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I must add, that, in my opinion, this school was better acquainted with the exterior circumstances of the life of the Founder than the group whose remembrances constituted the synoptics. It had, especially upon the sojourns of Jesus at Jerusalem, data which the others did not possess.
I re-read Liddon's "Bampton Lectures" on this controversy and Renan's "Vie de Jesus". I studied the Gospels, and tried to represent to myself the life there outlined; I tested the conduct there given as I should have tested the conduct of any ordinary historical character; I noted that in the Synoptics no claim to Deity was made by Jesus himself, nor suggested by his disciples; I weighed his own answer to an enquirer, with its plain disavowal of Godhood: "Why callest thou me good?
He will notice that all the events related in Justin are the same as those recorded in the Evangelists Matthew and Luke; and that the circumstances related by Justin, and not to be found in the Synoptics, are of the most trifling character, as, for instance, that the blaspheming bystanders at the cross "screwed up their noses."
Him shall ye hear. How ridiculous the cool superciliousness with which modern historical criticism 'pooh-poohs' that interpretation! But the contrast is quite as prominent as the resemblance. This saying is one which occurs in all the Synoptics, and is as full a declaration of Sonship as any in John's Gospel. It involves pre-existence.
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.
John contain, in germ, the whole of what Justin develops; but it is absurd to assert that, after Justin had written the above, it was necessary, in order to bolster up a later, and consequently, in the eyes of Rationalists, a mere human development, to forge a now Gospel, containing nothing like so explicit a declaration of the Trinity as we find in writings which are supposed to precede it, and weighting its doctrinal statements with a large amount of historical matter very difficult, in many cases, to reconcile perfectly with the history in the older Synoptics.
So far we have only spoken of the three Gospels named the synoptics. There remains a fourth, that which bears the name of John. Concerning this one, doubts have a much better foundation, and the question is further from solution.
The dead will then arise, and the Messiah will proceed to judgment. It must be remarked that the picture of the end of time attributed to Jesus by the synoptics, contains many features which relate to the siege of Jerusalem. There is no doubt, however, that Jesus predicted that great terrors would precede his reappearance. These terrors were an integral part of all the Jewish apocalypses.
We have further a pearl of great price in the mysticism of Paul, which presupposes, not the Jesus of modern critics, nor yet the Jesus of the Synoptics, but a splendid heart-uplifting Jesus in the colours of mythology. In this Jesus Paul lived, and had a constant ecstatic joy in the everlasting divine work of creation.
Because, if he had done so, the context would have shown that it was not a quotation from a gospel identical with our own "beseeching the all-seeing God not to lead us into temptation, as the Lord hath said, The spirit, indeed, is willing, but the flesh is weak." If this be a quotation at all, it is from some lost gospel, as these words are nowhere found thus conjoined in the Synoptics.
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