kai] and for the change of [Greek: timosin] to [Greek: tima].

There can be little doubt that this was a free quotation in the original of the Synoptic Gospels, and it is in a high degree probable that it has passed through them into Clement of Rome.

It might perhaps be suggested that Clement was possibly quoting the earlier document, the original of our Synoptics, but this suggestion seems to be excluded both by his further deviation from the LXX in [Greek: apestin], and also by the phenomena of the last quotation we have been discussing, which are certainly of a secondary character.
Altogether I cannot but regard this passage as the strongest evidence we possess for the use of the Synoptic Gospels by Clement; it seems to carry the presumption that he did use them up to a considerable degree of probability.
It is rather singular that Volkmar, whose speculations about the Book of Judith we have seen above, should be so emphatic as he is in asserting the use of all three Synoptics by Clement.

We might almost, though not quite, apply with a single change to this critic a sentence originally levelled at Tischendorf, to the intent that 'he systematically adopts the latest (earliest) possible or impossible dates for all the writings of the first two centuries,' but he is able to admit the use of the first and third Synoptics (the publication of which he places respectively in 100 and 110 A.D.) by throwing forward the date of Clement's Epistle, through the Judith-hypothesis, to A.D.125.

We may however accept the assertion for what it is worth, as coming from a mind something less than impartial, while we reject the concomitant theories.