Page:Early Christianity outside the Roman empire.djvu/88

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78
EARLY CHRISTIANITY

salute the Apostle as 'Twin of the Messiah[1].' No wonder that some of the mss. have obliterated this title!

The argument commonly relied upon for regarding the Acta Thomae as 'Gnostic' is the occurrence of certain mystical and very imperfectly understood expressions in the prayers and invocations. Some few of these have disappeared in Syriac from the text as preserved in the British Museum ms. used by Wright, and many more have been left out in the Sachau ms. at Berlin: but in some cases at least the queer phrases in the Greek are the result not of heterodox doctrine but of the ignorance or helplessness of the writer[2]. The discussion of such points involves critical details and the niceties of Semitic grammar: all that needs to be pointed out here is the improbability that a writer so much in earnest as the author of the Acts would indicate an elaborate and strange cosmogony by a few side touches.

  1. Wright 197, 208.
  2. E.g. Bonnet 3011—13 (= Wright 20910—13): cf. Gen i 2 in the Peshitta.