Lost and Hostile Gospels

Had St. Matthew any other part in the composition of the first Canonical Gospel than contributing to it his “Syntax of the Lord's Sayings”? Of that we can say nothing for certain. It is possible enough that many of the “doings” of Jesus contained in the Gospel may be memorabilia of St. Matthew, circulating in anecdota.

A critical examination of St. Matthew's Gospel reveals four sources whence it was drawn, three threads of different texture woven into one. These are:

1. The “Memorabilia” of St. Peter, used afterwards by St. Mark. These the compiler of the first Gospel attached mechanically to the rest of his material by such formularies as “in those days,” “at that time,” “then,” “after that,” “when he had said these things.”

2. The “Logia of the Lord,” composed by St. Matthew.

3. Another series of sayings and doings, from which the following passages were derived: iii. 7-10, 12, iv. 3-11, viii. 19-22, ix. 27, 32-34, xi. 2-19. Some of these were afterwards used by St. Luke.285 Were these by St. Matthew? It is possible.

4. To the fourth category belong chapters i. and ii., iii. 3, xiv. 15, the redaction of iv. 12, 13, 14, 15, v. 1, 2, 19, vii. 22, 23, viii. 12, 17, x. 5, 6, xi. 2, xii. 17-21, xiii. 35-43, 49, 50, the redaction of xiv. 13a, xiv. 28-31, xv. 24, xvii. 24b-27, xix. 17a, 19b, 28, xx. 16, xxi. 2, 7, xxi. 4, 5, xxiii. 10, 13, 15, 23, 25, 27, 29, 35, the redaction of xxiv. 3, 20, 51b, xxv. 30b, xxvi. 2, 15, 25, xxvii. 51-53, xxvii. 62-66, xxviii. 1a, 2-4, 8, 9, 11-15.

Was this taken from a collection of the recollections of St. Matthew, and the series 3 from another set of Apostolic Memorabilia? That it is not possible to decide.

Into the reasons which have led to this separation of the component parts 3, 4, the peculiarities of diction which serve to distinguish them, we cannot enter here; it would draw us too far from the main object of our inquiry.286

The theory that the Synoptical Gospels were composed of various disconnected materials, variously united into consecutive biographies, was accepted by Bishop Marsh, and it is the only theory which relieves the theologian from the unsatisfactory obligation of making “harmonies” of the Gospels. If we adopt the received popular conception of the composition of the Synoptical Gospels, we are driven to desperate shifts to fit them together, to reconcile their discrepancies.

The difficulty, the impossibility, of effecting such a harmony of the statements of the evangelists was felt by the early Christian writers. Origen says that the attempt to reconcile them made him giddy. Among the writings of Tatian was a Diatessaron or harmony of the Gospels. Eusebius adventured on an explanation, “of the discords of the Evangelists.” St. Ambrose exercised his pen on a concordance of St. Matthew with St. Luke; St. Augustine wrote “De consensu Evangelistarum,” and in his effort to force them into agreement was driven to strange suppositions – as that when our Lord went through Jericho there was a blind man by the road-side leading into the city, and another by the road-side leading out of it, and that both were healed under very similar circumstances.

Apollinaris, in the famous controversy about Easter, declared that it was irreconcilable with the Law that Christ should have suffered on the great feast-day, as related by St. Matthew, but that the Gospels disagreed among themselves on the day upon which he suffered.287 The great Gerson sought to remove the difficulties in a “Concordance of the Evangelists,” or “Monotessaron.”

Such an admission as that the Synoptical Gospels were composed in the manner I have pointed out, in no way affects their incomparable value. They exhibit to us as in a mirror what the apostles taught and what their disciples believed. Faith does not depend on the chronological sequence of events, but on the verity of those events. “See!” exclaimed St. Chrysostom, “how through the contradictions in the evangelical history in minor particulars, the truth of the main facts transpires, and the trustworthiness of the authors is made manifest!”

In everything, both human and divine, there is an union of infallibility in that which is of supreme importance, and of fallibility in that which concerns not salvation. The lenses through which the light of the world shone to remote ages were human scribes liable to error. Θεῖα πάντα καὶ ἀνθρώπινα πάντα, was the motto Tholuck inscribed on his copy of the Sacred Oracles.

