MATTHEW WROTE HIS GOSPEL IN
HEBREW
The writings of the Church Fathers (old
Catholic writers, of the first centuries of the Christian Era) say that Matthew
wrote his Gospel in Hebrew.
Some scholars think that when the Church
Fathers say that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, they are wanting to
say that he wrote in Aramaic, because in Jesus' time the Jews spoke in the day
by day Aramaic, and not Hebrew.
However, although in Jesus' time the Jews spoke in the day by day the
Aramaic, in the synagogue they prayed in Hebrew and they read the Holy
Scriptures in Hebrew, and the rabbis discussed on the Law of God in Hebrew.
The passage Luke 4:16-21 shows that in Jesus' time already existed the
habit that exists until today among the Jews of, in the service in the
synagogue, the leader to call several people of the congregation to read the
Holy Scriptures aloud, and this reading is made in Hebrew, and the passage Luke
2:41-51 shows that in Jesus' time already existed among the Jews the habit that
exists until today, of the boy thirteen years old to be called for the first
time to read the Torah (Law of God)
and Haftarah (Prophets) in the synagogue (this is called to do Bar Mitsvah, and
since then the youth becomes Bar Mitsvah, that means Son of the Commandment),
and in this time, the boy, when is close to complete 13 years, studies Hebrew
to make the reading of the Torah and of Haftarah in Hebrew.
Therefore, as in Jesus' time as nowadays, all Jew knows at least a few
of Hebrew, because he learns Hebrew when he is about to complete 13 years, to
do Bar Mitsvah.
The manuscripts of the Dead Sea, discovered in the area of Qumran, dated
approximately of Jesus' time, show that in that time people wrote and read in
Hebrew, because many of these manuscripts are written in Hebrew.
Hebrew and Aramaic are very similar languages one with the other, as
Portuguese and Spanish, so that who is accustomed to speak in Aramaic has much
easiness to speak, to read and to write in Hebrew.
Therefore, we see that in Jesus' time the Jews didn't speak only
Aramaic, they also spoke Hebrew.
The fact is that the Church Fathers
wrote that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Hebrew, and not in Aramaic.
See below the passages of the books of the Church
Fathers that say this:
Eusebius of Caesarea, The Ecclesiastical History, 3:24:6:
“For Matthew, who had at first preached to the Hebrews, when he was
about to go to other peoples, committed his Gospel to writing in his native
tongue, and thus compensated those whom he was obliged to leave for the loss of
his presence.
Papias, cited by Eusebius, in History of the Church, 3:39:16:
But concerning Matthew he writes as
follows: "So then Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and
every one interpreted them as he was able."
Irenaeus, Against Heresies, 3:1:1:
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.
Origen, quoted by Eusebius in The
Ecclesiastical History, 6:25:4:
Among the four Gospels, which are the
only indisputable ones in the Church of God under heaven, I have learned by
tradition that the first was written by Matthew, who was once a publican, but
afterwards an apostle of Jesus Christ, and it was prepared for the converts
from Judaism, and published in the Hebrew language.
Epiphanius, in Panarion 30:3:7, wrote
that Matthew issued his gospel in Hebrew with Hebrew letters.
Jerome, in Letters, 20: 5:
Finally, Matthew, who wrote the Gospel in the Hebrew language, put it in
the following way: Osianna barrama, which means ossana in excelsis.
This passage of this epistle of Jerome shows that Matthew really wrote
his Gospel in Hebrew and not in Aramaic, because there it is written “Osianna”,
what is the transcription of the Hebrew words הושיעה
נא (hoshia na), that mean “save,
please”, and these words in Aramaic are הושע נא (hosha na). In this passage, Jerome is mentioning Matthew 21:9,
where it is written “Hosana in the heights.”
Jerome, in the preface of his commentary, wrote:
“The first evangelist is Matthew, the publican, who was surnamed Levi.
He published his Gospel in Judea in the Hebrew language, chiefly for the sake
of Jewish believers in Christ, who adhered in vain to the shadow of the law,
although the substance of the Gospel had come.”
Jerome, in Letter to Pope Damasus,
Preface to the Gospels, wrote:
“I now speak of the New Testament, which is
undoubtedly Greek, except the Apostle Matthew, who had first set forth the
Gospel of Christ in Hebrew letters in Judea.”
Jerome, in his commentary on Matthew
12:13, wrote:
“In the Gospel which the Nazarenes and
the Ebionites use, which we have recently
translated from Hebrew to Greek, and which most people call the authentic
[Gospel] of Matthew, the man who had the withered hand is described as a mason
who begged for help in the following words: I was a mason, earning a living
with my hands; I beg you, Jesus, restore my health to me, so that I need not
beg for my food in shame."
Jerome, in his work Live of Illustrious
Men, chapter 3, wrote:
“Matthew, also called Levi, apostle and
aforetime publican, composed a gospel of Christ at first published in Judea in
Hebrew for the sake of those of the circumcision who believed, but this was
afterwards translated into Greek though by what author is uncertain. The Hebrew
itself has been preserved until the present day in the library at Caesarea
which Pamphilus so diligently gathered. I have also had the opportunity of
having the volume described to me by the Nazarenes of Beroea, a city of Syria,
who use it. In this it is to be noted that wherever the Evangelist, whether on
his own account or in the person of our Lord the Saviour quotes the testimony
of the Old Testament he does not follow the authority of the translators of the
Septuagint but the Hebrew.”
