Joseph followed these instructions except that he said, “_Salvet te Iesus_,” instead of “_Salvet te Christus_,” which was possibly the reason why the dead man upon reviving asked, “Who is Jesus?”[1706] [Sidenote: Learning of the Christ child.] While no very elaborate paraphernalia or ceremonial were involved in the miracles ascribed to the Christ child in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, it is perhaps worth noting that he was already possessed of all learning and nonplussed his masters, when they tried to teach him the alphabet, by asking the most abstruse questions. And when he appeared before the doctors in the temple, he expounded to them not only the books of the law,[1707] but natural philosophy, astronomy, physics and metaphysics, physiology, anatomy, and psychology. He is represented as telling them “the number of the spheres and heavenly bodies, as also their triangular, square, and sextile aspect; their progressive and retrograde motion; their twenty-fourths and sixtieths of twenty-fourths” (perhaps corresponding to our hours and minutes!) “and other things which the reason of man had never discovered.” Furthermore, “the powers also of the body, its humors and their effects; also the number of its members, and bones, veins, arteries, and nerves; the several constitutions of the body, hot and dry, cold and moist, and the tendencies of them; how the soul operates upon the body; what its various sensations and faculties are; the faculty of speaking, anger, desire; and lastly, the manner of the body’s composition and dissolution, and other things which the understanding of no creature had ever reached.”[1708] It may be added that in the apocryphal epistles supposed to have been interchanged between Christ and Abgarus, king of Edessa, that monarch writes to Christ, “I have been informed about you and your cures, which are performed without the use of herbs and medicines.”[1709] [Sidenote: Other charges of magic against Christ and the apostles.] Jesus is again accused of magic in _The Gospel of Nicodemus_ or _Acts of Pontius Pilate_, where the Jews tell Pilate that he is a conjurer. After Pilate has been warned by his wife, the Jews repeat, “Did we not say unto thee, He is a magician? Behold, he hath caused thy wife to dream.”[1710] In the _Acts of Paul and Thecla_, to which Tertullian refers and which are now seen to be an excerpt from the apocryphal _Acts of Paul_, discovered in 1899 in a Coptic papyrus,[1711] the mob similarly cries out against Paul, “He is a magician; away with him.” In the _Acts of Peter and Andrew_[1712] they are both accused of being sorcerers by Onesiphorus, who also, however, denies that Peter can make a camel go through the eye of a needle. Nor is he satisfied when the feat is successfully performed with a needle and camel of Peter’s selection, but insists upon its being repeated with an animal and instrument of his own selection. Onesiphorus also has “a polluted woman” ride upon his camel’s back, apparently with the idea that this will break the magic spell. But Peter sends the camel through the eye of the needle, “which opened up like a gate,” as successfully as before, and also back again through it once more from the opposite direction. [Sidenote: The _Magi_ and the star.] Some details are added by the apocrypha to the account of the star at Christ’s birth. The Arabic Gospel states that Zoroaster (Zeraduscht) had predicted the coming of the _Magi_, that Mary gave the _Magi_ one of Christ’s swaddling clothes, that they were guided on their homeward journey by an angel in the form of the star which had led them to Bethlehem, and that after their return they found that the swaddling cloth would not burn in fire.[1713] The _Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians_ states that this star shone with a brightness far exceeding all others, filling men with fear, and that with its coming the power of magic was destroyed and the new kingdom of God ushered in.[1714] [Sidenote: Allegorical zoology of Barnabas.] In the apocryphal _Epistle of Barnabas_ occurs some of that allegorical zoology which we are apt to associate especially with the Physiologus. In its ninth chapter the hyena and weasel are adduced as examples of its contention that the Mosaic distinction between clean and unclean animals has a spiritual meaning. Thus the command not to eat the hyena means not to be an adulterer or corrupter of others, for the hyena changes its sex annually. The weasel which conceives with its mouth signifies persons with unclean mouths. In the _Acts of Barnabas_ he cures the sick of Cyprus by laying a copy of the _Gospel of Matthew_ upon their bodies.