The Preface:
The following pages are a modest attempt to bring before
the public certain documents of great importance for
the understanding of the growth and development of the
Christian religion. They are not new, almost all of them
having been translated at one time or another into English,
French, German, or Italian: but they are all practically
unknown save to scholars, are all fragmentary, and with
hardly an exception, are difficult to understand without a
running commentary. In these circumstances, I have ventured
to follow, not for the first time, the advice given by Sir Gaston
Maspero to his pupils in one of his luminous lectures at the
College de France. "If" said in effect that great master of
archaeology, "you find yourselves in the presence of scattered
and diverse examples of any monument you cannot understand
—funerary cones, amulets of unusual form, hypocephali, or
anything else—make a collection of them. Search museums,
journals of Egyptology, proceedings of learned societies, until
you think they have no more novelties of the kind to offer you.
Then put those you have collected side by side and study them.
The features they have in common will then readily appear and
in a little time you will find that you will perceive not only the
use of the objects in question, but also the history of their
development, their connexion with each other, and their
relative dates." This has been the end aimed at in this book;
and although, like most aims in this world, it has not been
perfectly achieved, it may, I think, be said with confidence
that these documents explain and supplement one another in
a remarkable degree, and that in the majority of cases sense
can now be read into what at first sight seemed to be nonsense.
As more fragments of the same kind come to light, also, one
has fair reason to hope that those points which are still obscure
may be made clear.
The system of references adopted perhaps calls for some
explanation. As I have no right to expect my readers to take
what I say for gospel, I should have preferred to give my
authority for every statement made by me in the text. But
there are often many authorities supporting the same statement,
and some discrimination between them was necessary unless
these two volumes were to be swollen to an intolerable length.
The same consideration for brevity, too, has often led me to
quote at second or third hand rather than at first. References
to well-known passages in the more widely read classical writers
and Christian Fathers are not needed by scholarly readers,
while to others they are difficult to check or verify. I have
therefore deliberately and of choice preferred the less recondite
sources to the more recondite, and have never hesitated to
refer the reader to encyclopaedias, popular lectures, and the
works avowedly addressed to the general public of writers
like Renan and Mahaffy, rather than to the sources from which
they have themselves drawn their information. In so doing,
however, I have never consciously failed to check the statement
quoted with the original source, and to see, so far as in me lay,
that it correctly represents its purport. A fairly long experience
has convinced me that to many readers the "Apoll. Rhod.
ac Nigid. Schuster, p.41" and the "Clemens de div. serv.
Su 20" dear to certain German professors and their English
admirers mean very little, and to the greater public nothing
At all. For the translations which appear in the text or notes
I have gleaned from all sources, but, except where expressly
mentioned, I must personally accept all responsibility for them,
and in cases in which any doubt seemed possible I have generally
added the words of the original document.
Finally, I have not attempted to impress my own opinion
on my readers, but merely to give them the material on which
they can form their own; and where I have found myself in
doubt as to what the facts of the case really were, I have never
scrupled to say so. This is not a counsel of perfection, but
the one which on the whole seemed to me best. If by doing
so I have succeeded in sending to the documents themselves
a few readers hitherto ignorant of them, I shall think I have
not wasted my time. MsSVig
The following pages are a modest attempt to bring before
the public certain documents of great importance for
the understanding of the growth and development of the
Christian religion. They are not new, almost all of them
having been translated at one time or another into English,
French, German, or Italian: but they are all practically
unknown save to scholars, are all fragmentary, and with
hardly an exception, are difficult to understand without a
running commentary. In these circumstances, I have ventured
to follow, not for the first time, the advice given by Sir Gaston
Maspero to his pupils in one of his luminous lectures at the
College de France. "If" said in effect that great master of
archaeology, "you find yourselves in the presence of scattered
and diverse examples of any monument you cannot understand
—funerary cones, amulets of unusual form, hypocephali, or
anything else—make a collection of them. Search museums,
journals of Egyptology, proceedings of learned societies, until
you think they have no more novelties of the kind to offer you.
Then put those you have collected side by side and study them.
The features they have in common will then readily appear and
in a little time you will find that you will perceive not only the
use of the ob
development, their connexion with each other, and their
relative dates." This has been the end aimed at in this book;
and although, like most aims in this world, it has not been
perfectly achieved, it may, I think, be said with confidence
that these documents explain and supplement one another in
a remarkable degree, and that in the majority of cases sense
can now be read into what at first sight seemed to be nonsense.
As more fragments of the same kind come to light, also, one
has fair reason to hope that those points which are still obscure
may be made clear.
The system of references adopted perhaps calls for some
explanation. As I have no right to expect my readers to take
what I say for gospel, I should have preferred to give my
authority for every statement made by me in the text. But
there are often many authorities supporting the same statement,
and some discrimination between them was necessary unless
these two volumes were to be swollen to an intolerable length.
The same consideration for brevity, too, has often led me to
quote at second or third hand rather than at first. References
to well-known passages in the more widely read classical writers
and Christian Fathers are not needed by scholarly readers,
while to others they are difficult to check or verify. I have
therefore deliberately and of choice preferred the less recondite
sources to the more recondite, and have never hesitated to
refer the reader to encyclopaedias, popular lectures, and the
works avowedly addressed to the general public of writers
like Renan and Mahaffy, rather than to the sources from which
they have themselves drawn their information. In so doing,
however, I have never consciously failed to check the statement
quoted with the original source, and to see, so far as in me lay,
that it correctly represents its purport. A fairly long experience
has convinced me that to many readers the "Apoll. Rhod.
ac Nigid. Schuster, p.41" and the "Clemens de div. serv.
Su 20" dear to certain German professors and their English
admirers mean very little, and to the greater public nothing
At all. For the translations which appear in the text or notes
I have gleaned from all sources, but, except where expressly
mentioned, I must personally accept all responsibility for them,
and in cases in which any doubt seemed possible I have generally
added the words of the original document.
Finally, I have not attempted to impress my own opinion
on my readers, but merely to give them the material on which
they can form their own; and where I have found myself in
doubt as to what the facts of the case really were, I have never
scrupled to say so. This is not a counsel of perfection, but
the one which on the whole seemed to me best. If by doing
so I have succeeded in sending to the documents themselves
a few readers hitherto ignorant of them, I shall think I have
not wasted my time. MsSVig