It is evident that the dates assigned by apologists are wholly arbitrary, and even if our argument for the later epoch were very much less conclusive than it is, the total absence of evidence for an earlier date would completely nullify any testimony derived from Celsus. It is sufficient for us to add that, whilst he refers to incidents of Gospel history and quotes some sayings which have pandlels, with more or less of variation, in our Gospels, Celsus nowhere mentions the name of any Christian book, unless we except the Book of Enoch;(4) and he accuses Christians, not without reason, of interpolating the books of the Sibyl, whose authority, he states, some of them acknowledged.(5)
The last document which we need examine in connection with the synoptic Gospels is the list of New Testament and other writings held in consideration by the Church, which is generally called, after its discoverer and first editor, the Canon of Muratori. This interesting fragment, which was published in 1740 by Muratori in his collection of Italian antiquities,(1) at one time belonged to the monastery of Bobbio, founded by the Irish monk Columban, and was found by Muratori in the Ambrosian Library at Milan in a MS. containing extracts of little interest from writings of Eucherius, Ambrose, Chrysostom, and others. Muratori estimated the age of the MS. at about a thousand years, but so far as we are aware no thoroughly competent judge has since expressed any opinion upon the point. The fragment, which is defective both at the commencement and at the end, is written in an apologetic tone, and professes to give a list of the writings which are recognised by the Christian Church. It is a document which has no official character,(2) but which merely conveys the private views and information of the anonymous writer, regarding whom nothing whatever is known. From any point of view, the composition is of a nature permitting the widest differences of opinion. It is by some affirmed to be a complete treatise on the books received by the Church, from which fragments have been lost;(3) whilst
others consider it a mere fragment in itself.(1) It is written in Latin which by some is represented as most corrupt,(2) whilst others uphold it as most correct.(3) The text is further rendered almost unintelligible by every possible inaccuracy of orthography and grammar, which is ascribed diversely to the transcriber, to the translator, and to both.(4) Indeed such is the elastic condition of the text, resulting from errors and obscurity of every imaginable description, that by means of ingenious conjectures critics are able to find in it almost any sense they desire.(5) Considerable difference of opinion exists as to the original language of the fragment, the greater number of critics maintaining that the composition is a translation from the Greek,(6) whilst others assert it to
have been originally written in Latin.(1) Its composition is variously attributed to the Church of Africa(2) and to a member of the Church in Rome.(3)
The fragment commences with the concluding portion of a sentence.... "quibus tamen interfuit et ita posuit"—"at which nevertheless he was present, and thus he placed it." The MS. then proceeds: "Third book of the Gospel according to Luke. Luke, that physician, after the ascension of Christ when Paul took him with him..., wrote it in his name as he deemed best (ex opinione)—nevertheless he had not himself seen the Lord in the flesh,—and he too, as far as he could obtain information, also begins to speak from the nativity of John." The text, at the sense of which this is a closely approximate guess, though several other
interpretations might be maintained, is as follows: Tertio evangelii librum secundo Lucan Lucas iste medicus post ascensum Christi cum eo Paulus quasi ut juris studiosum secundum adsumsisset numeni suo ex opinione concribset dominum tamen nec ipse vidit in carne et idem prout asequi potuit ita et ad nativitate Johannis incipet dicere.