Gospel of Hebrews
The Hebrew Gospel (καθ᾿ Ήβραίους), Latin secundum Hebraeos is an apocryphal gospel that was not included in the canon of the Bible and was obviously used by Jewish Christians in the Greek-speaking area in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.
There is a problem in research because it is not clear whether the Hebrew, Ebionite and Nazarene gospels are three synonyms for the same scripture or whether they are different scriptures. A demarcation from the Ebioniter and the Nazarene Gospels, which were also sometimes referred to as the Hebrew Gospels, is z. B. performed by Vielhauer and Wilson. The reconstruction of the text is based on quotations from the early church writers Clemens of Alexandria , Origen , Papias and Hegesippus and others. a. only possible in fragments.
According to the church father Jerome, the gospel was used by “ Nazarenes ”. It had the following characteristics: It was written in Aramaic , was close to the Gospel of Matthew , and was entitled Gospel according to the Hebrews .
The preserved text is classified according to the literary genre as a narrative gospel like the canonical gospels and covers the period from baptism to the Easter apparitions. It contains both proverbs and narrative pieces. The traditional pieces are very independent and not a further development of the canonical gospels, nevertheless the texts are secondary to Paul and the Synoptics .
The work was received and recognized early in Egypt, so it may come from the Alexandrian Jewish Christianity, but a connection to the tradition in Palestine can be assumed. The constitutional period is very difficult: Terminus ad quem is a quote from Clemens, Terminus a quo is the martyrdom of the Lord Brother James . Overall, it appears that it was written in Egypt in the 1st half of the 2nd century, but it is not possible to find out more details due to the fragmentary tradition. James, the Lord's brother, is central and stands before Peter. Its origin is dated by Klaus Berger around the year 140 AD.
literature
- Klaus Berger, Christiane Nord : The New Testament and Early Christian Scriptures. Frankfurt, 1999 ISBN 3-458-16970-9
- Robert McLachlan Wilson: Apocrypha II . In: TRE Vol. 3 (1978), pp. 316-362; here: pp. 327–330 (Jewish Christian Gospels) Google Booksearch
- Philipp Vielhauer : History of early Christian literature. Introduction to the New Testament, the Apocrypha, and the Apostolic Fathers. de Gruyter, Berlin / New York: 1978 ISBN 3-11-007763-9 , p. 648 ff.
- Jörg Frey : Fragments of the Gospel of Hebrews. In: Ancient Christian Apocrypha in German translation , edited by Christoph Markschies and Jens Schröter in conjunction with Andreas Heiser. Volume I, Gospels and Related , Part 1, Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2012, pp. 593–606.
