passages from three separate writers are interwoven together and
assigned bodily to Zechariah. There are several more examples of
mistaken ascription.

* * * * *

The great advantage of collecting the quotations from the Old
Testament is that we are enabled to do so in regard to the very
same writers among whom our enquiry is to lie. We can thus form a
general idea of their idiosyncracies, and we know what to expect
when we come to examine a different class of quotations. There is,
however, the element of uncertainty of which I have spoken above.
We cannot be quite clear what text the writer had before him. This
difficulty also exists, though to a less degree, when we come to
consider quotations from the New Testament in writers of an early
date whom we know to have used our present Gospels as canonical.
The text of these Gospels is so comparatively fixed, and we have
such abundant materials for its reconstruction, that we can
generally say at once whether the writer is quoting from it freely
or not. We have thus a certain gain, though at the cost of the
drawback that we can no longer draw an inference as to the
practice of individuals, but merely attain to a general conclusion
as to the habits of mind current in the age. This too will be
subject to a deduction for the individual bent and peculiarities
of the writer. We must therefore, on the whole, attach less
importance to the examples under this section than under that
preceding.

I chose two writers to be the subject of this examination almost,
I may say, at random, and chiefly because I had more convenient
access to their works at the time. The first of these is Irenaeus,
that is to say the portions still extant in the Greek of his
Treatise against Heresies, [Endnote 49:1] and the second
Epiphanius.

Irenaeus is described by Dr. Tregelles 'as a close and careful
quoter in general from the New Testament' [Endnote 49:2]. He may
therefore be taken to represent a comparatively high standard of
accuracy. In the following table the quotations which are merely
allusive are included in brackets:--

_Exact._ | _Slightly | _Variant._ | _Remarks._
| variant._ | |
I. Praef. Matt. 10.26.| | |
I.3.2,Matt. 5.18. | | |quoted from
| | | Gnostics