Of one thing we may be sure: had Justin known the form of words used by the voice from heaven according to our Gospels, he would certainly have made use of it in preference to that which he actually found in his Memoirs. He is arguing that Christ is preexisting God, become incarnate by God's will through the Virgin Mary, and Trypho demands how he can be demonstrated to have been pre-existent, who is said to be filled with the power of the Holy Ghost, as though he had required this, Justin replies that these powers of the Spirit have come upon him not because he had need of them, but because they would accomplish Scripture, which declared that after him there should be no prophet.(3) The proof of this, he continues, is that, as soon as the child was born, the Magi from Arabia came to worship him, because even at his birth he was in possession of his power,(4) and after he had grown up like other men by the use of suitable means, he came to {319} the river Jordan where John was baptizing, and as he went into the water a fire was kindled in the Jordan, and the Holy Ghost descended like a dove. He did not go to the river because he had any need of baptism or of the descent of the Spirit, but because of the human race which had fallen under the power of death. Now if, instead of the passage actually cited, Justin could have quoted the words addressed to Jesus by the voice from heaven according to the Gospels: "Thou art my beloved son; in thee I am well pleased," his argument would have been greatly strengthened by such direct recognition of an already existing, and, as he affirmed, pre-existent divinity in Jesus. Not having these words in his Memoirs of the Apostles, however, he was obliged to be content with those which he found there: "Thou art my son; this day have I begotten thee;"--words which, in fact, in themselves destroyed the argument for pre-existence, and dated the divine begetting of Jesus as the son of God that very day. The passage, indeed, supported those who actually asserted that the Holy Ghost first entered into Jesus at his baptism. These considerations, and the repeated quotation of the same words in the same form, make it clear that Justin quotes from a source different from our Gospel.(1) In the scanty fragments of the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" which have been preserved, we find both the incident of the fire kindled in Jordan and the words {320}