Christianity. Annie Besant

and sometimes artifice and fraud, in order to multiply the number of Christians" (Ibid, p. 169). Thus do "villains" very often "teach honesty." Nor is it true that these apostles were "martyrs [their martyrdom being unproved] without the least prospect of honour or advantage;" on the contrary, they desired to know what they would get by following Jesus. "What shall we have, therefore? … Ye which have followed me shall sit upon twelve thrones" (Matt. xix. 27–30); and, further, in Mark ix. 28–31, we are told that any one who forsakes anything for Jesus shall receive "an hundredfold now in this time," as well as eternal life in the world to come. Surely, then, there was "prospect" enough of "honour and advantage"? These remarks apply quite as strongly to Mark and Luke, neither of whom are pretended to be eye-witnesses. Of Mark we know nothing, except that it is said that there was a man named John, whose surname was Mark (Acts xii. 12 and 25), who ran away from his work (Acts xv. 38); and a man named Marcus, nephew of Barnabas (Col. iv. 10), who may, or may not, be the same, but is probably somebody else, as he is with Paul; and one of the same name is spoken of (2 Tim. ii.) as "profitable for the ministry," which John Mark was not, and who (Philemon 24) was a "fellow-labourer" with Paul in Rome, while John Mark was rejected in this capacity by Paul at Antioch. Why Mark, or John Mark, should write a Gospel, he not having been an eye-witness, or why Mark, or John Mark, should be identical with Mark the Evangelist, only writers of Christian evidences can hope to understand.

      A. That forgeries, bearing the names of Christ, of the apostles, and of the early Fathers, were very common in the primitive Church.

"The opinions, or rather the conjectures, of the learned concerning the time when the books of the New Testament were collected into one volume, as also about the authors of that collection, are extremely different. This important question is attended with great and almost insuperable difficulties to us in these latter times" (Mosheim's "Eccles. Hist.," p. 31). These difficulties arise, to a great extent, from the large number of forgeries, purporting to be writings of Christ, of the apostles, and of the apostolic Fathers, current in the early Church. "For, not long after Christ's ascension into heaven, several histories of his life and doctrines, full of pious frauds and fabulous wonders, were composed by persons whose intentions, perhaps, were not bad, but whose writings discovered the greatest superstition and ignorance. Nor was this all; productions appeared which were imposed upon the world by fraudulent men, as the writings of the holy apostles" (Ibid, p. 31). "Another erroneous practice was adopted by them, which, though it was not so universal as the other, was yet extremely pernicious, and proved a source of numberless evils to the Christian Church. The Platonists and Pythagoreans held it as a maxim, that it was not only lawful, but even praiseworthy, to deceive, and even to use the expedient of a lie, in order to advance the cause of truth and piety. The Jews, who lived in Egypt, had learned and received this maxim from them, before the coming of Christ, as appears incontestably from a multitude of ancient records; and the Christians were infected from both these sources with the same pernicious error, as appears from the number of books attributed falsely to great and venerable names, from the Sibylline verses, and several suppositious productions which were spread abroad in this and the following century. It does not, indeed, seem probable that all these pious frauds were chargeable upon the professors of real Christianity, upon those who entertained just and rational sentiments of the religion of Jesus. The greatest part of these fictitious writings undoubtedly flowed from the fertile invention of the Gnostic sects, though it cannot be affirmed that even true Christians were entirely innocent and irreproachable in this matter" (Ibid, p. 55). "This disingenuous and vicious method of surprising their adversaries by artifice, and striking them down, as it were, by lies and fiction, produced, among other disagreeable effects, a great number of books, which were falsely attributed to certain great men, in order to give these spurious productions more credit and weight" (Ibid, page 77). These forged writings being so widely circulated, it will be readily understood that "It is not so easy a matter as is commonly imagined rightly to settle the Canon of the New Testament. For my own part, I declare, with many learned men, that, in the whole compass of learning, I know no question involved with more intricacies and perplexing difficulties than this. There are, indeed, considerable difficulties relating to the Canon of the Old Testament, as appears by the large controversies between the Protestants and Papists on this head in the last, and latter end of the preceding, century; but these are solved with much more ease than those of the New. … In settling the old Testament collection, all that is requisite is to disprove the claim of a few obscure books, which have but the weakest pretences to be looked upon as Scripture; but, in the New, we have not only a few to disprove, but a vast number to exclude [from] the Canon, which seem to have much more right to admission than any of the apocryphal books of the Old Testament; and, besides, to evidence the genuineness of all those which we do receive, since, according to the sentiments of some who would be thought learned, there are none of them whose authority has not been controverted in the earliest ages of Christianity. … The number of books that claim admission [to the canon] is very considerable. Mr. Toland, in his celebrated catalogue, has presented us with the names of above eighty. … There are many more of the same sort which he has not mentioned" (J. Jones on "The Canon of the New Testament," vol. i., pp. 2–4. Ed. 1788).

      The following list will give some idea of the number of the apocryphal writings from which the four Gospels, and other books of the New Testament, finally emerge as canonical:—

      GOSPELS.

      1. Gospel according to the Hebrews.

      2. Gospel written by Judas Iscariot.

      3. Gospel of Truth, made use of by the Valentinians.

      4. Gospel of Peter.

      5. Gospel according to the Egyptians.

      6. Gospel of Valentinus.

      7. Gospel of Marcion.

      8. Gospel according to the Twelve Apostles.

      9. Gospel of Basilides.

      10. Gospel of Thomas (extant).

      11. Gospel of Matthias.

      12. Gospel of Tatian.

      13. Gospel of Scythianus.

      14. Gospel of Bartholomew.

      15. Gospel of Apelles.

      16. Gospels published by Lucianus and Hesychius

      17. Gospel of Perfection.

      18. Gospel of Eve.

      19. Gospel of Philip.

      20. Gospel of the Nazarenes (qy. same as first)

      21. Gospel of the Ebionites.

      22. Gospel of Jude.

      23. Gospel of Encratites.

      24. Gospel of Cerinthus.

      25. Gospel of Merinthus.

      26. Gospel of Thaddaeus.

      27. Gospel of Barnabas.

      28. Gospel of Andrew.

      29. Gospel of the Infancy (extant).

      30. Gospel of Nicodemus, or Acts of Pilate and Descent

      of Christ to the Under World (extant).

      31. Gospel of James, or Protevangelium (extant).

      32. Gospel of the Nativity of Mary (extant).

      33. Arabic Gospel of the Infancy (extant).

      34. Syriac Gospel of the Boyhood of our Lord Jesus (extant).

      MISCELLANEOUS.

      35. Letter to Agbarus by Christ (extant).

      36. Letter to Leopas by Christ (extant).

      37. Epistle to Peter and Paul by Christ.

      38. Epistle by Christ produced by Manichees.

      39. Hymn by Christ (extant).

      40. Magical Book by Christ.

      41. Prayer by Christ (extant).

      42. Preaching of Peter.

      43.