"The Gospel according to the Egyptians."
"The Memoirs of the Apostles."
"The Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew."
"The Gospel of the Lord."
"The Discourses of Peter."
"The Collection of Discourses."
Although we do not know how these were embodied in our New Testament Scriptures, it is probable that they were in some way included, or the copies of the present Gospels may not all have uniformly borne the same titles as we know them by. In our day it is not usual for an author's name to appear in the body of his work, and often a title-page gives more than one title.[36] How few persons can give the exact title of the book known as "Butler's Analogy." The value of a book does not depend essentially upon the person who wrote it. We do not know who wrote the Book of Job, many of the Psalms, the Epistle to the Hebrews, and other portions of the Bible, but it would be unwise to reject their teaching on that account.
Our author says: "No reason whatever has been shown for accepting the testimony of these Gospels as sufficient to establish the reality of miracles" (p. 249). I remark, the question is, Do they show such insufficient testimony as to warrant the conclusion that the general evidence based on a great variety of proofs is not to be accepted?
The Epistle to Diognetus is a short composition, which has been ascribed to Justin Martyr, but its authorship is uncertain, and the date of its composition. It is not quoted or mentioned by any ancient writer. The two concluding chapters are supposed to have been written by a different hand. To the first quarter of the second half to the end of that century the date is variously assigned. It is written in pure Greek, and is elegant in style. Bunsen, in his valuable book, "Hippolytus and his Age," asserts that "the epistle is certainly the work of a contemporary of Justin the Martyr;" that he believes he has proved that the first part is a portion of the lost early Letter of Marcion, of which Tertullian speaks; and that "the very beautiful and justly admired second fragment, which in our editions of Justin's works is given at the end of that Patristic gem, the Epistle to Diognetus,"[37] does not belong to that letter, but is the conclusion of the great work, in ten books, by Hippolytus, "The Refutation of all Heresies." Our author, in the eighteen pages devoted to the Epistle to Diognetus, says nothing of this, although it is both important and interesting. He says the supposed allusions in the Fourth Gospel may be all referable to Paul's epistles, that the date and author are unknown, and that the letter is of no evidential value. His two brief allusions to Bunsen's work show that the ignoring of that eminent man's opinion was not unintentional; while the absence of any reference to Bunsen's elaborate proof that Hippolytus wrote the "Refutation," is also significant.