There is, however, another passage which deserves to be mentioned. The Epistle has the following quotation: "Again, I will show thee how, in regard to us, the Lord saith, He made a new creation in the last times. The Lord saith: Behold I make the first as the last."(l) Even Tischendorf does not pretend that this is a quotation of Matth. xx. 16,(2) "Thus the last shall be first and the first last," [——]—] the sense of which is quite different. The application of the saying in this place in the first, and indeed in the other, Synoptic Gospels is evidently quite false, and depends merely on the ring of words and not of ideas. In xix. 30 it is quoted a second time, quite irrelevantly, with some variation: "But many first shall be last and last first" [——]—]. Now it will be remembered that at xx. 16 it occurs in several MSS. in connection with "Many are called but few are chosen," although the oldest codices omit the latter passage, and most critics consider it interpolated. The separate quotation of these two passages by the author of the Epistle, with so marked a variation in the second, renders it most probable that he found both in the source from which he quotes. We have, however, more than sufficiently discussed this passage. The author of the Epistle does not indicate any source from which he makes his quotation; and the mere existence in the first Synoptic of a proverbial saying like this does not in the least involve the conclusion that it is necessarily the writing from which the quotation was derived, more especially as apocryphal works are repeatedly cited in the Epistle. If it be maintained that the saying is really historical, it is obvious that the prescriptive right of our Synoptic is at once excluded, and it may have been the common property of a score of evangelical works.
There can be no doubt that many Scriptural texts have crept into early Christian writings which originally had no place there; and where attendant circumstances are suspicious, it is always well to remember the fact. An instance of the interpolation of which we speak is found in the "Epistle of Barnabas." In one place the phrase: "Give to every one that asketh of thee" [——]—](1) occurs, not as a quotation, but merely woven into the Greek text as it existed before the discovery of the Sinaitic MS. This phrase is the same as the precept in Luke vi. 30, although it was argued by some that, as no other trace of the third Gospel existed in the Epistle, it was more probably an alteration of the text of Matth. v. 42. Omitting the phrase from the passage in the Epistle, the text read as follows: "Thou shalt not hesitate to give, neither shalt thou murmur when thou givest … so shalt thou know who is the good Recompenser of the reward." The supposed quotation, inserted where we have left a blank, really interrupted the sense and repeated the previous injunction. The oldest MS., the "Codex Sinaiticus," omits the quotation, and so ends the question, but it is afterwards inserted by another hand. Some pious scribe, in fact, seeing the relation of the passage to the Gospel, had added the words in the margin as a gloss, and they afterwards found their way into the text In this manner very many similar glosses have crept into texts which they were originally intended to illustrate.
Tischendorf, who does not allude to this, lays much stress upon the following passage: "But when he selected His own apostles, who should preach His Gospel, who were sinners above all sin, in order that he might show that He came not to call the righteous but sinners, then He manifested Himself to be the Son of God."(1) We may remark that, in the common Greek text, the words "to repentance" were inserted after "sinners," but they are not found in the Sinaitic MS. In like manner many Codices insert them in Matth, ix. 13 and Mark ii. 17, but they are not found in some of the oldest MSS., and are generally rejected. Tischendorf considers them a later addition both to the text of the Gospel and of the Epistle.(3) But this very fact is suggestive. It is clear that a supposed quotation has been deliberately adjusted to what was considered to be the text of the Gospel. Why should the whole phrase not be equally an interpolation? We shall presently see that there is reason to think that it is so. Alhough there is no quotation in the passage, who, asks Tischendorf,(3) could mistake the words as they stand in Matthew, ix. 13, "For I came not to call the righteous but sinners"? Now this passage is referred to by Origen in his work against Celsus, in a way which indicates that the supposed quotation did not exist in his copy; Origen says: "And as Celsus has called the Apostles of Jesus infamous men, saying that they were tax-gatherers and worthless sailors, we have to remark on this, that, &c. … Now in the Catholic Epistle of Barnabas from which, perhaps, Celsus derived the statement that the Apostles were infamous and wicked men, it is written that 'Jesus selected his own Apostles who were sinners above all sin,"(1)—and then he goes on to quote the expression of Peter to Jesus (Luke v. 8), and then I Timothy, L 15, but he nowhere refers to the supposed quotation in the Epistle. Now, if we read the passage without the quotation, we have: "But when he selected his own Apostles who should preach his Gospel, who were sinners above all sin … then he manifested himself to be the Son of God." Here a pious scribe very probably added in the margin the gloss: "in order that he might show that he came not to call the righteous but sinners," to explain the passage, and as in the case of the phrase: "Give to every one that asketh of thee," the gloss became subsequently incorporated with the text. The Epistle, however, goes on to give the only explanation which the author intended, and which clashes with that of the scribe. "For if he had not come in the flesh, how could men have been saved by beholding him? Seeing that looking on the sun that shall cease to be, the work of his hands, they have not even power to endure his rays. Accordingly, the Son of Man came in the flesh for this, that he might bring to a head the number of their sins who had persecuted to death his prophets."(2) The argument of Origen bears out this view, for he does not at all take the explanation of the gloss as to why Jesus chose his disciples from such a class, but he reasons: "What is there strange, therefore, that Jesus being minded to manifest to the race of men his power to heal souls, should have selected infamous and wicked men, and should have elevated them so far, that they became a pattern of the purest virtue to those who were brought by their persuasion to the Gospel of Christ."(1) The argument, both of the author of the Epistle and of Origen, is different from that suggested by the phrase under examination, and we consider it a mere gloss introduced into the text; which, as the [——]—] shows, has, in the estimation of Tischendorf himself, been deliberately altered. Even if it originally formed part of the text, however, it would be wrong to affirm that it affords proof of the use or existence of the first Gospel. The words of Jesus in Matt. ix. 12—14, evidently belong to the oldest tradition of the Gospel, and, in fact, Ewald ascribes them, apart from the remainder of the chapter, originally to the Spruchsammlung, from which, with two intermediate books, he considers that our present Matthew was composed.(2) Nothing can be more certain than that such sayings, if they be admitted to be historical at all, must have existed in many other works, and the mere fact of their happening to be also in one of the Gospels which has survived, cannot prove its use, or even its existence at the time the Epistle of Barnabas was written, more especially as the phrase does not occur as a quotation, and there is no indication of the source from which it was derived.
Teschendorf, however, finds a further analogy between the Epistle and the Gospel of Matthew, in ch. xii. "Since, therefore, in the future, they were to say that Christ is the son of David, fearing and perceiving clearly the error of the wicked, David himself prophesies—"The Lord said unto my Lord, sit at my right hand until I make thine enemies thy footstool."(1) Teschendorf upon this inquires: "Could Barnabas so write without the supposition, that his readers had Matthew, xxii. 41. ff, before them, and does not such a supposition likewise infer the actual authority of Matthew's Gospel?"(2) Such rapid argument and extreme conclusions are startling indeed, but, in his haste, our critic has forgotten to state the whole case. The author of the Epistle has been elaborately showing that the Cross of Christ is repeatedly typified in the Old Testament, and at the commencement of the chapter, after quoting the passage from IV Ezra, iv. 33, v. 5, he points to the case of Moses, to whose heart "the spirit speaks that he should make a form of the cross," by stretching forth his arms in supplication, and so long as he did so Israel prevailed over their enemies; and again he typified the cross, when he set up the brazen serpent upon which the people might look and be healed. Then that which Moses, as a prophet, said to Joshua (Jesus) the son of Nave, when he gave him that name, was solely for the purpose