jewish-christian gospels recovered of the doctrine”)^103 suggests that for Eusebius, the “good ones” probably
were those who agreed with the correct apostolic faith.
According toTheophania Syriaca, the gospel “exists among the Jews in
Hebrew language.” However, the above analysis of the Greek fragment
from theTheophania(GHeb’s version of the Parable of the Talents),
suggested that although Eusebius is referring to a gospel written in
“Hebrew letters,” the language was actually Syriac. That is most likely also
true in this case. Eusebius is paraphrasing the passage on the basis of
secondhand information and the information is not quite accurate.
More important is that according to Eusebius, the gospel in question
“exists among the Jews” (
). Usually scholars
have not paid much attention to this detail but their discussion implies
that they take “among the Jews” to mean Jewish converts who had
abandoned their ancestral religion and become Christians.^104 However,
it is natural to take the wording as it stands: the Christ believers who used
this gospel were factually living as Jews within Jewish communities (cf.
Chapter .).
Summary: Eusebius’ View of the Gospel of the Hebrews
In addition to the list of canonical and non-canonical writings, Eusebius
refers to theGospel of the Hebrewsthree times. () Eusebius may have
connected theGospel of the Hebrewsto the Ebionites on the basis of
his own reasoning. Although he may have been on the right track, we
cannotbesureaboutthehistoricalvalueofhisstatement.()Eusebius
hints at the contents of the passage about a woman accused of many
sins which he knew from Papias’ writings but he does not explicitly
quote the passage. Papias’ fragment was in Greek. If Papias’ fragment was
connected to John :–:, as was argued above, it is clear that Greek
was also the language of the “original”Gospel of the Hebrewsand that
the fragment may have included phrases from different synoptic gospels,
especially from Luke. () Eusebius may have also seen some quotations
in Hegesippus’ writings but he does not say a word about their contents.
Nevertheless, it is possible to conclude that by the time of Hegesippus,
theGospel of the Hebrewswas still known in Greek.
Eusebius also knows that Hegesippus quoted from a “Syriac gospel.”
This may have been a gospel written in West or East Aramaic. However,
(^103) Klijn , .
(^104) Cf. Resch , –; Vielhauer & Strecker (^2) ( (^1) ), ; Klijn , –
.