Page:The Apocryphal New Testament (1924).djvu/54

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FRAGMENTS OF EARLY GOSPELS, ETC.

this from an apocryphal writing. I have not much doubt that that was the Gospel of Thomas. The story occurs in text A, c. vi, and in all Infancy Gospels in some form. It is also told shortly in the Epistle of the Apostles, c. 4: see p. 486.

THE PREACHING OF PETER

Again our principal source of knowledge is Clement of Alexandria, who makes a series of quotations from it.

Clement of Alexandria, Strom. i. 29. 182. And in the Preaching of Peter you may find the Lord called 'Law and Word'.

Twice again he quotes this phrase.

vi. 5. 39. But that the most approved of the Greeks do not know God by direct knowledge, but indirectly, Peter says in his Preaching: Know ye then that there is one God who made the beginning of all things and hath power over their end; and: The invisible who seeth all things, uncontainable, who containeth all, having need of nought, of whom all things stand in need and for whose sake they exist, incomprehensible, perpetual, incorruptible, uncreated, who made all things by the word of his power... that is, the Son.[1]

Then he goes on: This God worship ye, not after the manner of the Greeks ... showing that we and the good (approved) Greeks worship the same God, though not according to perfect knowledge for they had not learned the tradition of the Son. 'Do not', he says, 'worship'—he does not say 'the God whom the Greeks worship’, but ‘not after the manner of the Greeks': he would change the method of worship of God, not proclaim another God. What, then, is meant by 'not after the manner of the Greeks'? Peter himself will explain, for he continues: Carried away by ignorance and not knowing God as we do, according to the perfect knowledge, but shaping those things over which he gave them power, for their use, even wood and stones, brass and iron, gold and silver (forgetting) their material and proper use, they set up things subservient to their existence and worship them; and what things God hath given them for food, the fowls of the air and the creatures that swim in the sea and creep upon the earth, wild beasts and fourfooted cattle of the field, weasels too and mice, cats and dogs and apes; yea, their own eatables do they sacrifice as offerings to eatable gods, and offering dead things to the dead

  1. ↑ In vi. 7. 58 he repeats a clause of this:

    For there is in very deed one God, who made the beginning of all things: meaning his first begotten Son; thus Peter writes, understanding rightly the words: In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

    The words In the beginning were interpreted as meaning 'By the Son'.
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