Ence

l. More facts are to be learned on the subject from Jerome than from any other Father ; and it is best to begin with what he tells us, re- ferring afterwards to the statements before him and afterhim. What is here said about Jerome is based on the admirable discussion by Zahn, in which the passages are collected. Jerome went twice to the East.

He lived 374- 379 a hermit life at Chalcis in Northern ies and in 385 he was at Antioch on his way to Palestine, to spend the rest of his life in the monastery he founded at Bethlehem. He was much in contact with Syrian Christians, who helped him to learn Hebrew, and told him many interesting things. In particular, he gathered from them much informa- tion as to the Gospel they used. This he describes by various phrases which at first sight seem some- what inconsistent with each other.

At one time he calls it ‘the Hebrew Gospel’; at others, and most frequently, ‘the Gospel according to the Hebrews’ (juaxta or secundum Hebreos). These words may be a description, not a title, and do not of themselves require us to think of a written work ; they might refer to the Evangelical tradi- tion current in the East, which might exist in more than one form. Jerome frequently says that the Nazarenes use this Gospel, or are in the habit of reading it.

If the ‘Nazarenes’ of Jerome were a particular sect, their Gospel would be a particular book. But the name is more probably, in most of the passages where he uses it, a general one for the Jewish Christians of the East; so that the Gospel they used might have various forms. In one pas- sage (ad Mt 128; No.8) Jerome says the Nazarenes and the Ebionites used this Gospel. Here he must be held to be speaking very loosely.

There were Ebionites who were, to the eye of the Churchman, heretics, and they had a Gospel of heretical ten- dency of which fragments are preserved, though not by Jerome. But the term ‘ Ebionite’ was also used as a general designation of the Christians of Pales- tine who kept up a Jewish form of belief in Christ. It is not therefore to be inferred from this expres- sion of Jerome that he identified the heretical * NT extra Can. Rec., Fasc. 1. Evangeliorum sec. Hebreeos, etc., 1884.

t Geschichte des NT Kanons, ii. 642-723. t Texte und Untersuchungen, v. 3. § Chronologie, ii. 1, pp. 625-661, \ The Gospel according to the Hebrews, 1879. §| The numbering of the Fragments in this article is that of Preuschen’s Antilegomena. HEBREWS, GOSPEL 339 Gospel of the Ebionites with that according to the Hebrews, which he does not elsewhere regard as heretical.

More probably he is guilty of a con- fusion, and adds the Ebionites to the Nazarenes, though the two were identical: if this is so, his expression need not point to more than one book. But all doubts as to what he means by his ‘ Gospel according to the Hebrews’ are set at rest by his other statements. In his de Viris Illustribus (1i.

3) of the year 392 he speaks of a book which existed at that day in the library at Cesarea, which the martyr Pamphilus took such pains to form; and he says that the Nazarenes at Bercea (Aleppo) showed him the same work, and allowed him to copy it (No. 2). Here we come to another puzzle. In this passage he calls the book, of which he knew two copies, ipsum Hebraicum, ‘the original Hebrew.

’ Now, he is speaking in this passage of the Gospel according to Matthew, so that he appears to think, like Cureton in later days, that what he had copied out was the original Hebrew of Matthew, of which the canonical First Gospel in Greek was a transla- tion. In his commentary on Mt 12% (the passage cited above) he says that the Gospel used by the Nazarenes and Ebionites was called by many ‘the original of Matthew’ (Matthei authenticum).

And in his work against the Pelagians he speaks of ‘ the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which is written in the Chaldean and Syrian tongue [t.e. Aramaic, cf. Zahn, p. 659. It is Chaldaic as appearing in the OT, Syriac as a living language], but in Hebrew letters, which the Nazarenes use to this day; ac- cording to the Apostles, or, as many are of opinion, according to Matthew, which has a place in the library at Czesarea (No. 3).’?

