Lost and Hostile Gospels

2. Doubtful Fragments

There are a few fragments preserved by early ecclesiastical writers which we cannot say for certain belonged to the Gospel of the Hebrews, but which there is good reason to believe formed a part of it.

Origen, in his Commentary on St. Matthew, quotes a saying of our Lord which is not to be found in the Canonical Gospels. Origen, we know, was acquainted with, and quoted respectfully, the Gospel of the Hebrews. It is therefore probable that this quotation is taken from it: “Jesus said, For the sake of the weak I became weak, for the sake of the hungry I hungered, for the sake of the thirsty I thirsted.”232

That this passage, full of beauty, occurred after the words, “This kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting,” in commenting on which Origen quotes it, is probable. It is noteworthy that it is quoted in comment on St. Matthew's Gospel, the one to which the lost Gospel bore the closest resemblance, and one which Origen would probably consult whilst compiling his Commentary on St. Matthew.233

The saying is so beautiful, and so truly describes the love of our Lord, that we must wish to believe it comes to us on such high authority as the Gospel of the Twelve.

Another saying of Christ is quoted both by Clement of Alexandria and by Origen, without saying whence they drew it, but by both as undoubted sayings of the Saviour. It ran:

“Seek those things that are great, and little things will be added to you.” “And seek ye heavenly things, and the things of this world will be added to you.”234

It will be seen, the form as given by St. Clement is better and simpler than that given by Origen. It is probable, however, that they both formed members of the same saying, following the usual Hebrew arrangement of repeating a maxim, giving it a slightly different turn, or a wider expansion. In two passages in other places Origen makes allusion to this saying without quoting it directly.235

In the Acts of the Apostles, St. Luke puts into the mouth of St. Paul a saying of Christ, which is not given by any evangelist, in these words: “Remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he said, It is more blessed to give than to receive.”236 It is curious that this saying should not have been inserted by St. Luke in his Gospel. Whether this saying found its way into the Hebrew Gospel it is impossible to tell.

In the Epistle of St. Barnabas another utterance of Christ is given. This Epistle is so distinctly of a Judaizing character, so manifestly belongs to the Nazarene school, that such a reference in it makes it more than probable that it was taken from the Gospel received as Canonical among the Nazarenes. The saying of St. Barnabas is, “All the time of our life and of our faith will not profit us, if we have not in abhorrence the evil one and future temptation, even as the Son of God said, Resist all iniquity and hold it in abhorrence.”237 Another saying in the Epistle of St. Barnabas is, “They who would see me, and attain to my kingdom, must possess me through afflictions and suffering.”238

In the second Epistle of St. Clement of Rome to the Corinthians occurs a very striking passage: “Wherefore to us doing such things the Lord said, If ye were with me, gathered together in my bosom, and did not keep my commandments, I would cast you out, and say unto you, Depart from me, I know not whence ye are, ye workers of iniquity.”239

We can well understand this occurring in an anti-Pauline Gospel.

Again. “The Lord said, Be ye as lambs in the midst of wolves. Peter answered and said unto him, But what if the wolves shall rend the lambs? Jesus said unto Peter, The lambs fear not the wolves after their death; and ye also, do not ye fear them that kill you, and after that have nothing that they can do to you, but fear rather him who, after ye are dead, has power to cast your soul and body into hell fire.”240

This is clearly another version of the passage, Matt. x. 16-26. In one particular it is fuller than in the Canonical Gospel; it introduces St. Peter as speaking and drawing forth the exhortation not to fear those who kill the body only. But it is without the long exhortation contained in the 17-27th verses of St. Matthew.

Another saying from the same source is, “This, therefore, the Lord said, Keep the flesh chaste and the seal undefiled, and ye shall receive eternal life.”241 The seal is the unction of confirmation completing baptism, and in the primitive Church united with it. It is the σφραγίς so often spoken of in the Epistles of St. Paul.242

Justin Martyr contributes another saying. We have already seen that in all likelihood he quoted from the Gospel of the Hebrews, or the Recollections of the Twelve, as he called it. He says, “On this account also our Lord Jesus Christ said, In those things in which I shall overtake you, in those things will I judge you.”243 Clement of Alexandria makes the same quotation, slightly varying the words. Justin and Clement apparently both translated from the original Hebrew, but did not give exactly the same rendering of words, though they gave the same sense.

