Origen (see p. 479) calls it t6 iTnyeypa/j.jj.ii>ov tCjv dddeKa eiayyiXiov, instead of using Kara, as he does in describing the other Gospels on his list, and as the Latin translator renders it ( ' iuxta * duodecim apostolos '). The probability is that a saying like (3) gave rise to this title ; it would suggest, and perhaps was intended by the writer to suggest, that the Gospel was composed by Matthew in the name of the twelve apostles, just like the Gospel of Peter or (according to one legend) the Fourth Gospel. It is true that a similar inference may be not unreason- ably drawn, identifying this Gospel with HG, which also claimed to be a Gospel of ^^lattliew ; but the inference would not be so conclusive, for in any case the Gospel of the Ebionites, like the other Jewish-ChristianGospels, was based on the canonical jNIatthew. Its original title may have been ' the Gospel of the Twelve by Matthew ' or ' the Gospel of the Twelve,' for 'the Gospel of the Ebionites' is naturally no more than a description of it which emanated from outside circles. It belonged to the Synoptic type ; nowhere can it be proved to have derived from the Johannine Gospel.
(c) The Gospel of the Egyptians.— The ' Gospel of the Egj-ptians ' means a Gospel current among the Egyptians, not a Gospel composed bj' them. The title {rb Kar Alyvwriovs evayyiXiov) first occurs in Clementof Alexandria, who observes that it was used by people (the Encratites) ol iravra fidWov rj rw /card TTji' dXrjdeiav evayyeXiKqi <TTOixf}<^o-vTes Kavovc {Strom, iii. 9. 66). By the time that Origen WTote, it had been degraded to the rank of a heretical writing, but Clement's language implies an earlier attitude M-hich was more favourable. Thus in Strom, iii. 13. 92 he remarks, h. propos of one quotation, ' We possess this saying (IxoM^*' Ti> p-nrdv) not in the four Gospels which have been handed down to lis, but in the Gospel according to the Egyptians.'
The extant quotations are for the most part taken from dialogues between Jesus and Salome, (a) ' When Salome asked " How long shall death prevail?" . . . the Lord said, "So long as you women bear"' (Clem. Strom, iii. 6. 45). (6) 'Salome says, " How long shall men die?" . • . The Lord answers, " So long as women bear" ' (Strom, iii. 9. 64 ; similarly in Excerpta Theod. 67). (c) '"Then," said she [i.e. Salome], "I would have done well in not bearing?" as if child-bearing were not allowed. The Lord replies, " Eat every herb, but do not eat the bitter t one " ' {Strom, iii. 9. 66). (d) A fourth quotation is less certain. ' Those who oppose what God has created, in their specious (or fine-sounding, riK^^fiov) continence adduce the words spoken to Salome which we have mentioned above. The\' occur, I think (<#>e'peT<u 6e, oT^nu), in the Gospel according to the EgjTDtians ; for they say, "The Sa%-iour himself said, 1 came to destroy the xcorks of the female " ' (Strom, iii. 9. 63). The hesita- tion is curious, but it hardly justifies us in arguing that the quota- tion must have come from a work like the Exegetica of Ca,siianua rather than from the Egyptian Gospel. In any case, the leading idea of (c) and (d) is that the distinctions "of sex are to be obliterated in the future kingdom, and that marriage as the bitter herb of bodily passion is therefore to be avoided. This is still more vi\'idly put in (e), a fifth quotation. In reply to another question put by Salome upon the time when the kingdom was to be revealed, 'The Lord said, "When you tread under foot the garment of shame, when I the two become one, the male with the female, neither male nor female " ' (Strom, iii. 13. 92). Here the 'garment of shame' is the body, which Cassianus regarded as the garments of skin in Gn 321. The perfect state means the abolition of all sexual connexions and the phvsical organism which forms their opportunity, according to the Pythagorean theosophy or perhaps merely Philonic influence.
* By 'iuxta ' he meant to render Kara, for he goes on to trans- late KOLTo. MafliW by 'iuxta ilathian.'
t G. Wobbermin's theory (Religionsgeschiehtliche Studien, 1S96, pp. 96-103) that Orphism has influenced this Gospel in- volves, among other improbabilities, the literal meaning of 'herb' here, as an indication of vegetarian tendencies.
X This kind of rhetoric became common in some circles; cf., e.g., the Acta Phib'ppi, 140 (p. 9ii, ed.Tischendorf)and the J. ctaPefri, 38 (C. Schmidt, TU xxiv. [1903]). But the curious fantasy of the Logion quoted in these Acta does not necessarily imply a use of the Egyptian Gospel.
The dialogue form is common in contemporary Rabbinic tradition, and Salome for some reason was one of the Synoptic figures to whom the later Gnostics (cf. her dialogues with Jesus in Pistil Sophia, 102, 104, 114, 115, 343,381) and the Carpocra- tians (Orig. Cels. v. 62) assigned an important r61e.
The allusions of Hippolytus and Epiphanius suggest that the Gospel must have contained pas- sages capable of a j^antheistic development, but it is naturally impossible to determine, with the scanty data at our disposal, how far these encratitic and modalistic theories of the later Naassenes and Sabellians were due to the text of the Gospel itself and how far to later interpretations.