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., and was brought by Tischendorf from the East to St. Petersburg. The 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 “Iovdatkéy; 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 probably 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 Nove Testa- menti Greect 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 that 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 piece
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 linguistic 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 émovc.os, taken as derived from 7 émtotca, ‘the coming day.’ But the converse is possible ; éruovowos may be a translation of mahar (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 érvovotos 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 6%.
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 nerhaps 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 10'8 with its parallels, the tradition tended to discard His self-depreciation. Mt 3" shows that reflexion early took place on the meaning of Jesus’ baptism by John.