ext represents a deviation
from the original, and _that deviation Justin has reproduced_. The
word [Greek: isangeloi] may be taken as a crucial case. Both the
other Synoptics have simply [Greek hos angeloi], and this may be
set down as undoubtedly the reading of the original; the form
[Greek: isangeloi], which occurs nowhere else in the New
Testament, and I believe, so far as we know, nowhere else in Greek
before this passage [Endnote 128:1], has clearly been coined by
the third Evangelist and has been adopted from him by Justin. So
that in a quotation which otherwise presents considerable
variation we have what I think must be called the strongest
evidence that Justin really had St. Luke's narrative, either in
itself or in some secondary shape, before him.

We are thus brought once more to the old result. If Justin did not
use our Gospels in their present shape as they have come down to
us, he used them in a later shape, not in an earlier. His
resemblances to them cannot be accounted for by the supposition
that he had access to the materials out of which they were
composed, because he reproduces features which by the nature of
the case cannot have been present in those originals, but of which
we are still able to trace the authorship and the exact point of
their insertion. Our Gospels form a secondary stage in the history
of the text, Justin's quotations a tertiary. In order to reach the
state in which it is found in Justin, the road lies _through_ our
Gospels, and not outside them.

This however does not exclude the possibility that Justin may at
times quote from uncanonical Gospels as well. We have already seen
reason to think that he did so from the substance of the
Evangelical narrative, as it appears in his works, and this
conclusion too is not otherwise than confirmed by its form. The
degree and extent of the variations incline us to introduce such
an additional factor to account for them. Either Justin has used a
lost Gospel or Gospels, besides those that are still extant, or
else he has used a recension of these Gospels with some slight
changes of language and with some apocryphal additions. We have
seen that he has two short sayings and several minute details that
are not found in our present Gospels. A remarkable coincidence is
noticed in 'Supernatural Religion' with the Protevangelium of
James [Endnote 129:1]. As in that work so also in Justin, the
explanation of the name Jesus occurs in the address of t