Another passage is in perfect harmony with the teaching of our Lord, and, like that given last, may very possibly have formed part of his teaching. It is also given by St. Jerome, and therefore in Latin: “Be never glad unless ye are in charity with your brother.”[191]
St. Jerome, in his treatise against Pelagius, quotes from the Gospel of the Hebrews the following passage: “If thy brother has sinned in word against thee, and has made satisfaction, forgive him unto seven times a day. Simon, his disciple, said unto him, Until seven times! The Lord answered, saying, Verily I say unto thee, until seventy times seven;” and then probably, “for I say unto thee, Be never glad till thou art in charity with thy brother.”[192]
The Gospel of the Nazarenes supplied details not found in that of St. Matthew. It related of the man with the withered hand, healed by our Lord,[193] that he [pg 136] was a mason,[194] and gave the words of the appeal made to Jesus by the man invoking his compassion: “I was a mason, working for my bread with my hands. I pray thee, Jesus, restore me to soundness, that I eat not my bread in disgrace.”[195]
It relates, what is found in St. Mark and St. Luke, but not in St. Matthew, that Barabbas was cast into prison for sedition and murder;[196] and it gives the interpretation of the name, “Son of a Rabbi.”[197] These particulars may be correct; there is no reason to doubt them. The interpretation of the name may be only a gloss which found its way into the text.
Eusebius says that Papias “gives a history of a woman who had been accused of many sins before the Lord, which is also contained in the Gospel according to the Hebrews.”[198] Of this we know nothing further, for the text is not quoted by any ancient writers; but probably it was the same story as that of the woman taken in adultery related in St. John's Gospel.[199] But then, why did not Eusebius say that Papias gave “the history of the woman accused of adultery, which is also related in the Gospel of St. John”? Why does he speak of that story as being found in a Gospel written in the Syro-Chaldaean tongue, with which he himself was unacquainted,[200] when the same story was in the well-known Canonical Greek Gospel of St. John? The conclusion one must arrive at is, either that the stories were sufficiently [pg 137] differently related for him not to recognize them as the same, or that the incident in St. John's Gospel is an excerpt from the Gospel of the Hebrews, or rather from a translation of it, grafted into the text of the Canonical Gospel. The latter opinion is favoured by some critics, who think that the story of the woman taken in adultery did not belong to the original text, but was inserted in it in the fourth or fifth century.
Those passages of the Gospel of the Nazarenes which most resemble passages in the Gospel of St. Matthew are not, however, identical with them; some differ only in the wording, but others by the form in which they are given.
And the remarkable peculiarity about them is, that the lessons in the Gospel of the Hebrews seem preferable to those in the Canonical Gospel. This was apparently the opinion of St. Jerome.
In chap. vi. ver. 11 of St. Matthew's Gospel, we have the article of the Lord's Prayer, “Give us this day our daily bread.” The words used in the Greek of St. Matthew are, τὸν ἄρτον ἡμῶν τὸν ἐπιούσιον. The word ἐπιούσιος is one met with nowhere else, and is peculiar. The word οὐσία means originally that which is essential, and belongs to the true nature or property of things. In Stoic philosophy it had the same significance as ὕλη, matter; ἐπιούσιον ἄρτον would therefore seem most justly to be rendered by supersubstantial, the word employed by St. Jerome.
“Give us this day our supernatural bread.” But in the Gospel of the Nazarenes, according to St. Jerome, the Syro-Chaldaic word for ἐπιούσιον was מחד, which signifies “to-morrow's,” that is, our “future,” or “daily” bread. “Give us this day the bread for the morrow,”[201] certainly was synonymous with, “Give us this day our [pg 138] daily bread.” It is curious that the Protestant Reformers, shrinking from translating the word ἐπιούσιον according to its apparently legitimate rendering, lest they should give colour to the Catholic idea of the daily bread of the Christian soul being the Eucharist, should have adopted a rendering more in accordance with an Apocryphal than with a Canonical Gospel.
In St. Matthew, xxiii. 35, Jesus reproaches the Jews for their treatment of the prophets, and declares them responsible for all the blood shed upon the earth, “from the blood of righteous Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, son of Barachias, whom ye slew between the Temple and the altar.”