History of Scholarship in The Jewish-Christian Gospel Problem
The early church fathers who are our sources for the Jewish-Christian gospels - Clement of Alexandria, Origen, Eusebius, Didymus the Blind, Epiphanius and Jerome - range from the late 2nd to the early 5th centuries. They frequently confuse one gospel with another, and all with a supposed Hebrew version of the gospel of Matthew. Nor were they all aware that there were different Jewish Christian communities with varying theologies, or that some of them (or at least one) was Aramaic-speaking and others knew only Greek.
This confusion has created uncertainty for modern scholars. There is agreement that the fragments cannot be traced back to a Hebrew/Aramaic version or revision of Matthew's gospel, as most of them have no parallel in the canonical gospels. There are good reasons for thinking that there must have been at least two Jewish-Christian gospels, since there are two differing accounts of the baptism and good evidence that some fragments were originally in Aramaic and others in Greek. Most modern scholars have concluded that there was one Jewish-Christian gospel in Aramaic/Hebrew and at least two in Greek. Most have argued that the total number was three (Bauer, Vielhauer and Strecker, Klijn), a minority that there were only two (Schlarb and Luhrmann).
Read more about this topic: Jewish-Christian Gospels
Famous quotes containing the words history of, history, scholarship, gospel and/or problem:
“What is most interesting and valuable in it, however, is not the materials for the history of Pontiac, or Braddock, or the Northwest, which it furnishes; not the annals of the country, but the natural facts, or perennials, which are ever without date. When out of history the truth shall be extracted, it will have shed its dates like withered leaves.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“It is the true office of history to represent the events themselves, together with the counsels, and to leave the observations and conclusions thereupon to the liberty and faculty of every man’s judgement.”
—Francis Bacon (1561–1626)
“The best hopes of any community rest upon that class of its gifted young men who are not encumbered with large possessions.... I now speak of extensive scholarship and ripe culture in science and art.... It is not large possessions, it is large expectations, or rather large hopes, that stimulate the ambition of the young.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“Theologians should not be ashamed to admit that they cannot enter a contest with such antagonists [the sceptics], and that they do not want to expose the Gospel truths to such an attack. The ship of Jesus Christ is not made for sailing on this stormy sea, but for taking shelter from this tempest in the haven of faith.”
—Pierre Bayle (1647–1706)
“It is very comforting to believe that leaders who do terrible things are, in fact, mad. That way, all we have to do is make sure we don’t put psychotics in high places and we’ve got the problem solved.”
—Tom Wolfe (b. 1931)