The Traditions of Matthias.

        The Acts records the appointment by lot of a twelfth apostle to take the place forfeited by Judas (1:26); his name was Matthias. Nothing more is said about him in the Acts or anywhere in the New Testament, but sometime in the second century a work was written, probably in Egypt, which was given his name and called the Traditions ofMatthias. There was apparently nothing particularly heretical about it, for Clement of Alexandria, writing probably about A.D. 190-210, quotes it with apparent approval three or four times in his Miscellanies (ii. 9. 45; iii- 4.26; vii. 13- 82; and perhaps iv. 6. 35).

        It is from Clement that we learn all that we really know about the work, although, it is true, he once speaks of the Gnostics as quoting it. Its title may have been suggested by Paul's use of the word in the plural, “traditions” (paradoseis), in I Cor. 11:2 and II Thess. 2:15, in a Christian sense, in such Christian instruction as he gave his converts. The work had a decidedly philosophical color, reminding Clement of Plato: “The beginning [of truth, or of the search for it] is to wonder at things, as Plato says, in the Theaetetus, and Matthias exhorts us in the Traditions: `Wonder at what is present before you.’” The moral solidarity of the Christian society was strongly held in the Traditions: “If the neighbor of one of the elect sins, the elect man sins; for if he had behaved as the word [or, reason] enjoins, his neighbor also would have respected his manner of life too much to sin.”

        In a third quotation Clement records that the Traditions taught that the physical nature must be controlled and mortified and the soul made to grow through faith and knowledge (iii. 4. 26). This is the text quoted, Clement says, by the Gnostics.

        The book was evidently written sometime before Clement wrote his Miscellanies, for Clement identifies its writer with “the apostle Matthias” (vii. 13. 82). It was probably written in the days when the Christian apologists were dipping into Greek philosophy, after the middle of the second century.

        The Secret Sayings, which Hippolytus says the schismatic Basilides and his son Isidorus claimed Matthias had taught them privately (Refutation vii. 20), may well have been part of the Traditions Clement speaks of so respectfully, and they are perhaps to be identified with another book under his name, the Gospel of Matthias, mentioned by Origen along with the Gospel of Thomas, as among the schismatic gospels.[14] Nothing, however, is known of such a gospel except Origen's mention of it, although it is also spoken of as heretical by Eusebius (Church History iii. 25. 6), doubtless following Origen. It is mentioned among the apocrypha at the end of the List ofthe Sixty Canonical Books (seventh century or earlier) and in the so-called “Decree of Gelasius,” really a product of the sixth century, although by these times the book must have disappeared, with only its name surviving. This is all that is known as yet of the Traditions, the Secret Sayings, and the Gospel ofMatthias.