upon these Apocryphal books as inspired, and in having a special Gospel called after his own name, which, therefore, he clearly adopts as the exponent of his ideas of Christian truth, completely ignores the canonical Gospels, and not only does not offer any evidence for their existence, but proves, on the contrary, that he did not recognize any such works as of authority. There is no ground, therefore, for Tischendorfs assumption that the commentary of Basilides "on the Gospel" was written upon our Gospels, but that idea is negatived in the strongest way by all the facts of the case.(1) The perfectly simple interpretation of the statement is that long ago suggested by Valesius,(2) that the Commentary of Basilides was composed upon his own Gospel,(3) whether it was the Gospel according to the Hebrews or the Egyptians.
Moreover, it must be borne in mind that Basilides used the word "Gospel" in a peculiar sense. Hippolytus, in the work usually ascribed to him, writing of the Basilidians and describing their doctrines, says: "When therefore it was necessary, he (?) says, that we, the children of God, should be revealed, in expectation of whose revelation, he says, the creation groaned and travailed, the Gospel came into the world, and passed through every principality and power and dominion, and every name that is named."(4) "The Gospel, therefore,
came first from the Sonship, he says, through the Son, sitting by the Archon, to the Archon, and the Archon learnt that he was not the God of all things but begotten,"(1) &c. "The Gospel, according to them, is the knowledge of supramundane matters,"(2) &c. This may not be very intelligible, but it is sufficient to show that "the Gospel" in a technical sense(3) formed a very important part of the system of Basilides. Now there is nothing whatever to show that the twenty-four books which he composed "on the Gospel" were not in elucidation of the Gospel as technically understood by him, illustrated by extracts from his own special Gospel and from the tradition handed down to him by Glaucias and Matthias. The emphatic assertion of Canon Westcott that Basilides "admitted the historic truth of all the facts contained in the canonical Gospels," is based solely upon the following sentence of the work attributed to Hippolytus; Jesus, however, was generated according to these (followers of Basilides) as we have already said.(4) But when the generation which has already been declared had taken place, all things regarding the Saviour, according to them, occurred in like manner as they have been written in the Gospel."(5) There are, however, several important points to be borne in mind in reference to this passage. The statement in question is not made in
connection with Basilides himself, but distinctly in reference to his followers, of whom there were many in the time of Hippolytus and long after him. It is, moreover, a general observation the accuracy of which we have no means of testing, and upon the correctness of which there is no special reason to rely. The remark, made at the beginning of the third century, however, that the followers of Basilides believed that the actual events of the life of Jesus occurred in the way in which they have been written in the Gospels, is no proof whatever that either they or Basilides used or admitted the authority of our Gospels. The exclusive use by any one of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, for instance, would be perfectly consistent with the statement. No one who considers what is known of that Gospel, or who thinks of the use made of it in the first half of the second century by perfectly orthodox Fathers, can doubt this. The passage is, therefore, of no weight as evidence for the use of our Gospels. Canon Westcott himself admits that in the extant fragments of Isidorus, the son and disciple of Basilides, who "maintained the doctrines of his father," he has "noticed nothing bearing on the books of the New Testament.."(1) On the supposition that Basilides actually wrote a Commentary on our Gospels, and used them as Scripture, it is indeed passing strange that we have so little evidence on the point.
We must now, however, examine in detail all of the quotations, and they are few, alleged to show the use of our Gospels, and we shall commence with those of Tischendorf. The first passage which he points out is found in the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria. Tischendorf guards himself, in reference to these quotations,
by merely speaking of them as "Basilidian" (Basilidianisch),(1) but it might have been more frank to have stated clearly that Clement distinctly assigns the quotation to the followers of Basilides [———],(2) and not to Basilides himself.(3) The supposed quotation, therefore, however surely traced to our Gospels, could really not prove anything in regard to Basilides. The passage itself compared with the parallel in Matt. xix. 11, 12, is as follows:—
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