chapter three
The analysis of Eusebius’ passages substantiates this argument by
revealing that Clement and Origen, at the beginning of the third-century
in Egypt, were not the earliest witnesses. Rather, theGospel of the Hebrews
wasalreadyknowntoPapiasandHegesippusinthesecondcentury
(roughly within the time span –). Moreover, it can be shown that
both Clement and Origen had good opportunities to acquire knowledge
of these fragments from the Syro-Palestinian area.
Clement of Alexandria casts light on his tutors as follows:
Now this work of mine in writing is... truly an image and outline of those
vigorous and animated discourses which I was privileged to hear, and of
blessed and truly remarkable men. Of these the one, in Greece, an Ionic;
the other in Magna Graecia: the first of these from Coele-Syria, the second
fromEgypt,andothersintheEast.TheonewasborninthelandofAssyria,
and the other a Hebrew in Palestine. When I came upon the last (he was
the first in power), having tracked him out concealed in Egypt, I found
rest. He, the true, the Sicilian bee, gathering the spoil of the flowers of the
prophetic and apostolic meadow, engendered in the souls of his hearers a
deathless element of knowledge. (Strom.I;trans.ANF).
Origen, for his part, started writing hisCommentary on Johnin Alexan-
dria and continued it after he moved to Caesarea in . The section
where we find the Jewish-Christian fragment (Comm. Jo. .; Klijn’s
date: “before ”) was written in Alexandria. However, Origen had
already visited Rome, Palestine and Antioch between ca. – and
could very well have come across traditions of theGospel of the Hebrews
in any of those places.
As regards Klauck’s argument concerning the three baptismal stories,
it is really hard to see why the discussion about the appropriateness
of Jesus’ baptism could not be connected to the actual description of
the baptism (cf. the reconstruction in the Appendix). Although Jesus
presents a critical question concerning the baptism of John, this does
not necessarily mean that he would not eventually have gone to be
baptized. The fragment that describes the actual baptism shows clearly
that baptism was not about forgiveness of sins in Jesus’ case. Instead, it
was an occasion where an unblemished, unique character was revealed.
There does not seem to be any reasons why the rest of the fragments—
after Jerome’s anti-rabbinic collection is removed—could not come only
from theGospel of the Hebrews. This assumption is the simplest one
and it presumes a character for theGospel of the Hebrewswhich best
coheres with Eusebius’ understanding about its positions on the fringes
of canon.