posterior to the fall of Jerusalem, and very hostile to the Jews in tone; this again is a forgery, made in Egypt. (2) The First Epistle of Clement, Bishop of Rome, to the Corinthians; this is perhaps the work of a Hellenistic Jew, a freeman of the Consul Flavius Clemens, who was a Christian or a Jew. It is interesting to note at this early period (c. 100 A.D.) the moral influence exercised by the Church of Rome upon a Greek Church. (3) The so-called Second Epistle of Clement is a homily by another author, sometimes attributed to Clement of Alexandria. (4) The epistle of the disciple of John the Elder, Polycarp, Bishop of Smyrna, who was martyred in A.D. 155, at the age of eighty-six. This letter is addressed to the Philippians, and is probably authentic. (5) Seven very instructive letters attributed to Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who was martyred under Trajan. Ignatius is supposed to have written them during his journey from Antioch to Rome, to communities which had received him cordially; he warns them against schisms, Docetism and Judaism; these communities were governed by Bishops. The first mention of the Gospels, in the sense of a history of Jesus, occurs in one of these letters (that to the Smyrnæans). The authenticity of these letters has been denied, but not convincingly; it is by no means impossible that the episcopate may have been organised in Greek territory as early as the year 100.

66

67. The Pastor of Hermas is a long and very tedious work which Clement of Alexandria and Origen believed to be inspired." The Pastor is the guardian angel of the writer, who has had visions, and reveals them to bring back the faithful from error. Hermas, born in Greece, and sometime a slave in Rome, had obtained his freedom, and was living in the city with his family. The Pastor was probably written not much later than the year 100 A.D.

68. It was believed in Rome, in the third century, that after Pentecost the Apostles had drawn up a joint confession of faith or Symbol, which had to be recited by all adults before receiving the rite of baptism. This is obviously impossible, but the most ancient Symbol of this nature, known to Justin in 150, was a product of the Church of Rome shortly before the year 100.

D

69. We possess certain fragments of a work called the Preaching or Doctrine of St. Peter, which purports to be addressed to the heathen by the Apostle; this is another Græco-Roman forgery dating from the end of the first century.

70. A fortunate discovery in a Greek library (1883) revealed to us the Doctrine of the Apostles or Didache, a manual of the Christian life both individual and social, a document of the first importance to the student of the primitive communities, their organisations and rites. The Apostles, of course, had nothing to do with it; but the Didache, a compilation from ancient catechisms, seems to have been drawn up in Syria before A.D. 150.

71. An important group of documents-called the pseudoClementine writings, because they were falsely attributed to Clement, Bishop of Rome-comprises twenty homilies and a didactic tale entitled The Recognitions. The ground-work of these compositions is almost identical. Clement, instituted Bishop of Rome by St. Peter, describes his conversion, on quitting the school of philosophy, to St. James, the head of the Church at Jerusalem. Having learnt that the Son of God was born in Judæa, he set out for that country, met Barnabas at Alexandria, and Peter at Cæsarea; the latter caused him to witness his dispute with Simon Magus and initiated him into his doctrine. Simon, vanquished, was pursued by Peter and Clement, who overtook him at Laodicea, and reopened the debate with him. Finally, Peter departed to Antioch, and there founded a community.1 The title of Recognitions is based on an episode in the seventh book: Matidia, the mother of Clement, had quitted Rome for Athens; she is discovered there with her sons by her husband, who had set out in search of her. In all this farrago, Paul is not even mentioned; it is a frankly Judæo-Christian document. The Homilies and the Recognitions have a common source dating probably from about A.D. 150-200; the compilation was made in the third century.

72. There is no more mysterious figure than that Simon, the magician of Samaria, whom we find opposing St. Peter in the Acts, and whom Justin, the Clementine writings and the apocryphal Acts represent as a very important personage at 1 See Renan, Origines, vol. vii. p. 77.

