Lost and Hostile Gospels

Luther did not know anything of the Life published later by Huldrich. The only Toledoth Jeschu he was acquainted with was that afterwards published by Wagenseil.

Part II. The Lost Petrine Gospels

Under this head are classed all those Gospels whose tendency is Judaizing, which sprang into existence in the Churches of Palestine and Syria.

These may be ranged in two sub-classes —

a. Those akin to the Gospel of St. Matthew.

b. Those related to the Gospel of St. Mark.

To the first class belong —

1. The Gospel of the Twelve, or of the Hebrews.

2. The Gospel of the Clementines.

To the second class belong, probably —

1. The Gospel of St. Peter.

2. The Gospel of the Egyptians.

I. The Gospel Of The Hebrews

1. The Fragments extant

Eusebius quotes Papias, Irenaeus and Origen, as authorities for his statement that St. Matthew wrote his Gospel first in Hebrew.

Papias, a contemporary of Polycarp, who was a disciple of St. John, and who carefully collected all information he could obtain concerning the apostles, declares that “Matthew wrote his Gospel in the Hebrew dialect,137 and that every one translated it as he was able.”138

Irenaeus, a disciple of Polycarp, and therefore also likely to have trustworthy information on this matter, says, “Matthew among the Hebrews wrote a Gospel in their own language, while Peter and Paul were preaching the gospel at Rome, and founding the Church there.”139

In a fragment, also, of Irenaeus, edited by Dr. Grabe, it is said that “the Gospel according to Matthew was written to the Jews, for they earnestly desired a Messiah of the posterity of David. Matthew, in order to satisfy them on this point, began his Gospel with the genealogy of Jesus”.140

Origen, in a passage preserved by Eusebius, has this statement: “I have learned by tradition concerning the four Gospels, which alone are received without dispute by the Church of God under heaven, that the first was written by St. Matthew, once a tax-gatherer, afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, who published it for the benefit of the Jewish converts, composed in the Hebrew language.”141 And again, in his Commentary on St. John, “We begin with Matthew, who, according to tradition, wrote first, publishing his Gospel to the believers who were of the circumcision.”

Eusebius, who had collected the foregoing testimonies on a subject which, in that day, seems to have been undisputed, thus records what he believed to be a well-authenticated historical fact: “Matthew, having first preached to the Hebrews, delivered to them, when he was preparing to depart to other countries, his Gospel composed in their native language.”142

St. Jerome follows Papias: “Matthew, who is also Levi, from a publican became an apostle, and he first composed his Gospel of Christ in Judaea, for those of the circumcision who believed, and wrote it in Hebrew words and characters; but who translated it afterwards into Greek is not very evident. Now this Hebrew Gospel is preserved to this day in the library at Caesarea which Pamphilus the martyr so diligently collected. I also obtained permission of the Nazarenes of Beraea in Syria, who use this volume, to make a copy of it. In which it is to be observed that, throughout, the Evangelist when quoting the witness of the Old Testament, either in his own person or in that of the Lord and Saviour, does not follow the authority of the Seventy translators, but the Hebrew Scriptures, from which he quotes these two passages, ‘Out of Egypt have I called my Son,’ and, ‘Since he shall be called a Nazarene.’ ”143 And again: “That Gospel which is called the Gospel of the Hebrews, and which has lately been translated by me into Greek and Latin, and was used frequently by Origen, relates,” &c.144 Again: “That Gospel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites make use of, and which I have lately translated into Greek from the Hebrew, and which by many is called the genuine Gospel of Matthew.”145 And once more: “The Gospel of the Hebrews, which is written in the Syro-Chaldaic tongue, and in Hebrew characters, which the Nazarenes make use of at this day, is also called the Gospel of the Apostles, or, as many think, is that of Matthew, is in the library of Caesarea.”146

St. Epiphanius is even more explicit. He says that the Nazarenes possessed the most complete Gospel of St. Matthew,147 as it was written at first in Hebrew;148 and “they have it still in Hebrew characters; but I do not know if they have cut off the genealogies from Abraham to Christ.” “We may affirm as a certain fact, that Matthew alone among the writers of the New Testament wrote the history of the preaching of the Gospel in Hebrew, and in Hebrew characters.”149 This Hebrew Gospel, he adds, was known to Cerinthus and Carpocrates.

The subscriptions of many MSS. and versions bear the same testimony. Several important Greek codices of St. Matthew close with the statement that he wrote in Hebrew; the Syriac and Arabic versions do the same. The subscription of the Peschito version is, “Finished is the holy Gospel of the preaching of Matthew, which he preached in Hebrew in the land of Palestine.” That of the Arabic version reads as follows: “Here ends the copy of the Gospel of the apostle Matthew. He wrote it in the land of Palestine, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, in the Hebrew language, eight years after the bodily ascension of Jesus the Messiah into heaven, and in the first year of the Roman Emperor, Claudius Caesar.”

The title of Gospel of the Hebrews was only given to the version known to Jerome and Epiphanius, because it was in use among the Hebrews. But amongst the Nazarenes it was called “The Gospel of the Apostles,”150 or “The Gospel of the Twelve.”151 St. Jerome expressly says that “the Gospel used by the Nazarenes is also called the Gospel of the Apostles.”152 That the same Gospel should bear two names, one according to its reputed authors, the other according to the community which used it, is not surprising.

Justin Martyr probably alludes to it under a slightly different name, “The Recollections of the Apostles.”153 He says that these Recollections were a Gospel.154 He adopted the word used by Xenophon for his recollections of Socrates. What the Memorabilia of Xenophon were concerning the martyred philosopher, that the Memorabilia of the Apostles were concerning the martyred Redeemer.

It is probable that this Hebrew Gospel of the Twelve was the only one with which Justin Martyr was acquainted.

Justin Martyr was a native of Samaria, and his acquaintance with Christianity was probably made in the communities of Nazarenes scattered over Syria. By family he was a Greek, and was therefore by blood inclined to sympathize with the Gentile rather than the Jewish Christians. This double tendency is manifest in his writings. He judges the Ebionites, even the narrowest of their sectarian rings, with great tenderness; but he proclaims that Gentiledom had yielded better Christians than Jewdom.155 Justin distinguishes between the Ebionites. There were those who in their own practice observed the Mosaic Law, believing in Christ as the flower and end of the Law, but without exacting the same observance of believing Gentiles; and there were those, who not only observed the Law themselves, but imposed it on their Gentile converts. His sympathies were with the former, whom he regards as the true followers of the apostles, and not with the latter.

Justin's conversion took place circ. A.D. 133. He is a valuable testimony to the divisions among the Nazarenes or Ebionites in the second century, just when Gnostic views were infiltrating among the extreme Judaizing section.

Justin Martyr's Christian training took place in the Nazarene Church, in the orthodox, milder section. He no doubt inherited the traditional prejudice against St. Paul, for he neither mentions him by name, nor quotes any of his writings. That he should have omitted to quote St. Paul in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew is not surprising; but one cannot doubt that had he seen the Epistles of the Apostle of the Gentiles, he would have cited them, or shown that they had influenced the current of his thoughts in his two Apologies addressed to Gentiles. He quotes “the book that is called the Gospel” as if there were but one; but what Gospel was it? It has been frequently observed that the quotations of Justin are closer to the parallel passages in St. Matthew than to those of the other Canonical Gospels. But the only Gospel he names is the Gospel of the Twelve.

Did Justin Martyr possess the Gospel of St. Matthew, or some other?

It is observable that he diverges from the Gospel narrative in several particulars. It is inconceivable that this was caused by defect of memory. Two or three of those texts in which he differs from our Canonical Gospels occur several times in his writings, and always in the same form.156 Would it not be strange that his memory should fail him each time, and on each of these passages? But though his memory may have been inaccurate in recording exact words, the differences that have been noticed between the citations of Justin Martyr and the Canonical Gospel of St. Matthew are not confined to words; they extend to particulars, to facts. Verbal differences are accountable for by lapse of memory, but it is not so with facts. One can understand how in quoting by memory the mode of expressing the same facts may vary, but not that the facts themselves should be different. If the facts cited are different, we are forced to conclude that the citations were derived from another source. And such is the case with Justin.

Five or six times does he say that the Magi came from Arabia;157 St. Matthew says only that they came from the East.158

He says that our Lord was born in a cave159 near Bethlehem; that, when he was baptized, a bright light shone over him; and he gives words which were heard from heaven, which are not recorded by any of the Evangelists.

That our Lord was born in a cave is probable enough, but where did Justin learn it? Certainly not from St. Matthew's Gospel, which gives no particulars of the birth of Christ at Bethlehem. St. Luke says he was born in the stable of an inn. Justin, we are warranted in suspecting, derived the fact of the stable being a cave from the only Gospel with which he was acquainted, that of the Hebrews.

The tradition of the scene of Christ's nativity having been a cave was peculiarly Jewish. It is found in the Apocryphal Gospels of the Nativity and the Protevangelium, both of which unquestionably grew up in Judaea. That Justin should endorse this tradition leads to the conclusion that he found it so stated in his Gospel.

I shall speak of the light and voice at the baptism presently.

St. Epiphanius says that the Ebionite Gospel began with, “In the days of Herod, Caiaphas being the high-priest, there was a man whose name was John,” and so on, like the 3rd chap. St. Matthew. But this was the mutilated Gospel of the Hebrews used by the Gnostic Ebionites, who were heretical on the doctrine of the nativity of our Lord, and whom Justin Martyr speaks of as rejecting the supernatural birth of Christ.160

Among the Nazarenes, orthodox and heretical, but one Gospel was recognized, and that the Hebrew Gospel of the Twelve; but the Gospel in use among the Gnostic Ebionites became more and more corrupt as they diverged further from orthodoxy.

But the primitive Hebrew Gospel was held “in high esteem by those Jews who received the faith.”161 “It is the Gospel,” says St. Jerome, “that the Nazarenes use at the present day.”162 “It is the Gospel of the Hebrews that the Nazarenes read,” says Origen.163

Was this Gospel of the Twelve, or of the Hebrews, the original of St. Matthew's Canonical Greek Gospel, or was it a separate compilation? This is a question to be considered presently.

The statement of the Fathers that the Gospel of St. Matthew was first written in Hebrew, must of course be understood to mean that it was written in Aramaic or Palestinian Syriac.

Now we have extant two versions of the Gospels, St. Matthew's included, in Syriac, the Peschito and the Philoxenian. The latter needs only a passing mention; it was avowedly made from the Greek, A.D. 508. But the Peschito is much more ancient. The title of “Peschito” is an emphatic Syrian term for that which is “simple,” “uncorrupt” and “true;” and, applied from the beginning to this version, it strongly indicates the veneration and confidence with which it has ever been regarded by all the Churches of the East.164 When this version was made cannot be decided by scholars. A copy in the Laurentian Library bears so early a date as A.D. 586; but it existed long before the translation was made by Philoxenus in 508. The first Armenian version from the Greek was made in 431, and the Armenians already, at that date, had a version from the Syriac, made by Isaac, Patriarch of Armenia, some twenty years previously, in 410. Still further back, we find the Peschito version quoted in the writings of St. Ephraem, who lived not later than A.D. 370.165

Was this Peschito version founded on the Greek canonical text, or, in the case of St. Matthew, on the “Hebrew” Gospel? I think there can be little question that it was translated from the Greek. There can be no question that the Gospels of St. Mark, St. Luke, St. John, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of St. Paul, and those of the other Epistles contained in this version,166 are from the Greek, and it is probable that the version of St. Matthew was made at the same time from the received text. The Syrian churches were separated from the Nazarene community in sympathy; their acceptance of St. Paul's Epistles is a proof that they were so; and these Epistles were accepted by them at a very early age, as we gather from internal evidence in the translation.

The Syrian churches would be likely, moreover, when seeking for copies of the Christian Scriptures, to ask for them from churches which were regarded as orthodox, rather than from a dwindling community which was thought to be heretical.

The Peschito version of St. Matthew follows the canonical Greek text, and not the Gospel of the Hebrews, in such passages as can be compared;167 not one of the peculiarities of the latter find their echo in the Peschito text.

The Gospel of the Hebrews has not, therefore, been preserved to us in the Peschito St. Matthew. The translations made by St. Jerome in Greek and Latin have also perished. It is not difficult to account for the loss of the book. The work itself was in use only by converted Jews; it was in the exclusive possession of the descendants of those parties for whose use it had been written. The Greek Gospels, on the other hand, spread as Christianity grew. The Nazarenes themselves passed away, and their cherished Gospel soon ceased to be known among men.

Some exemplars may have been preserved for a time in public libraries, but these would not survive the devastation to which the country was exposed from the Saracens and other invaders, and it is not probable that a solitary copy survives.

But if the entire Gospel of the Hebrews has not been preserved to us, we have got sufficiently numerous fragments, cited by ancient ecclesiastical writers, to permit us, to a certain extent, to judge of the tendencies and character of that Gospel.

It is necessary to observe, as preliminary to our quotations, that the early Fathers cited passages from this Gospel without the smallest prejudice against it either historically or doctrinally. They do not seem to have considered it apocryphal, as open to suspicion, either because it contained doctrine at variance with the Canonical Greek Gospels, or because it narrated circumstances not found in them. On the contrary, they refer to it as a good, trustworthy authority for the facts of our Lord's life, and for the doctrines he taught.

St. Ignatius, in his Epistle to the Smyrnians,168 has inserted in it a passage relative to the appearance of our Lord to his apostles after his resurrection, not found in the Canonical Gospels, and we should not know whence he had drawn it, had not St. Jerome noticed the fact and recorded it.169

St. Clement of Alexandria speaks of the Gospel of the Hebrews in the same terms as he speaks of the writings of St. Paul and the books of the Old Testament.170 Origen, who makes some quotations from this Gospel, does not, it is true, range it with the Canonical Gospels, but he speaks of it with great respect, as one highly esteemed by many Christians of his time.171

In the fourth century, no agreement had been come to as to the value of this Gospel. Eusebius tells us that by some it was reckoned among the Antilegomena, that is, among those books which floated between the Canonical and the Apocryphal Gospels.172

The Gospel of St. Matthew and the Gospel of the Hebrews were not identical. It is impossible to doubt this when we examine the passages of the latter quoted by ecclesiastical writers, the majority of which are not to be found in the former, and the rest differ from the Canonical Gospel, either in details or in the construction of the passages which correspond.

Did the difference extend further? This is a question it is impossible to answer positively in one way or the other, since we only know those passages of the Gospel of the Nazarenes which have been quoted by the early Fathers.173

But it is probable that the two Gospels did not differ from each other except in these passages; for if the divergence was greater, one cannot understand how St. Jerome, who had both under his eyes, could have supposed one to have been the Hebrew original of the other. And if both resembled each other closely, it is easy to suppose that the ecclesiastical writers who quoted from the Nazarene Gospel, quoted only those passages which were peculiar to it.

Let us now examine the principal fragments of this Gospel that have been preserved.

There are some twenty in all, and of these only two are in opposition to the general tone of the first Canonical Gospel.

With one of these I shall begin the series of extracts.

“And straitway,” said Jesus, “the Holy Spirit [my mother] took me, and bore me away to the great mountain called Thabor.”174

Origen twice quotes this passage, once in a fuller form. “(She) bore me by one of my hairs to the great mountain called Thabor.” The passage is also quoted by St. Jerome.175 Origen and Jerome take pains to give this passage an orthodox and unexceptionable meaning. Instead of rejecting the passage as apocryphal, they labour to explain it away – a proof of the high estimation in which the Gospel of the Twelve was held. The words, “my mother,” are, it can scarcely be doubted, a Gnostic interpolation, as probably are also the words, “by one of my hairs;” for on one of the occasions on which Origen quotes the passage, these words are omitted. Probably they did not exist in all the copies of the Gospel.

Our Lord was “led by the Spirit into the wilderness” after his baptism.176 Philip was caught away by the Spirit of the Lord from the road between Jerusalem and Gaza, and was found at Azotus.177 The notion of transportation by the Spirit was therefore not foreign to the authors of the Gospels.

The Holy Spirit was represented by the Elkesaites as a female principle.178 The Elkesaites were certainly one with the Ebionites in their hostility to St. Paul, whose Epistles, as Origen tells us, they rejected.179 And that they were a Jewish sect which had relations with Ebionitism appears from a story told by St. Epiphanius, that their supposed founder, Elxai, went over to the Ebionites in the time of Trajan.180 They issued from the same fruitful field of converts, the Essenes.

