The appearance of this edition of the so-called Jewish Christian Gospels, a term that the editor is not entirely happy with (hence its absence from the less than snappy title) is a timely one and provides the interested scholar with a solid and helpful starting point for his or her engagement with the subject.
Andrew Gregory, who boasts an expertise, inter alia, in the reception of New Testament writings in the second century, is ideally placed to edit such an edition. In a strikingly clear introduction, he makes plain the difficulties associated with the study of these texts, not the least of which is the fact that we have no independent manuscript of any of them – all are mediated to us through the hand of patristic authorities and with sometimes different titles. On the vexed question of the number of Jewish Christian Gospels, which has oscillated in the history of scholarship between two and three, Gregory opts for the former number, here citing with approval a number of arguments put forward by the Finnish scholar, Petri Luomanen, in particular his claim that Waitz's view that a Gospel with Gnostic-like overtones could not contain passages from the synoptic Gospels was false. The two Gospels are the ones which appear in the title of the volume – a Gospel of the Nazoreans, as proposed by Waitz many years ago, is dispensed with.
On many of the other preliminary critical issues, Gregory's conclusions are unsurprising whether these relate to the date of the documents under discussion (both are placed in the second century), their provenance (difficult to decide) or how to define the term Jewish Christian (rightly, Gregory wonders how, with so little text available to us, we might go about deciding whether these texts are Jewish Christian on the basis of the definition that he adopts: ‘a term describing communities who hold Jesus to be Messiah and observe the Law of Moses’). Gregory is also sceptical about whether these texts will afford us any new information about Jesus and his followers, for both reveal, in different ways, a knowledge of the synoptic Gospels.
Because each Gospel raises issues of its own, Gregory discusses them separately. He has chosen not to make a semi-continuous text of either Gospel on the grounds that the texts only come to us via other Christian authors and so determining the shape and order of the mooted Gospels is impossible. In the case of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, which is witnessed to by an array of authors from Clement of Alexandria in the third century to Nicephorus in the late eighth/early ninth century, in contrast to the Gospel of the Ebionites, which is witnessed to exclusively by Epiphanius, Gregory has decided to arrange the passages and testimonia in order of the date of their witness rather than, for instance, according to canonical order.
For the Gospel according to the Hebrews, passages are listed under two headings, one entitled ‘Probable and possible testimony’ and the other ‘doubtful’. Each entry begins with a citation of the text in the original language where that is Greek or Latin (a citation in Eusebius’ Theophania is preserved in Syriac and Gregory only provides the reader with an English translation). There then follows a comment on the context in the work of the author citing the passage, and finally a commentary section. In cases where the attribution might be questioned (from passage 7 onwards), a discussion of this subject follows immediately after the discussion of context. All in all twenty-eight passages are discussed, of which seventeen fall under the designation ‘probable and possible’. Aside from the substantive issues of date and provenance, Gregory discusses the extent of the text, which he holds to cover the period running from Jesus’ baptism to his resurrection and to have been contained within a document a tad longer than Mark (this on the basis of Nicephorus’ claim that the work was 2,200 stichoi long, which Gregory accepts, at least in relative terms – Mark's Gospel is referred to in the stichometry as having 2,000 stichoi). Among other things, this would indicate how little we know of this Gospel. On the issue of the work's theological characteristics, Gregory is admirably cautious. On the basis of the surviving evidence it is difficult to categorise the document's Christology in conventional doctrinal terms. Adoptionism may be implied but so could a more conventional Christology of pre-existence. The Gospel's interest in the spirit is explored (it anoints Jesus as a king and not just a prophet; and it may be the case that it is accorded a greater role than Jesus). Some passages imply a soteriological concern. Gregory is tentative about the extent to which the Gospel can be called Jewish Christian. The name may imply as much, though knowing what ‘Hebrews’ indicates here is difficult. But the words of Jesus to the rich young man in fragment 17, a passage which bears a close relationship to Matthew xix.17–19, that he should obey the law and the prophets, coupled with the claim that Jesus appeared to James the brother of Jesus (fragment 11), a figure of the greatest prominence in the early Christian community in Jerusalem, may also imply a Jewish Christian profile.
