Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T03:12:15.513Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Ways that Parted in the Library: The Gospels according to Matthew and according to the Hebrews in Late Ancient Heresiology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2022

JEREMIAH COOGAN
JEREMIAH COOGAN*
Affiliation:
Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, Gibson Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road, Oxford OX2 6GG
*
E-mail: jeremiah.coogan@theology.ox.ac.uk
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article traces how early Christian thinkers (including Irenaeus, Eusebius, Epiphanius and Jerome) conceptualised ‘Jewishness’ in bibliographic terms. The material that early Christian sources associate with the Gospel according to the Hebrews exhibits a substantial textual relationship with the Gospel according to Matthew. The distinction emerges within a fourth- and fifth-century heresiological project of bibliographic categorisation that seeks to differentiate Jewish and Christian books and readers. Bibliography is a way of distinguishing reading communities and thereby advances the late ancient rhetorical project often known as the parting of the ways between Judaism and Christianity.

Type
Eusebius Prize Essay
Information
The Journal of Ecclesiastical History , Volume 74 , Issue 3 , July 2023 , pp. 473 - 490
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2022

The second-century physician and bibliophile Galen (c. 129–216 ce) tells a story about a ‘man of letters’ (‘τις ἀνὴρ τῶν φιλολόγων’) who encounters a bookroll titled ‘The Doctor by Galen’ at a bookseller's stall in Rome. Yet the work has been misattributed. Although it addresses a medical topic, it does not match Galen's style (‘λέξις’) and is falsely titled (‘ψευδῶς ἐπιγέγραπται’). In Galen's self-aggrandising account, the title (‘ἐπιγραφή’) is a dishonest bookseller's clever ploy to pass off an inferior work by connecting it to a renowned medical writer. But a discerning reader can tell the difference. Upon reading only the first two lines, the educated man recognises the deception and corrects the misattribution by ripping up the book tag (or the whole book: ‘ἀπέρριψε τὸ γράμμα’) with the attribution to Galen.Footnote 1 This vignette reveals how, for Galen and other elite readers in the Roman Mediterranean, correctly identifying literary works was a mark of παιδεία, vital for maintaining their status as cultural arbiters.Footnote 2 Debates about authenticity, attribution and textual transmission appear again and again in the self-fashioning of Roman elites.Footnote 3

Early Christian thinkers participated in these bibliographic debates about titles and authenticity. Correct attribution was part of shaping the practices of a reading community and of asserting and maintaining privileged literary corpora: ‘Scripture’, ‘the Gospels’. Arbiters of these corpora positioned themselves as tastemakers for others.Footnote 4 The present article analyses one complex set of relationships between texts, titles and works in late antiquity. The relationship between the Gospel according to Matthew and the Gospel according to the Hebrews reflects a late ancient project of bibliographic categorisation that continues to shape how modern scholars read evidence about Gospel books and readers in the first several centuries ce.

Late ancient figures, Christian and otherwise, exhibit a remarkable preoccupation with bibliography – the practice of organising knowledge about books and their readers – as a way of knowing the world.Footnote 5 Bibliography is seldom, even never, just about cataloguing the library. Again and again, bibliographic thinking provides a way for people to organise wide vistas of knowledge and experience – including phenomena that are not bookish in and of themselves. Talking about books is a way of talking about other things: ethnography, cosmology, theology and so forth. Inversely, other ways of thinking about the world often intervene in the practice of bibliography. Organising the world and organising the library go hand in hand.

Ancient bibliographic thinking affords a revisionist analysis of the texts known in modern scholarship as ‘Jewish Christian’ Gospels.Footnote 6 Early Christian thinkers leveraged distinctions between texts, titles and works in order to categorise ‘Jewish’ and ‘Christian’ books and readers. This process of organising texts and readers emerges as a heresiological strategy within the broader developments often described as the ‘parting of the ways’. The fact that modern scholars or ancient heresiologists have imagined a Gospel according to the Hebrews distinct from a Gospel according to Matthew is the result of the late ancient practice of organising the world in bibliographic terms. That practice was deployed for particular theological ends, specifically the effort to identify what books and what readers were Christian and to distinguish them from other books and other readers defined as Jewish. This bibliographic development reflects the role of Gospel reading in late ancient constructions of Judaism and Christianity. Heresiologists’ shifting categorisations of books and readers both illuminate late ancient textual practices and continue to influence modern scholarship.

In what follows, it is first demonstrated that the material which modern scholars associate with one or more ‘Jewish Christian’ Gospels – and which late ancient writers associate with a Gospel according to the Hebrews – reveals a substantial textual relationship to the Gospel according to Matthew. Then it is shown that Christian heresiologists from the second to fifth centuries describe several individuals or groups who use only Matthew and not other Gospels. Critics characterise these groups as observing Torah in particular ways and sometimes associate them with Jewish ethnicity. A change in description occurs, however, as fourth- and fifth-century critics of these same groups characterise their Gospel-reading practices differently. The library has been reorganised: the Gospel that these people read is not Matthew; instead, it is a Gospel according to the Hebrews. Finally, the article analyses the implications of this bibliographic recategorisation for Christian thinking with and about books – and thereby about Jewishness – in late antiquity.Footnote 7

This article advances no claims about the religious demography of the Roman Mediterranean. This argument is not about who went to synagogue, about who participated in Christian liturgies or about who observed Torah and how. Such questions are part of conversations about the parting of the ways, but the evidence here is ill-suited to answer them. Instead, this article analyses an intriguing early Christian conversation about books and about the reported or imagined readers of those books.