Clement gives us another saying, but does not say from what Gospel he drew it. “The Lord commanded in a certain Gospel, My secret is for me and for the children of my home.”244

3. The Origin of the Gospel of the Hebrews

We come now to a question delicate, and difficult to answer – the Origin of the Gospel of the Hebrews; delicate, because it involves another, the origin of the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Mark; difficult, because of the nature of the evidence on which we shall have to form our opinion.

Because the Gospel of the Hebrews is not preserved, is not in the Canon, it does not follow that its value was slight, its accuracy doubtful. Its disappearance is due partly to the fact of its having been written in Aramaic, but chiefly to that of its having been in use by an Aramaic-speaking community which assumed first a schismatical, then a heretical position, so that the disfavour which fell on the Nazarene body enveloped and doomed its Gospel as well.

The four Canonical Gospels owe their preservation to their having been in use among those Christian communities which coalesced under the moulding hands of St. John. Those parties which were reluctant to abandon their peculiar features were looked upon with coldness, then aversion, lastly abhorrence. They became more and more isolated, eccentric, prejudiced, impracticable. Whilst the Church asserted her catholicity, organized her constitution, established her canon, formulated her creed, adapted herself to the flux of ideas, these narrow sects spent their petty lives in accentuating their peculiarities till they grew into monstrosities; and when they fell and disappeared, there fell and disappeared with them those precious records of the Saviour's words and works which they had preserved.

The Hebrew Gospel was closely related to the Gospel of St. Matthew; that we know from the testimony of St. Jerome, who saw, copied and translated it. That it was not identical with the Canonical first Gospel is also certain. Sufficient fragments have been preserved to show that in many points it was fuller, in some less complete, than the Greek Gospel of St. Matthew. The two Gospels were twin sisters speaking different tongues. Was the Greek of the first Gospel acquired, or was it original? This is a point deserving of investigation before we fix the origin and determine the construction of the Hebrew Gospel.

According to a fragment of a lost work by Papias, written about the middle of the second century, under the title of “Commentary on the Sayings of the Lord,”245 the apostle Matthew was the author of a collection of the “sayings,” λόγια, of our blessed Lord. The passage has been already given, but it is necessary to quote it again here: “Matthew wrote in the Hebrew dialect the sayings, and every one interpreted them as best he was able.”246 These “logia” could only be, according to the signification of the word (Rom. iii. 2; Heb. v. 12; Pet. iv. 11; Acts vii. 38), a collection of the sayings of the Saviour that were regarded as oracular, as “the words of God.” That they were the words of Jesus, follows from the title given by Papias to his commentary, Λόγια κυριακὰ.

This brief notice is sufficient to show that Matthew's collection was not the Gospel as it now stands. It was no collection of the acts, no biography, of the Saviour; it was solely a collection of his discourses.

This is made clearer by what Papias says in the same work on St. Mark. He relates that the latter wrote not only what Jesus had said, but also what he did;247 whereas St. Matthew wrote only what had been said.248

The work of Matthew, therefore, contained no doings, πραχθέντα, but only sayings, λεχθέντα, which were, according to Papias, written in Hebrew, i. e. the vernacular Aramaic, and which were translated into Greek by every one as best he was able.

This notice of Papias is very ancient. The Bishop of Hierapolis is called by Irenaeus “a very old man.”249 and by the same writer is said to have been “a friend of Polycarp,” and “one who had heard John.”250 That this John was the apostle is not certain. It was questioned by Eusebius in his mention of the Prooemium of Papias. John the priest and John the apostle were both at Ephesus, and both lived there at the close of the first century. Some have thought the Apocalypse to have been the work of the priest John, and not of the apostle. Others have supposed that there was only one John. However this may be, it is certain that Papias lived at a time when it was possible to obtain correct information relating to the origin of the sacred books in use among the Christians.

