a book, like the venerable Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Preaching of Peter, which we should dearly have liked to possess for the light they would throw on primitive Christian history, has perished as a consequence of their unfavourable verdict, and we regret the loss—no one more keenly than myself: but with the verdict that consigned them first to obscurity and then to destruction I cannot quarrel.
But, it may be said, if these writings are good neither as books of history, nor of religion, nor even as literature, why spend time and labour on giving them a vogue which on your own showing they do not deserve? Partly, of course, in order to enable others to form a judgement on them; but that is not the whole case. The truth is that they must not be regarded only from the point of view which they claim for themselves. In almost every other aspect they have a great and enduring interest.
If they are not good sources of history in one sense, they are in another. They record the imaginations, hopes, and fears of the men who wrote them; they show what was acceptable to the unlearned Christians of the first ages, what interested them, what they admired, what ideals of conduct they cherished for this life, what they thought they would find in the next. As folk-lore and romance, again, they are precious; and to the lover and student of mediaeval literature and art they reveal the source of no inconsiderable part of his material and the solution of many a puzzle. They have, indeed, exercised an influence (wholly disproportionate to their intrinsic merits) so great and so widespread, that no one who cares about the history of Christian thought and Christian art can possibly afford to neglect them.
The remainder of this Preface will be devoted to the explanation of several matters: the word apocryphal and my use of it: the misleading character of the last ‘Apocryphal New Testament’ and the fallacies which dominate it: the contents of the present one: and, lastly, some notice of the writings which are not included in it.
First as to the title—the Apocryphal New Testament.
The words apocrypha and apocryphal, particularly the latter, have come to mean, oftener than not, in common speech, that which is spurious or untrue. They do not mean
