Chapter XI: Part III: The Lost Pauline Gospels (2)

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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.

In Marcion’s text we have therefore the ἀδικαίοι shut and cast out, and the δικαίοι sitting overthroned in the kingdom of God. It can scarcely be doubted that this is the correct reading, and that “Abraham, Isaac and Jacob,” was substituted for δικαίοι at a later period with a conciliatory purpose.

The rest of the chapter, 31‐35, is not to be found in Marcion’s Gospel. The first who are to be last, and the last first, not obscurely means that the Gentiles shall precede the Jews. This was in the “Gospel of the Lord,” which was, however, without the warning given to Christ, “Get thee out, and depart hence; for Herod will kill thee,” and the lamentation of the Saviour over the holy city, “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, which killest the prophets,” &c. Why Marcion should omit this is not clear. It was probably not in the Gospel of Sinope.

23. Luke xiv. 7‐11. The same may be said of the parable put forth to those bidden to a feast, when Christ marked how they chose out the chief rooms. It has been supposed by critics that Marcion omitted it, lest Jesus should seem to sanction feasting; but this reason is far‐fetched, and it must be remembered that he did retain Luke v. 29 and 33.

24. Luke xv. 11‐32. The parable of the Prodigal Son is omitted. That it is left out, as is suggested by some critics, because the elder son signifies mystically the Jewish Church, and the prodigal son represents the Heathen world, is to transfer such allegorical interpretations back to an earlier age than we are justified in doing. Marcion was not bound to admit such an interpretation of the parable, if received in his day. Marcion, moreover, opposed allegorizing the sayings of Scripture, and insisted on their literal interpretation. Neander says, “The other Gnostics united with their theosophical idealism a mystical, allegorizing interpretation of the Scriptures. Marcion, simple in heart, was decidedly opposed to this artificial method of interpretation. He was a zealous advocate of the literal interpretation which prevailed among the antagonists of Gnosticism.”(466) It is therefore most improbable that a popular interpretation of this parable, if such an interpretation existed at that time, should have induced Marcion to omit the parable.

25. Luke xvi. 12: “If ye have not been faithful in that which is another man’s, who will give you that which is mine?” Surely a reading far preferable to that in the Canonical Gospel, “who will give you that which is your own?”

26. Luke, xvi. 17: “One tittle of my words shall not fall,” in place of, “One tittle of the Law shall not fall.” As has been already remarked, the reading in St. Luke is evidently corrupt, altered deliberately by the party of conciliation. Marcion’s is the genuine text.

27. Luke xvii. 9, 10. The saying, “We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do,” was perhaps omitted by Marcion, lest the Gospel should seem to sanction the idea that any obligation whatever rested on the believer. The received text is thoroughly Pauline, inculcating the worthlessness of man’s righteousness. Hahn and Ritschl argue that the whole of the parable, 7‐10, was not in Marcion’s Gospel; and this is probable, though St. Epiphanius only says that Marcion cut out, “We are unprofitable servants; we have done that which was our duty to do.”(467) The whole Parable has such a Pauline ring, that it would probably have been accepted in its entirety by Marcion, if his Gospel had contained it; and the parable is divested of its point and meaning if only the few words are omitted which St. Epiphanius mentions as deficient.

28. Luke xvii. 18: “There are not found returning to give glory to God. And there were many lepers in the time of Eliseus the prophet in Israel; and none of them was cleansed, saving Naaman the Syrian.” In the Gospel of the Lord, this passage concerning the lepers in the time of Eliseus occurs _twice_; once in chap. i. v. 15, as already given, and again here. It has been preserved in St. Luke’s Gospel in only one place, in that corresponding with Marcion i. 15, viz. Luke iv. 27.

It is clear that this was a fragmentary saying of our Lord drifting about, which the compiler of the Sinope Gospel inserted in two places where it thought it would fit in with other passages. When St. Luke’s Gospel was revised, it was found that this passage occurred twice, and that it was without appropriateness in chap. xvii. after verse 18, and was therefore cut out. But in Marcion’s Gospel it remained, a monument of the manner in which the Gospels were originally constructed.

29. Luke xviii. 19. Marcion had: “Jesus said to him, Do not call me good; one is good, the Father;” another version of the text, not a deliberate alteration.

30. Luke xviii. 31‐34. The prophecies of the passion omitted by Marcion.

31. Luke xix. 29‐46. The ride into Jerusalem on an ass, and the expulsion of the buyers and sellers from the Temple, are omitted.

