borne to Zacharias,’ i.e. his recorded character, or ‘the testimony borne by Zacharias,’ i.e. his martyrdom.”  By a vexatious mistake in reprinting, “to” was accidentally substituted for “by” in my translation of this passage in a very few of the earlier copies of my sixth edition, but the error was almost immediately observed and corrected in the rest of the edition.  Dr. Lightfoot seizes upon the “to” in the early copy which I had sent to him, and argues upon it as a deliberate adoption of the interpretation, whilst he takes me to task for actually arguing upon the rendering “by” in my text.  Very naturally a printer’s error could not extend to my argument.  The following is what I say regarding the passage in my complete edition: 

“The epistle is an account of the persecution of the Christian community of Vienne and Lyons, and Vettius Epagathus is the first of the martyrs who is named in it:  [Greek:  marturia] was at that time the term used to express the supreme testimony of Christians—­ martyrdom—­and the epistle seems here simply to refer to the martyrdom, the honour of which he shared with Zacharias.  It is, we think, highly improbable that, under such circumstances, the word [Greek:  marturia] would have been used to express a mere description of the character of Zacharias given by some other writer.”

This is the interpretation which is adopted by Tischendorf, Hilgenfeld, and many eminent critics.

It will be observed that the saying that he had “walked in all the commandments and ordinances of the Lord blameless,” which is supposed to be taken from Luke i. 6, is there applied to Zacharias and Elizabeth, the father and mother of John the Baptist, but the Gospel does not say anything of this Zacharias having suffered martyrdom.  The allusion in Luke xi. 51 (Matt. xxiii. 35) is almost universally admitted to be to another Zacharias, whose martyrdom is related in 2 Chron. xxiv. 21.

“Since the epistle, therefore, refers to the martyrdom of Zacharias, the father of John the Baptist, when using the expressions which are supposed to be taken from our third synoptic, is it not reasonable to suppose that those expressions were derived from some work which likewise contained an account of his death, which is not found in the synoptic?  When we examine the matter more closely we find that, although none of the canonical gospels except the third gives any narrative of the birth of John the Baptist, that portion of the Gospel in which are the words we are discussing cannot be considered an original production by the third Synoptist, but, like the rest of his work, is merely a composition based upon earlier written narratives.  Ewald, for instance, assigns the whole of the first chapters of Luke (i. 5-ii. 40) to what he terms ’the eighth recognisable book.’” [141:1]

No apologetic critic pretends that the author of the third Gospel can have written this account from his own knowledge or observation.  Where, then, did he get his information?  Surely not from oral tradition limited to himself.  The whole character of the narrative, even apart from the prologue to the Gospel, and the composition of the rest of the work, would lead us to infer a written source.