52 No nation was so given to idolatry, and worshopped such a countless number of monsters, as the Egyptians.-Jerome on Isaiah.
56 Matt. ii. 26. One of the MSS. here has: And Joseph and Mary went to live in the house of a certain widow, and spent a year there; and for the events of the year it gives a number of the mircles recorded in the early chapters of the Latin Gospel of Thomas.
57 Other forms of the name are: Zachias, Zachameus, Zacheus, Zachaeus.
58 Or, seeing that there was in Him and insuperable knowledge of virtue.
59 Tischendorf thinks that the text is corrupt. But the meaning seems to be: You are not a whit better than your neighbours: for all of you teach what you have named, and you can teach nothing else. But he alone (ipse, i.e., Christ) can teach more who is worthy.
61 Or, literally, inferior to me.
63 Tau, and not Teth, is the last letter of the Hebrew alphabet.
64 The original-triangulos gradatos, subacutos, mediatos obductos, productos, erectos, stratos, curvistratos-is hopelessly corrupt. Compare the passages in the following Apocrypha. [The Gospel of Thomas, first Greek form, chaps 6, 7, and parallel passages.-R.] It obviously, hwoever, refers to the Pentalpha, Pentacle, or Solomon's Seal, celebrated in the remains of the magical books that have come down to us under the names of Hermas and the Pythagoreans. The pentalpha was formed by joining by straight lines the alternate angles of a regula rpentagon, and thus contained numerous triangles. The Pythagoreans calle dit the Hygiea or symbol of health, and it was frequently engraved on amulets and coins. it is still, if the books are to be trusted, a symbol of power in the higher grades of freemasonry.
65 i.e., It is not wonderful that we do not understand what he says, for we do not know what he is.
67 The kor or chomer was, according to Jahn, equal to 32 pecks 1 pint.
69 Josh. iii. 16; 2 Kings ii. 8.
70 One of the MSS .tells the story, not of Joseph, but of a certain builder, a worker in wood.
72 One of the MSS. here inserts: And when Jesus was with other children He repeatedly went up and sat down upon a balcony, and many of them began to do likewise, and they fell down and broke their legs and arms. And the Lord Jesus healed them all.
73 Note that the letters are Greek here.
75 In place of this chapter, one of the MSS. has a number of miricles copied from the canonical Gospels-the walking o nthe sea, the feeding of the five thousand, the heaing of a blind man, the raising of Lazarus, and the raising of a certain young man.
76 According to the tradition preserved by Hegesippus and Tertullian, James and Judas were husbandmen. See Apost. Const., ch. lxvii.