Montague Rhodes James

“ Here the lame and blind are custodians of the King's garden and their transgression is eating the choice early fruits. There is nothing about the wedding-feast or the soldiers and pagani. The application is the same. The soul will say, "I have not sinned; it is the body. Since I came out from it I have been like a pure bird that flies in the air." The body says, "I have not sinned; it is the soul. Since it went forth from me I have been like a stone that is thrown on the ground."
Whether this is a later or an earlier form of the story than Ezekiel's, it seems to me an inferior one. ”

“ To all of us there will be like honour or like shame.
"The magicians, stirred by these words, as if made drunk with wine, promised seas and mountains to Pharaoh King of Egypt. The sun, said they, shall not again rise to lighten Egypt before the son of Amram has ceased to live. What time thou, O King, takest quiet slumber in thy bed, then shalt thou hear that Moses has been punished by a shameful death. And this, indeed, we account as nothing: it is child' s play. ”

“ For wisdom shall be among a few that keep watch and are silent and talk with one another in quiet, because some shall be afraid of them and fear them as evil men. But these shall not even believe the word of the law of the Most High, and others gaping with their mouths shall not believe and shall believe, and shall be contradicting and contrary, and obstructing the spirit of truth. ”

“ This people then, which now is laid up far away, will return to the land of Judah, the river being dried up. And with them God will come to fulfil the promises. All through the journey they exalt in the presence of God: everything grows green before them, all things are glad; the creature itself rejoices to receive the holy ones. Everywhere springs break out of their own accord where the people of the Most High pass with the terror of heaven. ”

“ He envied me and fought with me, and wrestled with me, saying that his name should have precedence of my name and of the angel that is before all (or that his name and the name of the angel that is before all should have precedence of my name) . (All is singular, and should perhaps be rendered 'before every (angel) .') And I told him his name, and in what order [1] he is among the sons of God, saying: 'Art not thou Uriel, the eighth from me, and I am Israel, an archangel of the power of the Lord, and a captain of captains of thousands among the sons of God? ”

“ The ladder which thou sawest, which had twelve steps having two human faces which changed their appearance—now this ladder is this age, and the twelve steps are the times of this age, and the twenty-four faces are the kings of the lawless heathen of this age. ”

“ For, as we showed before that the fact that God knows what every man will do is no obstacle to free-will, so neither do the signs which God has appointed for the giving of information impede freewill: but, like a book containing future events in prophecy, the whole heaven—the book of God, as it is—may contain the future. ”

“ He says: "For, since I am a sinner of the deepest dye, and not born for any end except repentance, I cannot easily keep silence about it (i. e. repentance) , and no more does Adam—the beginner both of the race of men and of sin against the Lord—when by confession he has been restored unto his Paradise." No more may be meant than that Adam, now that he is redeemed and restored, sings praise to God; but the other view has usually been taken, and if it is correct it means that there was in the second century a book that contained hymns uttered by Adam after his fall and repentance. ”

“ Now if any one accepts among the apocrypha current among the Hebrews, what is entitled the Prayer of Joseph, he will derive from it exactly this teaching, expressed in plain terms: that those who from the beginning possessed some special excellence beyond men, and were greatly superior to all other souls, have descended from the estate of angels into human nature. Jacob, at any rate, says: 'For I Jacob that speak unto you, I am also Israel, an angel of God and a ruling spirit, and Abraham and Isaac were pre-created (προεκτίσθησαν, a word only found here) before any work. ”

“ Be with me, O Lord, and let not any Satan prevail against me to make me err from thy way. And have mercy on me and bring me to thee to be thy servant and worship thee rightly: let a wall of thy peace be round about me, and a shelter of thy might cover me from all evil ... (a corrupt word παραδωσ) : wherefore also blot out lawlessness from under heaven, put an end to lawlessness from off the face of the earth. ”

