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Luk_2:40
After the circumstances to which our attention has been given, it is stated that “the child grew, a waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was upon Him.”
After this, the incident of the visit to Jerusalem, and the interview with the doctors in the temple, occurs when Jesus has reached twelve years of age. Then we are informed that “He went down with them, and came to Nazareth, and was subject unto them;” and that “Jesus increased in stature, and in favor with God and man.” And this is all we learn till He is thirty years old, and commences his public ministry.
The information which the evangelists were not instructed to give, there were many who in the early ages of Christianity undertook to supply; and it would need a larger disquisition than would be proper here, to render it intelligible how it happened that certain apocryphal gospels—or narratives framed entirely from the fancy—could not only be written by well-meaning men, who thought that they did God service, but that such narratives should have been received and credited by large bodies of Christians. The two general principles seem to have conspired in the construction of the narrative portions of these books. One was the desire to fill up gaps or remove imagined discrepancies in the canonical gospels, and thus make the story complete. The other was a wish to fulfill all the prophecies of the Old Testament by having ready a fact for every supposed prediction. The operation of these principles will best be shown by a few examples.
The gospel history is fragmentary. Whole passages in the life of Jesus are passed over in silence—for instance, not only his childhood and youth, as first mentioned, but the period between his resurrection and ascension. But how did Jesus grow up?—what were his occupations and tastes?—how was He regarded at home by his parents and neighbors?—did He laugh?—did He play?—did He mingle with the boys of his age?—did He go to school?—did He exhibit any extraordinary wisdom, any miraculous power?—did He work at a trade? These were, in some degree, natural questions. Curiosity also seized upon the recorded incidents of his biography, and demanded further information. It wanted to know the private history of the immaculate birth; what took place on the journey to Egypt, and there; whether Jesus was circumcised. It asked how his trial was conducted; who were his judges; and a thousand similar things; not forgetting to claim the solution of all historical doubts and disagreements. Such questions in such an age could not fail of answers. Fancy is never slow to gratify inquisitiveness, and inquisitiveness will not be dainty if it only can be satisfied. It seems, accordingly, as if every possible query respecting Christ was met in these apocryphal gospels with the most fearless confidence in the faith of the readers, and their incapacity for historical criticism.
Let us give some examples—
The particulars of the flight into Egypt are related with the utmost minuteness of detail. Besides the docile trees, the spontaneous springs, and the marvellous cures, to which we have already alluded, wild beasts escort the holy family, and the robbers of the desert flee before them. But the way to Egypt is long. Perhaps it was difficult to invent miracles enough to beguile it. Jesus therefore shortens the distance, so that the journey of many days is accomplished in one—“straightway the mountains of Egypt came in sight.” In a wilderness, as they are travelling, the pilgrims fall in with two robbers, who are afterwards crucified with Jesus; their names Titus and Dumachus. The former bribes the latter to let the strangers pass unmolested, and Jesus predicts his blessed fate on the spot. In Egypt, the sick and leprous are cured, and the dead are raised, by application of the water in which his person or his clothing has been washed. As an infant, Jesus is a perfect man. He goes to school and confounds his teacher; He performs the most surprising miracles. He makes clay sparrows fly; He carries water in his apron; He stretches out a large throne that Joseph had made too short; He transforms his companions into goats, and exhibits many other works; all equally marvellous, not all humane, and some very cruel. He is described as the virtual head of the family. No one ventures to eat or drink, or to seat himself at the table, or to break bread, until Jesus had done it before him. If He was not hungry, the family dispensed with the meal. The subject of his discussion with the doctors is, as we shall see presently, reported in full.