Rome. There, under Claudius or Nero, he rivals Peter in supernatural power, and ends by promising to fly through the air before the Emperor; but a prayer offered up by St. Peter deprives him of his power; he falls and breaks his neck. Justin (A.D. 150) asserts that he saw his tomb on the island in the Tiber, with this inscription: "To Simon, the holy god." This shows the ignorance and carelessness of Justin; the inscription in question has been found, and bears a dedication to Semo Sancus, an ancient Roman god whom a professor of rhetoric like Justin should certainly have known. But who was this Simon, the divine honours accorded to whom in Samaria are attested? The question has never been answered. In the nineteenth century, the school of Tübingen insisted a good deal on the traditions relative to the rivalry of Peter and Simon; it suggested that Simon represented St. Paul, and hence drew the somewhat exaggerated conclusion that the rivalry between the two Apostles degenerated into personal hatred. Their theological hatred, evident in the epistles of Paul, went far enough. Not only did the Judaising group at Jerusalem organise a kind of mission against Paul, but false epistles were circulated under his name (2 Thess. ii. 2). He accordingly denounces his adversaries as dogs, liars, children of the devil and forgers. It is necessary to call attention to these passages at the close of a chapter in which, examining the early books of the Church, we have found forgeries on every hand.

73. I might now consider many questions connected with the above: the first Apologies addressed by Christians to the pagan emperors, the Acts of the martyrs, very few of which are authentic, the Apostolic Constitutions; but this would be to trench on the domain of literary history. I will conclude with a few words concerning Antichrist (i.e. the adversary opposed to Christ). This famous name first appears in the Epistles of St. John, but the idea is much more ancient; it is that of the Babylonian Tiamat opposed to Marduk. The principle of evil is substituted for the dragon of the primitive myth, and between this and the principle of good a terrible conflict will be waged before the coming of the kingdom of God. Traces of this conception are to be found in Ezekiel, in Daniel, in Baruch, and

in the Apocalypse. It is referred to in the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians (ii. 3): "That day shall not come, except there come a falling away first, and that man of sin be revealed, the son of perdition." Good being personified in Christ, evil was personified in Antichrist: "For many shall come in my name," said Jesus," saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many. And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars; see that ye be not troubled; for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. . . . All these are the beginning of sorrows. . . . And many false prophets shall arise. . . . Then shall be great tribulation, such as was not since the beginning of this world to this time. . . . Then shall appear the sign of the Son of Man in heaven; and then shall all the earth mourn, and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory" (Matt. xxiv.).

...

74. These terrifying words have borne terrible fruit. From Nero onwards, there has been no conspicuous adversary of the Church who has not been assimilated to the Antichrist whose appearance is to inaugurate an era of catastrophe. Luther identified the Pope of Rome with Antichrist; millions of English people recognised him in Napoleon. We have already seen how in the Apocalypse the beast was Nero. After the death of this wretch there was a rumour that he had fled to the Parthians, and that he would come back. There is perhaps an allusion to this legend in the Apocalypse itself and in the First Epistle of St. John (iv. 3): "Every spirit that confesseth not Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God; and this is that spirit of Antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already it is in the world." Here, Antichrist is already assimilated to heresy. In the Sibylline oracles fabricated by the Jews of Alexandria, the name of Antichrist does not occur, but the Roman Empire, the object of a ferocious hatred, takes its place. Popular Jewish literature gave the name of Romulus to this enemy of God, and described him as a hideous giant, the offspring of a stone virgin. The Christians in general reserved the name of Antichrist for heretics and schismatics; but in the fourth century the idea still prevailed that the coming of Antichrist would be the awakening and return of Nero.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

The most complete repertory is Hauck's Real-Encyclop. für protestantische Theologie (3rd ed., 24 vols.); the most convenient is Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 5 vols., 1909-1913. Various other encyclopædias and dictionaries (Schaff-Herzog, Hastings, Lichtenberger, Encycl. Britann., Catholic Encycl., etc.) can be commended to students. There are special dictionaries of Christian biography (down to Charlemagne) by Smith, of Christian archæology by Martigny, Smith, and Dom Cabrol (in progress), of Catholic theology by Vacant (in progress), etc. Among periodicals I may mention the Expositor, the_Revue biblique and the Theologische Literaturzeitung (bibliographical).