“ And know thou, Jacob, that thy seed shall be strangers in a strange land, and men will ill-treat them with bondage and lay blows on them daily: but the people whom they serve will the Lord judge. When a king ariseth and fighteth, then will there be to that place (al. when the Most High giveth his judgment to that place, he will lead forth) then will thy seed, even Israel, go forth out of the bondage of the heathen who ruled over them with violence, and will be set free from all reproach of their enemies. ”

“ Clement of Alexandria, whom we have found to be a rich source, is our next hunting-ground.
Protrepticus viii. fin.: "Hear again the prophet who says: The sun shall fail and the heaven shall be darkened, but the Almighty shall stand for ever: and the powers of the heaven shall be shaken, and the heavens shall be rolled up like a curtain, stretched out and pulled in (for these are the words of the prophecy) , and the earth shall flee from the face of the Lord." ”

“ They are the Jews who were cut off by the river beyond Persia, whom God willed to remain there until the end. The captivity caused them to be in that place: of twelve tribes, nine and a half dwell there. There is no lying nor any hatred: therefore no son dies before his parents: nor do they bewail their dead nor mourn for them after our manner, for they look for a resurrection to come. They eat no living thing among their food, but only herbs, for these are without shedding of blood. Full of righteousness, they live with unblemished bodies. ”

“ The Jews, searching the Scriptures, cry aloud to the Most High that they have been deceived by Antichrist. Book II. begins: "The last holy hidden people, of whom we know not where they dwell, are desired." It then speaks, very obscurely, of the two and a half tribes who are separated from the nine and a half, and returns to its proper subject in line 21: "But then the things told in the law hasten to be fulfilled: Almighty Christ comes down to His elect, who have been hidden from us so long and grown to so many thousands. ”

“ And, for I must not pass over in silence what is said by Ezekiel the prophet in his own apocryphal book (i. e. that under his name) about resurrection, I will quote the very passage here. For, telling a story in cryptic (enigmatic) guise, he says about the just judgment in which soul and body both share, that a certain King had all the men in his kingdom enrolled in the army and had no "pagan" ("civilian," we should say) , but two only, one lame and one blind, and each abode separately and dwelt apart. ”

“ We give place to the devil, or to the prevailing spirit that comes up upon us, when the guiding principle in us has not been filled with holy learning or saving faith and excellent thoughts which counsel us for the best: for according to Zacharias the father of John, 'Satan tabernacles over (or, we might say, hovers over) the climates (κλίματα, regions?, inclinations?) of the soul,' and such concessions to the worse things . . . challenge the devil to enter into our souls. ”

“ But if Jacob says he has read in the tablets of heaven what is to befall his sons, and upon this point some one objects to us that the opposite of what we have said is shown by the Scripture (for we were saying that man has no apprehension of the signs, whereas Jacob says he has read in the tablets of heaven) , we shall say in defence that our wise men, aided by a spirit excelling human nature, are taught secret things not humanly but divinely, as Paul, who says, 'I heard unspeakable words,' etc. ”

“ When we read the prophecy of him, 'Behold, I send my angel before thy face,' etc., we reflected if by chance one of the holy angels being upon service were not sent down as a forerunner of our Saviour. It would not, indeed, be surprising if, when the firstborn of all creation became incarnate, for love of man, some should have become emulators and imitators of Christ, and embraced the opportunity of ministering to His kindness to men by means of a like body. ”

“ The only book current under this name was a "Gospel," and Epiphanius is the only authority for its existence. In the same 26th Heresy (2, 3) he says: "Others do not scruple to speak of a Gospel of Eve, for they father their offspring upon her name, as supposedly the discoverer of the food of knowledge by revelation of the serpent that spake to her." "Their words," he goes on, "like those of a drunkard, are fit to move sometimes laughter, sometimes tears. They deal in foolish visions and testimonies in this Gospel of theirs." ”

“ And on the fortieth day after he had disappeared, he returned and told the protoplasts all that he had been taught by the angel. He was comely and well-formed, both he and those that were born of him, who were called Watchers and Sons of God because of the shining of the face of Seth. And they dwelt on the higher land of Eden near to Paradise, living the life of angels, until the 1000th year of the world. ”

