chapter three
other Jewish-Christian gospel fragments. Although the story about the
woman caught in adultery is added to the Gospel of John, it is generally
acknowledged that its language is not typical of John. Instead, it has
many features typical of the synoptic gospels, Luke’s gospel in particular.
Moreover, if some Markan expressions are not later additions then the
passage would also be characterized by harmonization as are many of
the Jewish-Christian gospel fragments.^87
Hegesippus’ Gospel of the Hebrews
Eusebius’ last reference to theGospel of the Hebrewsis to be found in his
summary of Hegesippus’ work (Hist. Eccl..).AccordingtoEusebius,
Hegesippus quotes from
theGospelaccordingtotheHebrewsandfromSyriacandalsosomething
from the Hebrew dialect, showing that he was a convert from the Hebrews,
and he also mentions other things from unwritten Jewish traditions.
(trans. PL).From a grammatical point of view, it is most natural to “fill out” Euse-
bius’ sentence by adding “gospel” after the adjective “Syriac.” The expres-
sion “Syriac” is unique in Eusebius’ writings, which suggests, that he got
the information from his sources.^88 According to Klijn, Eusebius’ quota-
tion clearly indicates that theGospel of the Hebrewsmust have been in
Greek “since the second gospel is explicitly said to have been written in
Aramaic.” Although there are some problems with this line of thought,
the assumption about Greek as the original language of theGospel of the
Hebrewscoheres with other evidence about the gospel. Thus, I agree that
by the time of Hegesippus, theGospel of the Hebrewswas probably known
only in Greek.^89
(^87) The Lukan character of the language is clearly demonstrated by Becker , –
. Mark’s language has possibly effected John : (cf. Mark :). Alsoκ$ψαςcan be
found, in addition to this passage, only in Mk : (omitted by Luke). For harmonizing
readings, see Chapters . and . in this volume, also Luomanen , , – and
Luomanen .
(^88) Similarly, Vielhauer & Strecker (^2) ( (^1) ), . Eusebius himself only uses the
expression “Hebrew” when he refers to the original language of the Jewish scriptures
(several instances inDem. ev.andOnomasticon).
(^89) There are two main problems. First, Eusebius says nothing about the language
of theGospel of the Hebrews. He obviously takes up the title of the gospel only in
order to show that Hegesippus was familiar with Jewish(-Christian) traditions. Thus,
it must have been enough for Eusebius that he had seen the title of theGospel of the
Hebrewsin Hegesippus’ writings, and it is impossible for us to know for sure the original
language of the gospel Hegesippus had used. Second, it is not altogether clear that “Syriac”