And this book, he tells us, he had translated into Greek and Latin. To these translations of his own he frequently refers, There can be no doubt that he made them ; there is evidence, indeed, that they occasioned some little scandal in the Church, and were regarded as an indiscretion on his part, as if he had sought to add a fifth Gospel to the sacred four acknowledged by the Church.

There are many difficulties and confusions in Jerome’s statements on this subject, but the fol- lowing facts clearly appear from them:—l. The Christians of Syria used in the 4th cent. a Gospel in Aramaic, written in the square Hebrew char- acter, and not identical with any of those in the Canon. 2. There was great uncertainty as to the origin of this work. Many held it to be the origi- nal work of the Apostle Matthew.

Some identified it with the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles, the surviving fragments of which, not preserved by Jerome but by others, show it to have been a different work (see Harnack, Chronologie, ii. 627). Those who knew little about it could say that it was used by the heretical Ebionites as well as by the ordinary Oriental Christians. 3.

It was un- known at this period in the West; Jerome knew of no Greek or Latin version of it ; his designation of it ‘ according to the Hebrews’ indicates its circle of readers; it was used by Hebrew-speaking Chris- tians, not by others. 4. The identification with the Apostle Matthew shows that it resembled our First Gospel more than the others; yet Jerome knew that it was in many respects different from the canonical Matthew, else he need not have translated it. 2.

From LEpiphanius, Jerome’s contemporary, who also spent part of his life in the East, we have various statements as to the Gospel used in Pales- tine, and on the whole a confirmation of the facts obtained from Jerome. It is from Epiphanius that we derive our fragments of the Gospel according to the Ebionites.

He tells us that that Gospel began with John the Baptist, without any genealogy or story of the Infancy, and that the early Doce ea 340 HEBREWS, GOSPEL HEBREWS, GOSPEL Cerinthus and Carpocrates, had used it. The frag- ments show an ascetic tendency, and in one of them there is an account of the baptism of the Lord quite different from that in the Gospel ‘sec. Hebr.

’ Nicholson, however, prints them as part of the same book; for which he can allege the passage of Jerome given above, and also a statement of Epiphanius, who says that the Ebionites called this Gospel ‘according to the Hebrews,’ and that it was the Hebrew Matthew.

The latter statement the ex- tracts plainly disprove; and if we add to it the statement made by the same Father, that Tatian’s Diatessaron was called by many ‘according to Matthew,’ we have some measure of the confusion which, in this Father’s mind at least, rested on the whole subject.

As to the Nazarenes, whom he treats as another set of heretics, but in his descrip- tion of whom we may recognize the features of the ordinary Jewish Christian of the East who cherished the Law as well as the Gospel, Epiphanius says they have a ‘very full Matthew in Hebrew.’ This book, however, he has never seen; he cannot oe tell whether or not it opened with a gene- alogy. 3.

The work with which Jerome made such close acquaintance was known to Fathers of the two centuries before him; some of the extant frag- ments are found in their writings, and we find them considering how much authority is to be allowed to a Gospel which, though not recognized by the Church, was not suppressed, but in some quarters warmly cherished.

Husebiuws, who lived half a century Telore Jerome, and was much in- terested in the question of the books to be adopted by the Church, quotes several times ‘the Gospel which has reached us in Hebrew characters,’ or ‘the Gospel which is with the. Jews in the Hebrew language.’ He does not speak of any translation of it into Greek, and we do not know how he got the Greek versions he gives us. In his famous list of the New Testament Scriptures (HZ iii. 25) he gives ‘sec. Hebr.

’ a place, not among the acknow- ledged books of the Church, but among the Anti- legomena, the books which are accepted in some uarters of the Church but not generally, such as the Shepherd of Hermas, the Teaching of the Apostles, and, in the view of some, the Johanhine Apocalypse. ‘In this class,’ he says, ‘some count the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which is most used by those of the Hebrews who have ac- cepted Christ’ (6 pddtora ‘EBpalwy ol rdv Xpicrov mapadeeduevos xalpovow).

