Review of The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition

Last updated on: July 29, 2010 at 4:23 pm by James F. McGrath

Review of The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition 2010-07-29T16:23:00-04:00 James F. McGrath

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

I am grateful to Eerdmans for sending me a review copy of James R. Edwards’ book The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition. Edwards’ book seeks to bring much-deserved attention back to a text that is mentioned often in Patristic sources and was the subject of much interest in earlier scholarship, but which has in our time become relatively neglected, namely the claim (found as early as Papias) that Matthew wrote a Gospel in Hebrew.

After an introduction that summarizes key points to follow and offers some background to Edwards’ project, the first chapter surveys references to a Hebrew Gospel in early Christian sources. The meaning of Papias’ oft-quoted statement is discussed, as are other early sources. The material surveyed illustrates not only the widespread awareness of this source in the ancient church, but also the authority the work had (see e.g. p.15). Jerome refers to a copy of the Hebrew Gospel being in the library in Caesarea, and later says he himself translated the work. In addition to such relatively familiar (although in our day still mostly neglected) material, Edwards includes other less familiar sources of information, including scholia in Codex Sinaiticus which make emendations on the basis of “the Jewish (Gospel)” (pp.40-42), even if in the end he discounts these scholia because of their late date. Edwards also includes Islamic hadith, although accompanied by the problematic assumption that “By definition…hadith connote early tradition” (p.42).

Chapter two then turns from mentions of the Hebrew Gospel to quotations from it. Here we begin to encounter problematic aspects of Edwards’ discussion of the specific language the “Hebrew Gospel” was in. Aramaic and Hebrew have both been argued for in the past. In trying to adjudicate between the two in his discussion of Jerome’s quotation of the word mahar from the version in the Hebrew Gospel of the Lord’s Prayer, Edwards writes that “Mahar is Hebrew (Aramaic would be דמהר)” (p.84). Either Edwards thinks that Jerome would necessarily having quoted the word together with the relative particle “d-“, which is not at all persuasive, or Edwards has mistaken the Aramaic word with the relative particle in front of it for the Aramaic word. In either case, this does not bode well for his offering a satisfactory treatment of linguistic aspects of this subject.

Chapter three offers a defense of the ability of church fathers to be critical – not in the modern sense, to be sure, but duly critical nevertheless. Nevertheless, it is fair to point out that, of the twenty church fathers who mention the Hebrew Gospel (p.102), not all would have had an opportunity to see the Gospel themselves, and few who had would have been in a position to evaluate precisely what it was. Nevertheless, the “witnesses to the Hebrew Gospel are as ancient as patristic witnesses to any of the four canonical Gospels” (p.103). The relationship of material quoted from the Hebrew Gospel to what is found in New Testament Gospels is presented by Edwards. There is no instance of agreement with Mark’s unique material, but there is material not found in any NT Gospel, as well as agreement with Matthew’s special material, the double tradition, and a preponderance of points of intersection with Lukan material in terms of specific content as well as themes (pp.109-111). The question of how this relates to the Synoptic problem begins to be explored here, with quotations from and interaction with scholars who have treated this topic. The possibility that the Hebrew Gospel may be the source of Luke’s special material is considered.

This leads naturally to the subject of the fourth chapter, namely the strikingly high number of Semitisms in Luke. This chapter includes another problematic statement related to the linguistic question: “Luke…does not appear to have been a Jew, and it is unlikely that he thought in either Hebrew or Aramaic” (p.128). Apart from the problematic way of depicting how one’s native language affects speech in another, Edwards ignores the fact that Aramaic in its various dialects was not spoken only by Jews. Luke could have been a non-Jew from Syria, for instance, perhaps one raised bilingually, as many educated individuals would have been in that place and time. But this is never considered. Although Edwards draws on sources with linguistic expertise that make a strong case for Luke’s Gospel containing Hebraisms and not merely Semitisms of a vague or indistinct sort, he also mentions the fact that Semitisms and Hebraisms are found not only in the Gospel of Luke, but also in the Acts of the Apostles, Luke’s second volume. This cries out for explanation, since there is no reason to think that the Hebrew Gospel included an account of the early post-Easter church. Be that as it may, Edwards certainly draws attention to a feature of the Gospel of Luke, which is especially characteristic of Luke’s special material, that deserves more attention. Why Edwards decides to coin the phrase “hyper-Semitic” as a way of referring to these verses is beyond me (pp.145-146). On the whole, however, Edwards’ prose is delightful to read, even if one is not persuaded by a particular argument.