Renan, Origines du Christianisme, 8 vols., 1863-1883 (with a good index); Duchesne, Histoire ancienne de l'Eglise, vols. i. and ii., 1906-1908; Guignebert, Manuel d'histoire ancienne du Christianisme, 1906; Wendland, Die hellenistischrömische Kultur in ihren Beziehungen zu Judenthum und Christenthum, 1907; Conybeare, Christian Origins, 1909; The Historical Christ, 1914. There is a carefully selected bibliography in Nicolardot, Les trois premiers Evangélistes,

1908.

2. Loisy, Mystères païens et Myst. chrétien, 1919 (cf. Rev. archéol., 1919, ii. p. 384); W. Bousset, Geschichte des Christusglaubens, 1913 (cf. Rev. critique, 1914, p. 34).

3. Loisy, Hist. du canon du N. T., 1891; Th. Zahn, Gesch. des N. T. Kanons, 2nd ed., 1904; J. Leipoldt, same title, 2 vols., 1907-1908.

5. Text of the Fragmentum Muratorianum (and of most of the other documents of the primitive church) in Rauschen, Florilegium patristicum, fasc. iii., 1905.

11. M. Nicolas, Etudes critiques sur la Bible, vol. ii., 1864 (old, but still very useful).

13. E. Preusschen, Antilegomena, 2nd ed., 1905 (fragments of the lost Gospels and quotations from the Fathers, with German translation).

14. Ad, Jülicher, Einleitung in das N. T. 6th ed., 1915 (English transl.); E. Renan, Les Evangiles, 1877; Loisy, Les Evangiles synoptiques, 2 vols., 1907; Wellhausen, Einleitung in die 3 ersten Ev., 1905; Holtzmann, Handcommentar zum N. T., 3rd ed., 1901 et seq; H. Weinel, Theologie des N. T., 2nd ed., 1913; A. Réville Jésus, 2nd ed., 1906; A. Loisy, Jésus, 1910; P. Wernle, Quellen des Leben Jesu, 1906; Schmiedel, art. Gospels in Cheyne; Schweitzer, Geschichte der Leben-Jesu-Forschung, 1913.

17. Preusschen, op. cit. (13), in Greek and German; Loisy, Evangiles synoptiques, vol. i. (in French).

18. L. Venard, Les Ev. synoptiques (in Rev. du Clergé, July 15, 1908, p. 178).

186. B. W. Bacon, Is Mark a Roman Gospel? 1919.

18d. A. Harnack, Lukas der Arzt, 1906; Burkitt, The Gospel History, 1906 (connection between St. Luke and Josephus); Lagrange, Ev. selon. Luc, 1921; P. C. Sense (pseudonym of Lyons), Origin of the Third Gospel, 1901 (the Luke of Marcion).

18f. Loisy, Le quatrième Evangile 1903 (1922); Wellhausen Das 4te Ev., 1908; works of B. Bacon (1910), Č. Clemen (1912), M. W. Bauer (1912), on the same.

21. Saintyves, Le Vierges mères et les naissances miraculeuses, 1901. 22. A. Causse, L'évolution du messianisme, 1908.

26. Saintyves, Le miracle et la critique historique, 1907.

29. Interpolations in the MSS. of the Slav translations of Josephus: Rev. crit., 1906, ii. 447; J. Frei, Die Probleme des Leidensgeschichte, 1909.-Th. Reinach, Josèphe sur Jésus (in Rev. des Etudes juives, vol. xxxv. 1897); Norden, Neue Jahrb., 1913, p. 637; Laqueur, Josephus, 1921.