Harnack sees in these words an implied statement that there were Greek-speaking as well as Hebrew-speaking Chris- tians who used this Gospel, and holds them to prove the existence in Eusebius’ day of a Greek translation, which had disappeared when Jerome wrote. But the uddora may 33 taken with 6 rather than with ‘Efpalwy, and may indicate that the Christians of Syria clung to this Gospel more than to the Diatessaron or any other Syriac translation. Similarly, Eusebius says (iii. 27) that ‘sec.

Hebr.’ was used by the better set of Ebionites, t.e. by the Christians of Syria who kept up their attachment to the Law, as their only Gospel: ‘by the others they set small store.’ Eusebius, then, respects the practice of the Jewish Christians in using a Gospel which had come down to them in their own tongue ; but a work of such limited circulation could not be taken to belong to the accepted collection of the Church.

He nowhere identifies it with the Hebrew of Matthew, though he does speak of that work, in which early tradition firmly believed, when he says (v.") that Panteenus found in India the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew, which had been carried there by the Apostle Bartholomew. What he knew of ‘sec. Hebr.’ is all in the direction of the difference of that work from Matthew, not of their similarity. In a statement about Hegesippus, who travelled from the East to Rome in the latter half of the 2nd cent.

, he tells us that that Father wrote a book of Memoirs, in which he gave extracts from the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Syriac, translat- ing them himself. Whatever may be the precise meaning of this, whether it credits Hegesippus with using two Gospels of Semitic language or onl one, it shows Eusebius to have considered ‘sec. Hebr. to have been in the possession of the Christians of the East from a very early period. 4.

Going back more than a century to Clement and Origen, with whom, as is well known, the Canon of Christian Scriptures was only emerging into definite form, we find ‘sec. Hebr.’ in the posi- tion of a well-known book, which, while it may not rank as Scripture,—yet in one passage of Clement (see below) it almost seems to do so,—is treated with respect, and regarded as a possible source of genuine information as to the Gospel narrative and teaching.

Of Origen, Jerome tells us that he frequently used this Gospel; and there are three assages In the works of the great commentator in which he is seen todo so. He furnishes two of the extant fragments, introducing one of them (Jn 2!2) with the words: ‘If any one gives credence to the Gospel according to the Hebrews, where the Saviour Himself says’ (No.

5a), and saying of another (Mt 1915), ‘It is written in a certain Gospel which is called ‘‘ according to the Hebrews,” if at least any one choose to accept it not in the way of authority, yet (this phrase is thought by Zahn to be a gloss) for the bringing out of the question before us’ (No. 11). Origen, then, who firmly believes that the Church had only four Gospels (Hom. in Luc.

1) knows of another to which some attach value, an he does not condemn that work as either heretical or absurd, but leaves it open to those who are so inclined to accept its statements, and regards them himself with great interest. With regard to Origen’s predecessor, Clement, we have the one fact that he twice quotes a saying from ‘sec. Hebr.,’ on one occasion (Strom. ii. 9. 45) introducing it with ‘So also in the Gospel accord- ing to the Hebrews it is written’ (No.

24); where the phrase ‘it is written,’ the ordinary formula for quotation from Scripture, is held by some to in- dicate that he regarded ‘sec. Hebr.’ in that light. But with Clement the Canon is not a very definite quantity ; he names as Scripture a number of books which, according to Eusebius (vi. 14, 1), he does not seem to have held to belong to the NT. That Origen and Clement had ‘sec. Hebr.

’ in a Greek translation is asserted by Harnack ; but he does not succeed in accounting for the disappear- ance of such a version, if there was one, before the time of Jerome; and both Fathers were in a posi- tion to quote from a work in Aramaic. 5. It is not necessary to go further back. The Muratorian Canon, drawn up at Rome in the last quarter of the 2nd cent., does not name our Gospel.

Ireneus, writing in the West some time after, knows that there are Christians, whom he calls Ebionites, who use only the Gospel of Matthew, and repudiate the Apostle Paul as an apostate from the Law. He shows no knowledge of the Gospel ‘sec. Hebr.,’ and his statement may be understood as a vague reflexion in the West of the fact that there were believers in Christ in the East who used only one Gospel and connected it, in the way we have seen, with the name of the Apostle Matthew.

