The Gospel according to the Hebrews.

        The Gospel according to the Hebrews is believed to have been so called because of its use by the Jewish Christians of Egypt, but the name may really be no more than an inference from the very Jewish character of some of its contents. Jerome, writing about the end of the fourth century, says that he knew it only m Aramaic and himself translated it into Greek and Latin, but it was certainly current in Greek in the second century and was probably written in that language. We know it only from the quotations made from it by early Christian writers and from a few manuscript fragments which may, with some probability, be assigned to it.

        Jerome declared that he found the book in Palestine, in use among the Nazarene Christians in Beroea in Syria, and that it was also preserved in the library of Pamphilus in Caesarea. The book was unfortunately confused with the supposed original Aramaic form of the Gospel of Matthew, and Jerome does not entirely escape this error. The fact is, the Gospel of the Hebrews borrowed so much from the Gospel of Matthew that they naturally had much in common, but such portions as appear in Hebrews are so manifestly elaborated and built up that there can be no doubt that it drew from Matthew, not Matthew from it. The influence of Luke may also be traced in the Gospel of the Hebrews; indeed, it is altogether probable that its writer knew the Fourfold Gospel. That he should have independently struck upon the gospel type of literature and created a written gospel without ever having seen one is in itself extremely improbable, and, when his manifest indebtedness to Matthew and Luke is observed, it becomes impossible.

        The Gospel of the Hebrews, like that of the Egyptians, may have been written in the period between the publication of the Fourfold Gospel and its arrival at the status of scripture, that is, the time when it came to be read in church side by side with the Jewish scriptures, about the middle of the second century. Hebrews was about seven-eighths the length of the Gospel ofr~ Matthew, containing 2,200 stichoi, or lines of Homeric length against 2,500 in Matthew. It told of the baptism, the temptation the Lord's Prayer, the man with the withered hand, the rich in quirer, the parable of the talents, and the resurrection. In every, instance its accounts show literary development comparable with those in the Four Gospels. Jesus is reluctant to go to John's baptism; he says he has no consciousness of sin. This carries the account in Matthew a long step further. In Matthew, John sug ; Bests his freedom from sin; in Hebrews, Jesus claims it himself.: Mark's violent representation of the Spirit “flinging” or throwing, Jesus into the wilderness is heightened here: Origen quotes Hebrews as saying, “My mother the Holy Spirit took me by one of my hairs and carried me up to the great mountain Tabor”-, evidently for the temptation. This strange saying is usually explained by the fact that, in Hebrew, “Spirit” is feminine; and the: odd picture recalls the speculations of Jewish Christian theology; to which H. J. Schoeps and J. Danielou have drawn attention.' The vivid picture of Jesus being carried by his hair-indicating his utter helplessness in the grip of the Spirit-recalls Ezekiel, seized by a lock of his hair and carried to Jerusalem by the Spirit (Ezek. 8:3), and Habakkuk, lifted up by his hair by the angel of the Lord and carried from Judea to Babylon with the speed of the wind so that he could take food to Daniel in the den of lions (Bel and the Dragon, 36).

        Of the three men entrusted with the talents, in Hebrews the first squanders his upon harlots and flute girls, the second increases his, and the third hides his in the ground. This is evidently an effort to improve upon the simpler story.

        In dealing with the resurrection, according to Jerome, Hebrews relates that Jesus said to Peter and those with him, “Feel of me, and see that I am not a bodiless demon” (On Illustrious Men 16). This curious saying, which recalls Jesus' words to the disciples in Luke 24:39, occurs also in Ignatius, Smyrnaeans 3:2, and, according to Origen (First Principles, prologue 8), in the Teaching (perhaps meaning Preaching) of Peter. The question arises: In which of these works did the saying first appear? It is sometimes assumed that Ignatius was quoting the Gospel of the Hebrews. But there are no other traces of Hebrews in Ignatius' letters, and it is equally probable that both Ignatius and the compiler of Hebrews derived the saying from earlier oral tradition. It is also possible that neither Origen nor Jerome knew where the saying came from.

