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:
“The history of all Magazines shows plainly that those which have attained celebrity were indebted for it to articles similar in natureto Berenicealthough, I grant you, far superior in style and execution. I say similar in nature. You ask me in what does this nature consist? In the ludicrous heightened into the grotesque: the fearful coloured into the horrible: the witty exaggerated into the burlesque: the singular wrought out into the strange and mystical.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (18091849)
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
—William Howard Taft (18571930)
“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 (18221893)
“Resorts advertised for waitresses, specifying that they must appear in short clothes or no engagement. Below a Gospel Guide column headed, Where our Local Divines Will Hang Out Tomorrow, was an account of spirited gun play at the Bon Ton. In Jeff Winneys California Concert Hall, patrons bucked the tiger under the watchful eye of Kitty Crawhurst, popular lady gambler.”
—Administration in the State of Colo, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“... your problem is your role models were models.”
—Jane Wagner (b. 1935)