proportion of variation may be represented
thus:--
| Exact. | Slightly | Variant.
| | variant. |
| | |
Quotations from the Old Testament | 10 | 7 | 9
Quotations from the Synoptic Gospels | 10 | 25 | 32

It will be seen from this at once how largely the proportion of
variation rises; it is indeed more than three times as high for
the quotations from the Gospels as for those from the Old Testament.
The amount of combination too is decidedly in excess of that which
is found in the Old Testament quotations.

There is, it is true, something to be said on the other side.
Justin quotes the Old Testament rather as Scripture, the New
Testament rather as history. I think it will be felt that he has
permitted his own style a freer play in regard to the latter than
the former. The New Testament record had not yet acquired the same
degree of fixity as the Old. The 'many' compositions of which
St. Luke speaks in his preface were still in circulation, and were
only gradually dying out. One important step had been taken in the
regular reading of the 'Memoirs of the Apostles' at the Christian
assemblies. We have not indeed proof that these were confined to
the Canonical Gospels. Probably as yet they were not. But it
should be remembered that Irenaeus was now a boy, and that by the
time he had reached manhood the Canon of the Gospels had received
its definite form.

Taking all these points into consideration I think we shall find
the various indications converge upon very much the same conclusion
as that at which we have already arrived. The _a priori_ probabilities
of the case, as well as the actual phenomena of Justin's Gospel,
alike tend to show that he did make use either mediately or immediately
of our Gospels, but that he did not assign to them an exclusive
authority, and that he probably made use along with them of other
documents no longer extant.

The proof that Justin made use of each of our three Synoptics
individually is perhaps more striking from the point of view of
substance than of form, because his direct quotations are mostly
taken from the discourses rather than from the narrative, and
these discourses are usually found in more than a single Gospel,
while in proportion as they bear the stamp of originality and
authenticity it is difficult to assign the