chapter three
he identified the gospel with the Hebrew original of Matthew and it is
naturalthathemadeuseofitwhenhewaswritinghisowncommentary
to the same book. The number of these relatively certain cases is very
limited and raises the question of why precisely these passages were cho-
sen as the points of comparison. Were these the only points where the
Nazarene gospel differed from the canonical Matthew? Or had Jerome
knowledge of only these passages? Or is there an underlying common
denominator that could connect the seemingly random variant readings
with each other?
At first glance, there seems to be no apparent connection between the
different Matthean fragments and one is tempted to conclude that Jerome
made up the whole story about the Nazarenes’ gospel. The fragments
presented in Jerome’sCommentary on Matthewgive the impression that
Jerome had received only a collection of alternative readings from the
Nazarenes. These do exemplify a comparison of Matthew’s Greek phrases
with Semitic expressions but hardy justify Jerome’s claims that he had
copied and translated the Nazarenes’ gospel. A collection like this could
have been transmitted in the margins of a manuscript of a Greek gospel
as well.^63
However, a closer look at the Matthean contexts^64 of the fragments
reveals a remarkably clear pattern. The fragments are from Matthean
passages whose severe criticism of the Jewish people and their leaders
closely resembles the anti-rabbinic tone of the Nazarenes’ Isaiah exposi-
tions. When the variant readings are replaced in their Matthean contexts,
it appears that fragments ,, and form a unified collection con-
sisting of () the initial rejection of the newborn “king of the Jews” by
Herod and “all Jerusalem,” () the words of judgment upon the nation
because of its treatment of the prophets, () the nation’s avowed respon-
sibility for the death of Jesus (who died instead of a “son of their rabbi”),
and () of the signs following Jesus’ death that prove him to have been
“the son of God.” Even () the Matthean version of the Lord’s Prayer (frag-
ment ) accords very well with this collection because the Lord’s Prayer
(^63) In my paper “What is the Gospel of the Nazoreans?” delivered at the SBL
Annual Meeting in Denver, I suggested that Jerome was using a Greek manuscript with
some notes about “original” Hebrew readings.
(^64) Because Jerome lists only minor details that are different in the gospel used by the
Nazarenes, it is to be assumed that—excluding the differences that Jerome describes in
his commentary—the wording of the passages was not too far from the Greek text of
Matthew. Thus, the main contents of the collection can be sketched by simply listing the
Matthean passages whose wording Jerome discusses.