As has been indicated in the footnotes many of the foregoing marvels are recounted in the Pseudo-Matthew and Latin Gospel of Thomas as well as in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy. The Pseudo-Matthew also tells how lions adored the Christ child and were bade by him to go in peace.[1704] And how he “took a dead child by the ear and suspended him from the earth in the sight of all. And they saw Jesus speaking with him like a father with his son. And his spirit returned unto him and he lived again. And all marveled thereat.”[1705] When a rich man named Joseph died and was lamented, Jesus asked his father Joseph why he did not help his dead namesake. When Joseph asked what there was that he could do, Jesus replied, “Take the handkerchief which is on your head and go and put it over the face of the corpse and say to him, ‘May Christ save you.’” Joseph followed these instructions except that he said, “Salvet te Iesus,” instead of “Salvet te Christus,” which was possibly the reason why the dead man upon reviving asked, “Who is Jesus?”[1706]
Learning of the Christ child.
While no very elaborate paraphernalia or ceremonial were involved in the miracles ascribed to the Christ child in the Arabic Gospel of the Infancy, it is perhaps worth noting that he was already possessed of all learning and nonplussed his masters, when they tried to teach him the alphabet, by asking the most abstruse questions. And when he appeared before the doctors in the temple, he expounded to them not only the books of the law,[1707] but natural philosophy, astronomy, physics and metaphysics, physiology, anatomy, and psychology. He is represented as telling them “the number of the spheres and heavenly bodies, as also their triangular, square, and sextile aspect; their progressive and retrograde motion; their twenty-fourths and sixtieths of twenty-fourths” (perhaps corresponding to our hours and minutes!) “and other things which the reason of man had never discovered.” Furthermore, “the powers also of the body, its humors and their effects; also the number of its members, and bones, veins, arteries, and nerves; the several constitutions of the body, hot and dry, cold and moist, and the tendencies of them; how the soul operates upon the body; what its various sensations and faculties are; the faculty of speaking, anger, desire; and lastly, the manner of the body’s composition and dissolution, and other things which the understanding of no creature had ever reached.”[1708] It may be added that in the apocryphal epistles supposed to have been interchanged between Christ and Abgarus, king of Edessa, that monarch writes to Christ, “I have been informed about you and your cures, which are performed without the use of herbs and medicines.”[1709]
Other charges of magic against Christ and the apostles.
Jesus is again accused of magic in The Gospel of Nicodemus or Acts of Pontius Pilate, where the Jews tell Pilate that he is a conjurer. After Pilate has been warned by his wife, the Jews repeat, “Did we not say unto thee, He is a magician? Behold, he hath caused thy wife to dream.”[1710] In the Acts of Paul and Thecla, to which Tertullian refers and which are now seen to be an excerpt from the apocryphal Acts of Paul, discovered in 1899 in a Coptic papyrus,[1711] the mob similarly cries out against Paul, “He is a magician; away with him.” In the Acts of Peter and Andrew[1712] they are both accused of being sorcerers by Onesiphorus, who also, however, denies that Peter can make a camel go through the eye of a needle. Nor is he satisfied when the feat is successfully performed with a needle and camel of Peter’s selection, but insists upon its being repeated with an animal and instrument of his own selection. Onesiphorus also has “a polluted woman” ride upon his camel’s back, apparently with the idea that this will break the magic spell. But Peter sends the camel through the eye of the needle, “which opened up like a gate,” as successfully as before, and also back again through it once more from the opposite direction.
The Magi and the star.
Some details are added by the apocrypha to the account of the star at Christ’s birth. The Arabic Gospel states that Zoroaster (Zeraduscht) had predicted the coming of the Magi, that Mary gave the Magi one of Christ’s swaddling clothes, that they were guided on their homeward journey by an angel in the form of the star which had led them to Bethlehem, and that after their return they found that the swaddling cloth would not burn in fire.[1713] The Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians states that this star shone with a brightness far exceeding all others, filling men with fear, and that with its coming the power of magic was destroyed and the new kingdom of God ushered in.[1714]
Allegorical zoology of Barnabas.
In the apocryphal Epistle of Barnabas occurs some of that allegorical zoology which we are apt to associate especially with the Physiologus. In its ninth chapter the hyena and weasel are adduced as examples of its contention that the Mosaic distinction between clean and unclean animals has a spiritual meaning. Thus the command not to eat the hyena means not to be an adulterer or corrupter of others, for the hyena changes its sex annually. The weasel which conceives with its mouth signifies persons with unclean mouths. In the Acts of Barnabas he cures the sick of Cyprus by laying a copy of the Gospel of Matthew upon their bodies.[1715]
Traces of Gnosticism in the apocryphal Acts.