chapterone
sources. Although the evidence about early Jewish-Christian gospels
is fragmentary, it is often regarded important because of its possible
connections to the early Jesus movement. Therefore, modern scholars
have spent both time and energy in order to recover these lost gospels
from the church fathers’ quotations and references.
The publication of the third edition of Edgar Hennecke’s Neutes-
tamentliche Apocrypha in (edited by Wilhelm Schneemelcher)^7
and its English translation in more or less created a consensus in
the German and English-speaking scholarly world about the number
and character of the long lost early Jewish-Christian gospels. Several
textbooks and general articles on apocryphal gospels have repeated the
view according to which there were originally three Jewish-Christian
gospels: theGospel of the Hebrews,theGospel of the Ebionitesand the
“Gospel of the Nazarenes.”^8 In the following, I shall call this the Three
Gospel Hypothesis (the GH). An alternative reconstruction, favored
mainly by some French scholars, has counted two gospels: theGospel of
the Ebionitesand theGospel of the Hebrews/Nazarenes.^9
During the past decade, more and more critical voices—including
mine—have been raised against different aspects of the threefold dis-
tinction that was presented in the third edition of Hennecke’s collec-
tion by Philipp Vielhauer and Georg Strecker. Scholars who have become
more aware of the weaknesses of the GH, are now either refraining
from making any firm conclusions about the number and contents of
the gospels—organizing their presentation according to the available
sources, the church fathers^10 —or making adjustments to the threefold^11
or to the twofold distinction.
(^7) Hennecke & Schneemelcher (^3) ( (^1) ).
(^8) Vielhauer & Strecker (^2) ( (^1) ). A.F.J. Klijn (Klijn ) also argues for three
Jewish-Christian gospels. In the first edition of Hennecke’s collection, A. Meyer still
assumed there were only two Jewish-Christian Gospels. Foundations for the distinction
of three gospels were laid in Hennecke’s second edition by H. Waitz, and the theory
was developed further in the third edition by Vielhauer and Strecker. See, Meyer b;
a; Waitz a; b; c; d.
(^9) For instance, Mimouni , –, –. Some scholars have also argued
for only one Jewish-Christian gospel. W.L. Petersen has drawn attention to Diatessaronic
readings in many of the quotations suggesting that all the fragments could as well be
rooted in one and the same gospel that is somehow related to Tatian’sDiatessaron. See,
for instance, Petersen , –, –; Only one Jewish-Christian gospel is also
presupposed by Pritz , –; Schmidt .
(^10) Thus, for instance, Evans , –.
(^11) J. Frey, who is writing on Jewish-Christian Gospels in the “new Hennecke” (=
Markschies & Schröter Forthcoming) is critical of the close connection that has been