Having established the origin of the Gospel of St. Matthew, we are able now to see our way to establishing that of the Gospel of the Twelve, or Gospel of the Hebrews.

No doubt it also was a mosaic made out of the same materials as the Gospel of St. Matthew. There subsisted side by side in Palestine a Greek-speaking and an Aramaic-speaking community of Christians, the one composed of proselytes from among the Gentiles, the other of converts from among the Jews. This Gentile Church in Palestine was scarcely influenced by St. Paul; it was under the rule of St. Peter, and therefore was more united to the Church at Jerusalem in habits of thought, in religious customs, in reverence for the Law, than the Churches of “Asia” and Greece. There was no antagonism between them. There was, on the contrary, close intercourse and mutual sympathy.

Each community, probably, had its own copies of Apostolic Memorabilia, not identical, but similar. Some of the “recollections” were perhaps written only in Aramaic, or only in Greek, so that the collection of one community may have been more complete in some particulars than the collection of the other. The necessity to consolidate these Memorabilia into a consecutive narrative became obvious to both communities, and each composed “in order” the scraps of record of our Lord's sayings and doings they possessed and read in their sacred mysteries. St. Matthew's “Logia of the Lord” was used in the compilation of the Hebrew Gospel; one of the translations of it, which, according to Papias, were numerous, formed the basis also of the Greek Gospel.

The material used by both communities, the motive actuating both communities, were the same; the results were consequently similar. That they were not absolutely identical was the consequence of their having been compiled independently.

Thus the resemblance was sufficient to make St. Jerome suppose the Hebrew Gospel to be the same as the Greek first Gospel; nevertheless, the differences were as great as has been pointed out in the preceding pages.

II. The Clementine Gospel

We have now considered all the fragments of the Gospel of the Hebrews that have been preserved to us in the writings of Justin Martyr, Origen, Jerome and Epiphanius.

But there is another storehouse of texts and references to a Gospel regarded as canonical at a very early date by the Nazarene or Ebionite Church. This storehouse is that curious collection of the sayings and doings of St. Peter, the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies.

That the Gospel used by the author or authors of the Clementines was that of the Hebrews cannot be shown; but it is probable that it was so.

The Clementines were a production of the Judaizing party in the Primitive Church, and it was this party which, we know, used the Gospel of the Twelve, or of the Hebrews.

The doctrine in the Clementine Recognitions and Homilies bears close relations to that of the Jewish Essenes. The sacrificial system of the Jewish Church is rejected. It was not part of the revelation to Moses, but a tradition of the elders.288

Distinction in meats is an essential element of religion. Through unclean meats devils enter into men, and produce disease. To eat of unclean meats places men in the power of evil spirits, who lead them to idolatry and all kinds of wickedness. So long as men abstain from these, so long are the devils powerless against them.289

The observance of times is also insisted on – times at which the procreation of children is lawful or unlawful; and disease and death result from neglect of this distinction. “In the beginning of the world men lived long, and had no diseases. But when through carelessness they neglected the observance of the proper times … they placed their children under innumerable afflictions.”290 It is this doctrine that is apparently combated by St. Paul.291 He relaxes the restraints which Nazarene tradition imposed on marital intercourse.

The rejection of sacrifices obliged the Nazarene Church to discriminate between what is true and false in the Scriptures; and, with the Essenes, they professed liberty to judge the Scriptures and reject what opposed their ideas. Thus they refused to acknowledge that “Adam was a transgressor, Noah drunken, Abraham guilty of having three wives, Jacob of cohabiting with two sisters, Moses was a murderer,” &c.292

The moral teaching of the Clementines is of the most exalted nature. Chastity is commended in a glowing, eloquent address of St. Peter.293 Poverty is elevated into an essential element of virtue. Property is, in itself, an evil. “To all of us possessions are sins. The deprivation of these is the removal of sins.” “To be saved, no one should possess anything; but since many have possessions, or, in other words, sins, God sends, in love, afflictions … that those with possessions, but yet having some measure of love to God, may, by temporary inflictions, be saved from eternal punishments.”294

