chapter six
on Matthewshowed how the synoptic story had been re-judaized in the
Gospel of the Hebrews. The rewritten story clearly presumes a Jewish
group identity and intra Jewish setting for its moral exhortations. The
assumption that the “Hebrews” of theGospel of the Hebrewswere mostly
living as part of Jewish communities also accords with the way in which
Eusebius introduces theGospel of the Hebrewsin Theophania Syriaca (see
Chapter ..)
It is clear that by the time theGospel of the Hebrewswas composed
(first half of the second century), heresiological discourse was not yet
developed. This can be observed, for instance, in Justin’sDialogue with
Trypho. Justin approves of the law observant Jewish Christians if they live
in peace with other Christians and if they do not demand that gentile
Christians be circumcised and keep the Sabbath and other ordinances
(Dial. –). Justin even allows Jewish Christ believers—whom he
counts as part of “your race”, i.e., Jews like Trypho—not to accept his
proofs of Jesus’ divine origin if they admit that he was chosen by God
andanointedasChrist(Dial. ).
There is a tendency among scholars to “correct” the text inDial.
so that it does not refer to “your race” (Jews) but to “our race”
(Christians) because earlier scholarship presumed a split between Jews
and Christians and thought that Christ believers must, of course, be living
among Christians. During the past decades, this whole paradigm has
been proven wrong by Daniel Boyarin and others (see Chapter .). There
is no need to correct Justin’s text. The Christ believers inDial.were
obviously living among other Jews and this was perfectly natural by the
first half of the second century, and even later on.
On the whole, theindicators approachthat has been applied in this
volume has revealed a variety of Jewish Christianities. The overall picture
emerging from these studies challenges the Baurian idea of two main tra-
jectories. In the second century, when both theGospel of the Ebionitesand
theGospel of the Hebrewswere composed, there were still many different
Jewish-Christian groups using both written and oral traditions—the lat-
ter also being based to a large extent on secondary orality.
The results also show that scholars should give up attempts to recon-
struct a pre-synoptic gospel from information that has survived from the
early Jewish-Christian gospels. All the available evidence points to the
direction that theGospel of the Hebrews,theGospel of the Ebionites(and
the “Gospel of the Nazarenes”) were post-synoptic productions. This is
not to say that the canonical gospels as we have them would be the most
secure lead to the roots of early Christianity. Rather, it seems that the