THE GOSPEL ACCORDING TO THE HEBREWS.* Ix early times, long
before the Canon of the New Testament had been fixed, perhaps before any writings outside the old Testament were accounted canonical, each Christian community had, no doubt, its own tradition, oral or written, of the Gospel story, and of the teaching of the Apostles. Many of these commu- nities had scanty means of interchanging information, and so the- manuscript left by the teacher who had converted them, or the notes of his preaching taken at the time, or written afterwards from memory, would long continue their sole authority for the- events and doctrines on which their faith was founded. In other cases, difference of opinion rather than geographical isolation shut off one set of Christians from the means of knowledge possessed by others ; or it might be that language was the instrument of separation, which kept those who spoke- it to a Gospel of their own. So it was with the Jewish- Christian Church, which, as Dean Mansel in his Gnostic. Heresies tells us, "continued to exist in Pella and the region beyond Jordan," after the destruction of Jerusalem. These the true sons of the Church of James held by Jewish ceremonies, usages, and language ; or it may be more correct to call them Christianised descendants of that curious sect of the Jews, the Essenes. At any rate, they seem to have at first shared in the aversion to Paul and Pauline Christianity,. until, when that in its turn became dominant, their opposition grew weaker, and at last the remnant of one of their two branches was known as the Sect of the Nazarenes, the mildest and least offensive of heretics, if heretics they were to be called.
This peculiar people, whose disposition was, in the opinion of Neander, genuinely Evangelic, had a Gospel of their own, the "Gospel according to the Hebrews," written in the Aramaic language, then current in Palestine. There were many works professing Apostolic origin preserved in various places, and the defective or heretical nature of some among them afterwards gave the Bishops much trouble. Of the greater number of these, in all probability, no mention even has descended to us.. But among those which have been recorded, none is spoken of with so much respect, none, as Hilgenfeld thinks, is of such antiquity, as the Gospel according to the Hebrews. Its posses- sors believed it to be the original Gospel of St. Matthew, a claim which was admitted by some of the Fathers ; and it seems as though nothing but the language in which it was written at first prevented its use in other churches. By the time of Eusebius, it had begun to be spoken against by some; Origen quoted it without hesitation, and Jerome held it in such esteem that he translated it both into Greek and Latin.
• The Gospel according to the Hebrew,. By N. B. Nicholson. London : C. Ken Paul and Co. 1879.
This necessarily brief and imperfect sketch will serve to show in some degree the importance of the lost Gospel, which is the subject of the volume under review. Mr. Nicholson has in pre- paration a commentary on the Gospel of St. Matthew, as we learn from his preface. In the course of his study, he found it necessary to enter upon the question of the origin of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and having too much to say for an appendix, he has brought out this very valuable addition to English theological literature. In the misting fragments of the Nazarene Gospel, there are passages of much beauty and interest, some of which present remarkable variations from the -canonical narrative. The- question therefore arises whether these can in any degree compete with the received Gospel; -whether, by any possibility, fragments of a yet earlier account are here to be found. We must observe, however, that all por- tions of the Gospel according to the Hebrews do not come un- doubtedly from one source. Jerome, and perhaps some other authorities, quoted from the Gospel which was preserved by the Nazarenes. But from the original Jewish-Christian stock a more heretical sect had branched off, the adherents of which were called Ebionites. These heretics, as they at least were -certainly considered, were "distinguished from the more toler- -antly disposed Nazarenes," as Baur says in his Church History, by hatred of the Apostle Paul and his writings, and apparently by denial of the supernatural birth of Christ. Their version of the Gospel in question is said to have wanted the first two • chapters, which, according to Epiphanius, they had excised, for doctrinal reasons. It is further inferred by Hilgeufeld and Canon Westcott that the Ebionite Gospel was in Greek, as -the criticisms of Epiphanius seem to imply. Unfortunately, Epiphanius is a very untrustworthy author. Could we think that he had been at sufficient pains to examine the question in a tolerably careful and impartial spirit, we might be justified in a separate consideration of the Nazarene and Ebionite ver- sions; with Hilgenfeld, who even places the lost "Gospel -according to Peter" between these two. But it is evident that Epiphanius did not take the trouble to compare the Ebionite copies with those preserved by the Nazarenes ; and although the nature of his criticism seems to show that the copy of the Gospel according to the Hebrews which he read was written in Greek, it by no means follows that the Ebionite version had not an Aramaic original, and was not a faithful transcript of the same original as that preserved by the Nazarenes, perhaps with the exception of certain excised or perverted passages. Mr. Nicholson seems, therefore, to have wisely treated all the fragments as portions of one Gospel, -only marking in each case the source whence the passage is derived. The fragments quoted by Epiphanius are open to a twofold suspicion, as it is possible that they may have been perverted by the heretical Ebionites, or that Epiphanius may have misquoted through carelessness or prejudice. With this -caution, however, there seems to be no good reason for thinking that Jerome wrongly spoke of this as "the Gospel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use," or for our refusing to consider all fragments of it that have come down to us as more or less accurate quotations from a common source.
