THE SACRED BOOKS AND EARLY LITERATURE OF THE EAST WITH HISTORICAL SURVEYS OF THE CHIEF WRITINGS OF EACH NATION Translations, Bibliographies, etc., by the following Leading Orientalists: IN AMERICA: MORRIS JASTROW, LL.D., Professor of Semitic Languages, University of Penn- sylvania; JAMES H. BREASTED, LL.D., Professor of Egyptology. University of Chicago; CHARLES C. TORREY, D.D., Professor of Semitic Languages, Yale University, A. V. W. JACKSON, LL.D., Professor of Indo-Iranian, Columbia Uni- versity; CHARLES R. LANMAN, LL.D., Professor of Sanskrit, Harvard University; REV. CHARLES F. AIKEN, S.T.D., Dean of the Faculty of Theology, Catholic University; FRIEDRICH HIRTH, LL.D., Professor of Chinese, Columbia Uni- versity; REV. WILLIAM E. GRIFFIS, D.D., former Professor at the Imperial University, Tokio. IN EUROPE: E. A. W. BUDGE, F.S.A., Director of Egyptology in the British Museum; SIR GASTON MASPERO, D.C.L., Member of the Royal Institute of France; REV. A. H. SAYCE, LL.D., Professor of Comparative Philology, Oxford University; W. FLINDERS-PETRIE, LL.D., Professor of Egyptology, University College, London; STEPHEN LANGDON, Ph.D., Professor of Assyriology, Oxford University; SIR ERNEST SATOW, LL.D., G.C.M.G., British Minister to Japan; H. OLDENBERG, LL.D., Professor of Sanskrit, Kiel University; T. W. RHYS-DAVIDS, LL.D., Librarian of the Royal Asiatic Society; ARMINIUS VAMBÉRY, LL.D., Professor of Oriental Languages, University of Budapest. IN ASIA: SIR M. COOMARA SWAMY, Legislative Council of Ceylon; ROMESH CHUNDER DUTT, CI.E., Author of the History of Civilization in Ancient India; DARAB D. P. SANJANA, Educational Society of Bombay; VISCOUNT KENCHO SUYE- MATSU, LL.M., Japanese Minister of the Interior; SHEIK FAIZ-ULLAH-BHAI, Head Master of the Schools of Anjuman-i-Islam; RALPH T. GRIFFITH, President Benares College, India; JIVANJI JAMSHEDJI MODI, Fellow of Bombay Uni- versity, Officier de l'Académie Française. Under the editorship of a staff of specialists directed by PROF. CHARLES F. HORNE, PH.D. PARKE, AUSTIN, AND LIPSCOMB, INC. NEW YORK LONDON This Volume is one of a complete set of the Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, consisting of fourteen volumes. In Volume I of the series will be found a cer- tificate as to the limitation of the edition and the registered number of this set. Copyright, 1917, Parke, Austin, and Lipscomb, Inc. THE GRAVE OF JOSEPH. The grave in which tradition says that the Israelites buried the body of the Patriarch Joseph on their restoration to Palestine. © UNDERWOOD & UNDERWOOD, N.Y. THE SACRED BOOKS AND EARLY LITERATURE OF THE EAST —————— VOLUME XIV THE GREAT REJECTED BOOKS OF THE BIBLICAL APOCRYPHA —————— In Translations by REV. R. H. CHARLES, D.D., Fellow of the British Academy; REV. F. C. CONYBEARE, D.D., Officier de l'Académie Française; B. HARRIS COWPER, editor of the "Journal of Sacred Literature"; J. RENDEL HARRIS, LL.D.; L. S. A. WELLS, M.A., of Ripon Theological Col- lege; REV. H. MALDWYN HUGHES, D.D., and other authorities. With a Brief Bibliography by PROF. EDWARD H. JOHNS, Ph.D. ——————— With an Historical Survey and Descriptions by PROF. CHARLES F. HORNE, PH.D. PARKE, AUSTIN, AND LIPSCOMB, INC. NEW YORK LONDON "Let there be light."—GENESIS I, 3. ———— "There never was a false god, nor was there ever really a false religion, unless you call a child a false man."—MAX MÜLLER. CONTENTS OF VOLUME XIV —————— THE REJECTED BIBLICAL BOOKS PAGE INTRODUCTION: The Chief Writings Which Have Sought and Been Denied Admission to the Bible....................................................................... 1 OLD TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA I.—THE BOOKS OF ADAM AND EVE .................................. 7 The Lives of Adam and Eve (about A.D. 100) .......... 11 The Apocalypse of Moses (about A.D. 100) ............. 27 The Slavonic Book of Eve ......................................... 43 II.—THE WRITINGS ATTRIBUTED TO ENOCH ........................ 47 The Great Prophetic Book of Enoch (about 100 B.C.)........................................................................ 52 The Lost Book of Noah (about 200 B.C.) ................. 179 III.—THE APOCALYPSE OF BARUCH (about A.D. 120) ............ 183 His Vision of Heaven................................................. 186 IV.—THE STORY OF AHIKAR ................................................... 199 The Old Armenian Version (A.D. 500) ..................... 203 The New-found Ancient Book (500 B.C.) ................ 228 NEW TESTAMENT APOCRYPHA V.—THE GOSPELS OF CHRIST'S CHILDHOOD ........................ 233 The Protevangelium, or Original Gospel of James (about A.D. 150)........................................... 238 Gospel of Thomas the Doubter (about A.D. 200) ...... 253 The Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (about A.D. 400)..... 