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 only 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 ee narrative and teaching. Of Origen, Jerome tells us that he frequently used this Gospel; and there are three passages in the works of the great commentator in which he is seen to do 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 191), ‘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, and 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. il. 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. Irenwus, 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 does not say that Papias derived it from that source. Finally, it is a very
HEBREWS, GOSPEL
curious circumstance that Ignatius, 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 Tgnatius knew ‘sec. Hebr.,’ seems scarcely neces- sary.
6. The history of our Gospel after Jerome trans- lated it is soon told. Ina 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- metry 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.