“Those who have chosen the blessings of the future kingdom have no right to regard the things here as their own, since they belong to a foreign king (i. e. the prince of this world), with the exception only of water and bread, and those things procured by the sweat of the brow, necessary for the maintenance of life, and also one garment.”295

Thus St. Peter is represented as living on water, bread and olives, and having but one cloak and tunic.296 And Hegesippus, as quoted by Eusebius, describes St. James, first bishop of Jerusalem, as “drinking neither wine nor fermented liquors, and abstaining from animal food. A razor never came upon his head, he never anointed himself with oil, and never used a bath. He never wore woollen, but linen garments.”297

The Ebionites looked upon Christ as the Messiah rather than as God incarnate. They gave him the title of Son of God, and claimed for him the highest honour, but hesitated to term him God. In their earnest maintenance of the Unity of the Godhead against Gnosticism, they shrank from appearing to divide the Godhead. Thus, in the Clementines, St. Peter says, “Our Lord neither asserted that there were gods except the Creator of all, nor did he proclaim himself to be God, but he pronounced him blessed who called him the Son of that God who ordered the universe.”298

The Ebionitism of the Clementines is controversial. It was placed face to face with Gnosticism. Simon Magus, the representative of Gnosticism, as St. Peter is the representative of orthodoxy, in the Recognitions and Homilies, contends that the God of the Jews, the Demiurge, the Creator of the world, is evil. He attempts to prove this by showing that the world is full of pain and misery. The imperfections of the world are tokens of imperfection in the Creator. He takes the Old Testament. He shows from texts that the God of the Jews is represented as angry, jealous, repentant; that those whom He favours are incestuous, adulterers, murderers.

This doctrine St. Peter combats by showing that present evils are educative, curative, disguised blessings; and by calling all those passages in Scripture which attribute to God human passions, corruptions of the sacred text in one of its many re-editions. “God who created the world has not in reality such a character as the Scriptures assign Him,” says St. Peter; “for such a character is contrary to the nature of God, and therefore manifestly is falsely attributed to Him.”299

From this brief sketch of the doctrines of the Ebionite Church from which the Clementines emanated, it will be seen that its Gospel must have resembled that of the Hebrews, or have been founded on it. The “Recollections of the Twelve” probably existed in several forms, some more complete than others, some purposely corrupted. The Gospel of the Hebrews was in use in the orthodox Nazarene Church. The Gospel used by the author of the Clementines was in use in the same community. It is therefore natural to conclude their substantial identity.

But though substantially the same, and both closely related to the Canonical Gospel of St. Matthew, they were not completely identical; for the Clementine Gospel diverged from the received text of St. Matthew more widely than we are justified in concluding did that of the Gospel of the Hebrews.

That it was in Greek and not in Hebrew is also probable. The converts to Christianity mentioned in the Recognitions and Homilies are all made from Heathenism, and speak Greek. It is at Caesarea, Tripolis, Laodicaea, that the churches are established which are spoken of in these books, – churches filled, not with Jews, but with Gentile converts, and therefore requiring a Gospel in Greek.

The Clementine Gospel was therefore probably a sister compilation to that of the Hebrews and of St. Matthew. The Memorabilia of the Apostles had circulated in Hebrew in the communities of pure Jews, in Greek in those of Gentile proselytes. These Memorabilia were collected into one book by the Hebrew Church, by the Nazarene proselytes, and by the compiler of the Canonical Gospel of St. Matthew. This will explain their similarity and their differences.

