4. If John the Baptist was really the son of a chief priest, the silence of the other gospels is unaccountable. Certainly if Justin Martyr had had the opening chapters of Luke before him, he would have used them against Trypho. 5. When I first read Luke critically, I asked myself, Why has he omitted the death of Zacharias, as he has dragged him in? Then I was struck with the words that he has put into the mouth of Christ:-- "From the blood of Abel to the blood of Zacharias which _perished between the altar and the temple_." (Ch. xi. 51.) This passage convinced me that he had the Protevangelion before him. It is to be remarked that this verse does not appear in Marcion's version. Then I came across a whimsical passage in Bishop Lightfoot. He shows that an "early tradition identified the Zacharias who is mentioned in the gospels as having been slain between the temple and the altar (Matt. xxiii. 35) with this Zacharias, the father of the Baptist." ("Supernatural Religion," p. 256.) The bishop then triumphs over the author of "Supernatural Religion," who had declared that Luke makes no announcement of Zacharias's death. "He appears," says Bishop Lightfoot, "to have forgotten Luke xi. 51." (Op. cit. p. 257.) But surely the bishop has overlooked one whimsical objection to accepting this story as historical. If the John the Baptist was the son of Zacharias, the son of Barachias, he must have been 531 years old when he baptised Christ. Bishop Lightfoot makes much of these opening chapters, because they show that the parents of Jesus were orthodox Jews, who went up every year to the feast of the Passover, and offered doves at the prescribed times. But what about Herod and the flight into Egypt? If the first four chapters which "Luke" is accused of adding to Marcion's gospel be historical, the flight into Egypt is a fiction. The Buddhist story about Simeon, and the Buddhist disputation with the doctors, are borrowed from the First Gospel of the Infancy. They are not in any other canonical gospel, and the First Gospel of the Infancy is the great armoury of Buddhist legends. It is to be remarked that a young Buddhist, that he may acquire readiness in controversy, is pestered with questions by doctors and theologians. But the rabbis at Jerusalem would scarcely have allowed a little boy to talk to them about the Messiah. (First Infancy, xxi. 3.) We now come to the two passages most relied on by those who desire to show that Jesus condemned the asceticism of John. Let us read each with its context.