There can be no doubt that many Scriptural texts have crept into early Christian writings which originally had no place there; and where attendant circumstances are suspicious, it is always well to remember the fact. An instance of the interpolation of which we speak is found in the "Epistle of Barnabas." In one place the phrase: "Give to every one that asketh of thee" [--Greek--](1) occurs, not as a quotation, but merely woven into the Greek text as it existed before the discovery of the Sinaitic MS. This phrase is the same as the precept in Luke vi. 30, although it was argued by some that, as no other trace of the third Gospel existed in the Epistle, it was more probably an alteration of the text of Matth. v. 42. Omitting the phrase from the passage in the Epistle, the text read as follows: "Thou shalt not hesitate to give, neither shalt thou murmur when thou givest... so shalt thou know who is the good Recompenser of the reward." The supposed quotation, inserted where we have left a blank, really interrupted the sense and repeated the previous injunction. The oldest MS., the "Codex Sinaiticus," omits the quotation, and so ends the question, but it is afterwards inserted by another hand. Some pious scribe, in fact, seeing the relation of the passage to the Gospel, had added the {247} words in the margin as a gloss, and they afterwards found their way into the text In this manner very many similar glosses have crept into texts which they were originally intended to illustrate. Tischendorf, who does not allude to this, lays much stress upon the following passage: "But when he selected His own apostles, who should preach His Gospel, who were sinners above all sin, in order that he might show that He came not to call the righteous but sinners, then He manifested Himself to be the Son of God."(1) We may remark that, in the common Greek text, the words "to repentance" were inserted after "sinners," but they are not found in the Sinaitic MS. In like manner many Codices insert them in Matth, ix. 13 and Mark ii. 17, but they are not found in some of the oldest MSS., and are generally rejected. Tischendorf considers them a later addition both to the text of the Gospel and of the Epistle.(3) But this very fact is suggestive. It is clear that a supposed quotation has been deliberately adjusted to what was considered to be the text of the Gospel. Why should the whole phrase not be equally an interpolation? We shall presently see that there is reason to think that it is so. Alhough there is no quotation in the passage, who, asks Tischendorf,(3) could mistake the words as they stand in Matthew, ix. 13, "For I came not to call the righteous but sinners"? Now this passage is referred to by Origen in his work against Celsus, in a way which indicates that the supposed quotation did not exist in his copy; Origen says: "And as Celsus has called {248}