Question #1: I am in touch with someone who claims that Matthew originally wrote his gospel in Hebrew. Here is some information from the Early Church Fathers he adduces as proof. What do you think?
Matthew composed the words in the Hebrew dialect, and each translated as he was able. (Papias, 150-170 CE, quoted by Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. 3:39)
Matthew also issued a written gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect. (Ireneus, 170 CE, Against Heresies 3:1)
The first is written according to Matthew, the same that was once a tax collector, but afterwards an emissary of Yeshua the Messiah, who having published it for the Jewish believers, wrote it in Hebrew. (Origen circa 210 CE, quoted by Eusebius, Eccl. Hist. 6:25)
The epistle to the Hebrews he asserts was written by Paul, to the Hebrews, in the Hebrew tongue; but that it was carefully translated by Luke, and published among the Greeks. (Clement of Alexandria, Hypotyposes, referred to by Eusebius in Eccl. Hist.6:14:2)
He (Shaul) being a Hebrew wrote in Hebrew, that is, his own tongue and most fluently; while things which were eloquently written in Hebrew were more eloquently turned into Greek. (Jerome, 382 CE, 'Lives of Illustrious Men,' Book V)
Response#1: As to this list of quotations, I
suppose I would be in a better position to give you my take on these
things if I knew what point this fellow was trying to prove. I can say
that relying upon the quotations in Eusebius (please note that most of
these quotations are from Eusebius, fourth century, and/or go back to
Papias whose work has not survived except in rough quotation, mostly in
Eusebius) is a very questionable practice, no matter what point one is
trying to prove. This is evident just from the Smorgasbord of quotes
your correspondent provides.
For instance, you can see the "Paul wrote Hebrews in Hebrew" quotation
morphing right before your eyes as it travels from Eusebius to Jerome.
The underlying story is the same, but the facts change. When one adds to
this the need to explain the anonymous nature of the book of Hebrews,
one can see how speculation becomes fact which then gets embellished.
This happens in the most careful of historical traditions, and believe
me when I say that early Church history is not methodologically precise
(quite an understatement). Eusebius was playing Herodotus, and
incorporated into his history, which is more of series of anecdotes
really, whatever he found that was interesting. The analysis that he
appends to certain stories is often incredibly dense and misleading,
making it quite clear for anyone who takes the time to actually sit down
and read him at length that if one relies on anything he says without
critical judgment, one is leaning on a slender reed indeed.
Like all such documents from antiquity (Plutarch provides a rough
parallel), these "library histories" are only as good as their sources.
It is quite possible that Papias (to whom most if not all of the quotes
here should be attributed as the original source) was not a half bad
collector of stories he had heard - but he was not writing inspired
history. In addition to the fact that he was a fallible human being not
under the inspired direction of the Spirit, we also have the very large
problem that what we do have of Papias has been "filtered", mostly
through Eusebius who, as I have suggested above, is both intellectually
and theologically suspect (on the latter point, he ridicules the idea of
a literal millennium in a way that suggests a gross ignorance of certain
parts of the scripture).
Finally, on the issue of "Matthew first in Hebrew", all we have is
Eusebius' word that this is what Papias said. But what Eusebius
actually says in the particular passage quoted is "and each translated
(Gk. hermenusan, plural) them as best he could".
This suggests then that there
should be a goodly number of versions of Matthew that differ one from
the other (because no two translations would be close in word choice or
word order, even if they meant essentially the same thing). In fact this
is most assuredly not the case. The textual variation in
Matthew is no greater or less than that of the other gospels - a
situation which is virtually inexplicable if we are to
take this story of a Hebrew gospel being the original source as true.
There is a lot of strange information in Eusebius and in the Church
fathers generally. Anything past Eusebius is essentially worthless from
a historiographical point of view being certainly derivative of earlier
writings (in the same way that if you or I wrote about the Civil War
what we wrote would only be as good as the documents we consulted, since
none of the original actors are alive). And Eusebius himself is highly
suspect, largely because by his time (and possibly even by Papias time)
these and many other "stories" had been invented to answer questions to
which we would all like the answers: "Who wrote Hebrews?"; "Why is
Hebrews anonymous?"; "Why are the four gospels different?" Or also of
the sort "What else do we know about the lives of Jesus/Paul/Peter". To
this last question responds an entire genre of
pseudepigraphical "Gospel of ____-'s”, and there are any number of other
apocryphal works that date to the early centuries of the Church. The
bottom line is that on the one hand we have more than enough information
to know all we need to know from a close inspection of the canon itself,
and, on the other hand, most of the "stories" of the sort quoted by your
correspondent have been developed to answer questions to which we itch
to know the answer, often based entirely upon clues in the scripture
themselves (cf. Origen's analysis of Hebrews quoted in Eusebius 6.25).
