Part 2 (1/2)

With the exception of these two apparent cases, Justin never distinguishes one Memoir from another. He never mentions the author or authors of the Memoirs by name, and for this reason--that the three undoubted treatises of his which have come down to us are all written for those outside the pale of the Christian Church. It would have been worse than useless, in writing for such persons, to distinguish between Evangelist and Evangelist. So far as ”those without” were concerned, the Evangelists gave the same view of Christ and His work; and to have quoted first one and then another by name would have been mischievous, as indicating differences when the testimony of all that could be called memoirs was, in point of fact, one and the same.

According to the author of ”Supernatural Religion” Justin ten times designates the source of his quotations as the ”Memoirs of the Apostles,” and five times as simply the ”Memoirs.”

Now the issue which the writer of ”Supernatural Religion” raises is this: ”Were these Memoirs our present four Gospels, or were they some older Gospel or Gospels?” to which we may add another: ”Did Justin quote any other lost Gospel besides our four?”

I shall now give some instances of the use which Justin makes of the writings which he calls ”Memoirs,” and this will enable the reader in great measure to judge for himself.

First of all, then, I give one or two extracts from Justin's account of our Lord's Nativity. Let the reader remember that, with respect to the first of these, the account is not introduced in order to give Trypho an account of our Lord's Birth, but to a.s.sure him that a certain prophecy, as it is worded in the Septuagint translation of Isaiah--viz., ”He shall take the powers of Damascus and the spoil of Samaria,” was fulfilled in Christ. And indeed almost every incident which Justin takes notice of he relates as a fulfilment of some prophecy or other. Trifling or comparatively trifling incidents in our Lord's Life are noticed at great length, because they are supposed to be the fulfilment of some prophecy; and what we should consider more important events are pa.s.sed over in silence, because they do not seem to fulfil any prediction.

The first extract from Justin, then, shall be the following:--

”Now this King Herod, at the time when the Magi came to him from Arabia, and said they knew from a star which appeared in the heavens that a King had been born in your country, and that they had come to wors.h.i.+p Him, learned from the Elders of your people, that it was thus written regarding Bethlehem in the Prophet: 'And thou, Bethlehem, in the land of Judah, art by no means least among the princes of Judah; for out of thee shall go forth the leader, who shall feed my people.' Accordingly, the Magi from Arabia came to Bethlehem, and wors.h.i.+pped the child, and presented him with gifts, gold, and frankincense, and myrrh; but returned not to Herod, being warned in a revelation after wors.h.i.+pping the child in Bethlehem. And Joseph, the spouse of Mary, who wished at first to put away his betrothed Mary, supposing her to be pregnant by intercourse with a man, _i.e._ from fornication, was commanded in a vision not to put away his wife; and the angel who appeared to him told him that what is in her womb is of the Holy Ghost. Then he was afraid and did not put her away, but on the occasion of the first census which was taken in Judea under Cyrenius, he went up from Nazareth, where he lived, to Bethlehem, to which he belonged, to be enrolled; for his family was of the tribe of Judah, which then inhabited that region.

Then, along with Mary, he is ordered to proceed into Egypt, and remain there with the Child, until another revelation warn them to return to Judea. But when the Child was born in Bethlehem, since Joseph could not find a lodging in that village, he took up his quarters in a certain cave near the village; and while they were there Mary brought forth the Christ and placed Him in a manger, and here the Magi who came from Arabia, found Him. 'I have repeated to you,' I continued, 'what Isaiah foretold about the sign which foreshadowed the cave; but, for the sake of those which have come with us to-day, I shall again remind you of the pa.s.sage.' Then I repeated the pa.s.sage from Isaiah which I have already written, adding that, by means of those words, those who presided over the mysteries of Mithras were stirred up by the devil to say that in a place, called among them a cave, they were initiated by him. 'So Herod, when the Magi from Arabia did not return to him, as he had asked them to do, but had departed by another way to their own country, according to the commands laid upon them; and when Joseph, with Mary and the Child, had now gone into Egypt, as it was revealed to them to do; as he did not know the Child whom the Magi had gone to wors.h.i.+p, ordered simply the whole of the children then in Bethlehem to be ma.s.sacred. And Jeremiah prophesied that this would happen, speaking by the Holy Ghost thus: 'A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation and much wailing, Rachel weeping for her children, and she would not be comforted, because they are not.'”

