Our Fragmentary Sources for the Various Hebrew Gospel Versions

It can be very confusing to sort out all the various terms and references to sources that are broadly called "Hebrew Gospels." Besides the three complete texts of Hebrew Matthew (Shem Tov, duTillet, and Munster, see for some basic background), there are quite a few fragmentary quotations from various Christian writers of the 3rd through 5th centuries--the so-called "Church Fathers," such as Origen, Jerome, Clement, Epiphanius, and others. These gospels are variously attributed to the Ebionites or the Nazoreans--probably the same group. The problem is these various sources, most all of them versions of Matthew in Hebrew, are given various names so things can get confusing. We are not always sure if we are dealing with different texts/Gospels, or the same work by a different name. Thus we have these three:

The Gospel of the Hebrews
The Gospel of the Ebionites
The Gospel of the Nazoreans

Another problem is that none of these fragments agree with any of our complete versions of Hebrew Matthew (mentioned above), which then raises the question of just what it means to speak of Hebrew Matthew or even of Hebrew Gospels.

Robert Miller, editor of the very fine book, The Complete Gospels, which I highly recommend, does a nice job of putting these together for us with commentary. I append a scan of that section of the book, but encourage readers to buy the book itself at your local bookstore or via Amazon or Barnes and Noble on-line.

I thought we could begin a good discussion on these fragments. They are utterly fascinating and contain much that is of interest and great important in reconstructing this "lost" and suppressed version of the original Nazarene faith.

Attachments:

HebrewGospels-Miller.PDF, 876 KB

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Stephen on October 24, 2009 at 11:29am

James,

Thanks for posting this excerpt from Robert Miller's book. Nice to have the fragments and commentaries by the 'church fathers' laid out. In my opinion, Miller's commentary and conclusions tend to sow more doubt than hope about the actual origins of these fragments...

I'm really excited to have come across a book called 'The Gospel according to the Hebrews', written by Edward Nicholson in 1879. The book is available in it's entirety online. He demonstrates that the 'Gospel according to the Hebrews' and the 'Gospel according to the Ebionites' is originally a single work, used by the Jewish believers in the first century.

Jerome says in his commentary on Matthew : 'In the gospel that the Nazoreans and Ebionites use...' and in his tractate on Psalm 133 ... 'In the Hebrew Gospel of Mathhew it reads thus: ... ' There are at least 30 comments such as this in the literature of the 'church fathers' ... One of the most interesting is Jeromes's statement that he translated this Gospel of the Hebrews into two languages, and that a copy of this work was at that time available in the Library at Ceasarea. I wonder where it disappeared to?

I am attaching a copy of the book here. However, since it is 6mb in size, it may not work. The book is available online at googlebooks.

I look forward to some interesting discussions on this topic

Stephen

Attachments: