the gloss as to why Jesus chose his disciples from such a class, but he reasons: "What is there strange, therefore, that Jesus being minded to manifest to the race of men his power to heal souls, should have selected infamous and wicked men, and should have elevated them so far, that they became a pattern of the purest virtue to those who were brought by their persuasion to the Gospel of Christ."(1) The argument, both of the author of the Epistle and of Origen, is different from that suggested by the phrase under examination, and we consider it a mere gloss introduced into the text; which, as the [--Greek--] shows, has, in the estimation of Tischendorf himself, been deliberately altered. Even if it originally formed part of the text, however, it would be wrong to affirm that it affords proof of the use or existence of the first Gospel. The words of Jesus in Matt. ix. 12--14, evidently belong to the oldest tradition of the Gospel, and, in fact, Ewald ascribes them, apart from the remainder of the chapter, originally to the Spruchsammlung, from which, with two intermediate books, he considers that our present Matthew was composed.(2} Nothing can be more certain than that such sayings, if they be admitted to be historical at all, must have existed in many other works, and the mere fact of their happening to be also in one of the Gospels which has survived, cannot prove its use, or even {250} its existence at the time the Epistle of Barnabas was written, more especially as the phrase does not occur as a quotation, and there is no indication of the source from which it was derived. Teschendorf, however, finds a further analogy between the Epistle and the Gospel of Matthew, in ch. xii. "Since, therefore, in the future, they were to say that Christ is the son of David, fearing and perceiving clearly the error of the wicked, David himself prophesies--"The Lord said unto my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool."(1) Teschendorf upon this inquires: "Could Barnabas so write without the supposition, that his readers had Matthew, xxii. 41. ff, before them, and does not such a supposition likewise infer the actual authority of Matthew's Gospel?"(2) Such rapid argument and extreme conclusions are startling indeed, but, in his haste, our critic has forgotten to state the whole case. The author of the Epistle has been elaborately showing that the Cross of Christ is repeatedly typified in the Old Testament, and at the commencement of the chapter, after quoting the passage from IV Ezra, iv. 33, v. 5, he points to the case of Moses, to whose heart "the spirit speaks that he should make a form of the cross," by stretching forth his arms in supplication, and so long as he did so Israel prevailed over their enemies; and again he typified the cross, when he set up the brazen serpent upon which the people might look and be healed. Then that which Moses, as a prophet, said to Joshua (Jesus) the son of Nave, when he gave him that {251}