The Semitic Origin Question

Did Matthew first write his Gospel in a Semitic language? The whole patristic tradition says so, repeating and amplifying Papias; the dominant modern judgment is that canonical Matthew was composed in Greek and shows no sign of being a translation. This file sets out the chain of later witnesses (Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Jerome), the several things a “Hebrew Matthew” might mean, the question of the Jewish-Christian gospels and the late Shem-Tob text, and the reasons for the modern consensus — with the dispute marked as the open question it is.

Tradition: Pan-Orthodox (Apostle and Evangelist)

The Patristic Chain

After Papias, a remarkably consistent line of Fathers repeats that Matthew wrote first, and for the Hebrews, in their own language. Irenaeus (c. 180): “Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect, while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome and laying the foundations of the Church” (Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.1.1; ANF 1). Pantaenus, according to Eusebius, found in “India” (probably South Arabia) a community using “the Gospel according to Matthew” in Hebrew letters, said to have been left there by the apostle Bartholomew (Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 5.10.3; NPNF II/1). Origen, quoted by Eusebius, says the first Gospel was written by Matthew, once a tax-collector, “for those who came to the faith from Judaism, and composed in the Hebrew language” (Eusebius, HE 6.25.4; NPNF II/1). Eusebius himself reports that Matthew, having preached to the Hebrews and being about to go to others, “delivered to them in their native tongue his Gospel” as a substitute for his presence (HE 3.24.6; NPNF II/1). Epiphanius (late fourth century) says the Ebionites used a gospel “called according to Matthew,” in Hebrew but corrupted and abridged (Panarion 30). And Jerome (late fourth/early fifth century) is the fullest: he repeatedly states that Matthew wrote in Hebrew for the circumcised believers in Judaea, that the Hebrew original was preserved in the library at Caesarea, and that he himself had seen and even copied a gospel “according to the Hebrews” used by the Nazoraeans of Beroea, which many took to be the Hebrew Matthew (Jerome, De viris illustribus 3; Commentary on Matthew, prologue; Against Pelagius 3.2; NPNF II/3). The patristic testimony, then, is virtually unanimous on a Hebrew origin — but it is also, after Papias, increasingly a single tradition repeating and embroidering itself.

What “Hebrew Matthew” Might Mean

The phrase covers several quite distinct possibilities, and disentangling them is the substance of the question:

  1. A lost Semitic original of canonical Matthew — that the Gospel we have in Greek is a translation of a Hebrew or Aramaic original written by the apostle. This is the plain sense of the patristic testimony.
  2. A sayings-collection — that Matthew compiled a Semitic collection of the Lord’s logia (so a narrow reading of Papias), which was one source among others of the later Greek Gospel; this connects the Hebrew-Matthew tradition with the modern hypothesis of a sayings-source (see The Synoptic Problem).
  3. A testimonia collection — a Semitic gathering of Old Testament “oracles” fulfilled in Christ, again feeding the canonical Gospel.
  4. A distinct Jewish-Christian gospel — that the “Hebrew Matthew” the Fathers report was not the canonical Gospel at all but one of the Jewish-Christian gospels (the Gospel according to the Hebrews, of the Nazoraeans, of the Ebionites), confused with canonical Matthew because of its similar contents and Jewish character. Jerome’s own uncertainty — sometimes equating the Nazoraean gospel with the Hebrew Matthew, sometimes distinguishing them — shows how easily the two were merged (Jerome, De viris illustribus 3; Comm. on Matt. 12:13).
  5. A Hebrew style, not language — Kürzinger’s reading of Papias, by which the whole tradition rests on a misunderstanding of Papias’s claim about Semitic rhetorical form (Josef Kürzinger, Papias von Hierapolis, 1983; see Papias and the Logia).

The medieval Hebrew text of Matthew embedded in Shem-Tob ben Isaac’s anti-Christian polemic Even Bohan (fourteenth century) is sometimes adduced in popular discussion as a survival of the Hebrew original; the scholarly judgment, however, is that it is a medieval Hebrew rendering, not a witness to a first-century Semitic Matthew, whatever older readings it may occasionally preserve (G. Howard, Hebrew Gospel of Matthew, 1995, argues for some early material; the consensus treats it as medieval).

The Modern Consensus and Its Grounds

Against the patristic tradition, the dominant modern judgment is that canonical Matthew was composed in Greek and is not a translation. The reasons are internal and weighty: the Greek of Matthew reads as original composition, not translation-Greek; the Gospel quotes the Old Testament frequently in the Greek of the Septuagint, including in places where the argument depends on the Greek wording rather than the Hebrew (e.g. the “virgin” of Isa. 7:14 LXX at Matt. 1:23); and, most decisively for those who hold Markan priority, Matthew appears to incorporate the Greek text of Mark, often verbatim, which a translation from a Hebrew original would not do (see The Question of Priority). On this view the patristic “Hebrew Matthew” tradition either preserves a genuine memory of a Semitic source behind the Gospel (the logia / sayings-collection that became, in part, the Greek Matthew), or rests on a confusion with the Jewish-Christian gospels, or descends from a misreading of Papias — but the canonical Gospel itself was written in Greek.

[Disputed: whether canonical Matthew is a translation of a Semitic original. (a) The patristic tradition (Papias in Eusebius *HE* 3.39.16; Irenaeus *AH* 3.1.1; Origen and Eusebius in *HE* 6.25, 3.24; Jerome, *De vir. ill.* 3) holds that Matthew wrote first in Hebrew/Aramaic for Jewish believers. (b) The dominant modern view holds that canonical Greek Matthew was composed in Greek and is not a translation — it uses LXX citations and (on Markan priority) the Greek of Mark — and that the patristic notices preserve at most the memory of a Semitic source, a confusion with the Jewish-Christian gospels, or a misunderstanding of Papias (Davies–Allison, *Matthew* ICC I; W. G. Kümmel, *Introduction to the New Testament*). (c) A minority of modern scholars still defend a substantial Semitic substratum or original. No council has defined the question; the Orthodox tradition affirms the Gospel's apostolic authority and inspiration while leaving the language of first composition an open historical question.]

The Question for an Orthodox Reader

For the Orthodox tradition the inspiration, apostolicity, and canonical authority of the Gospel according to Matthew do not depend on resolving the language of its first composition — a historical question no council has defined. The Church receives the Gospel as it has it, in Greek, as the Spirit-bearing apostolic witness to Christ; whether the apostle Matthew first set down the logia in Aramaic for his own people, as the Fathers consistently report, or composed in Greek, as most modern scholars judge, the Gospel that the Church has read, sung, and lived by for nineteen centuries is the same. The Hebrew-origin tradition is honored as the unanimous memory of the early Church, and its precise meaning is held open as the genuinely contested historical question it is — provenance treated, in the methodology’s phrase, as a topic and not an embarrassment.

See Also

References

  • Irenaeus of Lyons. Against Heresies 3.1.1. Ante-Nicene Fathers, Vol. 1.
  • Eusebius of Caesarea. The Ecclesiastical History 3.24.6; 5.10.3; 6.25.4. Trans. McGiffert. NPNF II/1.
  • Jerome. De viris illustribus 3; Commentary on Matthew, prologue; Against the Pelagians 3.2. Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Series II, Vol. 3 (and Vol. 6).
  • Epiphanius of Salamis. Panarion 30 (the Ebionites’ gospel). Trans. F. Williams. Leiden: Brill, 1987.
  • Howard, George. Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. 2nd ed. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1995 (the Shem-Tob text).
  • Davies, W. D., and Dale C. Allison. Matthew (ICC), Vol. 1, Introduction. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1988.