The ancient authors discussed in this article were influential in their own day and have continued to be so, to varying degrees, for later Christians and for the history of scholarship. They include familiar names: Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius and Jerome. Yet these figures are not representative of Christ-followers in late antiquity. Rather, they have, through a confluence of elite education, influence in their own day and later reception, secured a place in histories of early Christianity. When Irenaeus or Epiphanius tells us about Ebionites or Nazoreans, historians should not assume that the heresiologists accurately describe social groups and their practices, or even that the groups that they describe existed as groups at all.Footnote 8 The present argument does not require such transparency from the late ancient sources. Rather, late ancient writing about books illuminates the ways in which these writers thought about what it meant to be Christian and what it meant to be Jewish. What were these early Christian figures doing when they wrote about a Gospel according to the Hebrews?

Matthew and related textual traditions

The text or texts which early Christian writers describe and cite as a Gospel according to the Hebrews was related to the text that modern readers know as Matthew.Footnote 9 They were sufficiently similar that the Gospel according to the Hebrews sometimes circulated as an alternate edition under the title of Matthew.Footnote 10

This argument encounters two inescapable complexities. First, no extensive texts survive from what late ancient Christian writers called a Gospel according to the Hebrews. Instead, historians have various short descriptions and citations, a constellation of fragments embedded in varied literary and argumentative contexts.Footnote 11 The scant evidence is often contradictory. The fourth-century bishop and heresiologist Epiphanius of Salamis (d. 404 ce) is worryingly unreliable, but he is the source for much of what scholars have. Epiphanius’ contemporary Jerome of Stridon (c. 347–420 ce) is, if anything, less trustworthy.Footnote 12 Historians must look for the model that best explains the evidence, but questions remain. Second, debate continues over how many ‘Jewish Christian’ Gospels existed.Footnote 13 In a recent monograph, Andrew Gregory posits two: a Gospel according to the Hebrews and a Gospel according to the Ebionites. This Gospel according to the Ebionites is a way of treating Epiphanius’ citations as a distinct text.Footnote 14 Other modern scholars argue that Jerome has two separate Gospels, yielding a total of three ‘Jewish Christian’ Gospels. This third text is termed the Gospel of the Nazoreans. Yet the titles ‘Ebionites’ and ‘Nazoreans’ are modern fictions – and the works, as such, might be too. At best the titles offer a convenient shorthand, but they often create confusion about the ancient evidence. Only two titles appear in the sources: the Gospel according to Matthew and the Gospel according to the Hebrews. Numerous late ancient figures treat these two titles as related or interchangeable.

The current debate about the number of ‘Jewish Christian’ Gospels is thus misleading. The fiction of modern nomenclature leads scholars to think that they are dealing with distinct works and with distinct groups of readers, but matters are more complicated. The Gospels that Eusebius of Caesarea (c. 260–339/340 ce), Epiphanius or Jerome called ‘according to the Hebrews’ were not identical to one another or to what modern readers know as the Gospel according to Matthew; the available evidence indicates at least minor variations. Yet recent work in material philology and reception history has demonstrated that differing textual forms or titles need not indicate distinct works, much less separate reading communities.Footnote 15 These are questions of bibliographic reception. What texts do different readers choose to read? How much do they care about variations in title or text?

Three arguments demonstrate the similarities between the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel according to Matthew. First, Epiphanius and Jerome both present Matthew and Hebrews as interchangeable designations for the same text (Epiphanius, Panarion xxx. 3.7; Jerome, Adversus Pelagianos iii.2; Commentariorum in Matthaeum libri IV xii. 13). Epiphanius, for example, writes that the Ebionites ‘accept the Gospel according to Matthew … They call it, according to the Hebrews’.Footnote 16 Given these authors’ efforts to demonstrate that the text is not really Matthew, historians should take seriously their tacit admission that the texts were frequently interchangeable.

Second, Jerome asserts that the Gospel according to the Hebrews – which he claims to know in Hebrew or Aramaic but uses in Greek – was related to an original Hebrew Matthew.Footnote 17 This does not offer evidence for an actual Hebrew (or Aramaic) Matthew, but it does indicate that someone looking at a Greek text that they called ‘according to the Hebrews’ could see it as another version of the material that they associated with the title ‘according to Matthew’.Footnote 18

