This theory of an interpolation is easily advanced, and it is drawn so entirely from our ignorance that it can seldom be positively disproved, but it ought surely to be alleged with more convincing reasons than any that are put forward here.  We now possess six MSS. of the Epistle of Barnabas, including the famous Codex Sinaiticus, the accuracy of which in the Biblical portions can be amply tested, and all of these six MSS., without exception, contain the passage.  The addition of the words [Greek:  eis metanoian] represents much more the kind of interpolations that were at all habitual.  The interpolation hypothesis, as I said, is easily advanced, but the onus probandi must needs lie heavily against it.  In accepting the text as it stands we simply obey the Baconian maxim hypotheses non fingimus, but it is strange, and must be surprising to a philosophic mind, to what an extent the more extreme representatives of the negative criticism have gone back to the most condemned parts of the scholastic method; inconvenient facts are explained away by hypotheses as imaginary and unverifiable as the ’cycles and epicycles’ by which the schoolmen used to explain the motions of the heavenly bodies.

‘If however,’ the author continues, ’the passage ’originally formed part of the text, it is absurd to affirm that it is any proof of the use or existence of the first Gospel.’  ‘Absurd’ is under the circumstances a rather strong word to use; but, granting that it would have been even ‘absurd’ to allege this passage, if it had stood alone, as a sufficient proof of the use of the Gospel, it does not follow that there can be any objection to the more guarded statement that it invests the use of the Gospel with a certain antecedent probability.  No doubt the quotation may have been made from a lost Gospel, but here again [Greek:  eis aphanes ton muthon anenenkas ouk echei elenchon]—­ there is no verifying that about which we know nothing.  The critic may multiply Gospels as much as he pleases and an apologist at least will not quarrel with him, but it would be more to the point if he could prove the existence in these lost writings of matter conflicting with that contained in the extant Gospels.  As it is, the only result of these unverifiable hypotheses is to raise up confirmatory documents in a quarter where apologists have not hitherto claimed them.

We are delaying, however, too long upon points of quite secondary importance.  Two more passages are adduced; one, an application of Ps. cx (The Lord said unto my Lord) precisely as in Matt. xxii. 44, and the other a saying assigned to our Lord, ’They who wish to see me and lay hold on my kingdom must receive me through affliction and suffering.’  Of neither of these can we speak positively.  There is perhaps a slight probability that the first was suggested by our Gospel, and considering the character of the verifiable quotations in Barnabas, which often follow the sense only and not the words, the second may be ’a free reminiscence of Matt. xvi. 24 compared with Acts xiv. 22,’ but it is also possible that it may be a saying quoted from an apocryphal Gospel.