There can be no question that this text belongs to an advanced, though early, stage of corruption.
At the same stage of corruption, then, Justin's quotations from the Gospels are found, and this very fact is a proof of the antiquity of originals so corrupted.

The coincidences are too many and too great all to be the result of accident or to be accounted for by the parallel influence of the lost Gospels.

The presence, for instance, of the reading [Greek: o haetoimasen ho pataer] for [Greek: to haetoimasmenon] in Irenaeus and Tertullian (who has both 'quem praeparavit deus' and 'praeparatum') is a proof that it was found in the canonical text at a date little later than Justin's.

And facts such as this, taken together with the arguments which make it little less than certain that Justin had either mediately or immediately access to our Gospels, render it highly probable that he had a form of the canonical text before him.
And yet large as is the approximation to Justin's text that may be made without stirring beyond the bounds of attested readings within the Canon, I still retain the opinion previously expressed that he did also make use of some extra-canonical book or books, though what the precise document was the data are far too insufficient to enable us to determine.

So far as the history of our present Gospels is concerned, I have only to insist upon the alternative that Justin either used those Gospels themselves or else a later work, of the nature of a harmony based upon them [Endnote 136:1].