We may assume, then, that the remaining fragments of the Gospel according to the Hebrews are nearly as accurate repre- sentations of the original text, as would probably be the case if they were quotations from a manuscript of a Canonical Book, made at the same time and under similar circumstances. Mr. Nicholson gives as genuine thirty-three fragments of this Gospel, and he has relegated the remainder to an appendix of ." Possible or Probable Fragments," more rigorously than other authorities. These thirty-three passages contain a considerable proportion of matter independent of the canonical narratives, but show a strong affinity to the Gospel of St. Matthew, and in s, less degree to that of St. Luke. This independence prevents us from concluding, with Jerome, that we have before us the remains of the actual Aramaic original of our First Gospel, -especially if we cannot think, with Mr. Baring-Gould (Lost and Hostile Gospels, p. 130), that "the Gospel of St. Matthew and the Gospel of the Hebrews" "did not differ from each other, except in these [preserved] passages." The -character of, these fragments is very far removed from that of the admittedly apocryphal gospels and narratives. In the main, even where they differ most from our Gospels, they are written in the same quiet and natural manner, without any apparent exaggeration, or straining after the mar- vellous. The saying, "And be ye never joyful save when ye have looked upon your brother in charity," may well be genuine ; and such narratives as those of the Baptism, of the answer to the rich man, and of the appearance to James, savour more of early evangelic tradition than of wild, inventions like the Gospel of Thomas or the Protevangelinm. Have we here, then, the relics of a very early and authentic Gospel, which only missed a place in the Canon through the language in which it was written, and the retired nature and ultimate disappearance of the sect which used it ? Can the Gospel according to the Hebrews, though not identical with the first book in our New Testament, have been written by the same author, although at a different time and place, and with consequent variations such as might be paralleled in similar cases ? This is the hypothesis put forward, modestly and with reserve, by our author ; and it is certainly worthy of a much more lengthy exami- nation than can be given to it in this place. Mr. Nichol- son's view has the advantage of agreeing with the strong current of early tradition which assigns this Gospel to St. Matthew ; while the internal evidence, at least as presented by most of the fragments, is not inconsistent with such a supposi- tion. On the other hand, it may be urged that signs of a some- ;what later origin are not wanting. The Preface to the Gospel, which is, however, Ebionite, and more or less suspicious, con- tains a list of the Apostles, in which St. John stands first,—a preference which does not belong to the very earliest times. The strange fragment in which Jesus is made to say, "Just now my mother, the Holy Spirit, took me by one of my hairs, and bore me up on to the great mountain Tabor," is quoted by Jerome from the Nazarene manuscript which he copied at Berma, and is therefore as likely to be genuine as any. Parallels may be cited from Ezekiel and elsewhere, so far as this mode of transportation is concerned. But unless, with Mr. Baring. Gould, we assign the words "my mother" and "by one of my hairs" to Gnostic interpolation—a way out of the difficulty which Mr. Nicholson is too scientific to adopt—we are met by a strong flavour of apocryphal writing. Here, however, we must stop, referring the reader to Mr. Nicholson's work for full arguments on this and other points of interest ; only adding that Codex Besae and some ancient versions occasionally con- firm the narrative of the Gospel according to the Hebrews.
Apart from the hypothesis which he has framed, Mr. Nichol- son's work is by far the most complete which has been pub- lished on the subject, certainly in England, and, we believe we may add, on the Continent. The limits beyond which he has not been able to push his inquiries are stated by himself, and therefore need not be here alluded to, further than to say that all attainable information necessary for forming an opinion on the question seems to be put together in this volume. The fragments are carefully translated, the original, or the nearest remaining approach to the original, being appended in foot- notes ; and full and fair discussion is added of all questions arising out of the text. Mr. Nicholson writes from a neutral stand-point, assuming neither orthodox nor heterodox premises ; or, in other words, taking nothing for granted, attaching him- self to no party, and exposing inaccurate statements, whether by Canon Westcott or by the author of Supernatural Religion, with equal severity.
The book is written with rare freedom from foregone convic- tions; and, as it seems to us, with a genuine desire to get as near as possible to the actual truth, or at least to lay the full materials for arriving at correct conclusions before others. Mr. Nicholson adopts certain peculiarities of spelling which are more usual on the other side of the Atlantic ; and in his desire to be faithful to the original, or to be perfectly fair, occasionally falls into a certain harshness of translation. But these are points of small importance, in a work which is likely to be long accepted as the best on its subject; unless, indeed, as is not impossiblet this book should be superseded by the discovery of the lost Gospel itself, or of a copy of Jerome's translated version Should our author's work be put on the shelf by so fortunate a chance, no one, we are persuaded, would rejoice more heartily than himself.
Previous page