Unless we profess Roman Catholicism, we need not accept the judgment of
these early churchmen anymore than that of our own contemporaries if
said judgment does not comport with scripture. Otherwise, I find it
dangerous in the extreme for believers to put as much weight upon
extra-biblical evidence as upon the Bible.
Please see also the following links:
Christians Beware (contains a critique of the "Hebrew gospel" fallacy)
In our Lord.
Bob L.
Question #2:
I didn't see any mention in your response of St. Irenaus's statement that Matthew wrote his gospel in Hebrew. What you think about what Irenaeus wrote? Thanks.
Response#2:
To elaborate concerning Irenaeus, like Eusebuius, his information is
clearly derivative of Papias. Here's what Irenaeus actually
says: "Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their
own dialect". To me, this is not new information but a rephrasing of the
same exact story from Papias. It may or may not be true. What is almost
certainly not true is the claim based solely upon this one
Papias' story variously reported that the Greek gospel of Matthew is
derivative. As I suggested in the previous e-mail, that supposition is
suspect on its merits because if the gospel was originally in Hebrew, we
would have many different versions of Matthew, since no two translators
could possibly handle the material in anything approaching a unified way
(and we in fact we only have one version of the Greek
gospel of Matthew). For this scenario to work, the Hebrew gospel would
have had to disappear almost immediately upon being issued, with only
one single Greek translation ever having been made (from which all
subsequent Greek versions derive). The likelihood of either of these
events playing out this way is, in my opinion, nil.
Irenaeus cleans up what Papias apparently said (notice in his quote, he
doesn't say that Matthew did the Hebrew first or only, just that there
was a Hebrew gospel by Matthew [too]). As I mentioned before, in my
experience with ancient history, stories of this kind, especially when
they do not jibe with the evidence available, are often to be explained
as answers to questions people had in the past. Two obvious such
questions here are "How did Matthew, a Hebrew, come to write his gospel
in Greek?", and "Why is Matthew's gospel different from the others in
some respects?". Positing an original Hebrew gospel that was then
altered and translated into Greek would answer both of these questions
(which are common even today). But just because this hypothesis might
answer these questions does not make it a correct hypothesis. The true
answer to the second question is complicated, but suffice it to say that
I think most Christians who have read the gospels over enough times
realize how much we benefit from having these multiple inspired accounts
of our Lord's life and work. In regard to the first question, the use of
Greek by Jesus and His disciples is under-appreciated largely because of
a very popular (and wrong) 20th century academic theory that they spoke
only Aramaic. It is not and has never been uncommon for people living in
areas where cultures collide to speak multiple languages by necessity.
There is plenty of evidence in scripture that these men spoke both
Hebrew and Aramaic (e.g., Peter's language giving him away and
occasioning his denial of Christ), and that they also spoke Greek (e.g.,
Peter's epistles are in pretty good Greek). This seems odd to Americans
who don't see any utility in speaking languages other than English, but
elsewhere in the world and in previous history being bi- and even tri-
lingual is not at all terribly unique.
Bottom line: Matthew wrote his gospel in Greek. That is what all of the
textual evidence and internal scriptural evidence suggests (and on the
other hand there is zero evidence for a Hebrew gospel apart from this
one very questionable story). Irenaeus is repeating Papias' story as
others do as well later on. It doesn't matter if 100 church fathers
repeat the same story - it has the same source. Notice that neither
Irenaeus nor Papias claims to have actually seen this Hebrew gospel or
even fragments or quotes from it. This story is the sort of thing that
in secular history would impress few historians, but for some reason in
Biblical studies gains many adherents. My suspicion is that this is
because it casts doubt upon the quality and validity of scripture, and
that has always been a popular cause in cynical circles. After all, if
this part of the Bible is derivative, how accurate can any of it be?
Next thing you know we have source criticism et al., nothing is solid,
and we start looking elsewhere for answers (just what the devil wants).
Irenaeus says some good things (i.e., he is an adherent of the seven
millennial days of human history: see the link:
“The Seven Days of Human History” in SR#5), but also has a lot of
stuff that is really "out there". I wouldn't put too much weight on this
particular statement. Even were there a later Hebrew version of Matthew,
it would still be the Greek version which is the original, inspired Word
of God, with the other being merely a historical curiosity.
Yours in our Lord.
Bob L.