From what has been said of the Clementines, it will be seen that their value is hardly to be over-estimated as a source of information on the religious position of the Petrine Church. Hilgenfeld says: “There is scarcely any single writing which is of such importance for the history of the earliest stage of Christianity, and which has yielded such brilliant disclosures at the hands of the most careful critics, with regard to the earliest history of the Christian Church, as the writings ascribed to the Roman Clement, the Recognitions and the Homilies.”300

No conclusion has been reached in regard to the author of the Clementines. It is uncertain whether the Homilies and the Recognitions are from the same hand. Unfortunately, the Greek of the Recognitions is lost. We have only a Latin translation by Rufinus of Aquileia (d. 410), who took liberties with his text, as he informs Bishop Gaudentius, to whom he addressed his preface. He found that the copies of the book he had differed from one another in some particulars. Portions which he could not understand he omitted. There is reason to suspect that he altered such quotations as he found in it from the Gospel used by the author, and brought them, perhaps unconsciously, into closer conformity to the received text. In examining the Gospel employed by the author of the Clementines, we must therefore trust chiefly to those texts quoted in the Homilies.

Various opinions exist as to the date of the Clementines. They have been attributed to the first, second, third and fourth centuries. If we were to base our arguments on the work as it stands, the date to be assigned to it is the first half of the third century. A passage from the Recognitions is quoted by Origen in his Commentary on Genesis, written in A.D. 231; and mention is made in the work of the extension of the Roman franchise to all nations under the dominion of Rome, an event which took place in the reign of Caracalla (A.D. 211). The Recognitions also contain an extract from the work De Fato, ascribed to Bardesanes, but which was really written by one of his scholars. But it has been thought, not without great probability, that this passage did not originally belong to the Recognitions, but was thrust into the text about the middle of the third century.301

I have already pointed out the fact that the Church in the Clementines is never called “Christian;” that the word is never employed. It belonged to the community established by Paul, and with it the Church of Peter had no sympathy. To believe in the mission of Christ is, in the Clementine Homilies, to become a Jew. The convert from Gentiledom by passing into the Church passes under the Law, becomes, as we are told, a Jew. But the convert is made subject not to the Law as corrupted by the traditions of the elders, but to the original Law as re-proclaimed by Christ.

The author of the Recognitions twice makes St. Peter say that the only difference existing between him and the Jews is in the manner in which they view Christ. To the apostles he is the Messiah come in humility, to come again in glory. But the Jews deny that the Messiah was to have two manifestations, and therefore reject Christ.302

Although we cannot rely on the exact words of the quotations from the Gospel in the “Recognitions,” there are references to the history of our Lord which give indications of narratives contained in the Gospel used by the pseudo-Clement, therefore by the Ebionite Christians whose views he represents. We will go through all such passages in the order in which they occur in the “Recognitions.”

The first allusion to a text parallel to one in the Canonical Gospels is this: “Not only did they not believe, but they added blasphemy to unbelief, saying he was a gluttonous man and slave of his belly, and that he was influenced by a demon.”303 The parallel passage is in St. Matthew xi. 18, 19. It is curious to notice that in the Recognitions the order is inverted. In St. Matthew, “they say, He hath a devil… They say, Behold a man gluttonous, and a wine-bibber;” and that the term “wine-bibber” is changed into “slave of his belly.” Probably therefore in this instance the author of the Clementines borrowed from a different text from St. Matthew.

In the very next chapter the Recognitions approaches St. Matthew closer than the lost Gospel. For in the account of the crucifixion it is said that “the veil of the Temple was rent,” whereas the Gospel of the Hebrews stated that the lintel of the Temple had fallen. But here I suspect we have the hand of Rufinus the translator. We can understand how, finding in the text an inaccuracy of quotation, as he supposed, he altered it.

The next passage relates to the resurrection. “For some of them, watching the place with all care, when they could not prevent his rising again, said that he was a magician; others pretended that he was stolen away.”304 The Canonical Gospels say nothing about this difference of opinion among the Jews, but St. Matthew states that it was commonly reported among them that his disciples had stolen his body away. Not a word about any suspicion that he had exercised witchcraft, a charge which we know from Celsus was brought against Christ later.

The next passage is especially curious. It relates to the unction of Christ. “He was the Son of God, and the beginning of all things; he became man; him God anointed with oil that was taken from the wood of the Tree of Life; and from this anointing he is called Christ.”305 Then St. Peter goes on to argue: “In the present life, Aaron, the first high-priest, was anointed with a composition of chrism, which was made after the pattern of that spiritual ointment of which we have spoken before… But if any one else was anointed with the same ointment, as deriving virtue from it, he became either king, or prophet, or priest. If, then, this temporal grace, compounded by men, had such efficacy, consider how potent was that ointment extracted by God from a branch of the Tree of Life, when that which was made by men could confer so excellent dignities among men.”

