Matthew and some only in St. Luke. He will notice also how
frequently Justin reproduces the narrative rather than quotes it.
The ordinary reader would account for all this by supposing that Justin
had our Synoptics (at least the first and third) before him, and
reproduced incidents first from one and then from the other as they
suited his purpose, and his purpose was not to give an account of the
Crucifixion, but to elucidate the prophecies respecting the Crucifixion.
The author of "Supernatural Religion," however, goes through those
citations, or supposed citations, seriatim, and attempts to show that
each one must have been taken from some lost Gospel, most probably the
Gospel of the Hebrews.
Be it so. Here, then, was a Gospel which contained all the separate
incidents recorded in SS. Matthew and Luke, and, of course, combined
them in one narrative. How is it that so inestimably valuable a
Christian document was irretrievably lost, and its place supplied by
three others, each far its inferior, each picking and choosing separate
parts from the original; and that, about 120 years after the original
promulgation of the Gospel, these three forged narratives superseded a
Gospel which would have been, in the matter of our Lord's Birth, Death,
and Resurrection, a complete and perfect harmony? I leave the author of
"Supernatural Religion" to explain so unlikely a fact.
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