Third, excerpts attributed to a Gospel according to the Hebrews often reflect close relationship with the text of familiar Matthew. Some material that early Christian writers cite from a Gospel according to the Hebrews is not attested in other forms of Matthew.Footnote 19 This is to be expected; various late ancient scholars quarried a Gospel according to the Hebrews to find ‘extra’ material not preserved in the four Gospels that they regarded as canonical. Yet the material that these early Christian writers associate with a Gospel according to the Hebrews often does intersect with the Matthean textual tradition. This is evident in the material from Epiphanius. Compare, for example, the baptism account with those of other Synoptic Gospels.Footnote 20 As part of the Ebionites’ Gospel according to Matthew – which Epiphanius also describes as ‘according to the Hebrews’ – Epiphanius cites an expanded text that incorporates recognisable Lukan material. Yet one can read it, like Epiphanius does, as an expanded form of Matthew. Moreover, the textual tradition of familiar Matthew includes details that parallel Epiphanius’ Ebionite Gospel. For example, Epiphanius mentions a light at Jesus’ baptism (Panarion xxx. 13.7). The same detail appears in two Old Latin codices at Matthew iii.16.Footnote 21 This suggests that the variation fits within the spectrum of textual variation in the text of Matthew. Elsewhere, Epiphanius says that the Ebionites ‘chop off’ (‘παρακόψαντες’) the genealogies of Matthew and begin with John's baptism.Footnote 22 Epiphanius’ claim indicates that he understood the Ebionites’ Gospel as a modified Matthew.

Epiphanius is not the only writer to present a Gospel according to the Hebrews as a form of Matthew. In his Commentary on Matthew, Origen of Alexandria (c. 184–254 ce) discusses parallel versions of the story of the rich young ruler.Footnote 23 He analyses versions from Matthew, Mark and Luke (Matt. xix.16–24//Mark x.17–25//Luke xviii.18–25) and then an expanded narrative in a Gospel according to the Hebrews. A passage attributed to Eusebius’ Theophany recounts an alternate version of Matthew's parable of the talents (Matt. xxv.14–30; cf. Luke xix.12–27).Footnote 24 Instead of two industrious enslaved persons and one timid enslaved person, this version of the parable involves a profligate enslaved person, an industrious enslaved person and a timid enslaved person.

Jerome's engagement with an alternate Gospel text occurs primarily in his Commentary on Matthew. He reports an alternate version of the healing of a man with a withered hand (cf. Matt. xii.13).Footnote 25 He states that the Gospel according to the Hebrews interprets the name Barabbas.Footnote 26 He asserts that this same text (‘the Gospel we have often referred to’) mentioned the shattering of the lintel of the Jerusalem Temple in addition to the tearing of the Temple curtain.Footnote 27 He also reports variant readings which make sense only if the text resembles Jerome's Matthew. Examples include the Hebrew מחר (maḥar) for crastinum (ἐπιούσιον) or ‘daily’ in Matt. vi.11Footnote 28 and the reading ‘son of Jehoiada’ for ‘son of Barachiah’ at Matt. xxiii.35.Footnote 29 Finally, several medieval manuscripts of Matthew attribute marginalia to τὸ ἰουδαϊκόν.Footnote 30 In ancient and late ancient textual scholarship, the neuter substantive adjective invites one to supply the noun ἀντίγραφον (‘copy’). These marginalia attest an alternate ‘Jewish’ version that a late ancient scholar collated into the margins of familiar Matthew.

One or more varying forms of Matthew best explain this data. Some examples could be expansions or alternate versions of material from any Synoptic Gospel. But others depend on distinctive Matthean material or redactional features.Footnote 31 Moreover, this textual relationship to Matthew applies to material that scholars have associated with all three hypothesised ‘Jewish Christian’ Gospels – Hebrews, Ebionites and Nazoreans.

This Matthean textual fluidity is not out of the ordinary for early Christian Gospels. Mark has multiple variant endings. The D-text (or ‘Western’ text) of Luke includes additional material in a work that is still known as Luke (for example, at vi.4). Not only does John come to include the pericope adulterae (vii.53–viii.11), but several significant shorter plusses appear in the first few centuries. What early Christians cite from a Gospel according to the Hebrews is no more extensive or dramatic than these variations in the textual traditions of other Gospels. In each case, additional material finds its way into a Gospel text and multiple differing textual forms of a work circulate under the same title.Footnote 32

The Gospel according to Matthew becomes a distinct Gospel according to the Hebrews through a process of bibliographic differentiation. This does not occur for Mark, John or the D-text of Luke. But historians might compare the emergence – the invention, even – of the Gospel according to the Hebrews with an earlier moment of bibliographic differentiation: the distinction between Marcion's Gospel and the Gospel according to Luke.Footnote 33 In both cases, bibliographic distinction maps textual difference. But differentiation goes beyond textual criticism. Distinctions between books and titles reflect not simply different texts but a division between reading communities. Historians must therefore inquire not about the ontology of the text, but about its sociology.Footnote 34 In the case of Marcion, in the second century ce, the differentiation of books and readers was mutual. Marcion wished to distinguish his Gospel from related texts that were read as the Gospel according to Luke; Marcion's critics, from Irenaeus onward, were happy to identify Marcion's Gospel as different and defective. It is unlikely that the distinction between Gospels ‘according to Matthew’ and ‘according to the Hebrews’ was similarly mutual. None the less, in the relationship between these two Gospels, a bibliographic parting of the ways occurs. It is a recategorisation of books and of readers, motivated by questions of heresiology and ethnicity – by questions of Jewishness.

