jewish-christian gospels recovered .Comm. Matt. . (ce)
.Comm. Matt. . (ce)
.Comm. Matt. . (ce)
.Comm. Matt. . (ce)
.Comm. Matt. . (ce)
.Comm. Isa. .– (/ce)
.Comm. Ezech. .– (/ce)At this juncture, it is important to keep in mind that the reconstruc-
tion has been accomplished by simply excluding the passages that are
extremely unlikely to have been derived from the Nazarenes because of
their early date, the wording of their introductions or because it can be
proved that Jerome derived his information from other sources. No pas-
sages have been excluded on the basis of their content or because they do
not cohere with a particular hypothesis about the character of the “Gospel
of the Nazarenes.” In this regard, the process is totally different from the
reconstruction of the GH, which starts with a hypothesis and proceeds
by sorting out the fragments into three predetermined categories.
Nevertheless, due to the fragmentary character of the evidence, it
is clear that at some point one has to resort to arguments based on
the contents of the fragments. Anticipating that phase, it can be noted
that fragment has, in earlier reconstructions, been attributed to the
same gospel as fragment ,^62 which was excluded from the Nazarene
collection on the basis that Jerome was likely to have gleaned it from
Origen’s writings. In contrast to synoptic descriptions of Jesus’ baptism,
which imply that God’s voice sounds from the heavens, fragment
explicitly attributes the voice to the Holy Spirit, who addresses Jesus as
her son and—the word Spirit being feminine in Hebrew—proves to be
his mother. Thus, it is clear that fragments and exemplify the
same understanding of the Holy Spirit as Jesus’ mother and are therefore
likely to be derived from the same source. If fragment was not from
the Nazarene collection, it is likely that neither is fragment . These
preliminary considerations will be confirmed if fragment does not
cohere with the content and focus of the other remaining fragments.
The majority of remaining fragments are to be found in Jerome’sCom-
mentary on Matthew. This fits very well with the fact that when Jerome
started to refer to the gospel that he had “copied” from the Nazarenes,
(^62) Vielhauer & Strecker (^2) ( (^1) ), –; Klijn , , ; Klauck , –
.