chapter three
Some church fathers refer to theGospel of the Apostlesby name but
nobody quotes it and it is never described as particularly Jewish. Thus,
given Jerome had much at stake in his dispute with Pelagius (see above)
he may have added the title.^70 However, there are two things in fragment
b that speak for its Jewish-Christian origin—the name Simon and the
fragment’s connection toτ. /υδαϊκ!νreadings.
Is one then to conclude that Jerome received fragment b from
the Nazarenes? Usually fragment b is attributed to the “Gospel of
the Nazarenes” and with it all the marginal readings from the Matthean
manuscripts that refer to a Jewish gospel (τ. /υδαϊκ!ν). However, it was
already noted above that, in contrast to the assumptions of the supporters
of the GH,τ. /υδαϊκ!νreadings do not necessarily constitute a unified
collection which could be attributed to a particular Jewish-Christian
gospel (see above Chapter .). If the readings were collected from
commentaries, they may have their origin in several different gospels that
were for some reason or other regarded as “Jewish.”^71 Furthermore, some
of the readings—including the one paralleled in fragment b—have
connections to both Matthew and Luke^72 and there is also a reading that
does not have any point of reference in Matthew. This indicates that these
(^70) TheGospel of the Ebionitesis certainly sometimes identified with the “Gospel of the
Apostles” because, in the Ebionite fragments, the disciples appear as storytellers: “There
was a man called Jesus. He was about thirty years old and he chose us” (Epiphanius,Pan.
..–). Thus, for instance, Waitz , – and Lagrange , . For a different
view and other literature, see Schmidtke , –. Vielhauer & Strecker ^2
(^1 ), , listPan. ..– among the fragments from theGospel of the Ebionitesbut
think that it is questionable if it really was from theGospel of the Ebionites.Incontrast
to Waitz, it should to be noted that Jerome’s fragment (a in this article) was unlikely
from theGospel of the Ebionites—which Waitz identifies with theGospel of the Apostles—
because, according toPan. .., John “baptized with the baptism of repentance,” not
“for the remission of sins” as in fragment a (Jerome,Pelag. .). This shows that at
this point, the wording of theGospel of the Ebioniteswas closer to Matthew’s gospel (Matt
:–) whereas the wording of fragment a draws on Mark and Luke (Mark :; Luke
:).
(^71) Frey a, –, correctly emphasizes thatτ. /υδαϊκ!νvariants cannot be
connected to the “Gospel of the Nazarenes” as it is reconstructed in the GH hypothesis
but he seems to attribute the fragments to a fourth, independent Jewish-Christian gospel.
I do not believe that the character of the fragments justifies this kind of assumption. The
fragments may have been derived from several different “Jewish” gospels but nothing in
the preserved fragments indicates thatτ. /υδαϊκ!νvariants were derived from a gospel
that was different from other available fragments.
(^72) In Matthew (Matt :–), Peter presents to Jesus the question about the need
to forgive and Jesus gives his instructions in a dialogue with Peter. In Luke (Luke :–
) Jesus addresses the disciples directly and there is no dialogue between Jesus and the
disciples.τ. /υδαϊκ!ν(fragment b) is a combination of these two forms since it