Apocalypse of Thomas

Historical English source page 598

562 APOCALYPSE OF THOMAS rejoicing and running upon the air beneath the heaven to deliver the elect that have believed in me. And they shall rejoice that the destruction of this world hath come. The words of the Saviour unto Thomas are ended, concerning the end of this world. None of the Latin texts seem to be complete. But we see that Wilhelm’s text is a blend of two sorts of Apocalypse—that akin to Daniel which, under the form of prophecy, describes events contem- porary with the author and continues them into the future: and that which is more akin to John and describes the signs of the end. Bihlmeyer’s text has only the latter element, and as it agrees pretty closely with our oldest authority, the Vienna fragment (though in that, as I have said, something did precede Bihlmeyer’s opening), I judge it to be the older of the two forms. The first part of Wilhelm’s text with its clumsy indication of Arcadius and Honorius by means of their initials is much in the manner of the later Sibyllines, in which this particular trick is pushed to an absurd length, and used for quite imaginary personages as well as historic ones. In the second part Wilhelm’s text departs widely from the Vienna fragment, and here again shows itself as probably inferior. The Apocalypse, we see, was known in England in the ninth century at least: and I think it must probably be regarded as the ultimate parent of a little piece which is found in innumerable manuscripts and has often been printed: I mean Jerome on the Fifteen Signs of the last days before the judgement. The beginning of this states that Jerome found it ‘in the annals of the Hebrews’. Its popularity was very great. Illustrations of the Fifteen Signs are occasionally to be found in manuscripts, and I have seen them on the alabaster tablets carved at Nottingham in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but the best-known representation of them is in a window at All Saints’, North Street, York, where they are accompanied by mottoes taken from the ‘Prick of Conscience’, which used to be attributed to Richard of Hampole. The Anglo-Saxon version in the Vercelli Book (no. xv) begins thus: We are told in this book how Saint Thomas the apostle of God asked our Lord when the time of Antichrist should be, Then the Lord spake unto him and said thus: . It behoveth that it be in the next days. Then shall be hunger and war, &c.: The text conforms, generally speaking, to the longer recensions. The signs of the fifth day are omitted. The conclusion diverges from the Latin and tells how the Virgin, Michael, and Peter successively intercede with the Judge, and he forgives a third part of the sinners at the prayer of each: But not all are pardoned: for we then have the sentences: Venite benedicti and Discedite maledicti as in Matt. xxv. Quite recently (in Proc. R.I.A.) the Rev. St. J. Seymour has pointed out the probable dependence of the Saltair na Rann (eleventh century) on our apocalypse in its description of the Signs of the End.