Why the Palm‐Sunday triumphal entry should have been excluded does not appear. In St. Luke’s Gospel Jesus is not hailed as “King of the Jews” and “Son of David.” Had this been the case, these two titles, we may conclude, would have been eliminated from the narrative; but we see no reason why the whole account should be swept away. It probably did not exist in the original Gospel Marcion obtained in Pontus.

Did Marcion cut out the narrative of the expulsion of the buyers and sellers from the Temple? I think not. St. John, in his Gospel, gives that event in his second chapter as occurring, not at the close of the ministry of Christ, but at its opening.

St. John is the only evangelist who can be safely relied upon for giving the chronological order of events. St. Matthew, as has been already shown, did not write the acts of our Lord, but his sayings only; and St. Mark was no eye‐witness.

A Pauline Gospel would not contain the account of the purifying of the Temple, and the saying, “My house is the house of prayer.” But when St. Matthew’s Gospel, or St. Mark’s, found its way into Asia Minor, this passage was extracted from one of them, and interpolated in the Lucan text, in the same place where it occurred in those Gospels—at the end of the ministry, and therefore in the wrong place.

32. Luke xx. 9‐18. The parable of the vineyard and the husbandmen. This Marcion probably omitted because it made the Lord of the vineyard, who sent forth the prophets, the same as the Lord who sent his son. The lord of the vineyard to Marcion was the Demiurge, but the Supreme Lord sent Christ.

33. Luke xx. 37, 38, omitted by Marcion, because a reference to Moses, and God, as the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.

34. Luke xxi. 18: “There shall not an hair of your head perish,” omitted, perhaps, lest the God of heaven, whom Christ revealed, should appear to concern himself about the vile bodies of men, under the dominion of the God of this world; but more probably this verse did not exist in the original text. The awkwardness of its position has led many critics to reject it as an interpolation,(468) and the fact of Marcion’s Gospel being without it goes far to prove that the original Luke Gospel was without it.

35. Luke xxi. 21, 22. The warning given by our Lord to his disciples to flee from Jerusalem when they see it encompassed with armies. Verse 21 was omitted no doubt because of the words, “These be the days of vengeance, that all things which are written may be fulfilled.” This jarred with Marcion’s conception of the Supreme God as one of mercy, and of Jesus as proclaiming blessings and forgiveness, in place of the vengeance and justice of the World‐God.

36. Luke xxii. 16‐18. The distribution of the paschal cup among the disciples is omitted.

37. Luke xxii. 28‐30. The promise that the apostles should eat and drink in Christ’s kingdom and judge the twelve tribes, was omitted by Marcion, as inconsistent with his views of the spiritual nature of the heavenly kingdom; and that judgment should be committed by the God of free forgiveness to the apostles, was in his sight impossible. Why Luke xxiii. 43, 47‐49, were not in Marcion’s Gospel does not appear; they can hardly have been omitted purposely.

38. Luke xxiii. 2. In Marcion’s Gospel it ran: “And they began to accuse him, saying, We found this one perverting the nation, and destroying the Law and the Prophets, and forbidding to give tribute to Caesar, and leading away the women and children.”

It is not possible that Marcion should have forced the words “destroying the Law and the Prophets” into the text, for these are the accusations of _false_ witnesses. And this is precisely what Marcion taught that Christ had come to do. Both this accusation and that other, that he drew away after him the women and children from their homes and domestic duties and responsibilities, most probably did exist in the original text. It is not improbable that they were both made to disappear from the authorized text later, when the conciliatory movement began.

39. Luke xxiv. 43. In Marcion’s Gospel, either the whole of the verse, “Verily, I say unto thee, To‐day shalt thou be with me in Paradise,” was omitted, or more probably only the words “in Paradise.” Marcion would not have purposely cut out such an instance of free acceptance of one who had all his life transgressed the Law, but he may have cancelled the words “in Paradise.”

40. Luke xxiv. 25 stood in Marcion’s Gospel, “O fools, and in heart slow to believe all that he spake unto you;” and 27 and 45, which relate that Jesus explained to the two disciples out of Moses and the Prophets how he must suffer, and that he opened their understanding to understand the Scriptures, were both absent.

41. Luke xxiv. 46. Instead of Christ appealing to the Prophets, Marcion made him say, “These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.” This was possibly Marcion’s doing.