According to the Prooemium of Papias, which Eusebius has preserved, the Bishop of Hierapolis had obtained his knowledge, not directly from the apostles, nor from the apostle John, but from the mouths of men who had companied with old priests and disciples of the apostles, and who had related to him what Andrew, Peter, Philip, Thomas, James, John and other disciples of the Lord had said (εἶπεν). Besides the testimony of these priests, Papias appealed further to the evidence of Aristion and the priest John, disciples of the Lord,251 still alive and bearing testimony when he wrote. “And,” says Papias, “I do not think that I derived so much benefit from books as from the living voice of those that are still surviving.”252

Papias, therefore, had his information about the apostles second-hand, from those “who followed them about.” Nevertheless, his evidence is quite trustworthy. He takes pains to inform us that he used great precaution to obtain the truth about every particular he stated, and the means of obtaining the truth were at his disposal. That Papias was a man “of a limited comprehension”253 does not affect the trustworthiness of his statement. Eusebius thus designates him because he believed in the Millennium; but so did most of the Christians of the first age, as well as in the immediate second coming of Christ, till undeceived by events.

The statement of Papias does not justify us in supposing that Matthew wrote the Gospel in Hebrew, but only a collection of the logia, the sayings of Jesus. Eusebius did not mistake the Sayings for the Gospel, for he speaks separately of the Hebrew Gospel,254 without connecting it in any way with the testimony of Papias.

According to Eusebius, Papias wrote his Commentary in five books.255 It is not improbable, therefore, that the “Logia” were broken into five parts or grouped in five discourses, and that he wrote an explanation of each discourse in a separate book or chapter.

The statement of Papias, if it does not refer to the Gospel of St. Matthew as it now stands, does refer to one of the constituent parts of that Gospel, and does explain much that would be otherwise inexplicable.

1. St. Matthew's Gospel differs from St. Mark's in that it contains long discourses, sayings and parables, which are wanting or only given in a brief form in the second Canonical Gospel. It is therefore probable that in its composition were used the “Logia of the Lord,” written by Matthew.

2. If the collection of “Sayings of the Lord” consisted, as has been suggested, of five parts, then we find traces in the Canonical Matthew of five groups of discourses, concluded by the same formulary: “And it came to pass when Jesus had ended these sayings” (τοὺς λόγους τούτους), or “parables,” vii. 28, xi. 1, xiii. 53,. xix. 1, xxvi. 1. It is not, however, possible to restore all the “logia” to their primitive positions, for they have been dispersed through the Canonical Gospel, and arranged in connection with the events which called them forth. In the “Sayings of the Lord” of Matthew, these events were not narrated; but all the sayings were placed together, like the proverbs in the book of Solomon.

3. The “Logia” of the Lord were written by Matthew in Hebrew, i. e. in the vernacular Aramaic. If they have formed the groundwork, or a composite part of the Canonical Gospel, we are likely to detect in the Greek some traces of their origin. And this, in fact, we are able to do.

α. In the first place, we have the introduction of Aramaic words, as Raka (v. 22),256 Mammon (vi. 22),257 Gehenna (v. 22),258 Amen (v. 18).259 Many others might be cited, but these will suffice.

β. Next, we have the use of illustrations which are only comprehensible by Hebrews, as “One jot and one tittle shall in no wise fall.” The Ἰῶτα of the Greek text is the Aramaic Jod (v. 18); but the “one tittle” is more remarkable. In the Greek it is “one horn,” or “stroke.”260 The idea is taken from the Aramaic orthography. A stroke distinguishes one consonant from another, as ח and ה from ד. With this the Greeks had nothing that corresponded.

γ. We find Hebraisms in great number in the discourses of our Lord given by St. Matthew.261

δ. We find mistranslations. The Greek Canonical text gives a wrong meaning, or no meaning at all, through misunderstanding of the Aramaic. By restoration of the Aramaic text we can rectify the translation. Thus:

Matt. vii. 6, “Give not that which is holy to dogs, neither cast ye your pearls before swine.” The word “holy,” τὸ ἅγιον, is a misinterpretation of the Aramaic קרשא, a gold jewel for the ear, head or neck.262 The translator mistook the word for קורשא, or קרשא without ו “the holy.” The sentence in the original therefore ran, “Give not a gold jewel to dogs, neither cast pearls before swine.”

