are other sayings attributed to Jesus which cannot be found in our
gospels. A few of these so-called Agrapha seem worthy of him, and are
recognized as probably genuine. The most important of them is the story of
the woman taken in adultery (John vii. 53 to viii. 11), which, though not
a part of the gospel of John, doubtless gives a true incident from Jesus'
life. They represent the "many other" things which John and the other
gospels have omitted, but their small number proves that our gospels have
preserved for us practically all that was known of Jesus after the first
witnesses fell asleep. It is certainly surprising that so little exists to
supplement the story of the gospels, for they are manifestly fragmentary,
and leave much of Jesus' public life without any record. The other class
of claimants is of a quite different character,--the so-called Apocryphal
Gospels. These consist chiefly of legends connected with the birth and
early years of Jesus, and with his death and resurrection. They are for
the most part crude tales that have entirely mistaken the real character
of him whom they seek to exalt, and need only to be read to be rejected.

III

The Harmony of the Gospels

36. The church early appreciated the value and the difficulty of having
four different pictures of the life and teachings of the Lord. Irenaeus at
the close of the second century felt it to be as essential that there
should be four gospels as that there should be "four zones of the world,
four principal winds, and four faces of the cherubim" (Against Heresies
III. ii. 8).

37. Before Irenaeus, however, another had sought to obviate the difficulty
of having four records which seem at some points to disagree, by making a
combination of the gospels, to which he gave the title "Diatessaron."
Tatian, the author of this work, was converted from paganism about 152
A.D., and prepared his unified gospel, probably for the use of the Syrian
churches, sometime after 172. His work is one of the treasures of the
early Christian literature recovered for us within the last
quarter-century. It seems to have won great popularity in the Syrian
churches, having practically displaced the canonical gospels for nearly
three centuries, when, owing to its supposed heretical tendency, it was
suppressed by the determined effort of the church authorities. It is a
continuous record of Jesus' ministry, beginning with the first six verses
of the Gospel of John, pa