“The fact that other works existed at an earlier period in which the history of Zacharias, the father of the Baptist, was given, and in which not only the words used in the epistle were found, but also the martyrdom, is in the highest degree probable, and, so far as the history is concerned, this is placed almost beyond doubt by the ‘Protevangelium Jacobi,’ which contains it.  Tischendorf, who does not make use of this epistle at all as evidence for the Scriptures of the New Testament, does refer to it, and to this very allusion in it to the martyrdom of Zacharias, as testimony to the existence and use of the ‘Protevangelium Jacobi,’ a work whose origin he dates so far back as the first three decades of the second century, and which he considers was also used by Justin, as Hilgenfeld had already observed.  Tischendorf and Hilgenfeld, therefore, agree in affirming that the reference to Zacharias which we have quoted indicates acquaintance with a Gospel different from our third synoptic.” [142:1]

Such being the state of the case, I would ask any impartial reader whether there is any evidence here that these few words, introduced without the slightest indication of the source from which they were derived, must have been quoted from our third Gospel, and cannot have been taken from some one of the numerous evangelical works in circulation before that Gospel was written.  The reply of everyone accustomed to weigh evidence must be that the words cannot even prove the existence of our synoptic at the time the letter was written.

“But, if our author disposes of the coincidences with the third Gospel in this way” (proceeds Dr. Lightfoot), “what will he say to those with the Acts?  In this same letter of the Gallican Churches we are told that the sufferers prayed for their persecutors ’like Stephen, the perfect martyr, “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge.’” Will he boldly maintain that the writers had before them another Acts, containing words identical with our Acts, just as he supposes them to have had another Gospel, containing words identical with our Third Gospel?  Or, will he allow this account to have been taken from Acts vii. 60, with which it coincides?  But in this latter case, if they had the second treatise, which bears the name of St. Luke, in their hands, why should they not have had the first also?” [143:1]

My reply to this is: 

“There is no mention of the Acts of the Apostles in the epistle, and the source from which the writers obtained their information about Stephen, is, of course, not stated.  If there really was a martyr of the name of Stephen, and if these words were actually spoken by him, the tradition of the fact, and the memory of his noble saying, may well have remained in the Church, or have been recorded in writings then current, from one of which, indeed, eminent critics (as Bleek, Ewald, Meyer, Neander, De Wette) conjecture that the author of Acts derived his materials, and