‘Only the Gospel according to Matthew’

A number of early Christian writers describe ‘heretical’ groups who use only Matthew. Heresiologists described these groups as sharing ideas, practices and texts.Footnote 35 Ebionites or their imagined founder Ebion appear in several second- and third-century texts which ascribe a Jewish profile to the group.Footnote 36 In fourth- and fifth-century texts, Ebionites are joined by Cerinthians and Nazoreans as heretics who practice ‘Jewishly’. For heresiological writers, these figures form a cluster, marked by Jewish ethnicity or practice.Footnote 37

Several heresiologists discuss Gospel-reading practices. In his five-volume treatise Against heresies, the second-century bishop Irenaeus of Lyon (fl. c. 180 ce) asserts that heretics known as Ebionites ‘use only the Gospel according to Matthew’. Irenaeus describes other Ebionite practices: they are said to circumcise, observe the law and revere Jerusalem as God's house. They were, according to Irenaeus, ‘Jewish in their way of life’ (‘et iudaico charactere uitae’).Footnote 38 In a second passage, Irenaeus again states that ‘the Ebionites use only the Gospel according to Matthew’ (‘Ebionei etenim eo euangelio quod est secundum Matthaeum solo utentes’).Footnote 39 He describes several other groups who use only forms of one or another Gospel. Four particular Gospels are so well established, on Irenaeus’ account, that even heretics appeal to them: Ebionites use only Matthew; Marcion's followers use only a form of Luke; Valentinus’ followers use John, but not other canonical Gospels; unnamed individuals who distinguish Jesus from the Christ prefer Mark. Although Irenaeus complains that Marcion ‘maims’ (‘circumcidens’, literally ‘circumcises’) Luke's Gospel, he makes no such claim about the Matthew that Ebionites use. If there are textual differences, they do not yet pose a problem.

Other heresiologists likewise associate certain readers with a preference for Matthew. The fourth-century bishop Epiphanius claimed that Cerinthians used only Matthew.Footnote 40 He wrote that the Ebionites ‘accept the Gospel according to Matthew. Like the Cerinthians and Merinthians, they too use it alone. They call it, according to the Hebrews’.Footnote 41 The fourth-century heresiologist Filastrius, who relies on both Irenaeus and Epiphanius, likewise asserts that Cerinthus, the eponymous founder of the Cerinthians, ‘accepts only the Gospel according to Matthew. He spurns the [other] three Gospels’.Footnote 42 As demonstrated above, Epiphanius and Jerome attest a relationship between Gospels according to the Hebrews and according to Matthew. Yet fourth- and fifth-century writers identify these varied ‘Jewish’ groups as readers of a different Gospel, one differentiated from Matthew.

A ‘Gospel according to the Hebrews’

Starting in the fourth century, several heresiological writers describe the reading habits of Cerinthians, Ebionites and Nazoreans differently. These groups are now said to use only a Gospel according to the Hebrews. In other words, these heresiologists attribute the Gospel according to the Hebrews to the same figures who had previously been described as using only Matthew. One description replaces the other.

Eusebius of Caesarea describes the Gospel used by Ebionites as a Gospel according to the Hebrews. He writes, ‘[the Ebionites] used only what is called the Gospel according to the Hebrews; the rest they gave short shrift’.Footnote 43 This shift in description is even more significant because Eusebius employs Irenaeus as one of his main sources. Elsewhere in his History, Eusebius categorises this Gospel according to the Hebrews among the νόθα, books of mixed parentage.Footnote 44

Epiphanius makes a similar move in his Panarion.Footnote 45 Although he acknowledges a relationship between the Gospel according to Matthew and the Ebionites’ Gospel according to the Hebrews, Epiphanius emphasises differences between the two, arguing that the Ebionites’ Gospel is not properly Matthew. Epiphanius asserts that ‘the Gospel that [the Ebionites] call according to Matthew … is not at all complete but is illegitimate and mutilated’ (‘νενοθευμένῳ καὶ ἠκρωτηριασμένῳ’: Panarion xxx. 13.2). Epiphanius describes this text by the title ‘according to the Hebrews’ except in contexts where associating it with Matthew aids his complaints that the Ebionites’ irresponsible practices damage the text (thereby changing it from Matthew to Hebrews). Ironically, Epiphanius’ efforts to distinguish the two texts provide rich evidence for the relationship between the Ebionites’ Gospel and other forms of Matthew. Yet Epiphanius emphasises that the Ebionites’ Gospel is ‘according to the Hebrews’ and not ‘according to Matthew’. This is a way of removing apostolic authority and canonical status from the Gospel that these other Christ-followers employ.Footnote 46

There is a similar impulse in Jerome's engagement with a Hebrew or Jewish Gospel. Jerome is no more welcoming of Ebionites or Nazoreans. As he writes, ‘What shall I say of the Ebionites who claim to be Christians? … since they want to be both Jews and Christians, they are neither Jews nor Christians.’Footnote 47 Throughout his corpus, Jerome criticises Ebionites and Nazoreans as heretics. Like Eusebius and Epiphanius, Jerome distinguishes the Gospel according to the Hebrews from the Greek Matthew that he deems canonical. None the less, he leverages its connection (real or imagined) with Jews, Judaism and the Hebrew language to advertise his own erudition.Footnote 48

Bibliography as a parting of the ways

In the fourth and fifth centuries, a process of bibliographic recategorisation occurs.Footnote 49 Groups that were once described as using only Matthew are now said to read a different text, the Gospel according to the Hebrews. This form of Matthew has been catalogued under a different title and relocated to another part of the library. This Gospel according to the Hebrews is presented as Jewish, not Christian. Under its new shelf-mark, the text remains available to heresiological writers, but it affords different uses. It is demarcated from the emergent canonical Gospel tradition, but – because it is catalogued as a Jewish text – scholarly readers can appeal to it for linguistic and historical information.

