After a year of life-changes (graduate degree, new job, new city), it's finally time to start posting again. I'll continue my series on the Jewish-Christian gospels and the documents known as the "Gospel of the Hebrews". So, picking up where I left off:
4. The Alexandrian school (Clement, Origen, and Didymus) also seems to have known the Nazaraean gospel, but indirectly.
Clement is in fact the first writer to refer to a gospel "according to the Hebrews" at Miscellanies 2.9/45.5, where he quotes a saying very much like GTh logion 2. He have no evidence that Clement knew Aramaic, so at first glance it seems this could not have come from the Nazaraean gospel, pointing us towards the Ebionite one.
However, examining Origen's references to a gospel acc. Heb. will suggest that Clement's reference may have been to the Nazaraean gospel after all. Origen knew a gospel he called "according to the Hebrews" (Commentary on John 1.3, καθ Εβραιους ευαγγελιον). Origen describes a passage from this gospel where Jesus says "Just now, my mother the Holy Spirit..."
But this is not from the Ebionite gospel; it must be from the Nazaraean gospel, for Jerome quotes the same passage three times, each time associating it with the Nazaraean gospel:
i) with the gospel he "recently translated" and published "according to the Hebrews" at On Micah 2;
ii) with the "gospel which the Nazaraeans read, written according to the Hebrews" at On Isaiah 11;
iii) with the "gospel of the Hebrews...which the Nazaraeans read" in his Commentary on Ezekiel.
One might object that Origen, like Clement, shows no evidence of having understood Aramaic, so his gospel acc. Heb. must refer to the Ebionite gospel. But there is no room for the holy spirit to become Jesus' mother in the Ebionite gospel: we know it ascribed a natural birth to Jesus, and its baptismal scene does not suggest an adoption by the holy spirit. The Nazaraean gospel, on the other hand, does suggest that Jesus was adopted by the holy spirit at his baptism.
We also know that Origen mentions a "Gospel of the Twelve", and as Schneemelcher and Wilson explain, "Origen clearly distinguishes between the GH and the Gospel of the Twelve" (New Testament Apocrypha, p. 166). So when Origen speaks of a gospel acc. Heb., he can't mean the Ebionite gospel.
Ronald Heine has pointed out that Origen seems to have known Jewish-Christians in Alexandria, and perhaps knew some of them personally (possibly including the "Hebrew" teacher he mentions in Princ. 1.3.4 and 4.1.26). And the first chapter of Comm. John, where Origen refers to the gospel acc. Heb., was written while in Alexandria, so it seems plausible that Origen knew some passages from the Aramaic Nazaraean gospel that had been translated into Greek for him by a Nazaraean Christian who knew both languages.
So although Origen did not know any Nazaraeans, he appears to have been familiar with their gospel, calling it "according to the Hebrews". He also knew a few passages in detail, including one in which Jesus calles the holy spirit his mother. It seems fairly safe to guess that Clement's information about a gospel acc. Heb. came from the same source that Origen's did, for why would they, both living in Alexandria at roughly the same time, use the same name for different texts? Also, Clement, like Origen, only quotes this gospel once, suggesting he had not read it in full or in detail. That would make sense if it were an Aramatic text, with only a handful of passages having been translated into Greek by bilingual Jewish-Christians living in Alexandria.
And Didymus the Blind also refers to a gospel acc. Heb., in his commentary on Psalm 34.1, explaining that this text does not identify Matthew with Levi, but rather Matthias with Levi. There is no evidence Didymus knew Aramaic either, but he did live in Alexandria, and knew the writings of Clement and Origen. It's plausible that he picked up this information from a comment that either Clement or Origen had made, in works now lost to us. Assigning Didymus' information to the Ebionite gospel is not impossible, and is fully compatible with my model, but it seems more plausible to attribute it to certain passages translated from the Nazaraean gospel by Alexandrian Jewish-Christians, a few of which wound their way into Clement and Origen's works.
There is also a reference to the gospel acc. Heb. in the Latin insertions into Origen's Comm. Matt. 15.14 (dicitur secundum Hebraeos), that describes an alternate version of the pericope of the Rich Young Man. But Petri Luomanen suggests that the context indicates this is a later addition to the original Greek text of comm. in Mt. (Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects and Gospels, p. 177, and pp. 177-78, n. 11), and many have proposed that these Latin insertions are generally not authentic Origen, but pseudo-Origen. If the passage is authentic Origen, then we can assume he happened to have the alternate pericope translated for him from Aramaic, and it can be assigned to the Nazaraean gospel. If the passage is pseudo-Origen, then that author might also have had it translated from Aramaic. It might also come from the Greek Ebionite gospel, and that is not incompatible with my model. However, it seems safest to guess it comes from the Aramaic Nazaraean gospel, since there is no Latin evidence of the Ebionite gospel; only the Nazaraean gospel is attested in Latin.
Next, we will examine what Eusebius calls the gospel acc. Heb., and see that it is also the Nazaraean gospel.
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