sonage; more often they take the form of prophecy in which Noah or another is made to foresee all that afterward occurred, leading up finally to the coming of Jesus as the Messiah. Books which thus proclaim the Messiah may very possibly be of late Christian invention; but most of these Old Testament apocrypha are obviously of Jewish origin, even when their earlier Hebrew text has disappeared. Some of them are much older than the date of Christ, and among them there are very beautiful and very valuable religious works.

Indeed, in reading the apocrypha we must keep clearly in mind the initial fact that the issuance of a book under some ancient name is not in itself evidence of an attempt to deceive. In our own day, historical novels, poems, and even philosophies, are constantly being thus fathered upon some older authority. Usually the author prevents confusion by putting his own name on the title-page; but the books of two thousand years ago were very different from ours, and no such necessity would have occurred to an ancient Hebrew. We can well imagine a young religious enthusiast saying to the friendly rabbis, "See, I have written a book showing all the wickedness of all the ages and foretelling the punishments to come, and I have pictured it as the vision of Adam." And the rabbis would read the book and approve the doctrines, if these seemed sound, without ever thinking of including the work in their Scripture as a Book of Adam. In fact, for such writings we have a special name. We call them not "apocrypha," but "pseudepigrapha," which means epigrams or writings given out under a pseudonym or assumed name. Yet these works are still but a variety of the apocrypha class. Some generations after our enthusiast had composed his Book of Adam or another, some scholar would stumble on the forgotten fantasy and, according to his own disposition, either cry "fraud" or worship a new Scripture, and perhaps invent a legend to account for the holy book having been lost and found again.

Apocrypha, then, as we said at the beginning, may be of all gradations, from the splendor of genius and religious earnestness, down to shallow stupidities or crafty frauds. In

the present volume we have sought to give to the general reader the most truly valuable and interesting of these, as well as the most celebrated. We begin with those Old Testament apocrypha which group themselves around Adam. These are, at least, of pre-Christian origin. They embody very old Hebraic traditions, and their picture of the earliest tragedy is as fascinating as it is pathetic.

We turn then to the most celebrated apocrypha of the Old Testament, those which have gathered around Enoch, the friend of God, and around Enoch's great-grandson Noah. The Book of Enoch, no matter what its origin, is one of the great religious visions and sermons of the world. And the Book of the Secrets of Enoch was one of the chief sources of the study of magic in the Middle Ages.

A third group of Old Testament visions centered around Baruch, the disciple of Jeremiah. One Book of Baruch is included in those apocrypha still sometimes included in the Bible. Several visions of Baruch exist, among which the one here given has a particular interest in that it gives a complete account of heaven, such as might well have inspired medieval visions like Dante's "Paradise."

Also, as having the most remarkable history of any of these books, we include the Story of Ahikar. Perhaps Ahikar's book should scarcely be classed as apocryphal. Its claim to be included in the Hebrew Scriptures may never have been definitely asserted, but it had a strong influence upon the books included in the Scriptures, and the proof of its questioned antiquity has come so recently and surprisingly before the world that our picture of the past would be sadly lacking if it excluded this strange old work. We give it here in the Armenian version, the oldest complete form in which it has survived.

From these, the best known of the Old Testament Apocrypha, we turn to those of the New Testament. The most nearly convincing of these, the one which seems both historically and in spirit to approach most closely to the true Gospels, is the Gospel of James, commonly called the Protevangelum.

After this we give all the better ancient apocrypha of the infancy of Jesus, including an interesting Arabic gospel. For these works, with their pictures of mother-love and baby miracles, have always been beloved for their poetic beauty.

Then as perhaps the most interesting, though least historic of all the early Christian apocrypha, we give the Gospel of Nicodemus. This, unlike most early apocrypha, tells of the closing, instead of the opening of Christ's career. It is full of legends of the crucifixion, and then it follows the victorious Christ down into hell. There it gives that thrilling picture of the "Harrowing of Hell" which was so well known to the Middle Ages and which made this the most popular of all the apocryphal gospels, in an age when belief was easy, and historical criticism almost impossible. There was a time, it must be recalled, when these apocrypha were not despised as wicked or as foolish, but were hailed with enthusiasm as the best of reading by thousands of earnest though unlearned Christians.

THE BOOKS OF ADAM AND EVE

"And I, Eve, cried with a loud voice: Pity me, O Lord, my creator! For my sake Adam suffereth thus.""

THE BOOK OF EVE.

"And Michael himself worshiped first; then he called me [the devil] and said: Worship the image of God the Lord."' And I answered, 'I have no need to worship Adam."