What is the Gospel of the Hebrews?

It is perhaps well to remark that the Gospel according to the Hebrews indulged in the grossest form of Jewish mysticism. We read, "The Saviour said, My mother the Holy Ghost took me by one of my hairs and carried me to the great mountain Tabor," and much more. (Gfrorer, Tahr. der Heils. Stuttgart, 1838, pp. 332 ff.) This is quoted by Origen only saying, "if any one received it," in Jer. Hom. 15:4. He elsewhere definitely declares the church had only four Gospels, the heretics many. Jerome quotes it, on Micah, lib. 2, cap. 7, vol. 6, 521, ed. Vall., where he states he had just translated it, so that it was not a mere Ebionidsh addition. So in Comm. Isa. 11, Vall. 4, 156: juxta Evangelium quod Hebraeo sermone inscriptum legunt Nazaraei. But it came to pass that when the Lord went up out of the water, the whole fountain of the Holy Ghost descended and rested upon Him, and said to Him, My Son, in all the prophets I expected Thee, that Thou shouldest come and I should rest on Thee, for Thou art my rest, Thou art my first-born Son, who reigneth for ever.

206 So 4, 485. He quotes the strange phrase, "my mother the Holy Ghost took me by a hair, etc.," from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which the Nazareans read, adding that no one ought to be offended, as spirit is feminine in Hebrew, masculine in Latin, and neuter in Greek; that thus being of the three genders in the three principal languages respectively, we might know that what is different is of none - going pretty far in owning the work. Origen excuses it also, De la Rue, 4, 59, but on the plea that as Christ called those who did His Father's will, brother, and sister, and mother, so we might call the Spirit His mother. But the passage of Jerome on Isaiah 11 proves it was a systematic doctrine, and the Gospel probably heretical, on the system of Simon Magus and Helen. Yet Jerome translates it and says, many call it the authentic Matthew. This, it is said, was in A.D. 398. Later still, A.D. 415, he says it was in the library of Caesarea (the Nazarenes there using it); the Gospel according to the apostles, or, as many think, according to Matthew. (Dialogus 3, contra Pelagianos.) He quotes or refers to it very often. Circa, A.D. 321 he speaks of it as in the Caesarean library, and composed in Hebrew letters and words. Who translated it into Greek was uncertain. (De Viris Ill.) The Ebionites, he says, used it, joining them and the Nazarenes, where he speaks of lately translating it. But the Nazarene copy he translated. The Ebionites at any rate were divided into two classes, one certainly heretical, as were the Nazarenes or Nazarites. Origen, he says, often used it. Jerome translated it into Greek and Latin; strange if he thought it the same as Matthew, and Matthew translated by we know not whom.

De Wette says (sec. 74, p. 124) of the Gospel to the Hebrews: "This is the oldest (of the uncanonical Gospels), but its use is traceable no farther back than Hegesippus (about A.D. 160), nor beyond the circle of the Jewish Christians; for the orthodox Fathers, far from placing it on a par with the canonical Gospels, reckon it among the ungenuine." And (76, 125) as to the current acceptance of the four Gospels: "Various countries and parties in the church also furnish testimonies which run back nearly to the Apostolic age." Again, as to the Gospel to the Hebrews, he says, "But the oldest accounts contradict the idea of its being an original and independent work by representing it as apocryphal, and as wavering between Matthew and Luke." (Sec. 63, p. 88.) "One of these alterations indicates a Greek original. Hence the opinion that the Gospel to the Hebrews is the most ancient Gospel writing falls to the ground." (Sec. 65, p. 93.)

As regards the Gospel to the Hebrews, it can hardly be doubted that Matthew wrote some account of Christ in Hebrew: at any rate early Fathers so state; but, after all, their statements are very vague as to what it was, Epiphanius saying it was corrupted, Jerome that he translated it, which would go to prove that it was not the canonical Matthew. What did he translate? It does not affect our Gospel, which is clearly original, as even the language proves. Jerome says he saw it at Caesarea and translated it; so that there was such in the fourth century. Still the statements of Jerome are so inconsistent that it is hard to draw any clear conclusion from what he says. He says he translated it, and that it was practically the same as Matthew: this it certainly was not, by his own testimony elsewhere. The writers of introductions, Bleek, De Wette, etc., say he gave up afterwards this thought, and I suppose did not like saying plainly he had been wrong; but it seems to me the dates do not bear this out. I do not think he is much to be trusted in the matter. Papias - a man sphodra mikros noun - assumes there was such a Hebrew Gospel by Matthew, but there were afterwards seemingly two differing editions; a few of the "Fathers" accepted it; but Origen, disposed to receive everything, says every one was free to use it if he thought it genuine, only not as authority. But it was in Aramaean; and there is no proof that Justin, a Greek, understood the tongue. He was a Greek, and though living in Palestine, it was in the Roman town Flavia Neapolis. Further, though he preferred being put to death rather than deny Christ, when, as is said, brought to martyrdom through a jealous philosopher, Crescens, yet he never gave up his philosopher's cloak, was a Platonist, and unsound in fundamental doctrines; and, though we cannot doubt his sincerity, was on the surface of Christianity. At any rate, the Gospel to the Hebrews is surrounded critically with the greatest obscurity, with no proof that Justin understood it, or was one of Papias's "every one interpreted as best he could." All this part of the book comes to nothing.

