Page "Justin Martyr" Paragraph 54

Justin occasionally uses the Gospel of Matthew directly as a source for Old Testament prophecies to supplement his testimony sources.

However, the fulfillment quotations from these sources most often appear to be harmonizations of the gospels of Matthew and Luke.

Koester suggests that Justin had composed an early harmony along the lines of his pupil Tatian's Diatesseron.

However, the existence of a harmony independent of a collection of sayings for exposition purposes has been disputed by scholar Arthur Bellinzoni.

The question of whether the harmonized gospel materials found in Justin's writings came from a preexisting gospel harmony or were assembled as part of an integral process of creating scriptural proof-texts is an ongoing subject of scholarly investigation.