תולדות יהושוע
(History of Jesus)
Hebrew Gospel of Matthew
This is the photograph of a page of the Hebrew Gospel of
Matthew, contained in a Sephardic treaty known by the name of �Even Bohan�. It
was compiled and completed around the year 1385, by the Jewish doctor Ben Shem
Tov Ben Isaac Shaprut, in the town of Tarazona de
Aragon (Spain).
Although his original work is lost, there are several complete copies
of his manuscripts, produced between the 15th and the 18th centuries. One of the
copies of his thirteenth book, written in semi cursive Sephardic
writing and dated in 1584, is today preserved in the Library of the
University of
Leiden, and starts on page
413, the report of Besorath Matahy or the Good News according to
Matthew.
This gospel of Matthew compiled in 18 manuscript pages, surely comes from
copies of previous Jewish copyists, and even if in the 80's was considered to be
a version of Greek or Latin texts, a linguistic study conducted by George Howard of the Mercer University, Georgia (USA),
verified that the Hebrew text of the Gospel could not be explained as a
translation from Greek.
First, we often find in the text sentences constructed with words coming
from roots phonetically very similar, but with a totally different meaning
(paronomasia). This wording is meant to embellish the text and is very typical
of the wording we find in the Hebrew Scriptures, and also in the way that Jesus
used to speak.
For example when he says: �If your eye
causes you to stumble (tajshilja) throw it
away from you (tashlijeha)�, (Matthew 18:9) he uses two words with a
very different meaning but with a very similar reading, and this kind of wording
would not come to mind if the text simply was a translation from Greek or
Latin.
Second, the Greek version of Matthew seems at some points, difficult to
understand, while the Hebrew text is easily understood, besides, it does not seem logical that a fourteenth-century rabbi
would be interested in translating a text condemned by his own people, striving
also to beautify it.
However, even if the Hebrew Gospel was a translation from the Greek one,
the fact is that the translated text is somewhat different from the one we have
today, and we may consistently conclude that due to the troubled history of
Christianity after the death of the apostles, the Shem Tov compilation differs
from the current text because it does not include the corrections and the
interpolations experienced by the Greek Scriptures during the first
centuries.
The study of the sources of the canonical writings is not only
interesting it also is an essential measure for a better understanding of
Scripture. Paul recommends the disciples to do so and be alert, when he tells
them: �I beseech you brethren, that in regard to the
presence of our Lord Jesus Christ and our assembling with him, do not be easily
confused or confounded by speeches, by statements allegedly inspired or by any
letter that pretends to be ours and says that the Day of Yahuh is
imminent.
Do not be deceived by anyone, because it can not arrive before the
apostasy, before the man of sin reveals himself, the son of destruction, the
opponent who exalts himself over anything considered divine or object of
reverence and taking seat in a divine place, holds divinity�. (2Thessalonians
2:1..4)
In line with this warning, Peter says:: �Consider that the patience of our Lord is for salvation, as
our beloved brother Paul writes, exposing these things in all his letters,
according to the wisdom to him granted. However, there is in them some things
which are difficult to understand, and are twisted by the ignorant and the
immature, as they also do with the rest of Scriptures for their own
destruction�. (2 Peter
3:15..16)
The Christian historian Eusebius
of Caesarea (263-339), heir to the extensive library of Pamphilus, that kept a copy of the
original text of Matthew, if not the same original text, confirmed in chapter 24
of the third book of his �Ecclesiastical
History� that Matthew �wrote in Hebrew the Gospel that bears his
name�. It is therefore well known that the Gospel of Matthew was
written in Hebrew and Greek, and that the Hebrew text circulated among the
Jewish Christians.
Jerome (331-420), author of
the Latin version of Scripture known as the 'Vulgate', confirms the existence of
the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew and declares: �Matthew,
who is also Levi ... composed a gospel ... in Hebrew language and characters ...
Furthermore, it is preserved to this day in Caesarea, in the library so diligently collected by the
martyr Pamphilus�. (Catalogue of
Ecclesiastical Writers)
The Hebrew version compiled by Shem Tov comes as does the Greek one, of
Matthew, but is to some extent independent and confirms a fact now widely
recognized: the words that we read today
at the end of Chapter 28, are not
those written by the apostle.
These are the words that conclude chapter 28 in Matthew's Hebrew Gospel, and their
translation:
18 Jesus came to them and said: �All power in
heaven and earth has been given to me,
19 you go to them
20 and take care of them so that they fulfill all the things I
have commissioned you. (I am)
with you
forever�.
The Greek version used by Eusebius poured more widely these verses, but
in no way changing the sense of the Hebrew text, because when he quotes in his
Ecclesiastical History (Book 3,
Chapter 5:2), part of Matthew 28:19, he writes: �Poreuthentes
math�teusate panta ta ethn� en to onomati mou�, or �Go and make
disciples of all nations in my name�, and when he cites the
entire conclusion in his Evangelical
Demonstration (Book 3, Chapter 6, paragraph 32, and Book 5, Chapter 26,
paragraph 3), he writes: �Go and make disciples of all nations in my
name, teaching them to observe everything I have
commanded you. Behold, I am with you every day until the end of
times�.
Frederick Cornwallis
Conybeare
(1856 -1924) a British orientalist, Fellow of
University College in Oxford, and Professor of Theology at the University of
Oxford, gave testimony to this fact and wrote: �Of the patristic witnesses to
the text of the New Testament as it stood in the Greek MSS (manuscripts),
from about 300-340, none is so important as Eusebius of Caesarea, for he
lived in the greatest Christian library of that age, namely that which Origen
and Pamphilus had collected. It is no exaggeration to say that from this single collection of
manuscripts at Caesarea derives the larger part
of the surviving ante-Nicene (prior to the Council of Nicaea)
literature�
It is therefore import to ask how Eusebius read this text. He cites it
again and again in his works written between 300 and 336, namely in his long
commentaries on the Psalms, on Isaiah, his Demonstratio Evangelica, his
Theophany only preserved in an old Syriac version in a Nitrian codex in the
British Museum written in AD 411, in his famous �History of the
Church, and in his panegyric of the emperor Constantine. I have, after a
moderate search in these works of Eusebius, found eighteen citations of Matthew
28:19, and always in the following form:
�Go and make disciples of all the nations in my name, teaching them to
observe all things, whatsoever I commanded you�.
(Zeitschrift fur die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft,
edited by Erwin Preuschen in Darmstadt in 1901)
The Hebrew Gospel of Matthew is in the following
libraries:
Library Add. No. 26964
Ms. Heb. 28, Rijksuniveriteit Library, Leiden
Ms. Mich. 119. Bodeleian Library, Oxford
Ms. Opp. Add. 4 '72. Bodeleian Library, Oxford
Ms. 2426 (Marx 16) Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, New
York.
Ms. 2279 (Marx 18) Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, New
York.
Ms. 2209 (Marx 19) Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, New
York.
Ms. 2234 (Marx 15) Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, New
York.
The Hebrew version of Matthew compiled by Shem Tov, is also available
upon request, at the Mercer University Press, Macon, Georgia ISBN 0-86554-470-0.
And it can also be obtained from the Century Publishers of
California.