The figures described as Ebionites, Nazoreans and so forth might have modified their habits of Gospel-reading over time, whether by using a different Gospel or by naming the same Gospel differently. Either of these possibilities would attest that such readers sought to distinguish themselves and their books from other Christ-followers and their books. If these Christ-followers began to call their own Gospel text ‘according to the Hebrews’, this decision about nomenclature would reflect bibliographic work as a process of self-definition between groups of Christ-followers. After all, a mutual – although not amicable – process of bibliographic distinction occurred in the case of Marcion's Gospel. But Epiphanius and Jerome uneasily attest an interchangeability between Gospels ‘according to Matthew’ and ‘according to the Hebrews’. Both acknowledge that (some) readers of this text call it ‘according to Matthew’. These observations suggest that mutual separation is not an adequate account for the change in title and categorisation of this Gospel.

The evidence reflects a heresiological project of bibliographic recategorisation. Heresiological writers reclassify the Matthew used by (ostensibly) Jewish Christ-followers as a different Gospel. Insofar as Gospel texts and liturgical reading were fundamental to Christian practice and identity in late antiquity, describing the Gospel used by Ebionites or Nazoreans as not Matthew, as not canonical, was a way of excluding such Christ-followers from being Christians at all. As Chris Keith writes, ‘reading events in assembly would eventually become a litmus test for canonicity’.Footnote 50 The inverse also is true: the texts that are read would eventually determine the validity of a reading event and a reading community. Differentiating books is a way of differentiating readers.

This reconstruction reveals heresiological writers in the fourth and fifth centuries addressing questions of ‘heresy’ and ‘Jewishness’ in bibliographic terms, as about what books one reads and how one reads them.Footnote 51 These figures are demarcating Christians from Jews; this bibliographic distinction is one way of drawing these lines. This is not simply a parting, then, but ‘an imposed partitioning of what was once a territory without border lines’.Footnote 52 This early Christian project of redescription advances a bibliographic parting of the ways that occurs, as it were, in the library stacks.

This recategorisation is not a necessary response to textual plurality. There were differing textual forms of Matthew. Yet there were also differing forms of Mark, Luke and John, and the same late ancient Christian thinkers discuss those differences. The separation between Matthew and Hebrews is retrospective, an imaginative attempt to divide Christians from others by separating Christian books from the books of others: Christians and Jews cannot share books. Bibliographic recategorisation is motivated by worries about overlapping libraries and intersecting communities of readers. Defining the limits of a textual work is a way of defining the limits of a reading community.

This heresiological move enables late ancient Christian writers to use the text that they call the Gospel according to the Hebrews in new ways. They employ it as a parallel form of Matthew and as a source of scholarly detail. Different authors exhibit more or less anxiety about this text. Epiphanius is especially critical. He describes the Gospel used by the Ebionites in harsh terms as ‘illegitimate and mutilated’ (Panarion xxx. 13.2). Others are more positive. Jerome differentiates this Gospel text from Matthew and describes it as a Hebrew and Jewish source of knowledge, but he puts it to work as a supplemental Gospel. Even in texts less motivated by heresiological polemic, this Gospel is framed as Hebrew or Jewish. We find both grudging respect and wariness, both visible from early on, such as in (pseudo-)Origen's emphasis that the Gospel according to the Hebrews is not authoritative, although it provides a parallel to material in Matthew (Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei xv. 14). Appeals to a Gospel according to the Hebrews present the exegete as having access to special, ethnically coded knowledge.

Titles, citations and bibliographic descriptions illuminate broader developments in late ancient social and intellectual history. Christian thinkers in the fourth and fifth centuries addressed questions of heresy and Jewishness in bibliographic terms, differentiating various forms of the Gospel according to Matthew along heresiological lines. Like Galen's educated reader, distinguishing between rightly attributed books and fraudulent knockoffs, these early Christian readers displayed their expertise – and sought to control the boundaries of a reading community – by identifying the Gospel used by Ebionites and Nazoreans as a distinct Jewish work, a Gospel according to the Hebrews. Ongoing use of this material is inflected by an imaginative recategorisation of Gospel books and Gospel-readers. Bibliography is a way of organising identities, between Jewish and Christian, and thereby advances the late ancient rhetorical project that we know as the parting of the ways.

Footnotes

Translations of ancient texts are the author's unless otherwise noted.

This project received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement no. 891569, ‘Expanding the Gospel according to Matthew: Continuity and Change in Early Gospel Literature’, and benefited from the support of Keble College, Oxford, and the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies. The author is grateful to Markus Bockmuehl, Warren Campbell, Mattias Gassman, Martin Goodman, Kirsten Macfarlane, Ian Mills, Candida Moss, Hindy Najman and Alison Salvesen for their generous feedback on these ideas at various stages. Earlier versions were presented to the Oxford Seminar on Jewish Studies in the Graeco-Roman Period in January 2021, to the Birmingham Biblical Studies Seminar in February 2021 and to the Oxford Ecclesiastical History Workshop in March 2021. The author thanks these audiences for their generous engagement.

References

1 Galen, De libris propriis, 1–2 (Kühn xix.8–9). Edition: Galien, I: Introduction générale: sur l'ordre de ses propres livres: sur ses propres livres: que l'excellent médecin est aussi philosophe, texte établi, traduit et annoté, ed. V. Boudon-Millot, Paris 2007, 134, with notes at pp. 175–7.

2 On reading culture and elite self-fashioning see W. Johnson, Readers and reading culture in the high Roman Empire: a study of elite communities, Oxford 2010.

3 Although Galen often discusses books and reading in order to demonstrate his disciplinary expertise, here he frames the question in the broader terms of παιδεία: ibid. 85–6. On elite Roman ‘problems of ascription’, of ‘correctly matching the author and his works’ see Johnstone, S., ‘A new history of libraries and books in the Hellenistic period’, Classical Antiquity iii (2014), 347–93 at pp. 384–7Google Scholar, quoting at p. 384. Galen elsewhere blames the misattribution of books on greed: In Hippocratis De natura hominis, in Galeni in Hippocratis de natura hominis, in Hippocratis de victu acutorum, de diaeta Hippocratis in morbis acutis, ed. J. Mewaldt, Leipzig 1914 (Kühn xv.104).

4 Cf. Johnson, Readers, 22, 160–1.

5 On bibliographic thinking in late antiquity see Coogan, J., ‘Reading (in) a quadriform cosmos: Gospel books and the early Christian bibliographic imagination’, JECS xxxi (2023)Google Scholar, forthcoming.

6 Since the nineteenth century, scholars have produced collections of ‘Jewish Christian’ Gospel texts and testimonia, including P. Vielhauer, ‘Judenchristliche Evangelien’, in W. Schneemelcher (ed.), Neutestamentliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung, Tübingen 1959–64, 75–108; Klijn, A. F. J. and Reinink, G. J., Patristic evidence for Jewish-Christian sects, Leiden 1973CrossRefGoogle Scholar; P. Vielhauer and G. Strecker, ‘Jewish-Christian Gospels’, in W. Schneemelcher (ed.), New Testament Apocrypha, I: Gospels and related writings, Cambridge 1991, 136–51; Klijn, A. F. J., Jewish-Christian Gospel traditions, Leiden 1992Google Scholar; Lührmann, D. and Schlarb, E., Fragmente apokryph gewordener Evangelien in griechischer und lateinischer Sprache, Marburg 2000, 32–55Google Scholar; Ehrman, B. D. and Pleše, Z., The apocryphal Gospels: texts and translations, Oxford 2011, 197–221Google Scholar; J. Frey, ‘Die Fragmente judenchristlicher Evangelien’, in C. Markschies and J. Schröter (eds), Antike christliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung, I/1–2: Evangelien und Verwandtes, Tübingen 2012, 560–92; Ehrman, B. D. and Pleše, Z., The other Gospels: accounts of Jesus from outside the New Testament, Oxford 2014, 99–114Google Scholar; Gregory, A., The Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Ebionites, Oxford 2017Google Scholar; and Gathercole, S., Apocryphal Gospels, New York 2021, 162–71Google Scholar. Other recent discussions include A. F. Gregory, ‘The Nazoraeans’, in J. Verheyden, T. Nicklas and E. Hernitscheck (eds), Shadowy characters and fragmentary evidence: the search for early Christian groups and movements, Tübingen 2017, 125–40; Luomanen, P., Recovering Jewish-Christian sects and Gospels, Leiden 2012CrossRefGoogle Scholar; J. Frey, ‘Texts about Jesus: non-canonical Gospels and related literature’, and P. Luomanen, ‘Judaism and anti-Judaism in early Christian apocrypha’, in A. F. Gregory and C. M. Tuckett (eds), The Oxford handbook of early Christian apocrypha, Oxford 2015, 13–47, 319–42; S. C. Mimouni, Les Fragments évangéliques judéo-chrétiens ‘apocryphisés’: recherches et perspectives, Paris 2006; M. J. Kok, ‘Did Papias of Hierapolis use the Gospel according to the Hebrews as a source?’, JECS xxv (2017), 29–53; and C. Clivaz, ‘(According) to the Hebrews: an apocryphal Gospel and a canonical letter read in Egypt’, in J. Frey and others (eds), Between canonical and apocryphal texts: processes of reception, rewriting, and interpretation in early Judaism and early Christianity, Tübingen 2019, 271–88.

7 On Christian thinking about books as thinking about Jewishness see A. Jacobs's excellent discussion of Epiphanius’ account of Joseph of Tiberius in ‘Matters (un-)becoming: conversions in Epiphanius of Salamis’, Church History lxxxi (2012), 27–47 at pp. 42–6. As Jacobs writes (p. 42), ‘Epiphanius ultimately embeds the Jewish “other” within his own Christian territory.’

8 As T. Berzon observes, in late ancient Christian heresiology ‘heresies with distinct names were continuously emerging and spreading out in the world – names, it should be noted, that were often supplied by the heresiologists’: Classifying Christians: ethnography, heresiology, and the limits of knowledge in late antiquity, Oakland, Ca 2016, 175. This heresiological project often involved naming texts as well as groups, and the two practices intertwine.

