[194] Teaching, ch. vii.; Matt. 28. 19.
The passage from Barnabas deserves special mention, since here we have words which only occur in our Gospels, introduced with the phrase as it is written, which is only used of Scripture quotations. And this shows conclusively that at the time of the writer, some Gospel containing these words must have been well known, and considered of high authority. And the attempts to explain it away as being from the Book of Esdras,[195] where the words are, 'There be many created, but few shall be saved;' or else as an error on the part of the writer, who thought they came somewhere in the Old Testament, are quite inadmissible.
[195] 2 Esdr. 8. 3.
But it may be said, may not all these quotations be from some Lost Gospel? Of course they may. It is always possible to refer quotations not to the only book in which we know they do occur, but to some imaginary book in which they might occur. There is, however, no need to do so in this case, as all the evidence points the other way. Though, even if we do, it does not materially affect the argument; for while it weakens the evidence for our Gospels, it increases that for the facts which they record; and this is the important point.
Suppose, for instance, the passage in Ignatius was not taken from St. Luke's, but from some Lost Gospel. It could not then be quoted to show that St. Luke's Gospel was known to Ignatius. But it would afford additional evidence that Christ really did rise from the dead, that when He appeared to His Apostles, they at first thought He was a spirit; and that He took the obvious means of convincing them, by asking them to handle His Body. All this would then be vouched for, not only by St. Luke's Gospel; but also by some other early Christian writing, which as Ignatius quotes it in A.D. 110 must certainly have been written in the first century, and must have been considered by him as conclusive evidence. For he is careful to distinguish between what he thus knows (that Christ had a Body after His Resurrection) and what he merely believes (that He has one now). And the same applies in other cases.
And if it be further urged that these writers would have referred more frequently to the Gospels, had they really known them, we must remember that their writings are generally short; and while a single quotation proves the previous existence of the document quoted, ten pages without a quotation do not disprove it. Moreover when they refer to the sayings of Christ, or the events of His life, they always do so without the slightest hesitation; as if everyone acknowledged them to be true. And as we have seen, their allusions often begin with the words remember or be mindful of, clearly showing that they expected their readers to know them already. Hence some books must then have existed which were well known, containing a life of Christ; and the improbability of these having perished, and a fresh set of Gospels having been published in a few years, is very great.
And the evidence in regard to the Third Gospel is particularly strong, since it was addressed to Theophilus, who was clearly a prominent convert; and he must have known from whom the book came, even if for some reason this was not stated in the heading. And as he is not likely to have kept it secret, the authorship of the book must have been well known to Christians from the very beginning. Therefore the testimony of early writers, like Irenæus, who always ascribed it to St. Luke, becomes of exceptional value; and makes it almost certain that he was the author.
We may now sum up the external testimony to the Four Gospels. It shows that at the beginning of the second century they were well known to Christian writers, and this alone would necessitate their having been written in the first century, or at all events before A.D. 110. And thanks to modern discoveries, especially that of the Diatessaron, this is now generally admitted. It may indeed be considered as one of the definite results of recent controversies. But if so, it is, to say the least, distinctly probable that they were written by the men to whom they have been universally ascribed. We have thus strong external testimony in favour of the genuineness of the Four Gospels.