User talk:Ignocrates/Gospel of the Hebrews

The purpose of this work-in-progress page is to create new sections for the existing GH article. This draft article will allow me to keep the overall layout of the article in mind as I populate the new sections with content. It will also let me do some noodling with the layout and content without disrupting the main-space article. Ignocrates (talk) 01:22, 27 March 2013 (UTC)

Jewish wisdom tradition
p.39 – "The theological conception of this Gospel is dominated by Jewish-Christian Wisdom Theology. Wisdom is represented in this Gospel by the Holy Spirit who is called "Mother". ... "The Spirit descends upon man but according to this Gospel, it is Jesus in particular who is looked for. Anybody who possesses the Spirit may be called Son but Jesus is the Son with a very special mission. One of the characteristics of the Spirit is that a man starts a new life during which he gradually comes nearer to his destination. The final stage is to reign and rest. In this situation man has arrived at a point at which he is invulnerable to evil forces which are now subjected to him. After his baptism Jesus is said to reign for eternity."
 * Klijn (1992) quotations

p.40 – "In other words, the Gospel according to the Hebrews is a product of one of the early Egyptian Wisdom Schools."

Alexandrian Gnosticism
Klauck, pp.38-9: See table p.39 comparing Strom. 2.45.5 and Strom. 5.96.3 with GThom 2 and POxy 645.5-9. "Behind the contents of this logion (though at some distance) stands Jesus' logion about seeking and finding (Mt 7.7). ... 'Reigning' recalls the central messsage of Jesus' preaching, viz. the sovereinty of God, in which all who are saved will have a share; our logion, however, does not understand this 'reigning' in an escatological sense, but as something that is present now, or else is timeless. ... Gnostics came more and more to identify 'rest' as the highest gift of salvation."
 * Klauck (2003) quotations

Klauck, p.39: "The logion contains an intentional paradox: only the restless activity of seeking leads to the rest for which one yearns."

Hermeticism
p.160 – "It may be that the saying which describes the progression that leads to salvation was familiar in Gnostic circles, especially in those regions influenced by the Alexandrian "Hermetica", for such a progression of seeking and marveling and finding salvation in oneness with God is a fundamental concept of the Corpus Hermeticum."
 * Lapham (2003) quotations

pp.160-1 – "In many second century writings the notion of 'rest' has to be understood not only as the ultimate goal of the seeker of truth, the end of the chain, as it were, which leads to salvation; it also possesses a mystical connection, descriptive of that unity of wisdom and love which lies at the heart of the Godhead. It is in this sense that another significant quotation from the Gospel of the Hebrews must surely be understood. In his Commentary on Isaiah, Jerome makes mention of the 'resting' of the Holy Spirit on Jesus at his Baptism, referring to a passage which he claims to have found in 'the Gospel written in Hebrew speech, which the Nazaraeans read'." (Jerome, Comm. Isaiah 4)

p.162 – "The importance of this passage lies in the christological insights it affords. In one sense it might be taken to imply the preexistence of the Son, rather than his adoption at the moment of his baptism. From the beginning of time ('in all the prophets') the Father had awaited the eschatological moment of the union and rest with his preexistent Son. ... It is this concept of unity within the Godhead that underlies this pericope from the Gospel of the Hebrews."

Hegesippus
I need to add something about Hegesippus after the first sentence about Eusebius and the Antilegomena. Eusebius states that Hegesippus used the GH (without quoting from it). This means the text was in wide circulation by c.180. Questions: 1. does Eusebius name Hegesippus' book where he mentions the GH? 2. what is the context of this mention by Eusebius in the H.E.? 3. can anything be inferred about where Hegesippus wrote his book when he used the GH as a source?

Eusebius mentions Hegesippus 7 times - partial list H.E. 2.23, 3.20, 3.32, 4.8, 4.22. The last citation (4.22.8) is where he mentions the GH. Hegesippus' writings were known as Hypomneumata, which translates loosely as Memoranda, i.e. notes on things recalled from memory. The Hypomneumata were organized into 5 books. Eusebius quotes from the fifth book. Hegesippus came to Rome under Pope Anicetus (155-166) and wrote during the time of Pope Eleuterus (175-189). However, Hegesippus is supposed to have died in April 180, so that would place his time in Rome at c.160 to 180 and the time-frame he wrote the Hypomneumata 175-180. The last book was presumably closer to 180. So, a time-frame of c.178 +/- 1 is highly likely for composition of the fifth book. Eusebius reports that Hegesippus traveled through Corinth on his way to Rome and stayed for some time there (how long?). Also, Hegesippus apparently had a working knowledge of Aramaic and Hebrew but wrote in Greek. The Hypomneumata were never translated into Latin. He distinguishes two apocryphal gospels - the GH and a Syriac (gospel), which presumably indicates the GH was written in Greek. So, Hegesippus quoted from the Greek GH as a source for his fifth book in Rome c.178.

