to
the other, inventing no middle links, but merely piecing together the
two accounts as best he could. Indeed the preliminary portions of
Justin's Gospel read very much like the sort of rough _prima facie_
harmony which, without any more profound study, most people make for
themselves. But the harmonising process necessarily implies matter to
harmonise, and that matter must have had the closest possible
resemblance to the contents of our Gospels.

If, then, Justin made use either of a single document or set of
documents distinct from those which have become canonical, we
conclude that it or they belonged to a later and more advanced
stage of formation. But it should be remembered that the case is a
hypothetical one. The author of 'Supernatural Religion' seems
inclined to maintain that Justin did use such a document or
documents, and not our Gospels. If he did, then the consequence
above stated seems to follow. But I do not at all care to press
this inference; it is no more secure than the premiss upon which
it is founded. Only it seems to me that the choice lies between
two alternatives and no more; either Justin used our Gospels, or
else he used a document later than our Gospels and presupposing
them. The reader may take which side of the alternative he
pleases.

The question is, which hypothesis best covers and explains the
facts. It is not impossible that Justin may have had a special
Gospel such as has just been described. There is a tendency among
those critics who assign Justin's quotations to an uncanonical
source to find that source in the so-called Gospel according to
the Hebrews or some of its allied forms. But a large majority of
critics regard the Gospel according to the Hebrews as holding
precisely this secondary relation to the canonical Matthew.
Justin's document can hardly have been the Gospel according to the
Hebrews, at least alone, as that Gospel omitted the section Matt.
i. 18-ii. 23 [Endnote 103:1], which Justin certainly retained. But
it is within the bounds of possibility--it would be hazardous to
say more--that he may have had another Gospel so modified and
compiled as to meet all the conditions of the case. For my own
part, I think it decidedly the more probable hypothesis that he
used our present Gospels with some peculiar document, such as this
Gospel according to the Hebrews, or perhaps, as Dr. Hilgenfeld
thinks, the ground document of the Gospel according to Peter (a
work of which we