Of Papias, first author, so far as we can discern, of the statement that Matthew had written a Gospel-work in Hebrew, Eusebius tells us that he had the story of the woman accused to the Lord of many sins—a story which Eusebius says ‘sec. Hebr.’ also contained (No. 23). He doesnot say that Papias derived it from that source. Finally, 1t is a very HEBREWS, GOSPEL curious circumstance that Jgnatius, in the early part of the 2nd cent.

, quotes the narrative in which the risen Christ summons His disciples to satisfy themselves that He is ‘not a bodiless spirit’ (No. 19). Eusebius, who knew our Gospel, declares that he does not know from what source Ignatius de- rived this ; and to conclude, as Harnack does, that Ignatius knew ‘sec. Hebr.,’ seems scarcely neces- sary. 6. The history of our Gospel after Jerome trans- lated it is soon told.

In a Stichometry, or list of the books of Scripture with the number of lines in each, appended to a copy of the chronography of Nicephorus, Patriarch of Constantinople 806-813, the Gospel according to the Hebrews is named among the Antilegomena of the NT. It is in company here with the Apocalypse of John, the Apocalypse of Peter, and the Epistle of Barnabas.

Good reasons have been given for thinking that the copy containing this list originated, not at Constantinople but at Jerusalem, and that the list was drawn up in Palestine.

It may have been a century or two old when the MS was written ; and thus we are given to know that though the Canon of the Church prevailed in Jerusalem as well as elsewhere, yet the work which had once been the only Gospel of the Christians of the East was still held in affection there, and read, if not in Church, yet privately. Its appearance on this list shows that it was in Greek when the list was made. And we may suppose that it was Jerome’s transla- tion which was thus half canonized.

The Sticho- need informs us how large a book our Gospel was, and how it compares in this respect with those of the Canon. ‘Sec. Hebr.’ had 2200 lines; it was longer than Mark, which had 2000, but shorter than Matthew, which had 2500. The last fact of the external history of our Gospel is derived from a@ minuscule codex of the First and Second canonical Gospels, which dates from the 9th or 10th cent., oa was brought by Tischendorf from the East to St. Petersburg.

Thie Gospel according to Matthew is said in it to have been taken from old copies at Jerusalem. There are four marginal notes on Matthew, giving readings from 7d "Iovdacxéy; and one of these agrees with matter quoted by Jerome from the Gospel according to the Hebrews. We thus learn that that work was extant in Greek, and was a matter of interest in the East up to the time when this copy was made, and pfobably some time after.

It is open to us to believe, with Zahn, that here also we are on the track of Jerome’s Greek translation. From this point the Gospel according to the He- brews is lost, and, till the book itself turns up in some corner in the East, we are left for our know- ledge of it to the shadowy history which has been traced, and to what may be learned from the scanty fragments which are preserved. ii. EXTANT FRAGMENTS. —The fragments are 24 in number.

They are collected in a very convenient form in Preuschen’s Antilegomena (Giessen, 1901), the passages in which they occur being also given; and also in Nestle’s Now Testa- menti Greci Supplementum (Leipzig, 1896) ; also in Nicholson, Zahn, and Handmann.

They are vari- ous in their nature—some being linguistic, stating a different word, phrase, or name which stood in our Gospel ; while some give a piece of narrative of a different tenor from that in the canonical Gospels, or additional to what they supply. A few give isolated utterances of the Lord not found in our New Testament.

The fragments show ‘hat the Gospel contained the baptism of Jesus by John, a piece which may be connected with either the Transfiguration or the Temptation, the Lord’s Prayer, the story of the man with the withered hand, the confession of Peter, the picce HEBREWS, GOSPEL 341 about forgiving seven times, the interview with the rich young man, the triumphal entry, the impeach- ment of the Pharisees, the parable of the Talents, Peter’s denial, Barabbas, a catastrophe in the temple at the crucifixion, two appearances of the risen Lord ; to which is to be added the story of the woman accused of many sins.