(Dial. ch. lxxviii.)

Now any unprejudiced reader, on examining this account, would instantly say that Justin had derived every word of it from the Gospels of St.

Matthew and St. Luke, but that, instead of quoting the exact words of either Evangelist, he would say that he (Justin) ”reproduced” them. He reproduced the narrative of the Nativity as it is found in each of these two Gospels. He first reproduces the narrative in St. Matthew in somewhat more colloquial phrase than the Evangelist used, interspersing with it remarks of his own; and in order to account for the Birth of Christ in Bethlehem he brings in from St. Luke the matter of the census, (not with historical accuracy but) sufficiently to show that he was acquainted with the beginning of Luke ii.; and in order to account for the fact that Christ was not born in the inn, but in a more sordid place (whether stable or cave matters not, for if it was a cave it was a cave used as a stable, for there was a ”manger” in it), he reproduces Luke ii. 6-7.

Justin then, in a single consecutive narrative, expressed much in his own words, gives the whole account, so far as it was a fulfilment of prophecy, made up from two narratives which have come down to us in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke, and in these only. It would have been absurd for him to have done otherwise, as he might have done if he had antic.i.p.ated the carpings of nineteenth century critics, and a.s.sumed that Trypho, an unconverted Jew, had a New Testament in his hand with which he was so familiar that he could be referred to first one narrative and then the other, in order to test the correctness of Justin's quotations.

Against all this the author of ”Supernatural Religion” brings forward a number of trifling disagreements as proofs that Justin need not have quoted one of the Evangelists--probably did not--indeed, may not have ever seen our synoptics, or heard of their existence. But the reader will observe that he has given the same history as we find in the two synoptics which have given an account of the Nativity, and he apparently knew of no other account of the matter.

We are reminded that there were numerous apocryphal Gospels then in use in the Church, and that Justin might have derived his matter from these; but, if so, how is it that he discards all the lying legends with which those Gospels team, and, with the solitary exception of the mention of the cave, confines himself to the circ.u.mstances of the synoptic narrative.

The next place respecting the Nativity shall be one from ch. c.:--

”But the Virgin Mary received faith and joy, when the angel Gabriel announced the good tidings to her that the Spirit of the Lord would come upon her, and the power of the Highest would overshadow her; wherefore also the Holy Thing begotten of her is the Son of G.o.d: and she replied, 'Be it unto me according to Thy word.'”

Here both the words of the angel and the answer of the virgin are almost identical with the words in St. Luke's Gospel; Justin, however, putting his account into the oblique narrative.

We will put the two side by side that the reader may compare them.

[GREEK TABLE]

Pistin de kai charan labousa | Maria he parthenos euangelizomenou | aute Gabriel angelou, hoti pneuma | Pneuma hagion epeleusetai epi kyriou ep' auten epeleusetai, | se, kai dynamis hypsistou kai dunamis hypsistou episkiasei | episkiasei soi, dio kai to gennomenon auten, dio kai to gennomenon | hagion klethesetai Hyios Theou.

ex autes hagion estin Hyios Theou, | * * * * *

apekrinato, Genoito moi kata to | Genoito moi kaia to rhema sou.

rhema sou. |

Now of these words, _as existing in St. Luke_, the author of ”Supernatural Religion” takes no notice. Was he, then, acquainted with the fact that Justin's words _in this place_ so closely correspond with St. Luke's? We cannot say. We only know that he calls his readers'

particular attention to a supposed citation of the previous words of the angel Gabriel, cited in another place:--

”Behold thou shalt conceive of the Holy Ghost, and shalt bear a Son, and He shall be called the Son of the Highest, and thou shalt call His name Jesus, for He shall save His people from their sins.”

(Apol. I. ch. x.x.xiii.)

The ordinary unprejudiced reader would say that Justin here reproduces St. Matthew and St. Luke, weaving into St. Luke's narrative the words of the angel to St. Joseph; but our author will not allow this for a moment. He insists that Justin knew nothing, or need have known nothing, of St. Luke. He shows that the words of the angel, ”He shall save his people,” &c., which seem to be introduced from St. Matthew, ”are not accidentally inserted in this place, for we find that they are joined in the same manner to the address of the angel to Mary in the Protevangelium of St. James.”