chapter three
focuses on the question whether it is justified to make a distinction
between the “Gospel of the Nazarenes” and theGospel of the Hebrews.
Foundations for the reconstruction of three Jewish-Christian gospels
were laid by Hans Waitz who wrote chapters on the Jewish-Christian
gospels in the second edition of Edgar Hennecke’sNeutestamentliche
Apokryphen.^3 In contrast to Hennecke’s first edition, where A. Meyer had
still assumed only two Jewish-Christian gospels,^4 Waitz argued that a dis-
tinction should be made between the clearly apocryphalGospel of the
Hebrewsand the synoptic type “Gospel of the Nazarenes” that closely
resembles the Gospel of Matthew.^5 Philipp Vielhauer and Georg Strecker,
who contributed to the third edition of Hennecke’s collection (revised by
W. Schneemelcher), adopted the same principle but made some changes
to the actual reconstructions.^6 Several text editions and collections of
Christian apocrypha have followed Vielhauer and Strecker’s reconstruc-
tion, and A.F.J. Klijn has adopted the same solution in his monograph on
Jewish-Christian gospels.^7
Vielhauer and Strecker took over Waitz’ view of the Matthean charac-
terofthe“GospeloftheNazarenes”andexplicitlymadeitonecentral
criterion for assigning passages either to theGospel of the Hebrewsor to
the “Gospel of the Nazarenes:”
Criteria for derivation from the Aramaic GN must be: (a) indications that
the text has a semitic basis and (b) the synoptic character of the text or its
affinity in particular with Mt., since the GH, according to all that we know
of it, diverged very much from the synoptic type.^8These criteria and the resulting reconstruction of the GH has four main
problems.
First, the starting point of Waitz’ reconstruction was an untenable
assumption that the Jewish-Christian gospel fragments must come from
(^3) Waitz a, –; Waitz c, –; Waitz b, – and Waitz d, –
.
(^4) See, Meyer b, – and Meyer a, –.
(^5) It is true that Waitz’ reconstruction was inspired by Schmidtke who introduced the
idea that Jerome’s fragments were derived from a Greek gospel and an Aramaic gospel
buthealsoarguedthattheGreekoneistobeidentifiedwiththeGospel of the Ebionites
thereby assuming only two Jewish-Christian gospels. See, Schmidtke , –.
(^6) Vielhauer & Strecker (^2) ( (^1) ), :–. The most important change was
that Vielhauer and Strecker no longer regarded the gospel quotations in thePseudo-
Clementine RecognitionsandHomiliesas part of theGospel of the Ebionites.
(^7) Klijn . For different views, see Mimouni , –, –; Petersen
, –, –; Luomanen , –, –.
(^8) Vielhauer & Strecker (^2) ( (^1) ), .