That the nar- rative proceeded after the same scheme as our Matthew cannot be proved or even shown to be probable; some narratives are fuller than in that Gospel, and some additional to it; yet the work was considerably shorter than Matthew. A Gospel for the use of Hebrews would probably contain a genealogy, though on this point Epiphanius confesses ignorance; it might also have a narra- tive of the Infancy, though the evidence on this point is not conclusive.

The linguistie variations have been thought by many scholars to show that ‘sec. Hebr.’ was a translation from Greek; but recent writers take a different view, and hold our Gospel to give valu- able corrections of the Greek Gospels of the Church, and to show an earlier tradition. Thus its read- ing Bethlehem Juda is better than Bethlehem of Judea in Matthew, pointing to the district, not the country ; and when Barabbas is explained to mean ‘the son of their Master’ (Jerome; No.

16), we remember Origen’s statement, that the name of this person was Jesus, and see that our Gospel may have been right in taking Barabbas, not as a name but as a title. Origen also says that the word is to be translated ‘son of the teacher.’ In the Lord’s Prayer the fifth petition ran, ‘Give us this day to-morrow’s bread’ (No. 7). Here it has been held that the Aramaic mahar was a trans- lation of émotcvos, taken as derived from 7 émodca, ‘the coming day.

’ But the converse is possible ; émiovcwos may be a translation of aehar (see Lightfoot, Fresh Revision, App. I. 195): in this prayer as originally given only very simple terms would be employed, which can scarcely be said of émvovacos if derived from ovcla, and denoting ‘ neces- sary,’ or (as Jerome) ‘ supersubstantial.

’ To-day’s work is done among simple people for the bread of to-morrow, and the prayer in this form might accompany the work without implying the anxiety forbidden in Mt 67), The narrative pieces are of extreme interest. No. 3: ‘ Behold, the Lord’s mother and brothers said to him, John the Baptist is baptizing for remission of sins; let us go and be baptized by him.

But he said to them, What sin have I done that I should go and be baptized by him; unless perhaps what I have now said is ignorance?’ Here the title ‘Lord’ applied to Christ, and that of ‘ the Baptist,’ belong to a time when the tradition was already formed; but the revelation of Christ’s family circumstances at an early time, and the words He utters, appear such as could not have been invented.

The absence of any consciousness of sin, and at the same time the attitude of humility, agree with all we know of His early life; but, as we see from Mk 108 with its parallels, the tradition tended to discard Hisself-depreciation. Mt 3% shows that reflexion early took place on the meaning of Jesus’ baptism by John. No. 4.

The Baptism: ‘J¢ came to pass when the Lord had ascended out of the water, the aaa Mas tain of the Holy Spirit came down and rested upon him, and said to him, My son, in all the prophets I was looking for thee, that thou shouldest come, and that I should rest in thee. For thou art my rest ; thou art my firstborn son, who reignest to eternity.

’ Here more distinctly than in any of the canonical Gospels the baptism is the act by which Jesus is made acquainted with His destiny to bring about the highest revelation of God, The dove is not mentioned; the Holy Spirit itself descends on 342 HEBREWS, GOSPEL HEBREWS, GOSPEL Him. The heavenly voice is that not of the Father but of the Spirit, afterwards spoken of as feminine, and is addressed as in Mark, not to the bystanders or to John but to Jesus Himself.

The Spirit is to dwell with Him, not as in the prophets occasionally and provisionally, but in full and ultimate manner ; He is firstborn of the Spirit, and is to have an endless reign. This passage also can scarcely be thought to be in- vented. It has the appearance, like the next extract, of a communication made by Jesus Him- self to His intimate friends, and setting forth His experience, as does also that of the Temptation, in a symbolic narrative. No. 5.