Chapter 5 focuses on whether Hebrew was the language of the “Hebrew Gospel.” Once again, linguistic matters are treated in a way that is problematic. For instance, Edwards calls kai egeneto a “qualified Septuagintism” since it would involve Luke imitating “only those parts of the LXX dependent on a Hebrew Vorlage” (p.158). But that was most of the Septuagint, and constituted the core and most famous parts of the Jewish Scriptures even in Greek. Likewise, the suggestion that Luke was not imitating the Septuagint or heavily influenced by it because of (1) failure to produce the LXX word-for-word in certain instances, or (2) using a phrase that is rare in the LXX, is unpersuasive. The phrase “gird up the loins” does not have to be common in the King James Version for someone using it to be echoing the KJV. Nor is it necessary that the phrase “verily he saith” occur anywhere in the KJV for this to represent an attempt to imitate the KJV’s English, in a way that speakers of modern English could readily recognize. Edwards also hurts rather than helps his case by appealing to Rabbinic texts stressing the importance of writing Scripture verses in tefillin in Hebrew, or reading key passages from the Scriptures in Hebrew (pp.169-170), since this requirement suggest that Aramaic would have been preferred by many were Hebrew not imposed. He also tries to argue for the predominance of Hebrew in Jesus’ time by pointing out that it was the dominant language in the times depicted in stories in the Hebrew Bible (pp.170-172). This is all rather unfortunate, since it detracts from the only point that matters to Edwards’ case, namely the literary use of Hebrew in this period, for which the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Mishnah provide more than ample evidence.
Chapter 6 provides an exploration of possible reasons for the disappearance of the Hebrew Gospel and its current scholarly neglect. There certainly have been anti-Jewish biases in European scholarship as in Christianity historically, and this is indeed likely to be part of the story.

Chapter 7 focuses on the relationship of the Hebrew Gospel to the double tradition and to the Synoptic Problem. Since the double tradition does not share the Semitic character of special Luke to the same extent, it is unlikely that Q can simply be done away with by suggesting that this material derived from the Hebrew Gospel. In surveying the history of the Q hypothesis, Edwards suggests it ought to make us suspicious that scholarship in an era that was embarrassed by miracle stories but valued Jesus’ ethical teaching produced the hypothesis that the Gospels derive from an earlier collection of such teaching, with little or no narrative. This discussion provides but one example of Edwards’ delightful writing style: “The ‘Q’ hypothesis was like a modern farm chemical that contained an herbicide capable of killing the weeds of miracle and dogma, and also a fertilizer capable of nourishing the ethical core of Jesus’ message” (p.223).

Edwards acknowledges that sometimes scholarship produces good results even if the context that favored them should make us cautious, and thus continues to survey internal evidence for Q. But the arguments he offers against it are problematic. That the Gospel of Thomas is on a trajectory that leads towards Gnosticism is hardly relevant, since the issue is whether it provides a comparable genre. Edwards dismisses alleged parallels to the genre of Q as not merely from outside but alien to the context of early Christianity. That Jerome never mentions a collection like “Q” in his Illustrious Men is hardly relevant, since we have no reason to think that Q, if it existed, survived down to Jerome’s time (pp.226-228). In the end, Edwards does not seem to be opposed to the Q hypothesis so much as the characterization of Q as a collection of sayings alone without any narrative framework.

Edwards’ attempt to argue that the Babylonian Talmud mentions the Hebrew Gospel involves special pleading. The Talmud (b. Shabb. 116a-b) has a “philosopher” quote from what seems to be Matthew 5. That this derived from a saying quoted from the Hebrew Gospel by Epiphanius, “I came to destroy the sacrifices,” seems particularly unlikely since the meaning is at odds with the passage from Matthew’s Gospel which is quoted imprecisely in the Talmud, which emphasizes that Jesus “did not come to diminish the Torah” (pp.229-232). Chapter 7 ends with the conclusion that the Q hypothesis could explain the Synoptic relationships, but is not a necessary inference.

Chapter 8 offers an exploration of the possibility of Matthean posteriority, offering a number of examples of material that seems to be more primitive in Luke either in wording or arrangement. The Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament shows no signs of being derived from a Hebrew original. Edwards suggests that Greek Matthew was so named in honor of the apostle who wrote the Hebrew Gospel, and that the church wrongly assumed that Greek Matthew was a translation of the Hebrew Gospel.

