and), the good cursives 1 and 33, one form of the Vulgate,
a, c, e, m of the Old Latin, the Peshito Syriac, the Armenian and
Aethiopic versions, Irenaeus, Gregory Thaumaturgus, Tertullian,
Cyprian, and Epiphanius. On the other hand, for the omission are
A. B, C (third hand), D, [Hebrew: Aleph symbol], and the rest of
the uncials and cursives, another form of the Vulgate, b, f, ff,
g'2, l of the Old Latin, the Harclean and Jerusalem Syriac, the
Memphitic, Gothic, and some MSS. of the Armenian versions, Origen,
Dionysius and Peter of Alexandria, and Eusebius. A text critic
will see at once on which side the balance lies. It is impossible
that [Greek: ek sou] could have been the reading of the autograph
copy, and it is not, I believe, admitted into the text by any
recent editor. But if it was present in the copy made use of by
the Gnostic writer, whoever he was, that copy must have been
already far enough removed from the original to admit of this
corruption; in other words, it has lineage enough to throw the
original some way behind it. We shall come to more of such
phenomena in the next chapter.

I said just now that the quotation could not with certainty be
referred to Valentinus, but it is at least considerably earlier
than the contemporaries of Hippolytus. It appears that there was a
division in the Valentinian School upon the interpretation of this
very passage. Ptolemaeus and Heracleon, representing the Western
branch, took one side, while Axionicus and Bardesanes, representing
the Eastern, took the other. Ptolemaeus and Heracleon were both,
we know, contemporaries of Irenaeus, so that the quotation was used
among the Valentinians at least in the time of Irenaeus, and very
possibly earlier, for it usually takes a certain time for a subject
to be brought into controversy. We must thus take the _terminus ad quem_
for the quotation not later than 180 A.D. How much further back it
goes we cannot say, but even then (if the Valentinian text is correctly
preserved by Hippolytus) it presents features of corruption.

That the Valentinians made use of unwritten sources as well as of
written, and that they possessed a Gospel of their own which they
called the Gospel of Truth, does not affect the question of their
use of the Synoptics. For these very same Valentinians undoubtedly
did use the Synoptics, and not only them but also the fourth
Gospel. It is immediately after he has spoken of the 'unwritten'
tradition of the Vale