The Flight to Mount Tabor: ‘ The Holy Spirit, my mother, took me just now by one of my hairs, and carried me away to the great Mount Tabor.’ This extract occurs 5 times in Origen and Jerome; it must have made a great impression.

Jesus appears to be telling of an experience He has just had ; it seems scarcely possible to connect it with either the Temptation or the Transfigura- tion, though early tradition held Tabor to be the scene of the latter : Jesus has been carried off, not as in the former by the devil, or as in the latter with any companions. The Holy Spirit, the Heb. word for which (m1) is usually feminine, has taken Him (cf. Ezk 8%, Bel and the Dragon v.**) for some communication which He alone is to hear. No.

7. The man with the withered hand (Mt 129-'8) is in this Gospel said to be a builder, and to entreat help in such words as these: ‘J was a builder, seeking my living with my hands ; I pray thee, Jesus, restore to me my health, that I may not basely beg my bread.’ The R.C. commentator Stapula states, when dealing with this story in Matthew, that the man with the withered hand made a strong appeal to Jesus’ compassion ; accepting this as a fact from Jerome citing this Gospel.

The story reads awkwardly without this feature; in its absence the energy of Jesus appears to be called forth by His indignation against the Pharisees, or by the desire to establish the view that cures may be wrought on the Sabbath : neither alternative is very satisfactory. The simple freedom which is apparent in these narratives meets us also in the Christophanies recorded in the Gospel. In one of them (No.

18) we are told how ‘the Lord after handing over the linen cloth to the servant of the high priest (the guard at the tomb is accordingly not Roman but Jewish), went to James and appeared to him (cf. 1 Co 15’) ; for James had sworn that he would eat no bread from the hour at which the Lord had drunk the cup (of death), till he should see him rising again from those who are asleep... Bring, the Lord says, a table and bread.’ ...

And then it goes on: ‘ He took bread, and blessed, and broke it, and gave it to James the Just, and said to him: My brother, eat thy bread, for the Son of Man is risen from those who are asleep.’ Here, as in the former pieces, the embellishing touches of a later time are unmistakable, while the tradition itself has a look of originality, and is independent of our NT. The narratives from the ministry also present surprising variations from those of our NT, as when we hear the Lord (No.

11) addressing the second rich man with the exhortation to part with his possessions, and showing him that he has not kept the Law, since there are people dying of hunger about his gates and no supplies are sent them out of his well-furnished house. The parable of the Talents (No.

14) had three types of service, not only two as in our NT, and the hard sentence was directed not to him who hid his lord’s talent in the earth, but to the servant who had devoured his lord’s substance with harlots and flute-players. It was not the veil of the temple that was rent at the Crucifixion, but the lintel (No. 17), a stone of immense size, that was broken in two; in which, however we may compare the two physical facts, we see at least a different symbolism.

We find, lastly, a number of sayings of the Lord not recorded in the canonical Gospels, but which are accepted by scholars as not unfit to stand with those formerly known tous. It is reckoned amon the greatest crimes ‘ that one should have saddene the spirit of his brother’ (No. 20). ‘ Never be glad but when you have looked upon your brother im charity’ (No. 21).

The following is more difficult : ‘T will choose for myself the well- es 3 the well- pleasing are those whom my Father in heaven gave me’ (No. 22; from a work of Eusebius in Syriac; the translation is disputed; cf. below, p. 346%). Could this come from the same mouth which said, ‘I came not to call the righteous, but sinners’? It speaks at least of a more Jewish colouring in this tradition.

Yet the same Gospel contained the story of the woman accused to the Lord of ey sins, which, whether parallel to Jn 8!™ or to L 735-5), or a different story, must have had a lesson of compassion for human infirmity. ili, THEORIES OF ORIGIN AND CHARACTER.— From these extracts, reminding him now of one of the Gospels of the NT and now of another, and in some cases appearing to add to what these Gospels give, the reader will readily see what questions are here suggested to scholarship. That ‘sec.