[1715] [Sidenote: Traces of Gnosticism in the apocryphal Acts.] If we turn again to the various apocryphal Acts, where we have already noted charges of magic made against the apostles, we may find traces of gnosticism which have already been noted by Anz.[1716] In the _Acts of Thomas_ the Holy Ghost is called the pitying mother of seven houses whose rest is the eighth house of heaven. In the _Acts of Philip_ that apostle prays, “Come now, Jesus, and give me the eternal crown of victory over every hostile power ... Lord Jesus Christ ... lead me on ... until I overcome all the cosmic powers and the evil dragon who opposes us. Now therefore Lord Jesus Christ make me to come to Thee in the air.” _The Acts of John_, too, speak of overcoming fire and darkness and angels and demons and archons and powers of darkness who separate man from God. [Sidenote: Legend of John.] We deal in another chapter with the struggle of the apostles with Simon Magus as recounted in the apocryphal _Acts of Peter and Paul_, and with similar legends of the contests of other apostles with magicians. Here, however, we may mention some of the marvels in the apocryphal legend of St. John, supposed to have been written by his disciple Procharus and “which deluded the Greek Church by its air of sincerity and its extreme precision of detail,”[1717] although it does not seem to have reached the west until the sixteenth century. John is represented as drinking without injury a poison which had killed two criminals, and as reviving two corpses without going near them by directing an incredulous pagan to lay his cloak over them. A Stoic philosopher had persuaded some young men to embrace the life of poverty by converting their property into gems and then pounding the gems to pieces. John made the criticism that this wealth might have better been distributed among the poor, and when challenged to do so by the Stoic, prayed to God and had the gems made whole again. Later when the young men longed for their departed wealth, he turned the pebbles on the seashore into gold and precious stones, a miracle which is said to have persuaded the medieval alchemists that he possessed the secret of the philosopher’s stone.[1718] At any rate Adam of St. Victor in the twelfth century wrote the following lines concerning St. John in a chant to be used in the church service: Cum gemmarum partes fractas Solidasset, has distractas Tribuit pauperibus; Inexhaustum fert thesaurum Qui de virgis fecit aurum, Gemmas de lapidibus.[1719] [Sidenote: Legend of St. Sousnyos.] The brief legend of St. Sousnyos, which Basset has included in his edition of Ethiopian Apocrypha,[1720] is all magic, beginning with an incantation or magic prayer against disease and demons. There is also a Slavonic version. This Sousnyos is presumably the same as the Sisinnios who is said by the author of the apocryphal _Acts of Archelaus_,[1721] forged about 330-340 A. D., to have abandoned Mani, embraced Christianity, and revealed to Archelaus secret teachings which enabled him to triumph over his adversary. [Sidenote: Old Testament apocrypha of the Christian era.] While on the subject, mention may be made of two works which properly belong to the apocrypha of the Old Testament, but which first appear during the Christian era and so fall within our period. _The Ascension of Isaiah_,[1722] of which the old Latin version was printed at Venice in 1522, and which dates back to the second century, is something like the _Book of Enoch_, describing Isaiah’s ascent through the seven heavens and vision of the mission of Christ. In the _Book of Baruch_, of which the original version was written in Greek by a Christian of the third or fourth century,[1723] the most interesting episode is the magic sleep into which, like Rip Van Winkle, Abimelech falls during the destruction of Jerusalem by the Chaldeans. In the legend of Jeremiah the prophet’s soul is absent from his body on one occasion for three days, while on another occasion he dresses up a stone to impersonate himself before the populace who are trying to stone him to death, in order that he may gain time to make certain revelations to Abimelech and Baruch. When he has had his say, the stone asks the people why they persist in stoning it instead of Jeremiah, against whom they then turn their missiles.[1724] Such is no exhaustive listing but rather a few examples of the encouragement given to belief in magic by the Christian Apocrypha.