The next passage occurs in Hom. xviii. 15: "For Isaiah said: I will open my mouth in parables, and I will utter things that have been kept secret from the foundation of the world."(3) Now this passage, with a slightly different order of words, is found in Matt. xiii. 35. After giving a series of parables, the author of the Gospel says (v. 34), "All these things spake Jesus unto the multitudes in parables; and without a parable spake he not unto them; (v. 35) That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophet (Isaiah), saying: I will open my mouth in parables, &c." There are two peculiarities which must be pointed out in this passage. It is not found in Isaiah, but in Psalm lxxviii. 2,(4) and it presents a variation from the version of the lxx. Both the variation and the erroneous reference to Isaiah, therefore, occur also in the Homily. The first part of the sentence agrees with, but the latter part is quite different from, the Greek of the lxx., which reads: "I will utter problems from the beginning," [------].(5) The Psalm from which the quotation is really taken is, by its superscription, ascribed to Asaph, who, in the Septuagint version of II. Chronicles xxix. 30, is called a {11} prophet.(1) It was, therefore, early asserted that the original reading of Matthew was "Asaph," instead of "Isaiah." Porphyry, in the third century, twitted Christians with this erroneous ascription by their inspired evangelist to Isaiah of a passage from a Psalm, and reduced the Fathers to great straits. Eusebius, in his commentary on this verse of the Psalm, attributes the insertion of the words, "by the prophet Isaiah," to unintelligent copyists, and asserts that in accurate MSS. the name is not added to the word prophet. Jerome likewise ascribes the insertion of the name Isaiah for that of Asaph, which was originally written, to an ignorant scribe,(2) and in the commentary on the Psalms, generally, though probably falsely, ascribed to him, the remark is made that many copies of the Gospel to that day had the name "Isaiah," for which Porphyry had reproached Christians,(3) and the writer of the same commentary actually allows himself to make the assertion that Asaph was found in all the old codices, but ignorant men had removed it.(4) The fact is, that the reading "Asaph" for "Isaiah" is not found in any extant MS., and, although "Isaiah" has disappeared from all but a few obscure codices, it cannot be denied that the name anciently stood in the text.(5) In the Sinaitic Codex, which is probably the earliest MS. extant, and which is assigned to the fourth century, "the prophet _Isaiah_" stands in the text by the first hand, but is erased by the second (b). {12}