261 An Arabic Gospel of the Infancy (about A.D. 600).... 296 v vi CONTENTS PAGE VI.—THE GOSPELS OF NICODEMUS ....................................... 325 The Greek Gospel of Nicodemus (about A.D. 440)... 328 A Later Gospel (about A.D. 600) .............................. 352 The Harrowing of Hell.............................................. 373 The Acts of Pilate ..................................................... 381 The Letters of Pilate ................................................. 389 BIBLIOGRAPHY................................................................... 403 ILLUSTRATIONS IN VOLUME XIV ———————— FACING PAGE The Grave of Joseph .................................................... Frontispiece The Garden of Eden................................................................. 32 The Fountain of the Virgin....................................................... 256 vii SACRED BOOKS AND EARLY LITERATURE THE GREAT REJECTED BOOKS OF THE BIBLICAL APOCRYPHA ——— INTRODUCTION THE CHIEF WRITINGS WHICH HAVE SOUGHT AND BEEN DENIED ADMISSION TO THE BIBLE HE books included in the present volume are those Twhich, loosely speaking, we call "The Apocrypha." They have a strange and piercing interest of their own. They are very old; most of them are very noble of sentiment and high of purpose; yet for one reason or another they have been rightly rejected from the Holy Scriptures into which they sought admission. The origin of most of them is doubtful. Even the language in which they were orig- inally written is uncertain. We can not group them defi- nitely as Hebraic or even as Semitic. Some may have Greek sources, and thus spring from the thought of the great Aryan races, rather than from the teaching of the Semites. All of them have Aryan touches added to their earlier ideas, and difficult to disentangle. Hence our volume, while mainly founded on Hebraic literature, drifts far from it, and the books here given show more of the Western world, the European spirit, than any other early literature of the East. The fact that these books have been denied a place in our Scriptures has gradually weighed down even the meaning 1 2 THE SACRED BOOKS of the word "apocrypha." Originally it meant "secret teachings," then it was accepted as implying that the teach- ings were of doubtful authority, and to-day even our dic- tionaries define the word as meaning "false and deceitful." Clearly, under a name which has so many meanings, many different kinds of books may be included, some wonderful, secret, and profound, others of doubtful worth, and some foolish or even deliberately treacherous. We must separate these classes in our minds. To most readers of to-day the name "Apocrypha" will bring to mind, first of all, those books or parts of books still frequently printed in Protestant Bibles under that heading, grouped together at the close of the Old Testament. These are too well-known to be reprinted here. They are "apocry- pha" in the middle sense of the word, books of doubtful authority. Catholic churches still accept them as part of the hallowed Scriptures. All the Christian world did so until Luther's day; and the chief reason for their rejection by the Protestant churches is that no Hebrew originals of these books are known. They exist only in the Greek version of the Old Testament. That is to say, the early Christians, in accepting as their own the Bible of the Jews, may have been mistaken in including these unquestionably pre-Christian writings as part of the Hebraic canonical books. These apocrypha were part of the later Jewish "wisdom" liter- ature, and as such were revered by the learned Jews of Egypt, who gave them to the world as part of their Greek version of the Jewish Bible. But we have no definite evi- dence that, before the destruction of Jerusalem (A.D. 70), the Jews who dwelt there had accepted these works as "holy" or "inspired." An entirely different class of apocrypha are those of later date, or what might be called the Christian apocrypha. There were naturally many tales of Jesus, which spread from land to land. Some of these may have been based on actual incidents of his life, and a good Christian might well have fancied he was doing a service to his religion when he wrote down one of these tales and so saved it from loss or from LITERATURE OF THE EAST 3 further additions. It was in this way, as readers of our second Arabic volume will recall, that Sunan, or traditions of Mohammed, were at first loosely preserved, and were then gathered into a fixed form some two hundred and fifty years after the Prophet's death. Yet these Sunan, after having been sifted by religious criticism, were accepted by the Mohammedans as part of their holy literature. The Christian Church, on the contrary, set itself firmly against the acceptance