[17]. In the early apocryphal work called Christ’s Descent into Hell, a striking description is given of the joy of the saints and the terror of Satan, when Christ descends to Hades and rescues the dead, leading them up to Paradise. In one of the versions of this work, the number of those “risen with the Lord” is mentioned as “twelve thousand men.”
[18]. If 1 Tim. v. 18 were an exception, it would shew that that letter, quoting a Gospel as “Scripture,” was later than St. Paul. But it is possibly not an exception.
[19]. “Attested” is not the same as “originated.” The tradition may (possibly) have been originated by a single author: but witness, or “attestation”, was borne to its authoritative character by the three earliest Gospels, whose authors, or compilers, independently adopted it. It is therefore ‘triply attested’.
[20]. “The Fragment of Muratori,” Westcott, Introduction to the Gospels, p. 255.
[21]. Of course its omission by the other Evangelists might indicate that the words were not uttered by Jesus; but it might also indicate that the precept, being generally misunderstood, was considered so strange and at variance with facts that it had come to be discredited and considered spurious.
[22]. Page 153.
[24]. i.e. the Powers of Heaven.
[25]. Two different kinds of baskets appear to be denoted by the two different Greek words. A similar difference is also found in the narratives of the feeding of the Four Thousand and the Five Thousand: but it would be easy to shew that no inference of importance can be drawn from this distinction.
[26]. Pp. 275-6.