203 Our critic speaks of many other Gospels, our four thus coming into an uncertain mass. But no one can examine the facts without knowing that these four were, from the earliest days, recognised as distinct. But which are these many? He speaks of the Egyptian, the Gospel according to Peter, the Ethiopians, and all depends upon this kind of thing. But these - unless the Gospel of Peter, once mentioned in a phrase of disputed meaning - are all the same, if we can trust various patristic accounts. Adapting an account (say the Gospel according to the Hebrews) to the Ethiopians was very natural, but is not another, and says nothing about the recognition of the four which were not counted with them, nor does it alter anything. The Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Ethiopian were not in Greek, so that reasoning from quotations is utterly without force; but it serves a turn.

201 The author of Supernatural Religion does not even understand the force of the reasoning. The existence of the Gospel according to the Hebrews is admitted and known, though perhaps seriously altered by certain parties, and never in the canon. The possibility of Justin having used it is not generally denied. What is said is that his quotations are sufficient to prove that he knew our Gospels. That is a question of judgment on comparing them. The possibility of another Gospel having what is in Justin does not alter this. If it be produced with the whole passage as he has it, and all else is consistent, we shall have another witness. I do not believe it is or can be. Nor have. they any hint of the existence of any such thing in all the writings of that day, save the Gospel according to Peter, the supposed reference to which is quite otherwise understood by sober critics, as it is in the only place in which Justin refers to it. What were the numerous other works in use in the early church? Various accounts were current but were lost, I may say, at once, in the prevalence of the four Gospels recognised as an authority and divine, and so used. And the author must remember that what we have in the written Gospel are the accounts of what Jesus said; and as to three witnesses or four it alters nothing if they are true. The facts may be called to memory by the Holy Ghost according to Christ's promise, according to the point they were connected with, and a writer quoting it may give it according to the point which is in his mind, and in the connection with the subject he is on suggests.

200 It is treated as an extraordinary anomaly that Justin could quote as he did if he really received the four Gospels. It is a common thing with Fathers. Thus Bleek speaks of this when insisting on Justin's use of the four Gospels (section 87). These variations are of little moment when we remember that the Fathers seldom quoted scripture verbatim and word for word. It is in this place Bleek gives the true account of what the author makes so much about (in 288). He assumes (367) that there were a number of Gospels current - "In how many more" Gospels; but this is falsifying the facts That there was probably a Gospel according to the Hebrews is not denied; but if there was, it was in Aramaean, which, as a rule, not one of the Fathers whose works are in question understood. A mass of apocryphal Gospels we have; one has only to read them to judge of them. Traditions no doubt there were and referred to, but gradually lost. My business is in no way to justify the accuracy of Justin, but the attempt in chap. 1, page 370, to prove his altering the text is the weakest absurdity.

4a None of the narratives referred to in the text, other than the Gospels of Matthew and Mark, both of which the Expositor excludes, have survived, at least in their integrity, as applicable to the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" (supposed by Lessing to be common source of the three Synoptics), and the "Gospel according to the Egyptians," to which latter the recently-discovered Oxyrhynchus fragments of Logia may have borne some relation. The Gospels commonly called "Apocryphal" were considerably later productions (Cf. Godet, vol. i., p. 56).

It was an old idea that our present Matthew was either a translation, or at least derived from a "Gospel according to the Hebrews." This is now discredited, and it would at any rate, if proved, be of no possible use to us. But it derives all the semblance of truth it ever had from the very obvious connection with the Old Testament in this first of the Gospels which approves also its place among them as the first. Not only are the quotations from the Old Testament comparatively more numerous than in the other; but these, where made by the evangelist himself, are fresh translations from the Hebrew original, while, where in the mouths of others, they are from that ordinarily in use, the Greek Septuagint. His own style is full of Hebraisms, and he anticipates with those for whom he writes a knowledge of Jewish customs and of the law, such as only Jews might be expected to possess.

There is the strongest evidence to prove that the Greek of Matthew is the original and not a version, though possibly the Evangelist may have also written it in Hebrew for the early Church in Judea. This might lapse, and what was permanently needed abide.

A plain, honest, christian man, apparently without one spark of natural genius, but characterised by modesty, hospitality, and cheerful devotion. According to Papias, Irenaeus, Eusebius, and others, he wrote his Gospel originally in Hebrew for Jewish converts, though our Greek version of it* was extant so early as the second century. There seems no reliable evidence of his having been martyred; he seems to have died a natural death.