um of our Gospels. The
text of the LXX is this, [Greek: engizei moi ho laos houtos en to
stomati autou kai en tois cheilesin auton timosin me]. Clement has
the passage exactly as it is given in Mark ([Greek: ho laos
houtos] Matt.), except that he writes [Greek: apestin] where both
of the Gospels have [Greek: apechei] with the LXX. The passage is
not Messianic, so that the variation cannot be referred to a
Targum; and though A. and six other MSS. in Holmes and Parsons
omit [Greek: en to stomati autou] (through wrong punctuation--
Credner), still there is no MS. authority whatever, and naturally
could not be, for the omission of [Greek: engizei moi ... kai] and
for the change of [Greek: timosin] to [Greek: tima]. There can be
little doubt that this was a free quotation in the original of the
Synoptic Gospels, and it is in a high degree probable that it has
passed through them into Clement of Rome. It might perhaps be
suggested that Clement was possibly quoting the earlier document,
the original of our Synoptics, but this suggestion seems to be
excluded both by his further deviation from the LXX in [Greek:
apestin], and also by the phenomena of the last quotation we have
been discussing, which are certainly of a secondary character.
Altogether I cannot but regard this passage as the strongest
evidence we possess for the use of the Synoptic Gospels by
Clement; it seems to carry the presumption that he did use them up
to a considerable degree of probability.

It is rather singular that Volkmar, whose speculations about the
Book of Judith we have seen above, should be so emphatic as he is
in asserting the use of all three Synoptics by Clement. We might
almost, though not quite, apply with a single change to this
critic a sentence originally levelled at Tischendorf, to the
intent that 'he systematically adopts the latest (earliest)
possible or impossible dates for all the writings of the first two
centuries,' but he is able to admit the use of the first and third
Synoptics (the publication of which he places respectively in 100
and 110 A.D.) by throwing forward the date of Clement's Epistle,
through the Judith-hypothesis, to A.D. 125. We may however accept
the assertion for what it is worth, as coming from a mind
something less than impartial, while we reject the concomitant
theories. For my own part I do not feel able to speak with quite
the same confidence, and yet upon the whole the evidence, which on
a single instance m