An epilogue summarizes the key theses of the book, offering 23 of them, one for each letter of the Hebrew alphabet. The last of these includes a diagram of how Edwards views the interrelationship between the canonical Gospels and the Hebrew Gospel – in essence, it takes the place of “L” in typical diagrams of the “four source hypothesis” (p.262). Appendix 1 provides all references to the Hebrew Gospel in the first nine centuries in the original languages. This is an extremely useful collection, even if it begins with the story in the Babylonian Talmud that we have already mentioned, placing it there on the rather naive assumption that the story’s setting in the time of first-century rabbis vouchsafes its preservation of early material. The second appendix sets forth Semitisms in Luke, while a third appendix briefly considers the distinctive version of Luke 6:5 in Codex Bezae. A select bibliography and indexes bring the volume to a close.

I have been very critical, but I do not think undeservedly so, of problematic aspects of the treatment of matters of linguistics in the book. But I would not like those criticisms to detract from the author’s main thesis, which is that the patristic references to a Hebrew Gospel need to be taken more seriously in scholarly study of the Synoptic problem, and this lost source can plausibly be connected with Luke’s reference to “many” who wrote before him and his preservation of material that has not only a Semitic, but in places a Hebraic character. And so hopefully if nothing else, this volume will spark further discussion of the Hebrew Gospel and of the Semitisms in Luke. And so even if they echo many of the criticisms and reservations I have presented here, I nonetheless hope that many scholars interested in the New Testament Gospels will read James R. Edwards’ book The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition. If it contains much that can be criticized or that is unpersuasive, there is also much that is thought-provoking and worthy of serious consideration, not to mention much that is delightful and entertaining to read even if it doesn’t persuade. And so I encourage other scholars to read Edwards’ book, and hope that the coming years will see more attention devoted to the question of the Hewbrew Gospel.

Uncategorized

Previous Post

July 29, 2010

Open Access, Open Source, and Open Ended Textbooks

Next Post

July 30, 2010 University Websites

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category 1 Corinthians 1 John 1 Peter 1 Samuel 1 Thessalonians 1 Timothy 2 Corinthians 2 Kings 2 Peter 2 Samuel 2 Thessalonians 2 Timothy academia Acts of the Apostles afterlife Akhaten Alcatraz American Academy of Religion Amos Anglican Arabic Aramaic archaeology art artificial intelligence astronomy atheism atonement Babylon 5 Baptists Battlestar Galactica Bible Biblical Studies Carnival biblioblogging Black Mirror Blade Runner Book of Job book review Buddhism Call for Papers China Christianity Christmas Christology Chronicles Coptic creation Daniel Deuteronomy Doctor Who Dune Easter Ecclesiastes economics education Eldad Keynan Enoch Seminar Ephesians eschatology Esther Evangelicals evolution Exodus Expanse Ezekiel Ezra fantasy Fringe fundamentalism Galatians games Ge'ez genealogy Genesis Gnosticism Gospel of Jesus' Wife Gospel of John Gospel of Judas Gospel of Luke Gospel of Mark Gospel of Matthew Gospel of Peter Gospel of Thomas Greek Harry Potter Hebrew Hebrews Hinduism historical Jesus history Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Holidays horror Hosea humor incarnation India inerrancy information literacy inspirational Intelligent Design Ireland Isaiah Islam Israel Italy James Jeremiah John the Baptist Jonah Joshua Judaism Jude Judges Judith Lamentations languages Latin Leviticus libraries literature Lord of the Rings LOST Mandaeans Mandaic memes Methodism Micah monotheism morality Mormons movies music mythicism NASSCAL Nehemiah new perspective New Testament news Numbers Orthodox paganism panentheism pantheism Patheos Paul and his letters Pentecostals Philippians Philippians 2:6-11 philosophy physics Planet of the Apes podcast politics Progressive Christianity Protestantism Proverbs Psalms pseudoscience racism religion Revelation Roman Catholicism Romania Romans Ruth scams science science fiction Secret Gospel of Mark Society of Biblical Literature Song of Songs Star Trek Star Wars Stargate Swahili Syriac Taoism technology Terminator The Handmaid's Tale The Hobbit The Matrix theodicy theology theory Timeless Titus tomb Torchwood travel TRON Uncategorized United Kingdom Westworld X-Files young-earth creationism Zechariah

Select a Month October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 February 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 February 2007 January 2001

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz