The Gospel of the Hebrews

About this edition

The Gospel of the Hebrews is known through quotations and reports by other authors; no complete text is available. This reading selection draws on M. R. James’s 1924 edition: quotations in Clement, Origen and Jerome, reports in Eusebius, and later testimony. The labels “according to the Hebrews,” “Hebrew Gospel,” “Hebrew Matthew” and references to Nazarene readers do not always establish whether a single book is meant. This collection is therefore not a reconstructed continuous gospel. Sections 1–5 contain quotations with their introductory wording; 6–7 give reports about the book; 8–10 present separately labelled comparative and disputed material. The full collections attributed to the Gospels of the Nazarenes and Ebionites are not included. This work is also distinct from the New Testament Epistle to the Hebrews.

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The ten sections and 22 passage numbers are Life for God reading and linking aids, not chapters of the lost gospel. Each passage names its source. Parentheses may retain James’s explanation or alternative wording. Ellipses mark his abridgements, not necessarily manuscript losses. Editorial explanations are kept separate from quotations. These are selected testimonies from James’s chapter, not every fragment ever assigned to Jewish-Christian gospels.

Translation notes

1. 1:1 — James prints Stromata I.9.45. The reference is corrected to II.9.45: the saying occurs in book II, chapter 9, checked in a complete English translation of the Stromata. The words “in the Gospel according to the Hebrews” belong to Clement’s introduction to the quotation.
2. 1:2 — This second passage does not repeat the gospel’s title. The longer saying is placed alongside it as a parallel in the same author. A related sequence of seeking, finding, wonder and reigning occurs in the tradition of Thomas, saying 2; resemblance does not identify the two books.
3. 2:1 — The image “my mother the Holy Spirit” is retained. James relates it to the feminine grammatical gender of the Hebrew word for spirit. This can help explain the image, but does not establish the lost gospel’s language or identify the Spirit with Mary. Thabor is not replaced with another mountain.
4. 2:1 — Origen introduces the saying conditionally: “if any accept.” His qualification is retained. The ellipsis represents James’s abbreviated continuation, not damage to an extant manuscript of this gospel.
5. 2:2 — The version in the homily on Jeremiah lacks the detail about a hair found in 2:1. The repetition preserves how another work quotes the saying; the two forms are not combined.
6. 3:1 — Jerome cites the passage while commenting on Isaiah 11:2 and associates his source with Nazarene readers. Thus even this named citation does not settle how Jewish-Christian gospels should be distinguished. “The whole fount” retains the metaphor of the Spirit’s fullness.
7. 3:1 — The Russian feminine forms follow the maternal image of the Spirit found in related testimony. The English first-person wording does not itself mark gender. This is a translation choice, not a claim to have checked a lost Semitic manuscript.
8. 4:1 — Jerome gives the words about joy and love in his commentary on Ephesians 5:4. Their conditional form is preserved; an explanatory moral is not inserted into the saying.
9. 4:2 — Grieving a brother’s spirit is retained as the source’s expression. The reference to the greatest sins belongs to Jerome’s report about the book; it is not a complete list of those sins.
10. 5:1 — The opening claim to have translated the gospel into Greek and Latin is Jerome’s. It is not the publication statement of this edition, nor does it give us access to his lost translations.
11. 5:1 — Jerome joins excerpts with “after a little” and “immediately it is added.” His method of quotation is retained without inventing transitions. The priest’s servant receives the linen cloth but is unnamed; identifying him as Malchus would be conjecture.
12. 5:1 — “James the Just” is the designation in the quotation Jerome includes in his chapter on James, the Lord’s brother. The report of an appearance to James may be compared with 1 Corinthians 15:7, which does not narrate the bread, oath or linen cloth.
13. 6:1 — “He” refers to Papias, whom Eusebius is discussing. Eusebius reports a story without supplying its full text here. Neither the woman nor a specific sin is named; John 7:53–8:11 is not inserted in place of the missing testimony.
14. 7:1 — This is a brief report of a source used by Hegesippus. It does not quote the material he took from the gospel.
15. 7:2 — “Among them” refers to Eusebius’s discussion of categories of church writings. Reporting that some included a book in a particular group does not mean Eusebius himself accepted it into an agreed canon.
16. 7:3 — The statement about the Ebionites is Eusebius’s report; the parenthesis supplies James’s compressed context. A shared title in different authors does not prove they read the same recension. The separate collection of Ebionite testimony is outside this selection.
17. 7:4 — Here Jerome is speaking about Hebrew Matthew. Its identity with every other passage called the Gospel of the Hebrews is not assumed. “To this day” refers to Jerome’s time, not to the present state of a library in Caesarea.
18. 7:5 — Stichometry measures length in lines, not modern verses or chapters. The recorded figure is 2,200. James’s comparison—300 fewer lines than Matthew—is moved from the list to this note. The figure cannot reconstruct the lost pages.
19. 8:1 — The passage survives in the Latin version of a commentary on Matthew associated with Origen. James distinguishes this case from Origen’s secure quotations; the insertion’s exact origin is not established here. Its qualification about non-authoritative use is retained.
20. 8:2 — “The second of the rich men” presupposes context this excerpt does not supply. A story about the first rich man is not reconstructed.
21. 8:3 — The rebuke contrasts a claim to keep the law with failure to help hungry brothers. The detail of the man scratching his head is retained. Comparison with Matthew 19:16–24 does not turn this version into Matthew’s text.
22. 8:4 — The unusual “son of Joanna” follows James and is not silently changed to a more familiar name. The needle’s eye is rendered literally; the source gives no account of a city gate bearing that name.
23. 9:1 — Mahar is retained as the word recorded by Jerome. “Super-substantial” renders the term he is discussing in the bread petition. The interpretation “of the morrow” is Jerome’s report, not a new collation of an Aramaic manuscript.
24. 10:1 — James quotes this story through E. A. Wallis Budge’s Miscellaneous Coptic Texts (1915), p. 637. It is a later work attributed to Cyril, not a verified transcript of Cyril of Jerusalem. The claim about a power named Michael and seven months is spoken by the monk whom another character challenges.
25. 10:1 — The ellipsis reflects James’s abridgement. James himself does not identify the book mentioned here with the gospel discussed earlier. The material is included separately as evidence for the use of the title.
26. 10:2 — The question about five gospels is a line within a polemical narrative. It reports neither the discovery of a fifth manuscript nor the contents of an early library.
27. 10:3 — James separately gives the fuller ending of the sentence he previously abridged. It is therefore not appended to 10:1 as a new event. The lack of a separate reference to resurrection does not by itself prove its denial; it may reflect compression.