Page:LostApocryphaOfTheOldTestamentMRJames.djvu/105

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QUOTATIONS

It now remains to collect certain anonymous quotations, purporting to be Scriptural, which appear in the works of early Christian writers. I can hardly hope that I have not missed some such, but probably all that are of first-class interest will be found here.

A word of caution is necessary. Whoever has read Dr. Rendel Harris's Testimonies (Part I.) must recognize that when we encounter passages seemingly conflated out of texts from the Old Testament, there is a possibility that we may be dealing with extracts from an early Christian selection of logia or testimonies from the prophets, or with erratic renderings of texts that we know in other forms, not with citations from lost writers. I suspect that this is the case with a good many of the passages I have here put together, though their origin has not yet been tracked out.

The Apostolic Fathers come first.

Clement of Rome. Ep. ad. Cor. xxix. (after quoting Deut. xxxii. 8): "And in another place he says, 'Behold, the Lord taketh to Himself a nation from the midst of the nations, as a man taketh the firstfruits of his threshing floor: and there shall come forth out of that nation the holy of holies' (Neuter Plural)."

This is guessed by Gebhardt and Harnack to be a conflation of passages in Deut. (iv. 34, vii. 6, xiv. 2), Num. (xviii. 27), 2 Chron. (xxxi. 14), Ezek. (xlvm. 12), but these do not contain the whole, by any means. Resch would assign it to the apocryphal Ezekiel, along with the prophecy quoted above under Eldad and Medad, and with the next:

l. c. l. 4: "For it is written, 'Enter ye into the

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