The Jewish-Christian Gospels, pt. 1: Ebionites and Nazaraeans

I've been promising this for a long time, so I better finally deliver :)

To explain the identification of Q with GEbi, and of both GEbi and GNaz (and perhaps GPet) with "GHeb", we'll need to sort out the evidence regarding these gospels and their relationships with not only GMt but also GLk-Ac. This will take several posts. I largely draw on Ben Smith's extremely helpful pages on the Jewish-Christian Gospels (helpfully indexed here), but augment this occasionally with material from elsewhere. I do not really rely on any one study of these gospels (such as Klijn or Luomanen) because I think that so far, no one has sorted out these gospels quite right. I believe that the HSH will help us see the true relationships.

I generally use Ben Smith's translations, but rely on Frank Williams' translation of Epiphanius. I copy the Greek from Ben Smith as well, who does not use diacritical marks. When translating the phrase "according to the Hebrews", I place it in quotation marks: otherwise when referring to it I use acc. Heb.

(ETA: fixed the translations from Jerome--I had accidentally deleted an intermediary block.)

So, let's begin with our first observation:

1. The gospel of the Ebionites, and that of the Nazareans, were different texts, as nearly all scholars now recognize.

A Home for GEbi, and a Solution for Q

ETA: In 2010, I began identifying Q with the Gospel of Peter, and both with the Gospel of the Hebrews. Later that year, I distinguished between GPet and GHeb, but continued to identify the former with Q. 

Over the years, my thinking on this evolved considerably, until late in 2013, I realized I had it wrong: Q is to be identified with GEbi and (one version of) GHeb. GPet was posterior to Q/GEbi.

This post, and several earlier posts, have been edited to reflect this realization. I have tried to note where I had made edits.

This is the post in which I first identified Q with GEbi. Some material has been removed; one bullet point has been added, as noted below.