One book contained a history of the bishops of Jerusalem and teachings handed down by those bishops as Church tradition. Another book was a polemical treatise against the Gnostics and other heresies. One of the topics of his fifth book was a historical tradition about the Jerusalem Church that included the death of James the Just. Ok, so much for my hypomneumata. Now I need to nail down sources.

The mention by Eusebius of Hegesippus' use of the GH in his fifth book reads as follows:

"He sets down certain things from the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Syriac (Gospel) and, in particular, from (writings in) the Hebrew tongue, thus showing that that he was himself a believer of Hebrew origin. And he relates other matters as well, on the strength of unwritten Jewish tradition." (Hist. eccl. 4.22.8)

sfn|Skarsaune|2007|p=339 The entire section on Hegesippus is pp.338-48. Interestingly, this follows immediately after a heresiology by Hegesippus on the 7 sects of Judaism and how the Jewish-Christian heresies and then Gnostic heresies sprung from them. Skarsaune's paraphrase of the entire passage is as follows:

"Until then the Church had been an undefiled virgin, but now Thebuthis, in revenge for not having been made bishop, began secretly to corrupt her from the seven sects among the people, to which he himself belonged. From this came two rounds of heresies: first Simon and Simonians, Cleobius and Cleobians, Dositheus and Dositheans, Gorthaeus and Goratheni and Masbotheans; next Menandrianits, Marcianists, Carpocratians, Valentinians, Basilidians, and Satornilians." (4.22.5-6) p.346 "Now these were the different opinions in the circumcision, among the sons of the Israelites, against the tribe of Judah and the Messiah: Essenes, Galilaeans, Hemerobaptists, Masbotheans, Samaritans, Sadducees, Pharisees." (4.22.7) p.344

Hegesippus attributes all opposition against Jesus the Messiah and his Davidic relatives to these seven sects. After reporting on this heresiology, Eusebius cites the GH and the Syriac Gospel as evidence to convince the reader that Hegesippus had extensive knowledge of Jewish and early Palestinian Jewish-Christian traditions. (see Skarsaune, p.18) This is the context of the mention of the GH by Eusebius.

Canonical Lists
Need to clarify and expand on the last sentence about the GH being regarded as a heretical text by the end of the 4th century. Could mention the Gelasian Decree c.550. Anything closer to c.400? See Bruce Metzger's book, The Canon of the New Testament. Third Council of Carthage 397, Letter of Rufinus c.400, and Letter of Pope Innocent I 405. None mention the GH as among the texts rejected from the canon. Argument from silence? All three lists contain the Wisdom of Solomon and the Wisdom of Sirach (Ecclesiasticus) as canonical books.

Cyril of Jerusalem
After discussing the closing of the canon, need to add a follow-on sentence or two about Cyril of Jerusalem and the polemical mention of the GH in the treatise on Mary Theotokos attributed to him. This was contained in a collection of Coptic writings now believed to date to the 6th century.

Justin Martyr
Klijn and Skarsaune both mention a baptismal theophany in the Dialogue with Trypho written by Justin Martyr that has the same description as the GH. The implication of this observation, if accurate, is that the GH was circulating in Rome by c.160 in Greek or Latin (Justin did not know Aramaic or Hebrew).

Jewish-Christian Gospels
Hans-Josef Klauck Apocryphal gospels: an introduction (2003) p.37, "In more recent years (cf. [P. L.] Schmidt) in a pendulum swing away from this skepticism, there has been a tendency to regard Jerome as more trustworthy. Against this hypothesis, however, it must be pointed out that we possess three extra-canonical narratives of the baptism of Jesus (see below) which vary to such an extent that they cannot come from one or even two gospels alone."

Gregory, Andrew; Foster, Paul ed.; The non-canonical gospels: "Here I differ from AFJ Klijn, Jewish-Christian Gospel Tradition (VCSupp XVII; Leiden: Brill, 1992) 41, where he writes that 'The presence of three Jewish Christian Gospels is an established fact.' "

Craig A. Evans, Ancient texts for New Testament studies: a guide to the background: "that the church fathers refer when they speak of a Gospel of the Ebionites, or a Gospel of the Nazarenes."