        No less singular is the other resurrection incident which Jerome found in this gospel (On Illustrious Men 2). It reads: “After the Lord had given the linen cloth to the servant of the high priest, he went to James and appeared to him, for James had sworn that he would not eat bread from the hour when he had drunk the Lord's cup until he should see him risen again from among those that sleep.” A little later it continues: “The Lord said, 'Bring a table and bread,'“ and then “He took bread and blessed it and broke it and gave it to James the just and said to him, 'My brother, eat your bread, for the Son of Man is risen from among those that sleep.' “ This account is clearly intended to establish a direct relationship between Jesus and James of Jerusalem, the hero of Jewish Christians and of some Gnostic groups. Just as Jesus had sworn not to drink of the fruit of the vine until he drank it new in the kingdom, so James takes a similar oath, and the Jewish Christian eucharist is obviously based on Jesus' command to him. According to I Cor. 15: 7, the risen Lord appeared to James.

        Eusebius in his Church History (iii. 39. 17) says that Pa pias, who flourished in Asia Minor early in the second century, “related another story about a woman who was accused of many sins before the Lord, which is contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews:” This may refer to the incident about the adulterous woman that, by the sixth century, had crept into manuscripts of the Gospel of John in the seventh chapter and later found its way into some manuscripts of Luke. On the other hand, the story may have been a variant version of the account preserved in Luke 7:36-50. There is no way of telling.

        Clement of Alexandria, writing at the end of the second century, quotes a curious saying of Jesus which, he says, is found in the Gospel of the Hebrews (Miscellanies ii. 45; v. 96): “He will not cease seeking until he finds; and when he finds he will be amazed; and when he is amazed he will reign; and when he reigns he will rest.” Exactly this saying was found in the papyrus fragments of Jesus' sayings discovered at Oxyrhynchus in 1903; and since these fragments belong to the Gospel of Thomas it is likely that Thomas, at least in part, was based upon Hebrews-or that both made use of common traditions.

        One of the gospel fragments from Oxyrhynchus (Oxyrhynchus Papyri v. 840), a tiny parchment leaf, written in the fourth or fifth century, allies itself by its phraseology (“harlots and flute girls”) with the Gospel of the Hebrews and, notwithstanding its disregard of temple arrangements and practices, may come from that gospel. Its diffuse style and evidently secondary character accord with this identification; and if, as we have argued, Hebrews was composed in Egypt, such ignorance of temple conditions would be natural enough. That it should have survived that long is not strange, for it seems to have contained nothing definitely heretical. The fragment tells of a conversation between Jesus and a chief priest about spiritual as against ceremonial purification.

        The Gospel of the Hebrews, therefore, apparently originated in Egypt, in Greek, perhaps between A.D. 120 and 140. Eusebius implies that it was known to Papias of Hierapolis, about A.D. izo and says that Hegesippus made some use of it in writing his Memoirs, A.D. 175-85 (Church History iv. 22. 7). Clement of Alexandria, soon after 200, quotes it with some respect, but Origen is dubious about it: “If any accept the Gospel according to the Hebrews” (On John 2: 4). In the third century, Christian opinion in Egypt was evidently going against it, as Origen shows, and the Greek form of it seems to have begun to disappear early in the fourth century, for Eusebius lists it among the “disputed books” (Church History iii. 25. 5). Jerome (toward the close of the century, could not find a Greek copy of it but saw an Aramaic text in Palestine, which, he says, he translated into Greek and Latin, probably meaning those parts he wished to copy or use in his works. This Aramaic version, so often regarded as the original, was probably made for the use of the Jewish Christian sectsperhaps the Ebionites, more probably the Nazarenes-who in the third century were using the book, and finally gave their name to it, so that it came to be known as the Gospel of the Nazarenes. Jerome's contemporary, Epiphanius (who died in 403), says in his Heresies that the “Nazaraeans,” or Gnostic Jewish Christians, used a gospel resembling Matthew, which they call “According to the Hebrews” (xxx. 3). Probably in Jerome's days the tiny Oxyrhynchus copy, miserably written, was produced in some obscure quarter, since no Greek text of it came to his notice, only the Aramaic.

        This is virtually the last appearance of Hebrews. What Theodoret (d. 458) says about it m the first half of the fifth century he derived from earlier writers. The Gospel of the Hebrews fades from sight, as the document of an obscure sect. The canon list known as the Stichometry of Nicephorus (ca. A.D. 850) lists it among the disputed books, along with the Revelation of John, the Revelation of Peter and the Letter of Barnabas. A copy of the Gospel ofthe Hebrews, either in its Aramaic version or its Greek original, is one of the desiderata of patristic study.