Lost scriptures: books that did not make it into the New Testament Read Free Page A

Aramaic, the language of Jesus and of Jews living in Palestine.2 This version would have been produced sometime near the end of the first century or the beginning of the second.
    Eventually this “Gospel of the Nazareans” fell into disfavor with the Christian community at large, both because few Christians in later centuries could read Aramaic and because the Gospel’s Jewish emphases were considered suspicious. As a result, the Gospel came to be lost. Now we know of it only through quotations of its text by church fathers like Jerome, and by references to it in the margins of several Greek manuscripts of the Gospel according to Matthew.
    These quotations reveal clearly the Jewish-Christian concerns of the Gospel and show that the Gospel contained stories of Jesus’ baptism, public ministry, death, and resurrection. It evidently did not include, however, the first two chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, which record the events surrounding Jesus’ miraculous birth. For according to many Jewish Christians, Jesus was not born of a virgin, but was a natural human being who was specially chosen to be the messiah because God considered him to be more righteous than anyone else.
    Today scholars debate whether the church fathers were right in thinking that the Gospel of the Nazareans was an Aramaic version of Matthew; it may have instead been an original composition, in Aramaic, based on oral traditions about Jesus that were in wide circulation and available both to this author and the author of Matthew.
    1See Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings , 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford, 2003), chap. 7. 2See Ehrman, Lost Christianities , 99–103.
    Translation by Bart D. Ehrman, based on the Greek, Latin, and Syriac texts in A. F. J.
    Klijn, Jewish-Christian Gospel Tradition (VCSupp 17; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992) 47–115.
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    NON-CANONICAL GOSPELS
    The following are the fragments of the Gospel quoted in our surviving sources.
    1 It is written in a certain Gospel that locked up in prison. (Eusebius, Theo-
    is called “according to the He
    phania , 4, 22)
    brews” (if in any event anyone is inclined
    to accept it, not as an authority, but to
    3 But [the Lord] taught about the reashed some light on the question we have son for the division of the souls in
    posed) that another rich man asked [Jethe houses, as we have found somewhere sus], “Master, what good thing must I do
    in the Gospel used by the Jews and writto have life?” He replied to him, “O man, ten in Hebrew, where he says “I will
    you should keep the law and the prophchoose for myself those who are good—ets.” He responded, “I have already done those given to me by my Father in
    that.” Jesus said to him, “Go, sell all that
    heaven.” (Eusebius, Theophania 4, 12)
    you have and distribute the proceeds to
    the poor; then come, follow me.”
    4 In the Gospel that is called “according to the Hebrews,” for the But the rich man began to scratch his
    words, “bread to sustain our lives” I
    head, for he was not pleased. And the
    found the word “mahar,” which means
    Lord said to him, “How can you say, ‘I
    “[bread] for tomorrow.” (Jerome, Com-
    have kept the law and the prophets?’ For
    mentary on Matthew , 6, 11)
    it is written in the law, ‘You shall love
    your neighbor as yourself.’ But look,
    In the Gospel that the Nazareans
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    many of your brothers, sons of Abraham,
    and Ebionites use, which I recently
    are clothed in excrement and dying of
    translated from Hebrew into Greek, and
    hunger while your house is filled with
    which most people consider the authentic
    many good things, not one of which goes
    version of Matthew, the man with a withforth to these others.” He turned and said ered hand is described as a mason, who
    to his disciple Simon, sitting beside him,
    sought for help in words like these: “I
    “Simon, son of Jonah, it is easier for a
    was a mason who made a living with