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Updated: June 9, 2025
On the same principles on which it is denied that this is a quotation from St. Matthew it would be easy to prove a priori that many of the quotations in Clement of Alexandria could not be taken from the canonical Gospels which, we know, are so taken. The fact that this passage is found among the Synoptics only in St. Matthew must not count for nothing.
But the reader will observe that he has given the same history as we find in the two synoptics which have given an account of the Nativity, and he apparently knew of no other account of the matter.
How is it that, connected with a general plan of the life of Jesus, which appears much more satisfactory and exact than that of the synoptics, these singular passages occur in which we are sensible of a dogmatic interest peculiar to the compiler, of ideas foreign to Jesus, and sometimes of indications which place us on our guard against the good faith of the narrator?
Such are the periods which may plainly be distinguished in the Koran. The order adopted with an extremely fine tact by the synoptics, supposes an analogous progress. If Matthew be attentively read, we shall find in the distribution of the discourses, a gradation perfectly analogous to that which we have just indicated.
The author consequently maintains that these were found in the original document from which all three, or two Synoptics at least, borrowed; and he notes that this very passage is assigned by Ewald to the 'oldest Gospel. The observation in itself is a fine and true one, and has an important bearing upon the question as to the way in which our Synoptic Gospels were composed.
As is well known, Renan, in his earlier editions, ascribed to this gospel a historical value superior to that of the synoptics, believing it to have been written by an eyewitness of the events which it relates; and from this source, accordingly, he drew the larger share of his materials.
I must recur, however, to the author's first remark, in which he characterizes the discourses of the Synoptics as "purely moral," and those of St. John as "wholly dogmatic." This is by no means true. The discourses in the Synoptics are on moral subjects, but they continually make dogmatic assertions or implications as pronounced as those in the Fourth Gospel.
Peter and St. Paul, and the revelation culminates in the knowledge of the Father and the Son in the Fourth Gospel. With respect to the assertion of the author of "Supernatural Religion," that the discourses in this Gospel are, as compared with those in the Synoptics, wholly dogmatic, as opposed to moral, the reader may judge of the truth of this by the following sayings of the Fourth Gospel:
The last months of the life of Jesus especially are explained by John alone; a number of the features of the passion, unintelligible in the synoptics, resume both probability and possibility in the narrative of the fourth Gospel. On the contrary, I dare defy any one to compose a Life of Jesus with any meaning, from the discourses which John attributes to him.
John is the only Evangelist who, in apparent allusion to the devout and spiritual reception of the Inward Part of the Lord's Supper, speaks of it as eating the Flesh of Christ, and drinking His Blood; the Synoptics and St. Paul in I Cor. x. 11, always speaking of it as His Body and Blood. Now Justin, in describing the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, uses the language peculiar to St.
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