With the third Gospel also there are coincidences.  Of the passages peculiar to this Gospel the Clementine writer has the fall of Satan ([Greek:  ton ponaeron], Clem.) like lightning from heaven, ‘rejoice that your names are written in the book of life’ (expanded with evident freedom), the unjust judge, Zacchaeus, the circumvallation of Jerusalem, and the prayer, for the forgiveness of the Jews, upon the cross.  It is unlikely that these passages, which are wanting in all our extant Gospels, should have had any other source than our third Synoptic.  The ‘circumvallation’ ([Greek:  pericharakosousin] Clem., [Greek:  peribalousin charaka] Luke) is especially important, as it is probable, and believed by many critics, that this particular detail was added by the Evangelist after the event.  The parable of the unjust judge, though reproduced with something of the freedom to which we are accustomed in patristic narrative quotations both from the Old and New Testament, has yet remarkable similarities of style and diction ([Greek:  ho kritaes taes adikias, poiaesei taen ekdikaesin ton boonton pros auton haemeras kai nuktos, Lego humin, poaesei... en tachei).]

We have to add to these another class of peculiarities which occur in places where the synoptic parallel has been preserved.  Thus in the Sermon on the Mount we find the following:—­

Matt. vii. 21.

[Greek:  Ou pas ho legon moi, Kurie, Kurie, eiseleusetai eis taen basileian ton ouranon, all’ ho poion to thelaema tou patros mou tou en ouranois]

Clem.  Hom. viii. 7.

[Greek:  Ti me legeis Kurie, Kurie, kai ou poieis a lego;]

Luke, vi. 46.

[Greek:  Ti de me kaleite Kurie, Kurie, kai ou poeite a lego;]

This is one of a class of passages which form the cruces of Synoptic criticism.  It is almost equally difficult to think and not to think that both the canonical parallels are drawn from the same original.  The great majority of German critics maintain that they are, and most of these would seek that original in the ‘Spruchsammlung’ or ‘Collection of Discourses’ by the Apostle St. Matthew.  This is usually (though not quite unanimously) held to have been preserved most intact in the first Gospel.  But if so, the Lucan version represents a wide deviation from the original, and precisely in proportion to the extent of that deviation is the probability that the Clementine quotation is based upon it.  The more the individuality of the Evangelist has entered into the form given to the saying the stronger is the presumption that his work lay before the writer of the Clementines.  In any case the difference between the Matthaean and Lucan versions shows what various shapes the synoptic tradition naturally assumed, and makes it so much the less likely that the coincidence between St. Luke and the Clementines is merely accidental.

Another similar case, in which the issue is presented very clearly, is afforded by the quotation, ’The labourer is worthy of his hire.’