Matt. v. 37, “Let your conversation be Yea, yea, Nay, nay.” This is meaningless. But if we restore the construction in Aramaic we have יהןא לכם הן הן, לאו לאו, and the meaning is, “In your conversation let your yea be yea, and your nay be nay.” The yea, yea, and nay, nay, in the Hebrew come together, and this misled the translator. St. James quotes the saying rightly (v. 12), “Let your yea be yea, and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation.” It is a form of a Rabbinic maxim, “The yea of the righteous is yea, and their nay is nay.” It is an injunction to speak the truth.

We have therefore good grounds for our conjecture that St. Matthew's genuine “Sayings of the Lord” form a part of the Canonical Gospel.

We have next to consider, Whence came the rest of the material, the record of the “doings of the Lord,” which the compiler interwove with the “Sayings”?

We have tolerably convincing evidence that the compiler placed under contribution both Aramaic and Greek collections.

For the citations from the Old Testament are not taken exclusively from the Hebrew Scriptures, nor from the Greek translation of the Seventy; but some are taken from the Greek translation, and some are taken from the Hebrew, or from a Syro-Chaldaean Targum or Paraphrase, probably in use at the time.

Matt. i. 23, “A virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son.” This is quoted as a prophecy of the miraculous conception. But it is only a prophecy in the version of the LXX., which renders the Hebrew word παρθένος, “virgin.” The Hebrew word does not mean virgin exclusively, but “a young woman.” We may therefore conclude that verses 22, 23, were additions by the Greek compiler of the Gospel, unacquainted with the original Hebrew text.

Matt. ii. 15, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” This is quoted literally from the Hebrew text. That of the LXX. has, “Out of Egypt have I called my children,” τὰ τέκνα. This made the saying of Hosea no prophecy of our Lord; consequently he who inserted this reference can have known only the Hebrew text, and not the Greek version. But in ii. 18, the compiler follows the LXX. And again, ii. 23, “He shall be called a Nazarene,” Ναζωραῖος. The Hebrew is כזר of which Ναζωραῖος is no translation. The LXX. have Ναζιραῖος. The compiler was caught by the similarity of sounds.

Matt. iii. 3. Here the construction of the LXX. is followed, which unites “in the wilderness” with “the voice of one crying.” The Hebrew was therefore not known by the compiler.

Matt. iv. 15. Here the LXX. is not followed, for the word γῆ is used in place of χώρα. The quotation is not, moreover, taken exactly from Isaiah, but apparently from a Targum.

Matt. viii. 17. This quotation is nearer the original Hebrew than the rendering of the LXX.

Matt. xii. 18-21. In this citation we have an incorrect rendering of the Hebrew לתורתו “at his teaching,” made by the LXX. “in his name,” adopted without hesitation by the compiler. He also accepts the erroneous rendering of “islands,” made “nation,” “Gentiles,” by the LXX.

But, on the other hand, “till he send forth judgment unto victory,” is taken from neither the original Hebrew nor from the LXX., and is probably derived from a Targum.

Thus in this passage we have apparently a combination of two somewhat similar accounts – the one in Greek, the other in Aramaic.

Matt. xiii. 35. This also is a compound text. The first half is from the LXX., but the second member is from a Hebrew Targum.

Matt. xxvii. 3. In the Hebrew, the field is not a “potter's,” nor is it in the LXX., who use χωνευτήριον “the smelting-furnace.” The word in the Hebrew signifies “treasury.” The composer of the Gospel, therefore must have quoted from a Targum, and been ignorant both of the genuine Hebrew Scriptures and of the Greek translation of the Seventy.

These instances are enough to show that the material used for the compilation of the first Canonical Gospel was very various; that the author had at his disposal matter in both Aramaic and Greek.

We shall find, on looking further, that he inserted two narratives of the same event in his Gospel in different places, if they differed slightly from one another, when coming to him from different sources.