han Justin's to reduce all this to
its simple Christian expression, to take the poetry of Judaea and
the philosophy of Alexandria and to interpret and realise both in
the light of the historical events of the birth and life of
Christ. 'The Word became flesh' is the key by which Justin is made
intelligible, and that key is supplied by the fourth Gospel. No
other Christian writer had combined these two ideas before--the
divine Logos, with the historical personality of Jesus. When
therefore we find the ideas combined as in Justin, we are
necessarily referred to the fourth Gospel for them; for the
strangely inverted suggestion of Volkmar, that the author of the
fourth Gospel borrowed from Justin, is on chronological, if not on
other grounds, certainly untenable. We shall see that the fourth
Gospel was without doubt in existence at the date which Volkmar
assigns to Justin's Apology, 150 A. D.

* * * * *

The history of the discussion as to the relation of the Clementine
Homilies to the fourth Gospel is highly instructive, not only in
itself, but also for the light which it throws upon the general
character of our enquiry and the documents with which it is
concerned. It has been already mentioned that up to the year 1853
the Clementine Homilies were only extant in a mutilated form,
ending abruptly in the middle of Hom. xix. 14. In that year a
complete edition was at last published by Dressel from a
manuscript in the Vatican containing the rest of the nineteenth
and the twentieth Homily. The older portion occupies in all, with
the translation and critical apparatus, 381 large octavo pages in
Dressel's edition; the portion added by Dressel occupies 34. And
yet up to 1853, though the Clementine Homilies had been carefully
studied with reference to the use of the fourth Gospel, only a few
indications had been found, and those were disputed. In fact, the
controversy was very much at such a point as others with which we
have been dealing; there was a certain probability in favour of
the conclusion that the Gospel had been used, but still
considerably short of the highest. Since the publication of the
conclusion of the Homilies the question has been set at rest.
Hilgenfeld, who had hitherto been a determined advocate of the
negative theory, at once gave up his ground [Endnote 288:1]; and
Volkmar, who had somewhat less to retract, admitted and admits
[Endnote 288:2] that the fact of the use of the G