Another passage is a phrase from the "Lord's Prayer," which occurs in
Hom. xix. 2: "But also in the prayer which he commended to us, we have
it said: Deliver us from the evil one" [------]. It need scarcely be
said, however, that few Gospels can have been composed without including
this prayer, and the occurrence of this short phrase demonstrates
nothing more than the mere fact, that the author of the Homilies was
acquainted with one of the most universally known lessons of Jesus, or
made use of a Gospel which contained it. There would have been cause for
wonder had he been ignorant of it.
The only other passage which agrees literally with our Gospels is also
a mere fragment from the parable of the Talents, and when the other
references to the same parable are added, it is evident that the
quotation is not from our Gospels. In Hom. iii. 65, the address to
the good servant is introduced: "Well done, good and faithful servant"
[------], which agrees
{14}
with the words in Matt. xxv. 21. The allusion to the parable of the
talents in the context is perfectly clear, and the passage occurs in
an address of the Apostle Peter to overcome the modest scruples of
Zaccheus, the former publican, who has been selected by Peter as his
successor in the Church of Caesarea when he is about to leave in pursuit
of Simon the Magician. Anticipating the possibility of his hesitating
to accept the office, Peter, in an earlier part of his address, however,
makes fuller allusions to the same parable of the talents, which we must
contrast with the parallel in the first Synoptic. "But if any of those
present, having the ability to instruct the ignorance of men, shrink
back from it, considering only his own ease, then let him expect to
hear:"
[--Table--]
{15}
The Homily does not end here, however, but continues in words not found
in our Gospels at all: "And reasonably: 'For,' he says, 'it is thine,
O man, to put my words as silver with exchangers, and to prove them as
money/"(1) This passage is very analogous to another saying of Jesus,
frequently quoted from an apocryphal Gospel, by the author of the
Homilies, to which we shall hereafter more particularly refer, but
here merely point out: "Be ye approved money-changers" [------].(2) The
variations from the parallel passages in the first and third Gospels,
the peculiar application of the parable to the _words_ of Jesus, and
the addition of a saying not found in our Gospels, warrant us in denying
that the quotations we are considering can be appropriated by our
canonical Gospels, and, on the contrary, give good reason for the
conclusion, that the author derived his knowledge of the parable from
another source.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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