Authentic Matthew

Authentic Matthew

At the time of Eusebius, there was no Bible, as we know it. However, there existed numerous Christian writings that recorded the life of Jesus. This corpus of literature had come into being during the 200 or so years after Christ. Eusebius catalogued these writings in his Church History. It is because of this catalogue that we know of those early works (many of which were lost). His catalogue consisted of three sections:

1) Spurious Works – These were writings that the Church unanimously rejected as heretical. Eusebius lists them as follows:

The Gospel of Thomas

The Gospel of Peter

The Gospel of Matthias

The Acts of Andrew

The Acts of John

2) The Homologumena or Accepted Books – These works were accepted as authentic. Eventually they would be included in what we call the Holy Bible. Eusebius lists them as follows:

The Gospel of Matthew

The Gospel of Mark

The Gospel of Luke

The Acts of the Apostles

The Gospel of John

The First Letter of John

The First Letter of Peter

The Letters of Paul

3) The Controversial Works or Disputed books – At the time of Eusebius there were many works that were controversial. Although accepted by many, some Early Church leaders voiced concerns and rejected them.

The Teachings of the Apostles

The Letter of James

The Letter of Jude

The Second Letter of Peter

The Second and Third Letter of John

The Letter of Barnabas

The Acts of Paul

The Apocalypse of Peter

The Apocalypse of John

The Gospel of the Hebrews (35–65 C.E.)

A. From Kerygma to Gospel

In 37 C.E., a small group of Hebrews in and about Jerusalem started to proclaim that a young man named Jesus of Nazareth was the promised Jewish Messiah. They said that the Romans had executed Jesus, and God had raised him from the dead.

They were a fanatical group, sharing the ‘Gospel,’ breaking bread together and worshipping in the Temple.

In the year 62 C.E., the Roman position of Procurator became vacant. During this period of instability, the Jewish leadership murdered the group’s leader, James the Just. In the late sixties, the Romans destroyed the Temple. The Hebrews, both Jew and Christian, were driven away.

However, Gentile Christianity had been flourishing due to the work of a missionary named Paul. While Peter and Paul were laying the foundations of the Church in Rome, a man from a Hebrew Christian community in Syria decided he also would bring the Good News to the people of other nations.

As he had been one of the original members of this sect, he decided to leave behind a “written account” to compensate the community for the lack of his presence. According to the Church Fathers, the name of this apostle was Matthew, and his account was a primitive work in Hebrew script.

Although circulated among Hebrew Christians, this Gospel of the Hebrews had little practical value in the Gentile Church, for even among learned Gentile Christians few were fluent in this Syriac dialect using Hebrew letters.

B. The Hebrew Text

According to the Church Fathers, the Gospel of the Hebrews or the Hebrew Gospel was authoritative and apostolic in nature.

Papius and Irenaeus tell us that the Apostle Matthew wrote it in Hebrew letters.

Eusebius adds that the reason Matthew wrote the Hebrew Gospel was that he was about to leave the Christian community he established, and therefore put together an account of the life of Jesus for the people he left behind in their own dialect (Aramaic).

Epiphanius confirms the aforementioned, and goes on to say that Matthew alone of the New Testament writers composed a Gospel in Hebrew script that was called the Gospel of the Hebrews.

Some modern scholars contested this, arguing that Matthew also wrote the Canonical Matthean Gospel in Hebrew script. However, Higher Criticism has proven that the Canonical Matthean Gospel as recorded in the Bible was composed in Greek many years after the time of Matthew by an unknown redactor.

St. Jerome is most helpful in understanding the origins of the Gospel of the Hebrews. According to Jerome, the Gospel of the Hebrews was written in the Syriac language (Aramaic) but used Hebrew letters. Most people of Jerome’s day called it ‘Authentic Matthew’, as the Apostle of Jesus who was the tax collector composed it. The Hebrew original was preserved at the library in Caesarea, but copies existed in the Nazarene community in Beroea, Syria, as well as in the Ebionite community. The Nazarenes gave Jerome a copy that he translated into Greek.

Jerome believed the Gospel of the Hebrews was authoritative and wrote about it extensively, thus preserving an otherwise lost Gospel.

*See appendix 1

The Gospel of Mark (40 – 70 CE)

Eusebius, in his catalogue of ancient church writings, puts the Gospel of Mark in his Homologoumena or “accepted” category. Both modern and ancient Biblical scholars agree that it was the earliest Canonical account of the life of Jesus Christ. It is a primitive, primary source, incorporated into both the Canonical Matthean Gospel as well as Luke-Acts.

Scholars agree that the Gospel of Mark was not written by any of the Apostles, but by some insignificant figure in the early church. Notwithstanding its shortcomings, it was probably included in the Canon because the Early Church Fathers believed it was a reliable account of the life of Jesus of Nazareth.

Eusebius, in his Church History records that the writer of this Gospel was a man named Mark who was Peter’s interpreter. It was believed that his accounts of Jesus were historically accurate, but that there was some chronological distortion. It is further agreed that this Gospel was originally composed in Koine Greek, near Rome.

The Canonical Matthean Gospel (70-100 CE)

For quite a while after the time of Jesus, only two Gospels were in existence, and circulated throughout the early Church. One was the Gospel of the Hebrews written by the Apostle Matthew (called Authentic Matthew) and the other was the Gospel of Mark, which Peter’s interpreter was believed to have written.

The Gospel of the Hebrews was written in the Syriac dialect using Hebrew letters. It was a primitive Jewish work that did not recognize Gentile Christians. As the Church evolved away from its Jewish roots, this work was “weighed, measured and found wanting”.

The Gospel of Mark was also sadly lacking. The stories of Jesus were out of order and the author’s Greek was substandard.

A redactor(s) was asked to compose a complete and orderly account of the life and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth. This work was based on the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of Mark.

This new Canonical Matthean work was called the Gospel of Matthew because of its heavy reliance on the Gospel of the Hebrews written by Matthew.

Having the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Canonical Matthean Gospel both called the Gospel of Matthew has caused much confusion that has persisted to modern times.

Yet Biblical scholars have shown that, above all reasonable doubt, Matthew did not write the Canonical Matthean Gospel, nor was it written in Hebrew, nor was it one of the early Gospels. This lines up with what Epiphanius wrote when he recorded that the Gospel of the Hebrews written by Matthew was the only Gospel to be written in Hebrew.

Therefore The Gospel of the Hebrews is probably Authentic Matthew.