3. Having thus stated the arguments in favor of a Hebrew and Greek original respectively, it remains for us to incjuire whetlier there is any way of adjusting the
claims of the two. Were there no explanation of this inconsistency between the external assertions and the internal facts, it would be hard to doubt the concurrent testimony of so many old writers, whose belief in it is shown by the tenacity with which they held it in spite of their own experience.
(1.) But it is certain that a Gospel, not the same as our canonical Matthew, sometimes usurped the apostle's name ; and some of the witnesses we have quoted ap- pear to have referred to this in one or other of its vari- ous forms or names. The Christians in Palestine still held that the Mosaic ritual was binding on them, even after the destruction of .Jerusalem. At the close of the first century one party existed who held that the Mosaic law was only binding on Jewish converts ; this was the Nazarenes. Another, the Ebionites, held that it was of universal obligation on Christians, and rejected Paul's Epistles as teaching the opposite doctrine. These two sects, who differed also in the most important tenets as to our Lord's person, possessed each a modification of the same Gospel, which no doubt each altered more and more, as their tenets diverged, and which bore various names — the Gospel of the twelve Apostles, the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel of Peter, or the Gospel according to Matthew. Enough is known to decide that the Gospel according to the Hebrews was not identical with our Gospel of Matthew ; but it had many points of resemblance to the synoptical Gospels, and especially to Matthew. What was its origin it is impossible to say: it may have been a description of the oral teaching of the apostles, corrupted by degrees ; it may have come in its early and pure form from the hand of Matthew, or it may have been a version of the Greek Gospel of Matthe;v, as the evangelist who wrote espe- cially for Hebrews. Now this Gospel, " the Proteus of criticism" (Thiersch), did exist; is it impossible that when the Hebrew Matthew is spoken of, this question- al)le document, the Gospel of the Hebrews, was really roferjed to? Observe that all accounts of it are at sec- ond hand (Avith a notable exception) ; no one quotes it ; in cases of doubt about the text, Origen even does not appeal from the Greek to the Hebrew. All that is cer- tain is, that Nazarenes or Ebionites, or both, boasted that they possessed the original Gospel of Matthew. .Jerome is the exception, and him we can convict of the very mistake of confounding the two, and almost on his own confession. "At first he thought," says an anony- mous writer {Edinburgh Review, 1851, July, p. 39), " that it was tlie authentic IMatthew, and translated it into both Greek and Latin from a copy which he obtained at Beroea, in Syria. This appears from his De Vir. Ill, written in the year 392. Six years later, in his Com- mentary on Matthew, he spoke more doubtfully about it — 'Quod vocatur a plerisque Matthaei authcnticum.' Later still, in his book on the Pelagian heresy, written in the year 415, he modifies his account still further, de- scribing the work as the 'Evangehum juxta Hebrajos, quod Cihaldaico quidem Syroque sermone, sed Hehraicis Uteris conscriptum est, quo utuntur usque hodie Naza- reni secundum Apostolos, sive ut plenque cmtinnant juxta Matthaeum, quod et in Cffisariensi habctur Bibli- otheca.' " There have pronounced for a Greek original — Erasmus, Calvin, Leclerc, Fabricius, Lightfoot, Wet- stein, Paulus, Lardncr, Hey, Hales, Hug, Schott, De Wette, Moses Stuart, Fritzsche, Credner, Thiersch, and many others. Great names are ranged also on the other side, as Simon, JMIII, Michaelis, Marsh, Eichhorn, Storr, Olshausen, and others. IMay not the truth be that Pa- pias, knowing of more than one Aramaic Gospel in use among the Judaic sects, may have assumed the exist- ence of a Hebrew original from which these were sup- posed to be taken, and knowing also the genuine Greek Gospel, may have looked on all these, in the loose, un- critical way which earned for him Eusebius's descrip- tion, as the various " interpretations" to which he al- ludes? It is by no means improbable that after several inaccurate and imperfect translations of the Aramaean
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original came into circulation, Matthew himself was prompted by this circumstance to publish a Greek trans- lation, or to have his Gospel translated under his own supervision. It is very likel}^ that this Greek translation did not soon come into general circulation, so that it is even possible that Papias maj^ have remained ignorant of its existence. See Stuart, in the Ame?: Bib. Repos. 1838, p. 130-179, 315-356.