Gospels, could scarcely fail to have remained fresh in the mind of the early Church, and more especially in the primitive community amongst whom they were uttered, and of which Hegesippus was himself a later member; and they would certainly have been treasured by one who was so careful a collector and transmitter of "the unerring tradition of the apostolic preaching." No saying is more likely to have been preserved by tradition, both from its own character, brevity, and origin, and from the circumstances under which it was uttered, and there can be no reason for limiting it amongst written records to Luke's Gospel. The omission of the prayer from very important codices of Luke further weakens the claim of that Gospel to the passage. Beyond these general considerations, however, there is the important and undoubted fact that the prayer which Hegesippus represents James as uttering does not actually agree with the prayer of Jesus in the third Gospel. So far from proving the use of Luke, therefore, this merely fragmentary and partial agreement, on the contrary, rather proves that he did not know that Gospel, for on the supposition of his making use of the third Synoptic at all for such a purpose, and not simply giving the prayer which James may in reality have uttered, why did he not quote the prayer as he actually found it in Luke?
We have still to consider a fragment of Hegesippus preserved to us by Stephanus Gobarus, a learned monophysite
of the sixth century, which reads as follows: "That the good things prepared for the righteous neither eye saw, nor ear heard, nor entered they into the heart of man. Hegesippus, however, an ancient and apostolic man, how moved I know not, says in the fifth book of his Memoirs that these words are vainly
spoken, and that those who say these things give the lie to the divine writings and to the Lord saying: 'Blessed are your eyes that see, and your cars that hear,'" &c. [——]—].(1) We believe that we have here an expression of the strong prejudice against the Apostle Paul and his teaching which continued for so long to prevail amongst Jewish Christians, and which is apparent in many writings of that period.(2) The quotation of Paul, 1 Corinthians ii. 9, differs materially from the Septuagint version of the passage in Isaiah lxiv. 4, and, as we have seen, the same passage quoted by "Clement of Rome,"(3) differs both from the version of the LXX'. and from the Epistle, although closer to the former. Jerome however found the passage in the apocryphal work called "Ascensio Isaiæ,"(4) and Origen, Jerome, and others likewise ascribe it to the "Apocalypsis Eliæ."(5) This, however, does not concern us here, and we have merely to examine the "saying of the Lord," which Hegesippus opposes to the passage: "Blessed are your eyes that see and your ears that hear." This is compared with Matt. xiii. 16, "But blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear" [——]—], and also with Luke x. 23, "Blessed are the eyes which see the things that ye see," &c. We need not point out that the saying referred to by Hegesippus, whilst conveying the
same sense as that in the two Gospels, differs as materially from them both as they do from each other, and as we might expect a quotation taken from a different though kindred source, like the Gospel according to the Hebrews, to do. The whole of the passages which we have examined, indeed, exhibit the same natural variation.
We have already referred to the expressions of Hegesippus regarding the heresies in the early Church: "From these sprang the false Christs, and false prophets, and false apostles who divided the unity of the Church by corrupting doctrines concerning God and his Christ."(1) We have shown how this recalls quotations in Justin of sayings of Jesus foreign to our Gospels, in common with similar expressions in the Clementine Homilies,(2) Apostolic Constitutions,(3) and Clementine Recognitions,(4) and we need not discuss the matter further. This community of reference, in a circle known to have made use of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, to matters foreign to our Synoptics, furnishes collateral illustration of the influence of that Gospel.
Tischendorf, who so eagerly searches for every trace, real or imaginary, of the use of our Gospels and of the existence of a New Testament Canon, passes over in silence, with the exception of a short note(5) devoted to the denial that Hegesippus was opposed to Paul, this first writer of Christian Church history, whose evidence, could it have been adduced, would have been so valuable. He does not pretend that Hegesippus made use of the Canonical Gospels, or knew of any other Holy Scriptures