The other differences between Marcion’s Gospel and the Canonical Gospel of St. Luke are so small, that the reader need not be troubled with them here. For a fuller and more particular account of Marcion’s Gospel he is referred to the works indicated in the footnote.(469)

It will be seen from the list of differences between the “Gospel of our Lord” and the Gospel of St. Luke, that all the apparent omissions cannot be attributed to Marcion. The Gospel he had he regarded with supreme awe; it was because his Gospel was so ancient, so hallowed by use through many years, that it was invested by him with sovereign authority, and that he regarded the other Gospels as apocryphal, or at best only deutero‐ canonical.

It is by no means certain that even where his Gospel has been apparently tampered with to suit his views, his hands made the alterations in it. What amplifications St. Luke’s Gospel passed through when it underwent revision for a second edition, we cannot tell.

The Gospel of our Lord, if not the original Luke Gospel—and this is probable—was the basis of Luke’s compilation. But that it was Luke’s first edition of his Gospel, drawn up when St. Paul was actively engaged in founding Asiatic Churches, is the view I am disposed to take of it. As soon as a Church was founded, the need of a Gospel was felt. To satisfy this want, Paul employed Luke to collect memorials of the Lord’s life, and weave them together into an historical narrative.

The Gospel of our Lord contains nothing which is not found in that of St. Luke. The arrangement is so similar, that we are forced to the conclusion that it was either used by St. Luke, or that it was his original composition. If he used it, then his right to the title of author of the third Canonical Gospel falls to the ground, as what he added was of small amount. Who then composed the Gospel? We know of no one to whom tradition even at that early age attributed it.

St. Luke was the associate of St. Paul; ecclesiastical tradition attributes to him a Gospel. That of “Our Lord” closely resembles the Canonical Luke’s Gospel, and bears evidence of being earlier in composition, whilst that which is canonical bears evidence of later manipulation. All these facts point to Marcion’s Gospel as the original St. Luke—not, however, quite as it came to Marcion, but edited by the heretic.

That the first edition of Luke bore a stronger Pauline impress than the second is also probable. The Canonical Luke has the Pauline stamp on it still, but beside it is the Johannite seal. More fully than any other Gospel does it bring out the tenderness of Christ towards sinners, a feature which has ever made it exceeding precious to those who have been captives and blind and bruised, and to whom that Gospel proclaims Christ as their deliverer, enlightener and healer.(470)

It is not necessary here to point out the finger‐mark of Paul in this Gospel; it has been often and well done by others. It is an established fact, scarcely admitting dispute, that to him it owes its colour, and that it reflects his teaching.(471)

And it was this Gospel, in its primitive form, before it had passed under the hands of St. John, or had been recast by its author, that I think we may be satisfied Marcion possessed. That he made a few erasures is probable, I may almost say certain; but that he ruthlessly carved it to suit his purpose cannot be established.

Of the value of Marcion’s Gospel for determining the original text of the third Gospel, it is difficult to speak too highly.

II. The Gospel Of Truth.

Valentine, by birth an Egyptian, probably of Jewish descent, it may be presumed received his education at Alexandria. From this city he travelled to Rome (circ. A.D. 140); in both places he preached the Catholic faith, and then retired to Cyprus.(472) A miserable bigotry which refused to see in a heretic any motives but those which are evil, declared that in disgust at not obtaining a bishopric which he coveted, and to which a confessor was preferred, Valentine lapsed into heresy. We need no such explanation of the cause of his secession from orthodoxy. He was a man of an active mind and ardent zeal. Christian doctrine was then a system of facts; theology was as yet unborn. What philosophic truths lay at the foundation of Christian belief was unsuspected. Valentine could not thus rest. He strove to break through the hard facts to the principles on which they reposed. He was a pioneer in Christian theology.

And for his venturous essay he was well qualified. His studies at Alexandria had brought him in contact with Philonism and with Platonism. He obtained at Cyprus an acquaintance with the doctrines of Basilides. His mind caught fire, his ideas expanded. The Gnostic seemed to him to open gleams of light through the facts of the faith he had hitherto professed with dull, unintelligent submission; and he placed himself under the inspiration and instruction of Basilides.

But he did not follow him blindly. The speculations of the Gnostic kindled a train of ideas which were peculiarly Valentine’s own.

The age was not one to listen patiently to his theorizing. Men were called on to bear testimony by their lives to facts. They could endure the rack, the scourge, the thumbscrew, the iron rake, for facts, not for ideas. That Jesus had lived and died and mounted to heaven, was enough for their simple minds. They cared nothing, they made no effort to understand, what were the causes of evil, what its relation to matter.

