This page has been validated.
164
APOCRYPHAL GOSPELS.
began to sow, Jesus put out his hand, and took of the wheat as much as he could hold in his fist, and scattered it. Then Joseph came in the time of reaping, that he might reap his crop. Jesus also came, and gathered the ears which he had scattered, and they made a hundred bushels of the best corn. And he called the poor, and widows, and orphans, and bestowed on them the wheat which he had made. Of the same corn Joseph took a little for a blessing from Jesus to his house.[1]
CHAPTER XI.
How Jesus made a short piece of wood equal to a longer.
And Jesus was eight years old. Joseph was a carpenter, and made ploughs and yokes for oxen. On a certain day a rich man said to Joseph, Master,
- ↑ The phrase "took a little for a blessing," points to the belief in what the whole system of relics rests upon. Pilgrims to the Holy Land in the sixth century "took a little for a blessing," of many things which the priests invited or allowed them to take. See for example the pilgrimage of Antoninus of Placentia, chap, xviii., etc. (translated by myself for the Journal of Sacred Literature, January, 1866). Antoninus was shown, cir. A.D. 570, the field in which Jesus produced the miraculous crop of corn. In chap, xiii., speaking of Jericho, he says, "Before the Church is the sacred field of the Lord, in which our Lord sowed corn with his own hand — sowing as much as three bushels of corn, which also is gathered twice a year; first in the month of February that it may be used at the communion at Easter; where it has been gathered it is ploughed, and gathered again with the rest of the harvest. Then it is ploughed again." The reader will compare this for himself with the version in the text. Certainly it puts a new face on the transaction, and especially the miraculous part of it. It would almost seem as if the miracle had not yet been invented; and if so,
