We find, again, the same variations as in Justin in several extant
apocryphal Gospels. The Protevangelium of James represents the birth
of Jesus as taking place in a cave;(1) so also the Arabic Gospel of
the Infancy,(2) and several others.(3) This uncanonical detail is also
mentioned by several of the Fathers, Origen and Eusebius both stating
that the cave and the manger were still shown in their day.(4)
Teschendorf does not hesitate to affirm that Justin derived this
circumstance from the Protevangelium.(5) Justin, however, does not
distinguish such a source; and the mere fact that we have a form of that
Gospel, in which it occurs, still extant, by no means justifies such
a specific conclusion, when so many other works, now lost, may equally
have contained
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it. If the fact be derived from the Protevangelium, that work, or
whatever other apocryphal Gospel may have supplied it, must be admitted
to have at least formed part of the Memoirs of the Apostles, and with
that necessary admission ends all special identification of the Memoirs
with our canonical Gospels. Much more probably, however, Justin quotes
from the more ancient source from which the Protevangelium and, perhaps,
Luke drew their narrative.(1) There can be very little doubt that the
Gospel according to the Hebrews contained an account of the birth in
Bethlehem, and as it is, at least, certain that Justin quotes other
particulars known to have been in it, there is fair reason to suppose
that he likewise found this fact in that work.(2) In any case it
is indisputable that he derived it from a source different from our
canonical Gospels.(3)
Justin does not apparently know anything of the episode of the shepherds
of the plain, and the angelic appearance to them, narrated in the third
Gospel.(4)
To the cave in which the infant Jesus is born came the Magi, but
instead of employing the phrase used by the first Gospel, "Magi from the
East,"(5) [--Greek--] Justin always describes them as "Magi from Arabia,"
[--Greek--]. Justin is so punctilious that he
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never speaks of these Magi without adding "from Arabia," except twice,
where, however, he immediately mentions Arabia as the point of the
argument for which they are introduced; and in the same chapter in which
this occurs he four times calls them directly Magi from Arabia.(1)
He uses this expression not less than nine times.(2) That he had no
objection to the term "the East," and that with a different context it
was common to his vocabulary, is proved by his use of it elsewhere.(3)
It is impossible to resist the conviction that Justin's Memoirs
contained the phrase "Magi from Arabia," which is foreign to our
Gospels.(4)
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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