The section on the Gospel of the Ebionites is a less controverted one as we are only dealing with one source (Epiphanius’ Panarion 30). In his preliminary discussion of the text, Gregory rejects the idea, proposed by D. Bertrand, that the text is a harmonisation of some or all of the synoptic Gospels. Gegory agrees that the author sometimes betrays an intensive interest in the synoptics but argues that his usage, insofar as we can assume that such a term accurately conveys his interaction with those texts (utilisation of memory, rather than use of Gospel manuscripts may have been more the order of the day) is on occasion quite free, involving the incorporation of material which contradicts what we find in the canonical Gospels or is an addition to them. The fact that the preserved fragments contain passages on John the Baptist and a Passover meal is suggestive of a Gospel with the scope of Mark, though absolute certitude on this point is not possible. In suggesting an original order for the excerpts, Gregory opts with those scholars who, for good reasons, have placed Jesus’ calling of his disciples before the appearance of the Baptist and Jesus’ own baptism. In commenting on the passages, a similar format to the commentary on the Gospel according to the Hebrews is followed, with the addition that there is a section on the relationship of each passage to the synoptics. Gregory's comments on the theology of the work are appropriately cautious (adoptionism, for instance, seems likely but the Christology may at the same time be ‘high’). The claims to this text being Jewish Christian are good, though such a designation should not colour the way in which the text is interpreted. Five appendices follow, including a useful and succinct discussion of the groups with which the Jewish Christian Gospels have been associated in which Gregory dispenses with the idea that there was a sect called the Nazoreans.
This is a very helpful publication, which deals effectively and thoughtfully with what is a complicated and difficult subject about which much has been written and a variety of sometimes convoluted theories presented. Gregory manages to write clearly on many of the controversial issues, whether they concern the number of Jewish Christian Gospels, the definition of the term ‘Jewish Christian’, and the often complex testimonia to do with the Gospel according to the Hebrews, to name but a few. The cautious tone of the volume is justified given the nature of the evidence that we have, though on occasion some might think that Gregory is too prone to adopt such a tone (some, for instance, may think that on occasion Gregory is too circumspect when judging if a passage comes from the Gospel according to the Hebrews or not).
I have just a few criticisms. First, I wonder whether Gregory's decision to list the references to the Gospel according to the Hebrews in relation to the chronological order of the Christian authors in whose writings they appear was the right one. I take his point about the issue of context and the problem of order in the mooted original but it makes for some oddities. So, for instance, the well-known passage about the Holy Spirit taking Jesus by one of his hairs occurs in fragment 2 (Origen), fragment 6 (Hegesippus as quoted by Eusebius) and fragment 10 (Jerome). Surely in this instance it would have been better to have had all of these citations examined together, and so to have listed the passages according to canonical order without committing oneself to any decision on the original ordering of the material in the Gospel itself. Secondly, Gregory's decision has the effect of mixing straightforward testimonia, that is places where there is only a reference to a Gospel according to the Hebrews or something similar, with citations of passages. It would have made better sense to have discussed these together with the reference to the length of the Gospel as recorded in Nicephorus.
Thirdly, it would have been helpful to have had Gregory's thoughts on Oskar Skarsaune's thesis, argued for in his seminal article on the Ebionites in the first volume of the Jewish Believers in Jesus series (O. Skarsaune and R. Hvalvik [eds], Jewish believers in Jesus: the early centuries, Peabody 2007), that reference to passages from a mooted Gospel of the Ebionites in Epiphanius’ Panarion 30 are at best a later addition to that chapter and that the contents of that Gospel are not Ebionite. By implication Gregory does not agree with Skarsaune but it would have been good to see a more detailed engagement with his arguments (and with Skarsaune's thoughts about the Ebionites more generally).
But these are small concerns (and others could be mentioned) about a volume whose appearance can only enhance discussion of a variety of subjects in the study of early Christianity.
