Quote:
Originally Posted by Scott Pitta
Eusebius said that Matthew originally was penned in Hebrew. If there are others from early Christianity who say the same thing, I have yet to read their testimony.
I don't think any of the early church fathers ever quoted from a Hebrew Matthew. IF they did, can we have the citation ??
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Many of the early church fathers were greeks, who had no knowledge of Hebrew so how could they quote a language they did not know?
Papias 150-170 AD “Matthew composed the words in the Hebrew dialect, and each translated as he was able.”
Ireneus 170 AD “Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect.”
Clement of Alexandria 150 AD -215 AD “Which also is written in the gospel according to the Hebrews: He who marveled shall reign, and he who reigned shall rest.”
Origen 210 AD “The first [Gospel] is written according to Matthew, the same that was once a tax collector, but afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ who having published it for the Jewish believers, wrote it in Hebrew.”
Epiphanius 370 AD “They [The Nazarenes] have the Gospel according to Matthew quite complete in Hebrew, for this Gospel is certainly still preserved among them as it was first written, in Hebrew letters.”
Jerome 382 AD “Matthew, who is also Levi, and from a tax collector came to be an Apostle first of all evangelists composed a Gospel of Christ in Judea in the Hebrew language and letters, for the benefit of those of the circumcision who had believed, who translated it into Greek is not sufficiently ascertained. Furthermore, the Hebrew itself is preserved to this day in the library at Caesarea, which the martyr Pamphilus so diligently collected. I also was allowed by the Nazarenes who use this volume in the Syrian city of Borea to copy it. In which is to be remarked that, wherever the evangelist…. makes use of the testimonies of the Old Scripture, he does not follow the authority of the seventy translators, but that of the Hebrew.”
Hegesippus, Hippolytus, Ephrem the Syrian, John Chrysostom, Theodore of Cyrrhus, Mario Mercator, Annarikhus, Didymus (the blind), Philip Sidetes, Pantaenus and many others also mention this Hebrew Gospel.
The Hebrew Gospel and the Development of the Synoptic Tradition (2009) by New Testament scholar James R. Edwards.