Consequently Valentine met with cold indifference, then with hot abhorrence. He was excommunicated. Separation embittered him. His respect for orthodoxy was gone; its hold upon him was lost; and he allowed himself to drift in the wide sea of theosophic speculation wherever his ideas carried him.

Valentine taught that in the Godhead, exerting creative power were manifest two motions—a positive, the evolving, creative, life‐giving element; and the negative, which determined, shaped and localized the creative force. From the positive force came life, from the negative the direction life takes in its manifestation.

The world is the revelation of the divine ideas, gradually unfolding themselves, and Christ and redemption are the perfection and end of creation. Through creation the idea goes forth from God; through Christ the idea perfected returns to the bosom of God. Redemption is the recoil wave of creation, the echo of the fiat returning to the Creator’s ear.

The manifestation of the ideas of God is in unity; but in opposition to unity exists anarchy; in antagonism with creation emerges the principle of destruction. The representative of destruction, disunion, chaos, is Satan. The work of creation is infinite differentiation in perfect harmony. But in the midst of this emerges discord, an element of opposition which seeks to ruin the concord in the manifestation of the divine ideas. Therefore redemption is necessary, and Christ is the medium of redemption, which consists in the restoration to harmony and unity of that which by the fraud of Satan is thrown into disorder and antagonism.

But how comes it that in creation there should be a disturbing element? That element must issue in some manner from the Creator; it must arise from some defect in Him. Therefore, Valentinian concluded, the God who created the world and gave source to the being of Satan cannot have been the supreme, all‐good, perfect God.

But if redemption be the perfecting of man, it must be the work of the only perfect God, who thereby counteracts the evil that has sprung up through the imperfection of the Demiurge.

Therefore Jesus Christ is an emanation from the Supreme God, destroying the ill effects produced in the world by the faulty nature of the Creator, undoing the discord and restoring all to harmony.

Jesus was formed by the Demiurge of a wondrously constituted ethereal body, visible to the outward sense. This Jesus entered the world through man, as a sunbeam enters a chamber through the window. The Demiurge created Jesus to redeem the people from the disorganizing, destructive effects of Satan, to be their Messiah.

But the Supreme God had alone power perfectly to accomplish this work; therefore at the baptism of Christ, the Saviour (Soter) descended on him, consecrating him to be the perfect Redeemer of mankind, conveying to him a mission and power which the Demiurge could not have given.

In all this we see the influence of Marcion’s ideas.

We need not follow out this fundamental principle of his theosophy into all its fantastic formularies. If Valentine was the precursor of Hegel in the enunciation of the universal antinomy, he was like Hegel also in involving his system in a cloud of incomprehensible terminology, in producing bewilderment where he sought simplicity.

Valentine accepted the Old Testament, but only in the same light as he regarded the great works of the heathen writers to be deserving of regard.(473) Both contained good, noble examples, pure teaching; but in both also was the element of discord, contradictory teaching, and bad example. Ptolemy, the Valentinian who least sacrificed the moral to the theosophic element, scarcely dealt with the Old Testament differently from St. Paul. He did not indeed regard the Old Testament as the work of the Supreme God; the Mosaic legislation seemed to him to be the work of an inferior being, because, as he said, it contained too many imperfections to be the revelation of the Highest God, and too many excellences to be attributed to an evil spirit. But, like the Apostle of the Gentiles, he saw in the Mosaic ceremonies only symbols of spiritual truth, and, like him, he thought that the symbol was no longer necessary when the idea it revealed was manifested in all its clearness. Therefore, when the ideas these symbols veiled had reached and illumined men’s minds, the necessity for them—husks to the idea, letters giving meaning to the thought—was at an end.

Like St. Paul, therefore, he treated the Old Testament as a preparation for the New one, but as nothing more. We ascertain Ptolemy’s views from a letter of his to Flora, a Catholic lady whom he desired to convert to Valentinianism.(474)

In this letter he laboured to show that the God of this world (the Demiurge) was not the Supreme God, and that the Old Testament Scriptures were the revelation of the Demiurge, and not of the highest God. To prove the first point, Ptolemy appealed to apostolic tradition—no doubt to Pauline teaching—which had come down to him, and to the words of the Saviour, by which, he admits, all doctrine must be settled. In this letter he quotes largely from St. Paul’s Epistles, and from the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. John.

Like Marcion, Ptolemy insisted that the Demiurge, the God of this world, was also the God who revealed himself in the Old Testament, and that to this God belonged justice, wrath and punishment; whereas to the Supreme Deity was attributed free forgiveness, absolute goodness. The Saviour abolished the Law, therefore he abolished all the system of punishment for sin, that the reign of free grace might prevail.