Recovered from the wip page. I don't know if anything is useful here. Maybe references. Ignocrates (talk) 17:47, 2 April 2013 (UTC)

Thoughts about how to lay out the first paragraph:

1. There are believed to be three Jewish-Christian Gospels, which are known only from fragments preserved in the writings of the Church Fathers.

2. Because of their fragmentary nature, the relationship of the gospels to each other is uncertain, and it has been a matter of scholarly investigation.

3. It has been recognized (since Klijn) that the Gospel of the Ebionites, known only to Epiphanius, is a gospel harmony of the Synoptic Gospels and distinct from the others.

4. The GH and GN are believed to be different gospels with distinguishing features (pair-wise comparisons - language of composition, Greek vs. Aramaic, place of circulation, Egypt vs. Coele Syria, tendency of the text, wisdom tradition vs. "like Matthew", etc.) The difficulty in assigning fragments is due primarily to uncertainly over the reliability of the testimony of Jerome.

5. Recent scholarship has challenged the majority 3GH view. There is currently no consensus, or at least a weaker consensus. We don't need to get into 3GH vs. 2GH or 3GH vs. multi-GH hypotheses.

The sources are Vielhauer & Strecker and Klijn for the majority view. Ehrman (2011) and Klauck represent the weaker or no consensus view. We don't need to cite Gregory and Luomanen for minority views in the article. Minority views will be covered in detail in the J-C Gospel article. Ignocrates (talk) 00:36, 3 April 2013 (UTC)

Other Sources
Teachings of Silvanus

Excerpts from The Roots of Egyptian Christianity

 * Earliest Christianity in Egypt; Some Observations: by Birger A.Pearson

p.132 – "the theory of Walter Bauer that the earliest type of Christianity in Egypt was 'heretical', specifically 'gnostic', a view widely held, is cogently called into question, if not definitively overturned" by the work of Colin H. Roberts on Egyptian papyri in Manuscript, Society, and Belief in Early Christian Egypt, The Schweich Lectures of the British Academy for 1977, OUP (1979). p.134 – "Robert's study has shed important new light on Christian origins in Egypt. He concludes that the preponderance of the evidence points to Jerusalem as the earliest source of Egyptian Christianity, that the earliest Christianity in Egypt was Jewish, and that, furthermore, the earliest Christians in Egypt would naturally have been regarded as Jews and indistinguishable as a separate religious group. It is, of course, obvious that Alexandria, the home of the largest Jewish community of the Diaspora, would have been the first place to which the earliest Christian missionaries to Egypt came."

p.136 – "A hint of the existence of a Christian community in Egypt in the forties of our era is provided by the story in Acts of Apollos, one of Paul's co-workers in Ephesus and Corinth. He is said to have been 'a Jew ... a native of Alexandria ... an eloquent man, powerfully trained in the scriptures' (Acts 18:24). A variant reading of Acts 18:25 (Codex Bezae) asserts that this Apollos 'had been instructed in the word in his home country'. This reading, if historically accurate, would presuppose the existence of a Jewish Christian community in Alexandria by the late 40s or early 50s C.E., i.e., during the reign of the Emperor Claudius (41-54)."

p.148 – "It is to be expected that, in such a large and well-established Jewish population as existed in first-century Alexandria, a considerable degree of religious and cultural diversity would be found. ... From the various writings of Philo alone we can obtain a good picture of the range of attitudes toward the law found among the Jews of Alexandria, from a strict literalist interpretation to an espousal of the kind of allegorical interpretation represented by Philo himself, from a total rejection of the Scriptures and their 'myths' to a spiritual reading of the Scriptures leading to a rational abandonment of the observances of ritual law. Apocalyptic and gnostic groups were also probably present in the Alexandrian Jewish community."

p.149 – "The earliest Christians of Alexandria are to be placed in this variegated Jewish context. We should surmise that a variety of beliefs and practices were represented in Alexandrian Christianity almost from the beginning. If Walter Bauer and others can extrapolate backwards in time from such second-century gnostic teachers as Basilidas, Carpocrates, and Valentinus, it is equally valid to extrapolate into the first century other varieties of Christianity, including more 'orthodox' ones, such as are represented in other early second century literature." ... (See, Bauer, Walter, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity (1977) Fortress Press pp.44–53, and especially, p.48.) "One can plausibly trace a trajectory backwards from Clement of Alexandria and such second-century texts as the Teachings of Silvanus to a first-century religious Platonism represented on the Jewish side by Philo and on the Christian side by Apollos."

