Among the Nazarenes, orthodox and heretical, but one Gospel was recognized, and that the Hebrew Gospel of the Twelve; but the Gospel in use among the Gnostic Ebionites became more and more corrupt as they diverged further from orthodoxy.
But the primitive Hebrew Gospel was held “in high esteem by those Jews who received the faith.”[161] “It is the Gospel,” says St. Jerome, “that the Nazarenes use at the present day.”[162] “It is the Gospel of the Hebrews that the Nazarenes read,” says Origen.[163]
Was this Gospel of the Twelve, or of the Hebrews, the original of St. Matthew's Canonical Greek Gospel, or was it a separate compilation? This is a question to be considered presently.
The statement of the Fathers that the Gospel of St. Matthew was first written in Hebrew, must of course be understood to mean that it was written in Aramaic or Palestinian Syriac.
Now we have extant two versions of the Gospels, St. Matthew's included, in Syriac, the Peschito and the Philoxenian. The latter needs only a passing mention; it was avowedly made from the Greek, A.D. 508. But the Peschito is much more ancient. The title of “Peschito” is an emphatic Syrian term for that which is “simple,” “uncorrupt” and “true;” and, applied from the beginning to this version, it strongly indicates the veneration and confidence with which it has ever been regarded by all the Churches of the East.[164] When this [pg 127] version was made cannot be decided by scholars. A copy in the Laurentian Library bears so early a date as A.D. 586; but it existed long before the translation was made by Philoxenus in 508. The first Armenian version from the Greek was made in 431, and the Armenians already, at that date, had a version from the Syriac, made by Isaac, Patriarch of Armenia, some twenty years previously, in 410. Still further back, we find the Peschito version quoted in the writings of St. Ephraem, who lived not later than A.D. 370.[165]
Was this Peschito version founded on the Greek canonical text, or, in the case of St. Matthew, on the “Hebrew” Gospel? I think there can be little question that it was translated from the Greek. There can be no question that the Gospels of St. Mark, St. Luke, St. John, the Acts of the Apostles, the Epistles of St. Paul, and those of the other Epistles contained in this version,[166] are from the Greek, and it is probable that the version of St. Matthew was made at the same time from the received text. The Syrian churches were separated from the Nazarene community in sympathy; their acceptance of St. Paul's Epistles is a proof that they were so; and these Epistles were accepted by them at a very early age, as we gather from internal evidence in the translation.
The Syrian churches would be likely, moreover, when seeking for copies of the Christian Scriptures, to ask for them from churches which were regarded as orthodox, rather than from a dwindling community which was thought to be heretical.
The Peschito version of St. Matthew follows the canonical Greek text, and not the Gospel of the Hebrews, in such passages as can be compared;[167] not one of the peculiarities of the latter find their echo in the Peschito text.
The Gospel of the Hebrews has not, therefore, been preserved to us in the Peschito St. Matthew. The translations made by St. Jerome in Greek and Latin have also perished. It is not difficult to account for the loss of the book. The work itself was in use only by converted Jews; it was in the exclusive possession of the descendants of those parties for whose use it had been written. The Greek Gospels, on the other hand, spread as Christianity grew. The Nazarenes themselves passed away, and their cherished Gospel soon ceased to be known among men.
Some exemplars may have been preserved for a time in public libraries, but these would not survive the devastation to which the country was exposed from the Saracens and other invaders, and it is not probable that a solitary copy survives.