persistently and in so arbitrary a way ignored, modified, or contradicted their statements.
Upon two occasions Justin distinctly states that the Jews sent persons throughout the world to spread calumnies against Christians. "When you knew that he had risen from the dead, and ascended into heaven, as the prophets had foretold, not only did you (the Jews) not repent of the wickedness which you had committed, but at that time you selected and sent forth from Jerusalem throughout the land chosen men, saying that the atheistic heresy of the Christians had arisen/' &c.(1).... "from a certain Jesus, a Galilrean impostor, whom we crucified, but his disciples stole him by night from the tomb where he had been laid when he was unloosed from the cross, and they now deceive men, saying that he has risen from the dead and ascended into heaven."(2) This circumstance is not mentioned by our Gospels, but, reiterated twice by Justin in almost the same words, it was in all probability contained in the Memoirs. Eusebius quotes the passage from Justin, without comment, evidently on account of the information which it conveyed.
These instances, which, although far from complete, have already occupied too much of our space, show that Justin quotes from the Memoirs of the Apostles many statements and facts of Gospel history which are not only foreign to our Gospels, but in some cases contradictory to them, whilst the narrative of the most solemn events in the life of Jesus presents distinct and systematic variations from parallel passages in the Synoptic records.
It will now be necessary to compare his general quotations from the same Memoirs with the Canonical Gospels, and here a very wide field opens before us. As we have already stated, Justin's works teem with these quotations, and to take them all in detail would be impossible within the limits of this work. Such a course, moreover, is unnecessary. It may be broadly stated that even those who maintain the use of the Canonical Gospels can only point out two or three passages out of this vast array which verbally agree with them.(1) This extraordinary anomaly—on the supposition that Justin's Memoirs were in fact our Gospels—is, as we have mentioned, explained by the convenient hypothesis that Justin quotes imperfectly from memory, interweaves and modifies texts, and in short freely manipulates these Gospels according to his argument. Even strained to the uttermost, however, could this be accepted as a reasonable explanation of such systematic variation, that only twice or thrice out of the vast number of his quotations does he literally agree with passages in them? In order to illustrate the case with absolute impartiality we shall first take the instances brought forward as showing agreement with our Synoptic Gospels.
Teschendorf only cites two passages in support of his affirmation that Justin makes use of our first Gospel.(2) It might be supposed that, in selecting these, at least two might have been produced literally agreeing, but this is
not the case, and this may be taken as an illustration of the almost universal variation of Justin's quotations. The first of Teschendorf s examples is the supposed use of Matthew viii. 11, 12: "Many shall come from the east and from the west, and shall sit down," &c. [——]—]. Now this passage is repeated by Justin no less than three times in three very distinct parts of his Dialogue with Trypho,(1) with a uniform variation from the text of Matthew—They shall come from the west and from the east," &c. &c. [——]—](2) That a historical saying of Jesus
should be reproduced in many Gospels, and that no particular work can have any prescriptive right to it, must be admitted, so that even if the passage in Justin agreed literally with our first Synoptic, it would not afford any proof of the actual use of that Gospel; but when on the contrary Justin upon three several occasions, and at distinct intervals of time, repeats the passage with the same persistent variation from the reading in Matthew, not only can it not be ascribed to that Gospel, but there is reason to conclude that Justin derived it from another source. It may be added that [——]—] is anything but a word uncommon in the vocabulary of Justin, and that elsewhere, for instance, he twice quotes a passage similar to one in Matthew, in which, amongst other variations, he reads "Many shall come [——]—]," instead of the phrase found in that Gospel.(3)
The second example adduced by Tischendorf is the supposed quotation of Matthew xii. 39; but in order fully