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.

"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