According to Ptolemy, therefore, retributive justice exercised by the State was irreconcilable with the nature of the Supreme God, and the State, accordingly, was under the dominion of the Demiurge.

To the revelation of the old Law belonged ordinances of ceremonial and of seasons. These also are done away by Christ, who leads from the bondage of ceremonial to spiritual religion.

Another Valentinian of note was Heracleon, who wrote a Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, of which considerable fragments have been preserved by Origen; and perhaps, also, a Commentary on the Gospel of St. Luke. Of the latter, only a single fragment, the exposition of Luke xii. 8, has been preserved by Clement of Alexandria.(475)

Heracleon was a man of deep spiritual piety, and with a clear understanding. He held Scripture in profound reverence, and derived his Valentinian doctrines from it. So true is the saying:

“Hic liber est in quo quærit sua dogmata quisque,
Invenit pariter dogmata quisque sua.”

His interpretation of the narrative of the interview of the Saviour with the woman of Samaria will illustrate his method of dealing with the sacred text.

Heracleon saw in the woman of Samaria a type of all spiritual natures attracted by that which is heavenly, godlike; and the history represents the dealings of the Supreme God through Christ with these spiritual natures (πνευματικοί).

For him, therefore, the words of the woman have a double meaning: that which lies on the surface of the sacred record, with the intent and purpose which the woman herself gave to them; and that which lay beneath the letter, and which was mystically signified. “The water which our Saviour gives,” says he, “is his spirit and power. His gifts and grace are what can never be taken away, never exhausted, can never fail to those who have received them. They who have received what has been richly bestowed on them from above, communicate again of the overflowing fulness which they enjoy to the life of others.”

But the woman asks, “Give me this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw”—hither—that is, to Jacob’s well, the Mosaic Law from which hitherto she had drunk, and which could not quench her thirst, satisfy her aspirations. “She left her water‐pot behind her” when she went to announce to others that she had found the well of eternal life. That is, she left the vessel, the capacity for receiving the Law, for she had now a spiritual vessel which could hold the spiritual water the Saviour gave.

It will be seen that Valentinianism, like Marcionism, was an exaggerated Paulinism, infected with Gnosticism, clearly antinomian. Though the Valentinians are not accused of licentiousness, their ethical system was plainly immoral, for it completely emancipated the Christian from every restraint, and the true Christian was he who lived by faith only. He had passed by union with Christ from the dominion of the God of this World, a dominion in which were punishments for wrong‐doing, into the realm of Grace, of sublime indifference to right and wrong, to a region in which no acts were sinful, no punishments were dealt out.

If Valentinianism did not degenerate into the frantic licentiousness of the earlier Pauline heretics, it was because the doctrine of Valentine was an intellectual, theosophical system, quite above the comprehension of vulgar minds, and therefore only embraced by exalted mystics and cold philosophers.

The Valentinians were not accused of mutilating the Scriptures, but of evaporating their significance. “Marcion,” says Tertullian, “knife in hand, has cut the Scriptures to pieces, to give support to his system; Valentine has the appearance of sparing them, and of trying rather to accommodate his errors to them, than of accommodating them to his errors. Nevertheless, he has curtailed, interpolated more than did Marcion, by taking from the words their force and natural value, to give them forced significations.”(476)

The Pauline filiation of the sect can hardly be mistaken. The relation of Valentine’s ideas to those of Marcion, and those of Marcion to the doctrines of St. Paul, are fundamental. But, moreover, they claimed a filiation more obvious than that of ideas—they asserted that they derived their doctrines from Theodas, disciple of the Apostle of the Gentiles.(477) The great importance they attributed to the Epistles of St. Paul is another evidence of their belonging to the anti‐judaizing family of heretics, if another proof be needed.

The Valentinians possessed a number of apocryphal works. “Their number is infinite,” says Irenaeus.(478) But this probably applies not to the first Valentinians, but to the Valentinian sects, among whom apocryphal works did abound. Certain it is, that in all the extracts made from the writings of Valentine, Ptolemy and Heracleon, by Origen, Epiphanius, Tertullian, &c., though they abound in quotations from St. Paul’s Epistles and from the Canonical Gospels, there are none from any other source.

Nevertheless, Irenaeus attributes to them possession of a “Gospel of Truth” (Evangelium Veritatis). “This Scripture,” says he, “does not in any point agree with our four Canonical Gospels.”(479) To this also, perhaps, Tertullian refers, when he says that the Valentinians possessed “their own Gospel in addition to ours.”(480)

Epiphanius, however, makes no mention of this Gospel; he knew the writings of the Valentinians well, and has inserted extracts in his work on heresies.

