But a large body of men could not, or would not, admit this distinction. St. Paul had proclaimed the emancipation of the Christian from the Law. They, having been Gentiles, had never been under the ceremonial Law of Moses. How then could they be set at liberty from it? The only freedom they could understand was freedom from the natural law written on the fleshy tables of their hearts by the same finger that had inscribed the Decalogue on the stones in Sinai. The God of the Jews was, indeed, the God of the world. The Old Testament was the revelation of his will. Christ had emancipated man from the Law. The Law was at enmity to Christ; therefore the Christian was at enmity to the Law. The Law was the voice of the God of the Jews; therefore the Christian was at enmity to the God of the Jews. Jesus was the revelation of the All-good God, the Old Testament the revelation of the evil God.
Looking at the Old Testament from this point of view, the extreme wing of the Pauline host, the Cainites, naturally came to regard the Patriarchs as being under [pg 304] the protection, the Prophets as being under the inspiration, of the God of the Jews, and therefore to hold them in abhorrence, as enemies of Christ and the Supreme Deity. Those, on the other hand, who were spoken of in the Old Testament as resisting God, punished by God, were true prophets, martyrs of the Supreme Deity, forerunners of the Gospel. Cain became the type of virtue; Abel, on the contrary, of error and perversity. The inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah were pioneers of Gospel freedom; Corah, Dathan and Abiram, martyrs protesting against Mosaism.
In this singular rehabilitation, Judas Iscariot was relieved from the anathema weighing upon him. This man, who had sold his Master, was no longer regarded as a traitor, but as one who, inspired by the Spirit of Wisdom, had been an instrument in the work of redemption. The other apostles, narrowed by their prejudices, had opposed the idea of the death of Christ, saying, “Be it far from thee, Lord; this shall not be unto thee.”[508] But Judas, having a clearer vision of the truth, and the necessity for the redemption of the world by the death of Christ, took the heroic resolution to make that precious sacrifice inevitable. Rising above his duties as disciple, in his devotion to the cause of humanity, he judged it necessary to prevent the hesitations of Christ, who at the last moment seemed to waver; to render inevitable the prosecution of his great work. Judas therefore went to the chiefs of the synagogue, and covenanted with them to deliver up his Master to their will, knowing that by his death the salvation of the world could alone be accomplished.[509]
Judas therefore became the chief apostle to the Cainites. [pg 305] They composed a Gospel under his name, τό Εὐαγγέλιον τοῦ Ἰουδα.[510] Irenæus also mentions it;[511] it must therefore date from the second century. Theodoret mentions it likewise. But none of the ancient Fathers quote it. Not a single fragment of this curious work has been preserved.
“It is certainly to be regretted,” says M. Nicolas, “that this monument of human folly has completely disappeared. It should have been carefully preserved as a monument, full of instruction, of the errors into which man is capable of falling, when he abandons himself blindly to theological dogmatism.”[512]
In addition to the Gospel of Judas, the Cainites possessed an apocryphal book relating to that apostle whom they venerated scarcely second to Judas, viz. St. Paul. It was entitled the “Ascension of Paul,” Ἀναβατικὸν Παύλου,[513] and related to his translation into the third heaven, and the revelation of unutterable things he there received.[514]
An “Apocalypse of Paul” has been preserved, but it almost certainly is a different book from the Anabaticon. It contains nothing favouring the heretical views of the Cainites, and was read in some of the churches of Palestine. This Apocalypse in Greek has been published by Dr. Tischendorf in his Apocalypses Apocryphae (Lips. 1866), and the translation of a later Syriac version in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. VIII. 1864.[515]