chapter one
The study of indicators of Jewish Christianity also helps to deal with
the Jewish-Christian gospel fragments in a more analytical and nuanced
manner. Although Gregory’s points are healthy reminders of how lit-
tle we actually know about these gospels, his criterion of what count as
Jewish-Christian texts—the ones that deal with law observance—appears
quite rigorous and not sensitive enough to the variety of ways Judaism
essentially affected the identities of Christ believers during the first cen-
turies ce^31 Although law observance was the bone of contention in many
cases, in some other circumstances, otherindicators of Judaismmay have
stamped the identities and border-marking of the Christ believers, also
leaving their mark on the gospelsthat were used by them to such a degree
that it is justified to speak of Jewish Christians transmitting and reinter-
pretingtheir owngospel traditions.
In the following chapters, the discussion about the Nazarenes anti-
rabbinic collection—which seems to have culminated in Jesus’ passion—
suitably illustrates this point. Although these pro-Pauline Christians
were probably not conservative in their interpretation of the law, there
were still strong Jewish components in their religious profile. Whether
these were strong enough to grant them—or their version of Matthew’s
gospel—the label of Jewish Christian will be discussed in more detail
below (Chapter .).
.. GospelHarmoniesandHarmonizingGospels................
In this work, I have used the termharmonizing(gospel) in a broad sense.
Itsimplyreferstothefactthatreadings,phrasesorpassagesthatwere
originally in different gospels have come together in the passage (or
gospel) under consideration. Thus, when using the term “harmonizing,” I
have not made any distinction whether the harmonizing aims at creating
one narrative out of two or more earlier versions or whether it is simply a
question about some phrases jumping from one passage to another. This
is mostly because of the fragmentary nature of the evidence. In many
cases, we do not have the whole gospel passages available which makes
it difficult to judge whether it is a question about a minor mixture of
Gospel of the Hebrewswas clearly earlier and more authentic because it was still free
from Jewish legalism and a detailed listing of individual commandments (cf. the synoptic
versions of the story) and concentrated only on the commandment of love, exactly the
way Christ himself must have taught (Handmann , , –, ).
(^31) Gregory , .