superexalted, and marriage condemned (at least by Leucius) as an institution of the devil. In the fourth century, the Manichaeans upheld these as the true Acts of the Apostles, and most likely rejected the Canonical Acts in their favour. Photius, learned patriarch of Constantinople at the end of the ninth century, read all five books as the work of Leucius, whose name had by that time come to be attache to the whole. But it is to be kept in mind that though they all came to be lumped together as the work of one heretical author, they are by five different writers, and three out of the five are, speaking somewhat generously, orthodox.
They were followed by a host of legends of the apostles, of which enough is said in the body of this book.
The Epistles are few. The famous correspondence of Christ with Abgarus is probably of the third century, the dull Epistle to the Laodiceans may be of the second, the letters of Paul and Seneca, equally poor, are not older than the fourth. But the Epistle of the Apostles, now first appearing in English, is dated by its editor at about A.D. 160, and the ‘Third Epistle to the Corinthians’ (which is part of the Acts of Paul) is also of that date.
The Apocalypses are headed by that of Peter, which I would assign to the first quarter of the second century. It has distinct resemblances in language and in matter to the Second Epistle of Peter. For instance, that book alone among the canonical scriptures speaks of the destruction of the world by fire; and this is prominent in the Apocalypse of Peter. For the first time, all the remains we have of this early book are brought together.
The Apocalypse of Paul follows. Though only of the fourth century, it is extremely interesting as a direct descendant of Peter, and as the parent of innumerable later visions of the next world.
That of Thomas—of uncertain date—appears (in a very ragged guise, it is true) for the first time in English. For the Virgin’s Apocalypse and that of Stephen (a very doubtful item) summaries are enough. I have excluded, as not sufficiently interesting, the late Apocalypse of John which Tischendorf prints.
In translating my texts I have employed a style meant to remind the reader of the Authorized Version of the Bible.