III. The Gospel Of Eve.

The immoral tendency of Valentinianism broke out in coarse, flagrant licentiousness as soon as the doctrines of the sect had soaked down out of the stratum of educated men to the ranks of the undisciplined and vulgar.

Valentinianism assumed two forms, broke into two sects,—the Marcosians and the Ophites.

Mark, who lived in the latter half of the second century, came probably from Palestine, as we may gather from his frequent use of forms from the Aramaean liturgy. But he did not bring with him any of the Judaizing spirit, none of the grave reverence for the moral law, and decency of the Nazarene, Ebionite and kindred sects sprung from the ruined Church of the Hebrews.

He was followed by trains of women whom he corrupted, and converted into prophetesses. His custom was, in an assembly to extend a chalice to a woman saying to her, “The grace of God, which excels all, and which the mind cannot conceive or explain, fill all your inner man, and increase his knowledge in you, dropping the grain of mustard‐seed into good ground.”(481) A scene like a Methodist revival followed. The woman was urged to speak in prophecy; she hesitated, declared her inability; warm, passionate appeals followed closely one on another, couched in equivocal language, exciting the religious and natural passions simultaneously. The end was a convulsive fit of incoherent utterings, and the curtain fell on the rapturous embraces of the prophet and his spiritual bride.

Mark possessed a Gospel, and “an infinite number of apocryphal Scriptures,” says Irenaeus. The Gospel contained a falsified life of Christ. One of the stories from it he quotes. When Jesus was a boy, he was learning letters. The master said, “Say Alpha.” Jesus repeated after him, “Alpha.” Then the master said, “Say Beta.” But Jesus answered, “Nay, I will not say Beta till you have explained to me the meaning of Alpha.”(482) The Marcosians made much of the hidden mysteries of the letters of the alphabet, showing that Mark had brought with him from Palestine something akin to the Cabbalism of the Jewish rabbis.

This story is found in the apocryphal Gospel of St. Thomas. It runs somewhat differently in the different versions of that Gospel, and is repeated twice in each with slight variations.

In the Syriac:

“Zacchaeus the teacher said to Joseph, I will teach the boy Jesus
whatever is proper for him to learn. And he made him go to school.
And he, going in, was silent. But Zacchaeus the scribe began to
tell him (the letters) from Alaph, and was repeating to him many
times the whole alphabet. And he says to him that he should answer
and say after him; but he was silent. Then the scribe became
angry, and struck him with his hand upon his head. And Jesus said,
A smith’s anvil, being beaten, can (not) learn, and it has no
feeling; but I am able to say those things, recited by you, with
knowledge and understanding (unbeaten).”(483)

In the Greek:

“Zacchaeus said to Joseph ... Give thy son to me, that he may
learn letters, and with his letters I will teach him some
knowledge, and chiefly this, to salute all the elders, and to
venerate them as grandfathers and fathers, and to love those of
his own age. And he told him all the letters from Alpha to Omega.
Then, looking at the teacher Zacchaeus, he said to him, Thou that
knowest not Alpha naturally, how canst thou teach Beta to others?
Thou hypocrite! if thou knowest, teach Alpha first, and then we
shall believe thee concerning Beta.”(484)

Or, according to another Greek version, after Jesus has been delivered over by Joseph to Zacchaeus, the preceptor

“—wrote the alphabet in Hebrew, and said to him, Alpha. And the
child said, Alpha. And the teacher said again, Alpha. And the
child said the same. Then again a third time the teacher said,
Alpha. Then Jesus, looking at the instructor, said, Thou knowest
not Alpha; how wilt thou teach another the letter Beta? And the
child, beginning at Alpha, said of himself the twenty‐two letters.
Then he said again, Hearken, teacher, to the arrangement of the
first letter, and know how many accessories and lines it hath, and
marks which are common, transverse and connected. And when
Zacchaeus heard such accounts of one letter, he was amazed, and
could not answer him.”(485)

Another version of the same story is found in the Gospel of the pseudo‐ Matthew:

