In introducing them I have not attempted to record every mention of them which is to be found in Church writers. Where the date and character of a book is sufficiently established, it is not important to know that Augustine or even Eusebius names it. It is only when such writers tell us something that we do not learn from other sources that I quote them. And I have reduced the explanatory notes, the mention of previous editions, and the record of various readings, to an absolute minimum. In so doing I have followed the example set in Hennecke’s recent (1904) German collection of New Testament Apocrypha. The first volume of that excellent work contains only introductions and texts: the notes on language, text, and interpretation fill a second volume as large as the first. But it is for the specialist that this second volume is meant: the first is intended for the general reader, and it is for him that my work also is designed.
Numerous as are the texts which appear here, the collection is not an absolutely complete corpus of the apocryphal literature of the New Testament. Several whole groups of writings do not find a place in it: I hope, for sufficient reasons. Of these some notice must now be given.
The first class of books which I have found it impossible to include is that of the Gnostic Apocrypha. We have a considerable mass of this literature, all in Coptic. As a rule it is safe to assume that the Coptic is a version from Greek: but in the case of some of these books it may possibly be the original language.
The oldest of the extant Gnostic treatises have not yet been published. They are contained in a manuscript of the fifth century at Berlin, which is almost complete. The first of them is a Gospel of Mary, in which the risen Saviour instructs the apostles, and Mary then describes a vision in which she was shown the progress of the ‘gnostic’ (enlightened) soul through the seven planetary spheres.
The second is an apocryphon of John, which we know to be earlier than a. d. 180, since Irenaeus used it for his account of a particular school of Gnostics, in Book I, 29–31, of his refutation of heresies. It begins with a dialogue between John and a Pharisee, but quickly merges into Gnostic technicalities.
