jewish-christian gospels recovered language, the apostles and Matthew function as evidence for the antiquity
and the reliability of the transmitted tradition.
In the following,I shall reconstruct the collection that Jerome received
from the Nazarenes by excluding the fragments that Jerome probably did
not get from them. First, I shall exclude a group of fragments on the basis
of their introductions that use the st person plural or refer to Greek
as the target language. After that, I shall discuss other evidence which
indicates a non-Nazarene origin of some of the fragments. By applying
this method, it is possible to reach back to some key characteristics of
Jerome’s Nazarene collection.
The following list contains all the introductions to the fragments that
have been preserved by Jerome.The ones whose introductions contain
the st person plural, references to Greek as the target language or give
exceptional titles for the gospel have been marked with an asterisk.In
addition, I have also highlighted (bold+underlined) features that suggest
some other source than Nazarenes for the passage in question.^58
.Epist. . (ce).
Finally, Matthew, who wrote theGospel in the Hebrew language,put
it in the following way “osianna barrama” which means “ossanna in
excelsis.”
.Comm. Eph. . (/ce)
As we read in theHebrew Gospelthat the Lord said to the disciples:
and never rejoice, he said, unless when you look at your brother in
love.
*.Comm. Mich. . (ce)... and who should believe theGospel which is edited according to
the Hebrews and whichwetranslated not long ago, in which it is said
of the person of the Saviour: A moment ago my Mother, the Holy
Spirit took me by one of my hairs.
Parallels: Origen,Comm. Jo..;Hom. Jer. . and Jerome,Comm.
Isa. .– (“gospel written according to the Hebrews”; /ce)
andComm. Ezech. . (“Gospel which is of the Hebrews and is
read by the Nazarenes”; /ce).
*.Vir. ill. (ce)
And also theGospel which is called according to the Hebrewsand
which I have recently translated intoGreekand Latin of whichalso
(^58) Translations follow Klijn with some modifications.