Here we have trace of an apparent myth relating to the unction of Jesus at his baptism. Was there any passage to this effect in the Hebrew Gospel translated by St. Jerome? It is hard to believe it. Had there been, we might have expected him to allude to it.

But that there was some unction of Christ mentioned in the early Gospels, I think is probable. If there were not, how did Jesus, so early, obtain the name of Christ, the Anointed One? That name was given to him before his divinity was wholly believed in, and when he was regarded only as the Messiah – nay, even before the apostles and disciples had begun to see in him anything higher than a teacher sent from God, a Rabbi founding a new school. It is more natural to suppose that the surname of the Anointed One was given to him because of some event in his life with which they were acquainted, than because they applied to him prophecies at a time when certainly they had no idea that such prophecies were spoken of him.

If some anointing did really accompany the baptism, then one can understand the importance attached to the baptism by the Elkesaites and other Gnostic sects; and how they had some ground for their doctrine that Jesus became the Christ only on his baptism. It is remarkable that, according to St. John's Gospel, it is directly after the baptism that Andrew tells his brother Simon, “We have found the Messias, which is … the Anointed.”306 Twice in the Acts is Jesus spoken of as the Anointed: “Thy holy child Jesus, whom Thou hast anointed.”307 The second occasion is remarkable, for it again apparently associates the anointing with the baptism. St. Peter “opened his mouth and said … The word which God sent unto the children of Israel … that word ye know, which was published throughout all Judaea, and began from Galilee after the baptism which John preached; how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power.”308 I do not say that such an anointing did take place, but that it is probable it did. When Gnosticism fixed on this anointing as the communication to Christ of his divine mission and Messiahship, then mention of it was cut out of the Gospels in possession of the Church, and consequently the Canonical Gospels are without it to this day. But the Christian ceremonial of baptism, which was founded on what took place at the baptism of the Lord, maintained this unction as part of the sacrament, in the Eastern Church never to be dissociated from the actual baptism, but in the Western Church to be separated from it and elevated into a separate sacrament – Confirmation.

But if in the original Hebrew Gospel there was mention of the anointing of Jesus at or after his baptism, as I contend is probable, this mention did not include an account of the oil being expressed from the branch of the Tree of Life; that is a later addition, in full agreement with the fantastic ideas which were gradually permeating and colouring Judaic Christianity.

After the baptism, “Jesus put out, by the grace of baptism, that fire which the priest kindled for sins; for, from the time when he appeared, the chrism has ceased, by which the priesthood or the prophetic or the kingly office was conferred.”309 The Homilies are more explicit: “He put out the fire on the altars.”310 There was therefore in the Gospel used by the author of the Clementines an account of our Lord, after his anointing, entering into the Temple and extinguishing the altar fires.

In St. John's Gospel, on which we may rely for the chronological sequence of events with more confidence than we can on the Synoptical Gospels, the casting of the money-changers out of the Temple took place not long after the baptism. In St. Matthew's account it took place at the close of the ministry, in the week of the Passion. That this exhibition of his authority marked the opening of his three years' ministry rather than the close is most probable, and then it was, no doubt, that he extinguished the fires on the altar, according to the Gospel used by the author of the Clementines. Whether this incident occurred in the Gospel of the Hebrews it is not possible to say.

We are told that “James and John, the sons of Zebedee, had a command … not to enter into their cities (i. e. the cities of the Samaritans), nor to bring the word of preaching to them.”311 “And when our Master sent us forth to preach, he commanded us, But into whatsoever city or house we should enter, we should say, Peace be to this house. And if, said he, a son of peace be there, your peace shall come upon him; but if there be not, your peace shall return unto you. Also, that going from house to city, we should shake off upon them the very dust which adhered to our feet. But it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment than for that city or house.”312 The Gospel of the Clementines, it is plain, contained an account of the sending forth of the apostles almost identical with that in St. Matthew, x.