13. “He says, ‘The children of this world marry and are given in marriage; but the children of the world to come neither marry nor are given in marriage, but shall be like the angels in heaven.’” (Res., c. 3.) Luke xx. 34, 35.
14. “And wishing to confirm this, when his disciples did not know whether to believe he had truly risen in the body, and were looking upon him and doubting, he said to them, ‘Ye have not yet faith, see that it is I,’ and he let them handle him, and showed them the prints of the nails in his hands. And when they were by every kind of proof persuaded that it was himself and in the body, they asked him to eat with them, that they might thus still more accurately ascertain that he had in verity risen bodily; and he did eat honeycomb and fish. And when he had thus shown them that there is truly a resurrection of the flesh, and wishing to show them this also, that it is not impossible for flesh to ascend into heaven (as he had said that our dwelling place is in heaven). ‘He was taken up into heaven while they beheld,’ as he was in the flesh.” (Res., c. 9.) Luke xxiv. 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, and Acts i. 9.
Before presenting Justin, from the Fourth Gospel, the use of this Gospel by his contemporaries will be considered.
In Barnabas (c. 6) it is said that “He was to be manifested in flesh and to sojourn among us.” (Com. John i. 14.) It is also said in c. 12, in effect, that the brazen serpent was a type of Jesus. (Com. John iii. 14-18.) Another passage in c. 7, although not cited by the editors, is, “Because they shall see him then in that day having a scarlet robe about his body down to his feet; and they shall say, ‘is not this he whom we once despised and pierced and mocked and crucified?’” This may have had reference to what is recorded only in John, as Apollinaris,[3] bishop of Hierapolis (cir. A.D. 170), afterward wrote: “The Son of God, pierced in the sacred side, who shed forth from his side the two things again cleansing, water and blood, word and spirit.”
In Diognetus, c. 6, it is said that “Christians dwell in the world yet are not of the world.” (Com. John xvii. 11, 14, 16.) In c. 11 it is said, “This is he who was from the beginning” (Com. John i. 1); and in the same chapter, “For who that is rightly taught and begotten by the loving Word, would not seek to know accurately the things which have been clearly shown by the Word to his disciples, to whom the Word being manifested has revealed them.” (Com. John i. 14, 18.) There is but a single quotation in this eloquent Letter, which is as in First Corinthians viii. 1, “Knowledge puffeth up, but love edifieth.”
John alone speaks of Christ as the door, but the figure is often used in Hermas, as, “You saw, he added, the multitude who were building the tower? I saw them, sir, I said. Those, he said, are all glorious angels, and by them accordingly is the Lord surrounded. And the gate is the Son of God. This is the one entrance to the Lord. In no other way, then, shall any one enter into him except through his Son.” (Simil. ix. 12.) John x. This book of Hermas is an allegory in which an angel, in the guise of a shepherd, gives instruction in the doctrines and duties that were held and required by the Church. It has not a single quotation from either the Old or New Testament. But as Dr. Chartris in “Canonicity” (p. 137) well says: “The dignity, mission, and sufferings of God’s Son are prominent in Hermas’ teaching, and remind us of the Fourth Gospel at every turn.”
The supposed quotation by Papias, Fragment 5 (found in Irenæus), “In my Father’s house are many mansions,” has been given in a previous chapter.[A]
Basilides, according to Hippolytus, used as proof-texts the exact passages found in John i. 9 and John ii. 4. Hippolytus first records the comments of Basilides on the sentence in Genesis, Let there be light, and then proceeds as follows: “And this, he says, is what is said in the Gospels, ‘The true light which lighteth every man which cometh into the world.’ And that each thing, he says, has its own seasons, the Saviour is a sufficient witness when he says, ‘My hour is not yet come.’” Those who deny that these quotations[4] were by Basilides, claim that Hippolytus sometimes mixes up the opinions of the master of a school with those of his followers, and so it is not certain that Basilides used these texts. The learned author of “Canonicity,” recently published, p. 173, declares that the difficulties in the way of ascribing those quotations to any other than Basilides, are “enormous.” The reasoning of Matthew Arnold (who is quite far from being rigidly orthodox) is so conclusive that we give the substance of it: “If we take all the doubtful cases of the kind and compare them with our present case, we shall find that it is not one of them. It is not true that here where the name of Basilides has just come before, and where no mention of his son or of his disciples has intervened since, there is any such ambiguity as is found in other cases.... The author in general uses the formula, according to them, when he quotes from the school, and the formula, he says, when he gives the dicta of the Master. And in this particular case he manifestly quotes the dicta of Basilides, and no one who had not a theory to serve would ever dream of doubting it. Basilides, therefore, about the year one hundred and twenty-five of our own era, had before him the Fourth Gospel.”
The Epistles of Ignatius, whether the longer or shorter or Syriac, may be of too doubtful genuineness, or rather, the extent as to which they are genuine is too doubtful to be relied upon, although some of them contain numerous quotations.
[1] The Logic of Christian Evidences. By G. Frederick Wright, Andover, A.D. 1880, p. 190.