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THE

TRANSLATED FROM PARCHMENT MANUSCRIPTS, IN LATIN, AND
FOUND IN THE CATACOMBS UNDER THE CITY OF ROME.

Edited by

REV. GIBSON SMITH.

PUBLISHED BY

GIBSON SMITH, SOUTH SHAFTSBURY, VT.
NEW YORK: S. T. MUNSON, 5 GREAT JONES STREET.
BOSTON BELA MARSH, 14 BROOMFIELD STREET.

1858.

SEP 291899

Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1858, by

GIBSON SMITH,

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the State of Vermont.

EDITOR'S PREFACE.

In order to escape death at the hands of their persecuting enemies, the early Christians who were living at Rome fled to the Catacombs, which extend for several miles in various directions under the city. There, in those vaults, where repose the ashes of the ancient dead, they held their religious meetings. The parchments from which this work is translated were found in these same Catacombs, carefully concealed within one of the walls. And it is not an unreasonable thing to believe that they were placed there by those persecuted Christians in the very first age of Christianity, to prevent their being seized and destroyed by their enemies.

The MANUSCRIPTS appear to be very ancient. They are parchment rolls, much worn, though very well preserved, with the exception of that which contains the History of Jesus. The language is LATIN. The letters are uncial or large, nearly round, and not joined by any hair-lines. This is evidence of their antiquity. From the size of the strokes, the letters seem to have been made with a style. The ink seems to have been a composition of lamp-black, or charcoal and oil. The writing on some of the

rolls is faded to a yellowish cast, yet legible. On others it retains its black color.

Now, if these writings are forgeries, they must have been executed at a very early period. And, allowing the supposition, what could have induced their author, or others, to conceal them so carefully in the vaults of the Catacombs, where, by mere accident, the place of their concealment was discovered? But the idea of forgery is not admissible here. The writer who could put forth the sublime, beautiful, perfect, moral teachings found in this volume could not be guilty of a forgery. The man who uttered the sayings of this book must have been more than a Plato or a Socrates. He could have been no other than a Jesus, inspired from on high.

It is a doctrine among the learned-not generally understood by common readers of the Bible—that our four Gospels were not written by the disciples Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, whose names they bear, but by unknown persons, who professed to write according to them.

This doctrine was advocated so early as the commencement of the fourth century, by Bishop Faustus, who was at the head of the Manichean Christians. He holds the following language on this subject: "It is an undoubted fact that the New Testament was not written by Christ himself, nor by his Apostles, but a long while after their time, by some unknown persons, who, lest they should not be credited when they wrote of affairs they were little acquainted with, affixed to their works the names of Apostles, or of such as were supposed to have been their companions, and ther said they were written "ACCORDING TO THEM." (Faust., lib. ii.)

Again; in writing to St. Augustine upon this subject, he uses the following strong language: "For many things have been inserted by your ancestors in the speeches of our Lord, which, though put forth under his name, agree not with his faith, espe-cially since-as already it has often been proved to us--that these

things were not written by Christ nor his Apostles, but a long while after their assumption, by I know not what sort of halfJews, not even agreeing with themselves, who made up their tale out of reports and opinions merely, and yet fathered the whole upon the names of the Apostles of the Lord, or on those who were supposed to have followed the Apostles. They mendaciously pretended they had written their lives and conceits according to them. (Faust., lib. xxxiii., chap. 3.)

Le Clerc, in his "Historia Critica," published in 1716, seems to have been the first to put forth the supposition that our Gospels were derived from older works. He was followed by Dr. Selmer, who contended that our first three evangelists used in common a Hebrew or Syriac document, from which they derived the matrials of their history.

Dr. Lessing, in 1784, advocated the same doctrine. Dr. Eichorn, in his dissertation on the "Origin of our First Three Gospels," published in 1794, advocates the idea, that one document was used by all three evangelists.

In 1793, the theological faculty in Gottingen proposed for the prize essay the following, among other questions: "What was the origin of the Gospel of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ?" The prize was awarded to Mr. Hatfeld, who contended that the evangelists extracted their Gospels from different documents.

But I now ask the reader's special attention to the testimony of Dr. Nemeyer, Professor of Divinity in Halle, and to the conclusions to be drawn therefrom. In endeavoring to account for the silence of the New Testament writers concerning the early life of Jesus, he says: "If credit be due to the authority of the Fathers, there existed a most ancient narration of the life of Jesus Christ, written especially for those inhabitants of Palestine who became Christians from among the Jews. This narrative is dis

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