“Joseph and Mary coaxing Jesus, led him to the school, that he
might be taught his letters by the old man, Levi. When he entered
he was silent; and the master, Levi, told one letter to Jesus, and
beginning at the first, Aleph, said to him, Answer. But Jesus was
silent, and answered nothing. Wherefore, the preceptor Levi, being
angry, took a rod of a storax‐tree, and smote him on the head. And
Jesus said to the teacher Levi, Why dost thou smite me? Know in
truth that he who is smitten teacheth him that smiteth, rather
than is taught by him.... And Jesus added, and said to Levi, Every
letter from Aleph to Tau is known by its order; thou, therefore,
say first what is Tau, and I will tell thee what Aleph is. And he
added, They who know not Aleph, how can they say Tau, ye
hypocrites? First say what Aleph is, and I shall then believe you
when you say Beth. And Jesus began to ask the names of the
separate letters, and said, Let the teacher of the Law say what
the first letter is, or why it hath many triangles, scalene,
acute‐angled, equilinear, curvi‐linear,” &c.(486)

At the root of Mark’s teaching there seems to have been a sort of Pantheism. He taught that all had sprung from a great World‐mother, partook of her soul and nature; but over against this female principle stood the Deity, the male element.

Man represents the Deity, woman the world element; and it is only through the union of the divine and the material that the material can be quickened into spiritual life. In accordance with this theory, they had a ceremonial of what he called spiritual, but was eminently carnal, marriage, which is best left undescribed.

Not widely removed from the Marcosians was the Valentinian sect of the Ophites. Valentinianism mingled with the floating superstition, the fragments of the wreck of Sabianism, which was to be found among the lower classes.

The Ophites represented the Demiurge in the same way as did the Valentinians. They called the God of this world and of the Jews by the name of Jaldaboth. He was a limited being, imposing restraint on all his creatures; he exercised his power by imposing law. As long as his creatures obeyed law, they were subject to his dominion. But above Jaldaboth in the sublime region without limit reigns the Supreme God. When Adam broke the Law of the World‐God, he emancipated himself from his bondage, he passed out of his realm, he placed himself in relation to the Supreme God.

The world is made by Jaldaboth, but in the world is infused a spark of soul, emanated from the highest God. This divine soul strives after emancipation from the bonds imposed by connection with matter, created by the God of this world. This world‐soul under the form of a serpent urged Eve to emancipate herself from thraldom, and pass with Adam, by an act of transgression, into the glorious liberty of the sons of the Supreme God.

The doctrine of the Ophites with respect to Christ was that of Valentine. Christ came to break the last chains of Law by which man was bound, and to translate him into the realm of grace where sin does not exist.

The Ophites possessed a Gospel, called the “Gospel of Eve.” It contained, no doubt, an account of the Fall from their peculiar point of view. St. Epiphanius has preserved two passages from it. They are so extraordinary, and throw such a light on the doctrines of this Gospel, that I quote them. The first is:

“I was planted on a lofty mountain, and lo! I beheld a man of
great stature, and another who was mutilated. And then I heard a
voice like unto thunder. And when I drew near, he spake with me
after this wise: I am thou, and thou art I. And wheresoever thou
art, there am I, and I am dispersed through all. And wheresoever
thou willest, there canst thou gather me; but in gathering me,
thou gatherest thyself.”(487)

The meaning of this passage is not doubtful. It expresses the doctrine of absolute identity between Christ and the believer, the radiation of divine virtue through all souls, destroying their individuality, that all may be absorbed into Christ. Individualities emerge out of God, and through Christ are drawn back into God.

The influence of St. Paul’s ideas is again noticeable. We are not told that the perfect man who speaks with a voice of thunder, and who is placed in contrast with the mutilated man, is Christ, and that the latter is the Demiurge, but we can scarcely doubt it. It is greatly to be regretted that we have so little of this curious book preserved.(488) The second passage, with its signification, had better repose in a foot‐note, and in Greek. It allows us to understand the expression of St. Ephraem, “They shamelessly boast of their Gospel of Eve.”(489)

IV. The Gospel Of Perfection.

The Gospel of Perfection was another work regarded as sacred by the Ophites. St. Epiphanius says: “Some of them (_i.e._ of the Gnostics) there are who vaunt the possession of a certain fictitious, far‐fetched poem which they call the Gospel of Perfection, whereas it is not a Gospel, but the perfection of misery. For the bitterness of death is consummated in that production of the devil. Others without shame boast their Gospel of Eve.”