“ And they announce to the wise men and let them know what will befall (or is befalling) on earth, and by the star will they know the way to him, when they see him upon earth whom the angels see not above. Then will the Almighty be found in a body on the earth, and encompassed by the arms of a mortal, and he reneweth the state of man and quickeneth (Adam and) Eve that died through the fruit of the tree. Then will the deceit of the godless one be overcome, and all idols fall on their faces, for they will be put to shame by one who is adorned with honour, because they made lying inventions. ”

“ But the head of the king will be for (an object of) revenge: bitterly standeth he up against them, but they cry, and the Lord heareth them and poureth out his wrath upon the Leviathan the sea serpent, and smiteth the lawless Thalkon with the sword: for against the God of gods raiseth he up his pride. But then, Jacob, appeareth thy righteousness and that of thy fathers, and of them that shall be after thee, walking in thy righteousness: and then shall thy seed blow with the trumpet, and the whole kingdom of Edom shall perish, with all the kings and peoples of the Moabites. ”

“ We know that the slaying of the Egyptian was part of the devil's claim against Moses in the Assumption.
Epiphanius, Hær. 1: "The angels, as the tradition that has reached us tells, buried the body of the holy Moses, and did not purify (wash) themselves, but the angels were not made unclean (common) by the holy body."
From these data a conjectural narrative may be put together.
Moses dies in the Mount. Michael and other angels are sent to bury him. They find Satan about to carry off the body, and meaning to induce the people to worship it. ”

“ In the so-called Life of Adam, then, is set forth both the number of the days of the naming of the beasts, and that of the creation of the woman and of the entrance of Adam himself into Paradise, and of the precept of God to him about the eating of the tree, and of the entry of Eve into Paradise with him, and the story of the Fall and what followed it, as is subjoined. ”

“ The function of Tubal was to tell the old man where the game was, and direct his shot. One day Tubal was aware of something moving in the thicket; he turned Lamech's aim upon it, and the creature fell dead. It proved to be their ancestor Cain—covered with hair and with a horn growing out of his forehead—for such was the mark set upon him by God. Lamech, on learning what he had done, smote his mighty hands together in consternation, and in so doing smote and slew Tubal Cain. Thus it was that he "killed a man to his wounding and a young man to his hurt." ”

“ To Adam he comes as the angel over repentance and tells him of the hours of day and night. To Esdras he shows visions. In the Apocalypse of Peter (and Sib. Orac. II ) he brings souls out of Hades to judgment. In the Testament of Solomon we read of a demon who was an offspring of Uriel, and Uriel is summoned to control him.
He appears in our fragment in a somewhat unfavourable light, seeming to take advantage of Jacob's (Israel's) confinement in a human body to gain a superiority over him, which he (no doubt) hopes to maintain when Jacob's earthly life is over. ”

“ For since it left me, I have done none of these things,' and it will have a good defence and will paralyze the judgment of God. . . . The body cannot be judged apart from the soul: for it also could reply, saying, 'It was not I that sinned, it was the soul: have I, since it departed from me, committed adultery, fornicated, or worshipped idols?' and the body will be withstanding the justice of God, and with reason. ”

“ Hereby he shows that the Old Testament agrees with the New, both being given by one God. For the devil resisted, trying to deceive, saying, 'The body is mine, for I am the Lord of matter,' and was answered by 'The Lord rebuke thee'—that is, the Lord who is Master of all spirits. Others say that God, willing to show that after our departure hence demons oppose our souls on their upward course, permitted this to be beheld at the burial of Moses. ”

“ The first that stumbleth upon the steps . . . angels ascending and descending and faces in the midst of the steps: the Most High will raise up an heir of the descendants of thy brother Esau, and all the lords of the nations of the earth will accept it, who have done evil against thy seed, and will be given into his hand, and he will be hardly borne by them. ”