9 On problems with categorising these fragments as ‘Jewish Christian’ see Gregory, A., ‘Hindrance or help: does the modern category of “Jewish-Christian Gospel” distort our understanding of the texts to which it refers?’, Journal for the Study of the New Testament xxviii (2006), 387–413CrossRefGoogle Scholar, cf. Gospel, 20–3. Gregory's critique is strengthened by recent challenges to the category of ‘Jewish Christianity’ itself, especially Reed, A. Y., Jewish-Christianity and the history of Judaism: collected essays, Tübingen 2018CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Jackson-McCabe, M., Jewish Christianity: the making of the Christianity-Judaism divide, New Haven 2020Google Scholar.

10 Despite ancient assertions that Matthew was composed in Hebrew or Aramaic – for example, Irenaeus, Adversus haereses iii. 1.1; Eusebius, HE iii. 39.16 (attributed to Papias); v. 8.2; v. 10.2–3; vi. 25.4 (attributed to Origen's Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei); Epiphanius, Panarion xxx. 3.7; xxx. 13.2; Jerome, De viris illustribus iii; and Chrysostom, Homiliae in Matthaeum i – Markan priority offers compelling reason to think that Matthew was composed in Greek. None the less, the Greek texts described by early Christian writers as the Gospel according to the Hebrews resemble the familiar Gospel according to Matthew. For a survey of ancient discussions of the language of Matthew see W. D. Davies and D. C. Allison, Jr, A critical and exegetical commentary on the Gospel according to Saint Matthew, Edinburgh 1988–97, i. 7–17.

11 Gregory discusses this fragmentation and selection in Gospel, 3–17.

12 See the devastating critique of Jerome, ibid. 36–52. Jerome inconsistently claims to have translated a Hebrew or Aramaic Gospel into Latin or Greek (for example, De viris illustribus iii; Commentariorum in Matthaeum libri IV xii. 13), but he cites material that he already has through Origen's citations of a Greek text.

13 Most recent Anglophone and German scholarship posits three ‘Jewish Christian’ Gospels. These include Klijn, Jewish-Christian Gospel traditions, 41; Klauck, H.-J., Apocryphal Gospels: an introduction, London 2003, 37Google Scholar; and Frey, ‘Fragmente’. Some argue for two Gospels, including S. C. Mimouni, Le Judéo-christianisme ancien: essais historiques, Paris 1998; Luomanen, Recovering, 83–144; and Gregory, Gospel, 8–17. Reflecting a shifting consensus, Simon Gathercole's recent translation also divides the material into just two Gospels: Apocryphal Gospels, 162–71. In this he is anticipated by Lührmann and Schlarb, Evangelien, 32–55. W. Petersen remains open to a single Gospel text: Tatian's Diatessaron: its creation, dissemination, significance, and history in scholarship, Leiden 1994, 29–31, 39–41. The longer history of this debate need not detain us here.

14 Scholars offer two reasons for distinguishing the Gospel used by Epiphanius’ Ebionites from other texts known as Gospel according to the Hebrews. First, the baptism account in Panarion xxx. 13.7–8 differs slightly from the account cited by other early Christian writers; many conclude that they represent two distinct texts. On the differences see Gregory, Gospel, 226–40, and Klauck, Gospels, 37. Second, with the exception of baptism accounts, none of Epiphanius’ citations of a Gospel according to the Hebrews overlap with citations from Origen, Eusebius, Didymus and Jerome. Neither of these reasons justifies reconstructing multiple distinct texts.

15 On the distinction between ‘text’ and ‘work’ see M. Driscoll, ‘The words on the page: thoughts on philology, old and new’, in J. Quinn and E. Lethbridge (eds), Creating the medieval saga: versions, variability and editorial interpretations of Old Norse saga literature, Odense 2010, 87–104 at p. 93. For reception of this insight in the study of early Christian and early Jewish literature see H. Lundhaug and L. I. Lied (eds), Snapshots of evolving traditions: Jewish and Christian manuscript culture, textual fluidity, and new philology, Berlin 2017.

16 ‘καὶ δέχονται μὲν καὶ αὐτοὶ τὸ κατὰ Ματθαῖον εὐαγγέλιον. τούτῳ γὰρ καὶ αὐτοί, ὡς καὶ οἱ κατὰ Κήρινθον καὶ Μήρινθον χρῶνται μόνῳ. καλοῦσι δὲ αὐτὸ κατὰ Ἑβραίους, ὡς τὰ ἀληθῆ ἔστιν εἰπεῖν, ὅτι Ματθαῖος μόνος Ἑβραϊστὶ καὶ Ἑβραϊκοῖς γράμμασιν ἐν τῇ καινῇ διαθήκῃ ἐποιήσατο τὴν τοῦ εὐαγγελίου ἔκθεσίν τε καὶ κήρυγμα’: Epiphanius, Panarion xxx. 3.7, ed. Karl Holl, GCS xxv. 337, line 9–338, line 3.

