Date of composition

• 100s.
• All we have is a quote from Epiphanius (d. 403) of four verses. Since this was popular among the Gnostics, it is dated to the second century.

Type of Apocrypha (heretical or in error (made up))

• Error and probably heresy.

Length

• All we have are four verses.

Summary

• Zachariah, the father of John the Baptist, saw a man (perhaps this referred to God?) in the form of an ass in the Temple while burning incense. When he came out, he said to the Jews, "Woe to you, whom are you worshipping?" They then kill him.

Noteworthy from the book

1. This negative view of God reflects the Gnostic view of the Jewish faith.
2. The last verse states this is why priests in the Temple wore bells, so that God would hear the bells and hide so the priests could not see him.

This is the quote from Epiphanius:

• Indeed, they have ventured countless other forgeries. They say that one book is a "Birth of Mary," and they teach some horrid, baneful things off in it and say that they get them from it.
• On its authority they say that Zachariah was killed in the temple because he had seen a vision, and when he wanted to reveal the vision his mouth was stopped from fright. For at the hour of incense, while he was burning it, he saw a man standing there, they say, with the form of an ass.
• And when he had come out and wanted to say "Woe to you, whom are you worshiping?" the person he had seen inside in the temple stopped his mouth so that he could not speak. But when his mouth was opened so that he could speak, then he revealed it to them and they killed him. And that, they say, is how Zachariah died.
• This, they say, is why the priest was ordered to wear bells by the lawgiver himself. Whenever he went in to officiate, the object of his worship would hear them jangle and hide, so that no one would spy the imaginary face of his form.