This quotation is clearly not from our Gospels, but must be assigned to a different written source. The writer would scarcely refer the Corinthians to such words of Jesus if they were merely traditional. It is neither a combination of texts, nor a quotation from memory. The language throughout is markedly different from any passage in the Synoptics, and to present even a superficial parallel, it is necessary to take a fragment of the discourse of Jesus at the Last Supper regarding the traitor who should deliver him up (Matth. xxvi. 24), and join it to a fragment of his remarks in connection with the little child whom he set in the midst (xviii. 6). The parallel passage in Luke has not {230} the opening words of the passage in the Epistle at all, and the portion which it contains (xvii. 2), is separated from the context in which it stands in the first Gospel, and which explains its meaning. If we contrast the parallel passages in the three Synoptics, their differences of context are very suggestive, and without referring to their numerous and important variations in detail, the confusion amongst them is evidence of very varying tradition.(1) This alone would make the existence of another form like that quoted in the Epistle before us more than probable. Tischendorf, in a note to his statement that Clement nowhere refers to the Gospels, quotes the passage we are now considering, the only one to which he alludes, and says: "These words are expressly cited as 'words of Jesus our Lord;' but they denote much more oral apostolic tradition than a use of the parallel passages in Matthew (xxvi. 24, xviii. 6) and Luke (xvii. 2)."(2) It is now, of course, impossible to determine finally whether the passage was actually derived from tradition or from a written source different from our Gospels, but in either case the fact is, that the Epistle not only does not afford the slightest evidence for the existence of any of our Gospels, but from only making use of tradition or an apocryphal work as the source of information regarding words of Jesus, it is decidedly opposed to the pretensions made on behalf of the Synoptics. {231}