Hebr.’ was a translation from Greek into Aramaic, drawing its information from the can- onical Gospels, mostly, no doubt, from Matthew, but also from Luke, has now ceased to be believed. If, however, Matthew wrote a Gospel-work in Hebrew, as Papias declares and -as early Christen- dom believed, our Gospel may be related to that Apostolic work. This is held by Hilgenfeld, Nicholson, and Zahn, in different ways.

Hilgen- feld, as the principal opponent of the now pre- vailing view of the priority of Mark to Matthew, is naturally led to claim for ‘sec. Hebr.,’ which agreed on the whole with Matthew, but was more Jewish and less universalistic, a very early and independent position. He considers ‘sec. Hebr.’ to be the work of Matthew of which Papias speaks, and to be the earliest Gospel, from which the study of the Gospels must set out as its point of Archimedes.

Nicholson, in a book full of learn- ing and of interest, concludes that ‘ Matthew,’ not necessarily the Apostle, wrote both ‘see. Hebr.’ and canonical Matthew, the latter of which may have been translated from Aramaic, and was probably first produced, This would be another instance in the NT of an author who wrote two versions of his book, both of which got into circulation. Zahn considers that Matthew wrote, as Papias says, in Hebrew, and that ‘sec, Hebr.

’ followed him, but was written in a broader and more popular style (as some of the fragments show), which caused the original Matthew to dis- appear before it. It follows that on points of language the non-canonical Gospel, being nearer Matthew’s original than the canonical, is more correct, but that its tradition is derived from Matthew, and is to be regarded as secondary.

The present state of opinion as to the origin of the Synoptic Gospels is opposed to the views of these scholars, and none of them has found fol- lowers on this subject.

If, as is now generally believed, the sources of Matthew, Mark, and Luke alike were Greek; and if Matthew, as appears to many to be capable of demonstration, composed his Gospel with Mark before him, and another work, also Greek, before him from which Luke also drew, then any Aramaic work Matthew used AGRAPHA must have been subsidiary to his main sources. That canonical Matthew was originally composed in Greek, not translated, is not now questioned.

The position, accordingly, is that we know the Gospel tradition to have been put into Greek by A.D. 70, when attempts were made to construct out of it continuous Gospels for the use of Christians. These underwent various modifications, the textual critics assure us, after they were written, and tended to become always more dignified, more intelligible to men of lands, and to part with any features they might have at first of too great naiveté and simplicity.

But the tradition, though translated into Greek, continued to exist in its original Aramaic; and it is no matter of wonder if it was seen in course of time to be different in some respects from that of the Church, if it re- mained more Jewish, more particular, and in many instances more realistic and quaint. Zahn ex- plains these features of ‘sec. Hebr.

’ as due to the exuberance of a popular preacher, and therefore quite secondary; but they may also be explained as signs of an earlier stage of the tradition which, while the Church outgrew it, survived among ‘ the Hebrews.’ The date of the work Jerome translated cannot be fixed with any precision. Papias may not have known it, as Hilgenfeld thinks, nor Ignatius, as Harnack. Its anonymity, its primitive character, and the authority it afterwards enjoyed, point to a very early origin.

It may have come into existence about the same time as the Synoptic Gospels, and in obedience to some at least of the same motives as led to their appearance.* LiTzRATURE.—In addition to the works mentioned in the body of the above article, which are the most recent and important, the student may consult, for the history of the subject, Lessing’s Theol. Nachlass, p.

45; the NT Introductions of Eichhorn, Hug, de Wette, Reuss, and Hilgenfeld; Weizsacker’s Unter- Relongen tiber die evangelische Geschichte; Baur’s and Holtz- mann’s works on the Gospels; Lipsius’ art. ‘ Apocryphal Gospels’ in Smith’s Dict. of Christian Biography. The subject is discussed by Strauss and Keim in their works on the Life of Christ, while the most recent publication of this kind, Oscar Holtzmann’s Leben Jesu (1901), treats ‘sec. Hebr.

’ as a co- ordinate source with the Synoptic Gospels and weaves its statements into the narrative. ALLAN MENZIES.