Gospel of Gamalia

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The Gamaliel Gospel or Gospel of Gamaliel (EvGam) is a fragmentarily transmitted apocryphal gospel.

Lore

From the original work, only two Sahidan parchment leaves from a single manuscript with the original page numbers 53/54 and 69/70 have survived. The manuscript with the signature copte 127 fol. 37 and copte 129 fol. 38 is in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris . There is, however, a homiletic revision and revision of the Gospel of Gamalia by the bishop Cyriakus from Oxyrhynchus , known as the Lamentation of Mary , which was first written in Coptic and then translated into Arabic and in the 14th century into Ethiopian. The bishop is mentioned several times in other sources, but nothing is known about him. The Lamentation of Mary is available in the Arabic and Ethiopian versions in several manuscripts and gives us knowledge of the entire content of the script, but not in the Coptic wording.

Date and place of origin, original language

The Egyptologist and philologist Pierre Lacau did not comment on the dating of the manuscript, which would also be the latest possible point in time for the creation of the work ( terminus ante quem ), but set it earlier than M.-A. van den Oudenrijn , who dated it to the 2nd half of the 5th century. It is known that the writing was known in Oxyrhynchus, but so far there is no reliable indication of the place of origin. So far there has been no systematic investigation into whether the work was originally written in Coptic, as Oudenrijn and A. De Santos Otero thought, or whether it was a translation from Greek, as Lacau assumed.

Title and literary genre

The specified author is Gamaliel , named in the New Testament as a contemporary of Jesus , so it is a pseudepigraphic text. The original title is not known, the title “Gamalielevangelium” has only been developed. The Old Church nowhere mentions a Gamali gospel. The text, as can be deduced from the Lamentation of Mary, is, in terms of its genre, a simple and well-structured narrative of the passion story . The material of the story is in the tradition of the Nicodemus and Pilate literature .

content

The Gospel of Gamalia wants to prove Pilate's innocence in the death of Jesus . It even tries to make him appear as a Christian. Accordingly, the guilt for the death of Jesus falls on the Jewish authorities. The entire scripture is pervaded by an anti-Jewish attitude. There is also an apologetic interest in providing further evidence for the resurrection of Jesus . Pilate thus acts as a witness for the resurrection of a dead person at the tomb of Jesus (cf. Mt 27 : 52–53  EU ). According to Oudenrijn, the role of Herod comes from the Gospel of Peter , which was still in use in Egypt for a long time.

Preserved parts of the Coptic fragments

With the help of the Lamentation of Mary , the two fragments can be brought into an overall context. At the point where the traditional text begins, it is assumed that Pilate is convinced of the resurrection of Jesus through a dream vision and wants to prove this to the Jews. He interrogates the soldiers who guarded the tomb, but who deny the truth and tell different stories. Pilate therefore has the soldiers locked up. He goes with the centurion and the rulers of the Jews and the high priests to the tomb of Jesus , where they find the shrouds but no body. Pilate weeps over the light scars and hugs them. Contact with them heals one of the captain's eyes that he lost in a fight.
There is a four-sided gap in the manuscript. Next, the company comes to a well that is said to contain the body of Jesus. In fact, it is the body of the thief who repented on the cross. Pilate now has his body wrapped in the shrouds of Jesus, whereupon the dead thief comes back to life. This is taken as evidence of the resurrection of Jesus. The description of the actual resurrection of Jesus is not contained in the existing text fragment.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Christoph Markschies , Jens Schröter (ed.): Ancient Christian Apocrypha in German translation. I. Volume, Tübingen 2012, p. 1309.
  2. ↑ Edgar Hennecke , Wilhelm Schneemelcher (Ed.): New Testament Apokryphen. Vol. 1, 1990 p. 442.
  3. ↑ Christoph Markschies, Jens Schröter (ed.): Ancient Christian Apocrypha in German translation. I. Volume, Tübingen 2012, p. 1309.
  4. ↑ Günter Stemberger : Jews and Christians in The Holy Land: Palestine in The Fourth Century , Edinburgh 2000. ISBN 0-567-08699-2 , pp. 110–111, quoted from: M.-A. van den Oudenrijn: Gamaliel. Ethiopian texts on Pilatus literature (Freiburg, 1959).

literature

Editions and translations

  • Pierre Lacau : Fragments d'apocryphes coptes. In: Mémoires / Institut Français d'Archéologie Orientale. Cairo 1904. pp. 13-22. (French)
  • Eugène Revillout : Les apocryphes coptes. Publiés et traduits par E. Revillout. Tape. 1. Les évangiles des douze apôtres et de S. Barthélemy. Firmin-Didot, Paris 1904, published 1907. pp. 170–174 (= Tournhout 1946). (Coptic, French)
  • Hans Martin Schenke : The Gamali Gospel. In: Christoph Markschies , Jens Schröter (ed.): Ancient Christian Apocrypha in German translation. Volume I: Gospels and Related. 7th edition, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2012. pp. 1310-1313 (German translation of the Coptic fragments)
  • Marcus-Antonius van den Oudenrijn : Gamaliel. Ethiopian texts on Pilate literature . In: Spicilegium Friburgense. 4, Univ.-Verlag, Freiburg (Switzerland) 1959. (Ethiopian, German)

Investigations