St. Epiphanius calls this Gospel of Perfection a poem, ποιήμα. But M. Nicolas justly observes that the word ποιήμα is used here, not to describe the work as a poetical composition, but as a fiction. In a passage of Irenaeus,(490) of which only the Latin has been preserved, the Gospel of Judas is called “confictio,” and it is probable that the Greek word rendered by “confictio” was ποιήμα.(491)

Baur thinks that the Gospel of Perfection was the same as the Gospel of Eve.(492) But this can hardly be. The words of St. Epiphanius plainly distinguish them: “Some vaunt the Gospel of Perfection ... others boast ... the Gospel of Eve;” and elsewhere he speaks of their books in the plural.(493)

V. The Gospel Of St. Philip.

This Gospel belonged to the same category as those of Perfection and of Eve, and belonged, if not to the Ophites, to an analogous sect, perhaps that of the Prodicians. St. Philip passed, in the early ages of Christianity, as having been, like St. Paul, an apostle of the Gentiles,(494) and perhaps as having agreed with his views on the Law and evangelical liberty. But tradition had confounded together Philip the apostle and Philip the deacon of Caesarea, who, after having been a member of the Hellenist Church at Jerusalem, and having been driven thence after the martyrdom of Stephen, was the first to carry the Gospel beyond the family of Israel, and to convert the heathen to Christ.(495) His zeal and success caused him to be called an Evangelist.(496) In the second century it was supposed that an Evangelist meant one who had written a Gospel. And as no Gospel bearing his name existed, one was composed for him and attributed to him or to the apostle—they were not distinguished.

St. Epiphanius has preserved one passage from it:

“The Lord has revealed to me the words to be spoken by the soul
when it ascends into heaven, and how it has to answer each of the
celestial powers. The soul must say, I have known myself, and I
have gathered myself from all parts. I have not borne children to
Archon (the prince of this world); but I have plucked up his
roots, and I have gathered his dispersed members. I have learned
who thou art; for I am, saith the soul, of the number of the
celestial ones. But if it is proved that the soul has borne a son,
she must return downwards, till she has recovered her children,
and has absorbed them into herself.”(497)

It is not altogether easy to catch the meaning of this singular passage, but it apparently has this signification. The soul trammelled with the chains of matter, created by the Archon, the Creator of the world, has to emancipate itself from all material concerns. Each thought, interest, passion, excited by anything in the world, is a child borne by the soul to Archon, to which the soul has contributed animation, the world, form. The great work of life is the disengagement of the soul from all concern in the affairs of the world, in the requirements of the body. When the soul has reached the most exalted perfection, it is cold, passionless, indifferent; then it comes before the Supreme God, passing through the spheres guarded by attendant aeons or angels, and to each it protests its disengagement. But should any thought or care for mundane matters be found lurking in the recesses of the soul, it has to descend again, and remain in exile till it has re‐absorbed all the life it gave, the interest it felt, in such concerns, and then again make its essay to reach God.

The conception of Virtues guarding the concentric spheres surrounding the Most High is found among the Jews. When Moses went into the presence of God to receive the tables of stone, he met first the angel Kemuel, chief of the angels of destruction, who would have slain him, but Moses pronounced the incommunicable Name, and passed through. Then he came to the sphere governed by the angel Hadarniel, and by virtue of the Name passed through. Next he came to the sphere over which presided the angel Sandalfon, and penetrated by means of the same Name. Next he traversed the river of flame, called Riggon, and stood before the throne.(498)

St. Paul held the popular Rabbinic notion of the spheres surrounding the throne of God, for he speaks of having been caught up into the third heaven.(499) In the apocryphal Ascension of Isaiah there are seven heavens that the prophet traverses.

The Rabbinic ideas on the spheres were taken probably from the Chaldees, and from the same source, perhaps, sprang the conception of the soul making her ascension through the angel‐guarded spheres, which we find in the fragment of the Gospel of St. Philip.

Unfortunately, we have not sufficient of the early literature of the Chaldees and Assyrians to be able to say for certain that it was so. But a very curious sacred poem has been preserved on the terra‐cotta tablets of the library of Assurbani‐Pal, which exhibits a similar belief as prevalent anciently in Assyria.

This poem represents the descent of Istar into the Immutable Land, the nether world, divided into seven circles. The heavenly world of the Chaldees was also divided into seven circles, each ruled by a planet. The poem therefore exhibits a descent instead of an ascent. But there is little reason to doubt that the passage in each case would have been analogous. We have no ancient Assyrian account of an ascent; we must therefore content ourselves with what we have.

Istar descends into the lower region, and as she traverses each circle is despoiled of one of her coverings worn in the region above, till she stands naked before Belith, the Queen of the Land of Death.

i. “At the first gate, as I made her enter, I despoiled her; I took the crown from off her head.

“ ‘Hold, gatekeeper! Thou hast taken the crown from off my head.’