tinctly above Gospels like those of Peter, Thomas, and Matthias !
The suspicion that Ka9' "E^patovs * was being used loosely to describe more than one Gospel t is con- firmed by two other lines of evidence.
(1) The first of these runs parallel to the refer- ences already quoted, and is derived from the statements of Jerome. It is to Jerome that we owe our knowledge of the existence of NG, but his statements about this Gospel and the Nazarenes who used it require to be carefully sifted, and when they are sifted they witness to a ditt'erence between Hli and NG which Jerome for some reason ignored. At first sight, almost everything would seem to turn upon the interpretation of Jerome's famous allusion in his treatise contra Pelagianos, iii. 2 : ' In the Gospel according to the Hebrews, written in the Chaldaic and Syriac tongue [i. e. Aramaic, or Western Syriac]i but in Hebrew letters, which the Nazarenes use to this day, (the Gospel) according to the apostles {secundum apostolos) or, as most suppose, according to Matthew, (the Gospel) which is in the library at Cajsarea, the story runs, '* Behold the mother of the Lord and his brothers said to him, John the Baptist is baptizing for the remission of sins ; let us go and be baptized by him. But he said to them. What sins have I committed, that I should go and be baptized by him ? Unless perhaps what I have just said is (a sin of) ignorance." And in the same volume, " If your brother has sinned in word, he says, and made amends to you, receive him seven times in one day. Simon his disciple said to him. Seven times in one day ? The Lord answered and said to him. Yes and up to seventy times seven, I tell thee. For even in the prophets, after they had been anointed with the Holy Spirit, matter of sin was found." ' The opening words § seem to suggest that Jerome identified HG and TG ( = the Gospel of the Ebionites), but he is simply reproducing at second-hand the conjecture about HG and the Gospel of the Ebionites, neither of which he seems to have known ; as the only Semitic Gospel he knew was NG, he naturally attributes to it the floating titles and opinions which had gathered round the others.
This is corroborated by the fact that he sometimes uses ' Nazartei ' loosely for heretical Jewish Chris- tians ( practically = the 'Ebionites' of earlier writers), and sometimes speaks of them in special connexion with thelocal Church at Syrian Beroea. Now, what- ever Gospel or Gospels the former used, and whoever they were, it is plain that the latter class of Jerome's ' Nazartei' could not have been the Ebionite Chris- tians of Irenaeus, Origen, and Eusebius, for, accord- ing to their interpretation of Is 8-*-9\ which Jeromequotes, theyhonouredSt.Paul and his Gospel (' per evangelium Pauli ... in terminos gentium et viam universi maris Christi evangelium splen- duit').|| They were Jewish Christians of non-
* The size of the HG known to Kicephorus in the 6th cent, amounted to 2,200 stichoi, i.e. larger than Mark and smaller than Matthew — though such comparative calculations depend on the size of the writing being the same, which is not to be assumed invariably.
t This was felt long ago by Gieseler (Uistorisch-kritisch Ver- S^ick liber Entstehung dcr schrij'tl. Evaiigelien, 1818, p. 8 f.), and elaborated by Credner {Beitriige, 1832, p. 399 f.), who almost dis- tinguished EG, HG, and NG under the common title of KaO' 'EjSpat'ous. How easy it was for early Christians to fall into confusion of this kind may be seen from the fact that in some quarters Tatian's Diatessaron was actually called the Gospel 'according to the Hebrews' (Epiph. xlvi. 1).
t The meaning of Jerome's words may be seen by comparing his remarks in his Pre/ace to 5am. and Eiiigs( = frolog.Galeatus): 'Syrorum quoque el'Chaldseorum lingua testatur, quae Hebrajaj magna ex parte confinis est.'
§ Handniann (p. Ill f.) thinks that Jerome wrote 'secundum a]x«lolos' to prevent this Gospel from being confused with the heretical Gospel of the Twelve ('evangelium secundum xu. apostolos').
II Their catholic attitude to the canonical Scriptures, including not onlv Matthew but Acts, John, and even St. Paul's Epistles, is excellently deduced by Schmidtke (p. 107 f.) from Jerome a
GOSPELS (UXCANONICAL)
GOSPELS (UNCAXOXICAL) 491
heretical opinions, as is implied in Jerome's account in de Viris illu'itribus, 3: ' Matthew who is also Levi, the apostle who had been a tax-gatherer, first in Judrea composed the Gospel of Christ in Hebrew letters and words for the benefit of those belonging to the circumcision who had believed. It is not quite certain who translated it afterwards into Greek. Further, the Hebrew (original) itself is kept to this day in the library at Ceesarea which Pamphilus the martyr gathered most diligently. I was also given permission to copy it, by the Nazarsei who use this volume in Bercea, a town of Syria.'
(2) The second line of proof which suggests that HG and NG were not identical is as follows. In his Epistle to the Church at Smyrna (iii. 1-2) Ignatius ■writes : ' I know and believe He was in the flesh even after the resurrection. And when He came to those with Peter, He said to them, " Take, handle Me and see that I am not a bodiless phantom."' This may be a loose paraphrase of the Synoptic saying in Lk 24^^, but the early Church preferred to regard it as a quotation from some uncanonical Gospel. Unfortunately, the three writers who mention it do not agree upon its origin. Origen (according to the Latin version of the preface to his de Principns) said it came from a little book called the Teaching of Peter, which had no claim to be authentic ('ille liber inter libros eeclesiasticos non habetur . . . neque Petri est scripturanequealterius cuiusquam qui spiritu dei fuerit inspiratus'). This sounds so definite that we are surprised to learn that Eusebius [HE iii. 36. 11) does not know what source Ignatius used. Jerome, however, twice asserts that it was the Gospel which he had trans- lated. As both Origen and Eusebius knew HG, Jerome's statement must be an error, if he is refer- ring to HG. But it is very difficult to suppose that he could have made such a mistake about a Gospel which he had translated, and the inference must be either that his HG was a difierent edition from that known to Origen and Eusebius, or more pro- bably that it was not HG but NG. This latter hypothesis explains why Eusebius could not place the quotation, for Eusebius knew HG but not NG. There is no reason why such a quotation should not have occurred both in NG and in the pseudo-Petrine document mentioned by Origen. It is of course possible that one of them borrowed from the other ; perhaps Ignatius used the Petrine document (Zahn), while NG used Ignatius or that document (Schmidtke). But the last-named hypothesis im-