Three texts of the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew were found: The
Text of the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew of Du Tillet, the Text of the
Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew of Münster, and the text of the Gospel
according to Matthew in Hebrew of Shem Tov (or Shem Tob).
The text of the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew of Du Tillet was
found in Rome, in 1553, among the books that were apprehended from the Jews
when the Pope commanded that all the books written in Hebrew letters found
among the Jews were confiscated. This
manuscript of the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew was found by a Catholic
bishop called Du Tillet, and because of this it is called the Gospel according
to Matthew in Hebrew of Du Tillet.
The text of the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew of Münster was
also confiscated from the Jews, and it was printed in 1537 by Sebastian Münster,
who, in the foreword of his work, said that he filled out some parts that
lacked in the manuscript, but he did not inform which were the parts that
lacked in the manuscript. The text of the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew
of Münster was edited later by Iohannes Quinquarboreus Avrilacensis in
1551.
The text of the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew of Shem Tov (or
Shem Tob) is contained in the work Even Bohan, written approximately in 1380 by
the Spanish rabbi Shem Tob Ben Yitschak ben Shaprut. The book Even Bohan is a book of twelve
volumes, and in the twelfth volume the author transcribes the text of the
Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew, making polemic comments in the middle of
the text.
Several manuscripts of the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew of Shem
Tov were found, and they are at several libraries.
George Howard edited the text of the Gospel according to Matthew in
Hebrew of Shem Tov in 1995.
The manuscripts used by George Howard in his edition of the Gospel according
to Matthew in Hebrew of Shem Tov are the following ones:
Ms. Add. no. 26964. British Library, London.
Ms. Heb. 28. Bibliotheek der Rijksuniversiteit, Leiden.
Ms. Mich. 119. Bodleian Library, Oxford.
Ms. Opp. Add. 4º 72. Bodleian Library, Oxford.
Ms. 2426 (Marx 16). Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, New York.
Ms. 2279 (Marx 18). Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, New York.
Ms. 2209 (Marx 19). Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America,
New York.
Ms. 2234 (Marx 15). Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America, New York.
Ms. Mich. 137. Bodleian Library, Oxford.
You can find the text of the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew of
Shem Tov in the following page:
http://www.fetchbook.info/compare.do?search=0865544425
You can find the text of the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew of Du
Tillet and the text of the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew of Münster in
the following page:
http://store.torahresource.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=34
You can see scanned images of the manuscript of the Gospel according to
Matthew in Hebrew of Du Tillet in the page http://www.torahresource.com/Dutillet.html
.
Those that say that Matthew wrote his Gospel in Greek say that the texts
of the Gospel according to Matthew in Hebrew are translations to Hebrew of the
text of the Gospel according to Matthew in Greek.
However, there are several evidences that the texts of the Gospel
according to Matthew in Hebrew are not translations of the Greek text.
One of the evidences is the fact that in the texts of the Gospel
according to Matthew in Hebrew of Du Tillet and of Shem Tov the wording of the
verse Matthew 1:1 is "These are the generations of Jesus son of David son
of Abraham", while in the Gospel according to Matthew in Greek the wording
of the verse Matthew 1:1 is "Book of the generations of Jesus Christ son
of David son of Abraham".
Another evidence is the fact that in the three texts of the Gospel
according to Matthew in Hebrew it is written in Matthew 13:55 that Jesus was
the son of the blacksmith, and in the Gospel according to Matthew in Greek it
is written in Matthew 13:55 that Jesus was the son of the carpenter.
In Hebrew, blacksmith is napách (נַפָּח) and carpenter is
nagár (נַגָּר).
In Greek, blacksmith is sidereus (σιδηρευς) and carpenter is técton (τεκτων).
Therefore, we see that the divergence is explainable by the similarity
that exists in Hebrew between the words napách (נַפָּח) and nagár (נַגָּר), that caused that the person who translated from Hebrew to Greek had
become confused, perhaps because of the manuscript to be written with bad
calligraphy, and so have read nagár (נַגָּר) instead of napách (נַפָּח), and because of this translated to Greek as técton (τεκτων), instead of sideréus (σιδηρευς).
Be highlighted that the divergence would not be explainable if the
original text was the Greek and the Hebrew text was the translation, because
there is not any similarity between the Greek words técton (τεκτων) and sideréus (σιδηρευς).
Another evidence is the fact that in the three texts of the Gospel
according to Matthew in Hebrew the verse Matthew 7:23, final part, is with the
wording "Depart from me, all ye that work iniquity", and in the text
of the Gospel according to Matthew in Greek the referred verse has the wording
"Depart from me, ye that work iniquity".
Yahveh bless you.
João Paulo Fernandes Pontes.
Published in September 16, 2008.
Updated in November 22, 2009
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