HEBREWS, Gospel According to the. - An apocryphon that arose in the Jewish-Christian milieu. It is debated whether it should be identified with other apocryphal gospels called of the Nazarenes (v.), of the Ebionites (v.), of the Twelve Apostles (v. APOCRITI LIBRI).
The "classic" solution (so called by E. Amann), commonly held until 1900 and still supported by G. Bonaccorsi, groups those apocrypha into two gospels: one orthodox (v. according to the Hebrews, to be identified with the gospel of the Nazarenes); the other heterodox (gospel of the Ebionites, to be identified with the gospel of the Twelve Apostles).
In this solution the Gospel according to the Hebrews would be the one that converted Hebrews called simply "the gospel." It would have been composed in Aramaic toward the end of the 1st century, then soon translated into Greek. This Greek would already have been known by St. Ignatius Martyr and cited by Clement of Alexandria and Origen. In the time of Eusebius the Greek version was no longer known, but the Aramaic original was preserved in the library of Caesarea in Palestine. St. Jerome (whose assertions are called into question by G. Bardy in Mélanges de science religieuse, 3 [1946], pp. 5-36) would have consulted it, would also have found a copy at Berei (Aleppo) among the Nazarenes (gospel of the Nazarenes), and would have made a version of it in Greek and in Latin. Some hold that these were partial versions for personal use; Bardy maintains that St. Jerome only had the intention of translating it. In the commentaries and works of St. Jerome fragments of the Latin version would be preserved, while in the marginal notes of certain Greek codices of Matthew fragments of the Greek version would be preserved, with the heading: τὸ Ἰωσδάκον.
St. Jerome (followed by Zahn and Hilgenfeld) considered it outright as the Aramaic original of Matthew. Harnack considers it independent of the Synoptics; Lagrange, on the other hand, maintains its dependence.
The few fragments that have come down to us (eleven in Bonaccorsi's edition, pp. 1-7) do not allow the question to be adequately resolved.
Other solutions are given by A. Schmidtke (1912) and by H. Waitz (1912). The former distinguishes three gospels: a) of the Nazarenes (Aramaic version (or Targum) of our canonical Matthew = τὸ Ἰωσδάκον); b) Gospel according to the Hebrews, to be identified with that of the Ebionites (heretical); c) of the Twelve (ethnic-Christian, infected with Parsism).
H. Waitz likewise distinguishes three gospels, but differently: a) of the Nazarenes, orthodox Jewish-Christian, written originally in Greek, dependent on a pre-canonical Matthew (= τὸ Ἰωσδάκον); b) of the Ebionites = gospel of the Twelve, heterodox, which would have influenced the pseudo-Clementine writings (II Clem.); c) Gospel according to the Hebrews, mentioned by Clement of Alexandria (Strom., V, 14, 96), related to Ἰόγος Ἰησοῦ (of the Oxyrhynchus papyrus 653, of which it would be the source); it would have been written in Greek by a Jewish-Christian toward the middle of the 2nd century, in opposition to the heretical gospel according to the Egyptians (v.).
Bibliography4 works
Pietro De Ambroggi