[253:2] Euseb. H.E. v. 3.
[253:3] Euseb. H.E. v. 4.
[254:1] Euseb. H.E. v. 24.
[255:1] S.R. II. p. 201. In earlier editions the words are translated 'the testimony of the elder Zacharias;' but in the sixth I find substituted 'the testimony borne to the elder Zacharias.' The adoption of this interpretation therefore is deliberate. [In the Complete Edition (II. p. 199 sq) the rendering 'borne by the elder Zacharias' is substituted for the above, and defended at some length.]
[256:1] Protev. 23. See Tischendorf Evang. Apocr. p. 44.
[257:1] S.R. II. p. 203. So previously (p. 202), 'his martyrdom, which Luke does not mention.' I have already had occasion to point out instances where our author's forgetfulness of the contents of the New Testament leads him into error; see above, p. 125. Yet he argues throughout on the assumption that the memory of early Christian writers was perfect. [The whole section is struck out in the Complete Edition.]
The Protevangelium bears all the characteristics of a romance founded partly on notices in the Canonical Gospels. Some passages certainly are borrowed from St Luke, from which the very words are occasionally taken (e.g. §§ 11, 12); and the account of the martyrdom of Zacharias is most easily explained as a fiction founded on the notice in Luke xi. 51, the writer assuming the identity of this Zacharias with the Baptist's father. I have some doubts about the very early date sometimes assigned to the Protevangelium (though it may have been written somewhere about the middle of the second century); but, the greater its antiquity, the more important is its testimony to the Canonical Gospels. At the end of § 19 the writer obviously borrows the language of St Thomas in John xx. 25. This, as it so happens, is the part of the Protevangelium to which Clement of Alexandria (Strom. vii. p. 889) refers, and therefore we have better evidence for the antiquity of this, than of any other portion of the work.
[258:1] S.R. II. p. 381.
[259:1] S.R. II. p. 200; 'The two communities [of Vienne and Lyons] some time after addressed an Epistle to their brethren in Asia and Phrygia, and also to Eleutherus, Bishop of Rome, relating the events which had occurred…. This Epistle has in great part been preserved by Eusebius;' and again, II. p. 210; 'We know that he [Irenæus] was deputed by the Church of Lyons to bear to Eleutherus, then Bishop of Rome, the Epistle of that Christian community describing their sufferings during the persecution,' etc. [So also in the Complete Edition.] Accordingly in the index, pp. 501, 511, Irenæus is made the bearer of the Epistle.
This is a confusion of two wholly distinct letters—the letter to the Churches of Phrygia and Asia, containing an account of the persecution, which is in great part preserved by Eusebius, but of which Irenæus was certainly not the bearer; and the letter to Eleutherus, of which Irenæus was the bearer, but which had reference to the Montanist controversy, and of which Eusebius has preserved only a single sentence recommending Irenæus to the Roman Bishop. This latter contained references to the persecutions, but was a distinct composition: Euseb. H.E. v. 3, 4.