The term by which the Holy Spirit is designated in Hebrew is feminine, and lent itself to a theory of the Holy Spirit being a female principle, and this rapidly slid into identification of the Spirit with Mary.

The Clementines insist on the universe being compounded of the male and the female elements. There are two sorts of prophecy, the male which speaks of the world to come, the female which deals with the world that is; the female principle rules this world, the body, all that is visible and material. Beside this female principle stands Christ, the male principle, ruling the spirits of men, and all that is invisible and immaterial.181 The Holy Spirit, brooding over the deep and calling the world into being, became therefore the female principle in the Elkesaite Trinity.

In Gnosticism, this deification of the female principle, which was represented as Prounikos or Sophia among the Valentinians, led to the incarnation of the principle in women who accompanied the heresiarchs Simon and Apelles. Thus the Eternal Wisdom was incarnate in Helena, who accompanied Dositheus and afterwards Simon Magus,182 and in the fair Philoumena who associated with Apelles.

The same influence seems imperceptibly to have been at work in the Church of the Middle Ages, and in the pictures and sculptures of the coronation of the Virgin. Mary seems in Catholic art to have assumed a position as one of the Trinity.

In the original Gospel of the Hebrews, the passage probably stood thus: “And straightway the Holy Spirit took me, and bore me to the great mountain Thabor;” and Origen and Jerome quoted from a text corrupted by the Gnostic Ebionites. The words “bore me by one of my hairs” were added to assimilate the translation to that of Habbacuc by the angel, in the apocryphal addition to the Book of Daniel.

We next come to a passage found in the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria, who compares it with a sentence from the Theaetetus of Plato: “He who wondereth shall reign, and he who reigneth shall rest.”183

This, like the preceding quotation, has a Gnostic hue; but it is impossible to determine its sense in the absence of the context. Nor does the passage in the Theaetetus throw any light upon it. The whole of the passage in St. Clement is this: “The beginning of (or search after) truth is admiration,” says Plato. “And Matthias, in saying to us in his Traditions, Wonder at what is before you, proves that admiration is the first step leading upwards to knowledge. Therefore also it is written in the Gospel of the Hebrews, He who shall wonder shall reign, and he who reigns shall rest.”

What were these Traditions of Matthias? In another place St. Clement of Alexandria mentions them, and quotes a passage from them, an instruction of St. Matthias: “If he who is neighbour to one of the elect sins, the elect sins with him; for if he (the elect) had conducted himself as the Word requires, then his neighbour would have looked to his ways, and not have sinned.”184 And, again, he says that the followers of Carpocrates appealed to the authority of St. Matthias – probably, therefore, to this book, his Traditions – as an excuse for giving rein to their lusts.

These Traditions of St. Matthias evidently contained another version of the same passage, or perhaps a portion of the same discourse attributed to our Lord, which ran somehow thus: “Wonder at, what is before your eyes (i. e. the mighty works that I do); for he that wondereth shall reign, and he that reigneth shall rest.”

It is not impossible that this may be a genuine reminiscence of part of our Lord's teaching.

Justin Martyr, in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew, says that Jesus exercised the trade of a carpenter, and that he made carts, yokes, and like articles.185

Where did he learn this? Not from St. Matthew's Gospel; probably from the lost Gospel which he quotes.

St. Jerome quotes as a saying of our Lord, “Be ye proved money-changers.”186 He has no hesitation in calling it a saying of the Saviour. It occurs again in the Clementine Homilies187 and in the Recognitions.188 It is cited much more fully by St. Clement of Alexandria in his Stromata: “Be ye proved money-changers; retain that which is good metal, reject that which is bad.”189 Neither St. Jerome, St. Clement of Alexandria, nor the author of the Clementines, give their authority for the statement they make, that this is a saying of the Lord; but we may, I think, fairly conclude that St. Jerome drew it from the Hebrew Gospel he knew so well, having translated it into Greek and Latin, and which he looked upon as an unexceptionable authority.

Whence the passage came may be guessed by the use made of it by those who quote it. It probably followed our Lord's saying, “I am not come to destroy the Law, but to fulfil it.” “Nevertheless, be ye proved exchangers; retain that which is good metal, reject that which is bad.”