pp.149–50 – "An array of non-canonical gospels also circulated there early on, of which at least two were probably compiled in Alexandria: the Gospel of the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Egyptians. The Jewish Christian character of the former is obvious, ... Neither of these gospels is gnostic in any recognizable sense, and the application of such labels as 'unorthodox' or 'heretical' to such early Christian texts is clearly anachronistic. I would suggest that the Gospel of the Hebrews was compiled for the Jewish Christians of Alexandria, ... The earliest Christians doubtless lived in the same areas of the city as the other Jews there, and can be presumed to have participated in the life of the synagogues. They would also have worshiped in house churches, ... The final split between church and synagogue in Alexandria was late in coming, and was probably not complete until the time of the Jewish revolt under Trajan (115-17 C.E.), as a result of which the Jewish community, probably even including some Christians, was virtually exterminated."

pp.161–2 – "The second stage is represented by W. Bauer, who in 1934 repeated that we do not know much about early Christianity in Egypt. He explained this lack of knowledge on the assumption of its heterodox ideas. According to Bauer, both Jewish and Gentile Christians based themselves 'auf synkretetisch-gnostischer Grundlage'. The third stage is represented by Danielou, Hornschuh, Roberts, and Koester, who suppose that Egyptian Christianity originally showed a Jewish-Christian character. According to the latest views, therefore, to speak about Jewish Christianity in Egypt is, at the same time, to discuss early Christianity in Egypt in general, and even the origins of Egyptian Christianity."
 * Jewish Christianity in Egypt: by A.F.J. Klijn

p.163 – "Nowadays, Jewish Christianity is supposed to be a form of Christianity that is closely related to an underlying Judaism in language, ideas, and theology. The character of this language, these ideas, and that theology changes according to the form of Judaism adopted by Christians in a particular area. This form of Christianity is not necessarily 'heterodox'. The lines between heterodoxy and orthodoxy, on the one hand, and those between Christianity and Judaism, on the other, are vague."

p.166 – "This summary provides the basis for the conclusions now drawn about the origin and development of early Christianity in Egypt. Early Egyptian Christianity is characterized by pluriformity, with both Jewish and gnostic influences. ... this picture is generally correct but does not present the actual situation. It is still based upon the traditional view of an orthodox church surrounded by heretical sects of a Jewish or gnostic nature."

p.190 – "We knew that before the arrival of Christianity at Alexandria, Jewish and Platonic speculations already had been merged into a special brand of Judaism that was able to satisfy the religious and intellectual needs of widely Hellenized Jews and was also attractive to interested pagans. But now, we see better than ever how this process of reformulation and assimilation actually took place, and also how much early Christian Alexandrian theology, both in its gnostic and Catholic varieties, was directly based upon these Jewish-Platonic speculations."
 * Jewish and Platonic Speculations in Early Alexandrian Theology; Eugnostos, Philo, Valentinus, and Origen: by Roelof van den Broek

p.192 – "Jewish mystical speculations on the human shape of God or, more exactly, the manifestation of his Glory, were already known at Alexandria before the first century B.C.E. ... It is sufficient to say that at an early date speculations about the Anthropos as the hypostasized manifestation of God were known in Jewish circles at Alexandria and from there found their way into gnostic and hermetic writings."

pp.193–5 – "Eugnostus presupposes here well-known Jewish speculations on the two principal names of God in the Old Testament, Elohim and Yahweh, which in the Septuagint were rendered as theos and kurios, "God" and "Lord". According to Philo, the name God represents the creative and beneficent power of God and the name Lord his royal and punishing power. ... In any case, Eugnostus demonstrates the existence of a Jewish tradition according to which the heavenly Adam reveals God in his creative and royal powers as God and Lord. And this shows that Philo, in attributing this function to the Logos, was not original, but simply Hellenizing a Jewish myth, which, though in itself not gnostic at all, could easily be interpreted in a gnostic sense."

p.195 – "According to Eugnostus, Immortal Man is an androgynous being whose female side is identified with Wisdom, Sophia, the other hypostasized manifestation of God that played an important part in Judaism and Christianity, especially at Alexandria, as is witnessed by the Wisdom of Solomon, Philo, the Gnostics, and Clement and Origen. Anthropos and Sophia, the two basic entities of gnostic mythology, had become part of Alexandrian theology long before the arrival of Christianity. Here, in Eugnostus, they are the two sides, the male and female aspects, of one androgynous being called the Athanatos Antropos, or Immortal Man."

These are working titles for the new sections. Ignocrates (talk) 17:06, 27 March 2013 (UTC)