It need not be added that all these are pure fictions. But they were fictions designed for a purpose. Curiosity called for them, and credulity accepted them, although they were not at any time, except by the Gnostics, regarded as an indisputable history, or as standing on the same level with the gospel verities. Indeed, considering the misapprehension of the spirit and work of Christ which these narratives indicate, and the gross puerilities which they embody, it is difficult to account for the degree of attention they received but by insisting upon the absence of the faculty of critical discrimination—which has in modern times been, perhaps, too sedulously cultivated—in the age in which these narratives were produced; and by the evident suitability of this garbage to a taste which the simple truths of the gospel narrative could no longer satisfy. In fact, such matters are acceptable in all ages to minds in a certain state of culture, analogous to that which was then prevalent. If any proof of this were needed, it is found in the fact of which we are personally cognizant, that anecdotes, received orally, but derived originally from the apocryphal gospels some years ago, formed the most cherished lore of numbers in the uneducated, or partially educated classes, who took no small pride upon being wise above what is written, and of knowing something which the evangelists had not taught. It was shown also in the veneration with which one of these apocryphal documents, printed on a broad sheet, was regarded by thousands; being stuck up in the places of honor—over the bed’s head or the center of the mantel-piece—as something peculiarly sacred and salutary. Note: This comprised the alleged Epistle of Abgarus, king of Edessa, to Christ, and the reply of our Lord thereto. It was from the latter, as the only writing of Jesus, that the document derived the special sanctity ascribed to it. To this was usually added the Letter of Lentullus, giving a description of the person of Christ. We believe these sheets have now generally disappeared, the distributors of the Religious Tract Society having made it an object to substitute its useful broad-sheets; an object not always achieved without great difficulty and a large expenditure of remonstrance and earnest persuasion.
The Rev. Jeremiah Jones, in his work on the Canon of Scripture, Note: “A New and Full Method of Settling the Canonical Authority of the New Testament.” Oxford, 1827. See also an article in No. 172 of the American Christian Examiner, being a review of Das Leben Jesu nach den Apocryphen of Dr. Hofmann. enters largely into the grounds on which these narratives should be regarded as apocryphal and spurious. First, he shows that they were not regarded as authentic by any of the ancient Christians. Then the whole contexture of them is false, or contrary to certainly known truth. The design is to relate a large series of miracles and wonderful actions wrought by our Savior during his infancy, or before he entered upon his public ministry; whereas it is certain, by the most incontestable evidence, that our Lord wrought no such miraculous actions, nor indeed any one miracle before he was about thirty years old. This we will presently show when we come to consider the miracle at Cana. Further, the multitude of idle and silly stories and trifling and ludicrous relations, which are contained in these “gospels,” clearly evince their apocryphal and spurious character. Then, again, these writings contain much that is false, and contrary to known truth. Thus the Virgin is reported to have given birth to our Savior in a cave, before she reached Bethlehem. Joseph is described as leaving Egypt for fear of the Egyptians, whereas in fact he left because the ends of his going thither were accomplished. Joseph is employed in making a throne for “the king of Jerusalem,” when there was no king reigning there—Archelaus having been deposed, and Judea made a Roman province. It is notoriously false in these writings that they make Jesus to have been morose and revengeful—striking men dead upon the slightest provocation, or for none at all. Thus He kills a Jew who reproached him for breaking the Sabbath; He kills a boy who in haste happened to run against Him in the street. He kills his master for being about to strike Him, because He could not say his lesson. It needs not be pointed out that these things are contrary to the design of Christ’s miracles, which were all for the benefit of mankind; contrary to his doctrine, which was wholly against revenge, and inculcated the forgiveness of injuries. These gospels of the infancy also contain things later than the time at which they pretend to have been written; such as the prodigious respect paid to the Virgin Mary, which was not known in the Church until the fourth and fifth centuries, and that care for the preservation of relics which can be proved to have been unknown to the primitive gospels.
The result of the whole is to render us deeply thankful that God has given and preserved to us authentic and divinely-inspired narratives, free from all taint of error or stain of man’s devices; which have stood the most excruciating processes of criticism, and on which every truth-seeking mind is able to rely with the most unwavering confidence.