went to James and appeared to him ; for James had sworn he would not eat bread from the hour when the Lord had drunk the cup until he saw him rise from those who sleep. . . . "Bring a table and bread," the Lord says. 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* has risen from those who sleep " ' (quoted by Jerome). The Eusebius quota- tions are doubtful ; the Theophania citations point to NG, but wliether the story of the accused Avoman corresponds to that of Lk 7^^'- or to that of Jn 7^*- 8'", the probability is that Eusebius means to say that it occurred in HG — a fresh indication that HG was not, like NG, a sort of ' Mattha^an ' composi- tion or version. We do not know if HG had any Birth-story ; t perhaps it resembled Mark or John in this respect. And its contents seem to have been different from the exact Synoptic or Johannine type. Both HG and NG were known to Hegesippus, who brought forward material from both, as Eusebius informs us : iK re rod Ka6' ' E^patous eiiayyeXiov Kal rod ^vpiaKou Kal ZStws ^k rrjs'E^patdos diaX^KTovTivii, rid-Qijiv (iv. 22. 8 ; cf. iii. 25. 5). Unless we regard the Kal between evayyeXlov and tov as an error or interpolation (Nicholson, Handmann), the inference from this passage is that ' the Syriac (Gospel)' was used by this Jewish-Christian writer as well as the Gospel of the Hebrews. J Furthermore, since NG was probably used by Ignatius (cf. p. 491), it may be placed not later than the end of the 1st cent., subsequent to the composition of Matthew's Gospel. It was the special Gospel of the Jewish Christians at Bercea, originally ; it was not marked by anti-Catholic tendencies,§ but owing to its language it never attained the popularity and circulation of HG. The latter was not a translation but a Greek Gospel. It received the name of nad' "E^palovs or 'Hebrew Gospel' from Christians who were not Jews ; the title no more meant that it was written in Hebrew than the Go.spel according to the Egyptians meant a Gospel written in Coptic. It was tlie readers, not the language, that suggested the sobriquet, in this case. Again, unlike NG or even EG, it had not Matthew's Gosjiel as its basis or prototype. Clement and Origen never quote it or refer to it as a work allied to Matthew. So far as we can judge from the few allusions and cita- tions that may be accepted as belonging to it, the contents of HG nmst liave been stamped with characteristics which differentiated it from the canonical Gospels and yet commended it for a time to others than Jewish Christians both in Palestine and Syria (probably its original home) and Egypt. But we do not possess any means of determining its date with certainty ; whether it was contem- porary with NG or written early in the 2nd cent., remains an open question. Later || than NG at any rate, and further from orthodox teaching than either NG or HG, was EG, which seems to imply a
• This is one note of primitive origin or colour ; the title ' Son of Man ' is extremely rare outside the Gospels, and later writers of uncanonical Gospels never copied it.
t Hegesippus did say that Doniitian dreaded the second ap- pearance of Christ as Herod dreaded the first (Eus. BE iii. 20. 2), but it does not follow that he owed to HG this reference to Herod. Oral tradition (as Handmann suggests) might account for it.
: Waitz (ZNTW, 1913, p. 121) thinks it was EG that Hegesippus used, not HG ; but his reasons are unconvincing. There is no ground for supposing that HG was confined to Egypt, and none for assuming that James was a vegetarian (see below), whose principles would be shared by the Jewish Christians — and ex- pressed in their Gospel (i.e. EG).
§ It is still a question how far the text and traditions of NO represent earlier forms than those of the Synoptic narrative.
ji But if EG is used in the pseudo-Ciementine Kijpvy/naTa Tlerpov, and if the latter were written by the middle of the 2nd cent., as Waitz shows good reason for maintaining (cf. ZNTW, 1913, p. 49 f.), our Gospel may be put in the first half or even quarter of the 2nd century. This is corroborated by Irenaeus (cf. above, p. 490), if his Ebionitic Christians used EG.
494 GOSPELS (UXCAI^"ONICAL)
GOSPELS (UNCANONICAL)
knowledge of Luke as well as of Matthew, although it is Matthaean, as HG does not appear to liave been. This early 2nd cent, production is known to us from the quotations made by Epiphanius, which enable the following outline to be drawn :
(b) The Gospel of the Ebionites.— According to Epiphanius [Ecer. xxx. 3), the Ebionites accepted no Gospel except that of Matthew. ' This alone they use, like the adherents of Cerinthus and Merinthus ; they call it " the Gospel according to the Hebrews" — a correct description, since it was Matthew alone in the New Testament who com- posed the narrative and preaching of the Gospel in Hebrew and Hebrew characters.' It is true, he adds — and he repeats this in xxx. 6 — that Hebrew translations of John's Gospel and of Acts were said to be kept in the Genizah at Tiberias, which had proved useful in the conversion of Jews. But Matthew's Gospel was the only one originally written in Hebrew. This idea of a Hebrew Matthew obsesses Epiphanius among other early Christian writers ; it is needless* to spend words upon his explanation of Kad' 'E^palovs as suitable to the original language of Matthew. What is more important for our present purpose is to notice how he proceeds to explain that this Gospel used by the Ebionites was not the canonical Matthew, however, but a mutilated and revised edition (xxx. 13). It began at 3^. (1) ' The beginning of their Gospel is : "It came to pass in the days of Herod king of Judaea that John came baptizing with a baptism of repentance in the Jordan river ; he was said to be of the race of Aaron the priest, the son of Zechariah and Elizabeth. And all went out to him.'" The story of the Birth and the genealogy were therefore absent from this Gospel. ' Cutting off the genealogies in Matthew, they make a beginning, as I have already said, in this way : "It came to pass in the days of Herod, king of Judaea, under the high priest Caiaphas, that a certain man named John came, baptizing with a baptism of repentance in the Jordan river"' (xxx. 14). This suggests that the author had Lk 3' in mind, but in the following extract (2), by making the Pharisees accept John's baptism, he dillers from the Lucan tradition (Lk 3"* T-s-so) : 'John came baptizing, and the Pharisees went out to him and were baptized, and all Jerusalem. And John had raiment of camel's hair and a girdle of skin round his loins ; and his food (says the Gospel) was wild honey, t the taste of which was the taste of manna, like a honej'-cake dipped in oil' (xxx. 13). The account of the Baptism of Jesus, however, did not immediately follow, as in the canonical Matthew, but only after an interval (/texA t6 eliretv voWd). The author first of all brought Jesus on the scene, and placed the call of the twelve apostles prior to the Lord's Baptism, possibly to make it clear that they had not been originally disciples of John, more probably to convey the impression that they had been eye-witnesses from the very outset. (3) ' There was a man named Jesus, and he was about thirty years of age ; he chose us . . . and entering Capharnaum he went into the house of Simon surnamed Peter, and opening his lips said, "As I walked beside the lake of Tiberias:): I chose John