17 Jerome claims that a Hebrew Matthew was preserved in Caesarea (De viris illustribus iii) and that a text known as ‘according to the Hebrews’ (‘iuxta Hebraeos’), sometimes also known as ‘according to Matthew’ (‘iuxta Matthaeum’), was held in the Caesarean library: Adversus Pelagianos dialogi III 2; cf. Epiphanius, Panarion xxx. 13.2. In late antiquity (and not just for Jerome), the fantasy of a Hebrew or Aramaic original Matthew merges with knowledge of Gospel texts translated into Hebrew, Aramaic or Syriac and with thinking about reading communities described as ‘Hebrew’, even when they read (some texts) in Greek.

18 Jerome discusses a Gospel of the Hebrews in Adversus Pelagianos dialogi III iii. 2. But he also says that this text, which he accesses in Greek, corresponds to an original Hebrew Matthew: ‘In Euangelio iuxta Hebraeos, quod Chaldaico quidem Syrioque sermone, sed Hebraicis litteris scriptum est, quo utuntur usque hodie Nazareni, secundum apostolos, siue ut plerique autumnant, iuxta Matthaeum, quod et in Caesarensis habetur bibliotheca, narrat historia’: Adversus Pelagianos dialogi III iii. 2.1–5, ed. Claudio Moreschini, CCSL lxxx. 99. Two excerpts attributed to this ‘Gospel according to the Hebrews’ follow; cf. the reports of a Gospel in Hebrew script that appear in Eusebius’ Theophania iv.12 (Syriac) and frag. 22 (Greek). The attribution of the second passage to Eusebius is unreliable: see n. 24 below.

19 Examples of material attributed to a Gospel according to the Hebrews without obvious connection to Matthew include Clement of Alexandria, Stromateis ii. 9.45.4–5 (cf. v. 14.96.3); Origen of Alexandria, Commentarii in evangelium Joannis ii. 12.87; Eusebius, HE iii. 39.17 (on Papias); Didymus of Alexandria, Commentarii in Psalmos 184.9–10; Commentarii in Ecclesiasten iv. 223.6–13; and Jerome, Commentariorum in Isaiam libri XVIII xl. 9–11; Commentariorum in Ezechielem libri XVI xviii. 7; Commentariorum in Michaeum libri II vii. 5–7; Commentariorum in Epistulam ad Ephesios libri III v. 4; and De viris illustribus ii.

20 ‘(7) καὶ μετὰ τὸ εἰπεῖν πολλὰ ἐπιφέρει ὅτι ‘τοῦ λαοῦ βαπτισθέντος ἦλθεν καὶ Ἰησοῦς καὶ ἐβαπτίσθη ὑπὸ τοῦ Ἰωάννου. καὶ ὡς ἀνῆλθεν ἀπὸ τοῦ ὕδατος, ἠνοίγησαν οἱ οὐρανοὶ καὶ εἶδεν τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον ἐν εἴδει περιστεράς, κατελθούσης καὶ εἰσελθούσης εἰς αὐτόν. καὶ φωνὴ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ λέγουσα⋅ σύ μου εἶ ὁ υἱὸς ὁ ἀγαπητός, ἐν σοὶ ηὐδόκησα, καὶ πάλιν⋅ ἐγὼ σήμερον γεγέννηκά σε. καὶ εὐθὺς περιέλαμψε τὸν τόπον φῶς μέγα. ὃ ἰδών, φησίν, ὁ Ἰωάννης λέγει αὐτῷ⋅ σὺ τίς εἶ, κύριε; καὶ πάλιν φωνὴ ἐξ οὐρανοῦ πρὸς αὐτόν⋅ οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός, ἐφ’ ὃν ηὐδόκησα. (8) καὶ τότε, φησίν, ὁ Ἰωάννης προσπεσὼν αὐτῷ ἔλεγεν⋅ δέομαί σου, κύριε, σύ με βάπτισον. ὁ δὲ ἐκώλυσεν αὐτὸν λέγων⋅ ἄφες, ὅτι οὕτως ἐστὶ πρέπον πληρωθῆναι πάντα’: Epiphanius, Panarion xxx. 13.7–8, GCS xxv. 350, line 12–351, line 6; cf. Jerome, Commentariorum in Isaiam libri XVIII xi. 1–3, on Jesus’ baptism in ‘the Gospel written in the Hebrew language, which the Nazaraeans read’ (‘evangelium quod Hebraeo sermone conscriptum legunt Nazaraei’).

21 The codices are the fifth-century Codex Vercellensis (VL 3) and the ninth-century Codex Sangermanensis (VL 7). Similar details appear in Justin, Dialogus cum Tryphone lxxxviii. 3 and pseudo-Ephrem, Commentary on the Gospel iv. 5 (possibly reflecting Tatian's Gospel; this section is extant only in the Armenian tradition of the Commentary, ed. Louis Leloir, CSCO cxxxvii.48-9). A similar detail is attributed by the third-century pseudo-Cyprianic On rebaptism xvii to a ‘heretical’ work known as the Preaching of Paul.

22 ‘παρακόψαντες γὰρ τὰς παρὰ τῷ Ματθαίῳ γενεαλογίας ἄρχονται τὴν ἀρχὴν ποιεῖσθαι ὡς προείπομεν, λέγοντες ὅτι ἐγένετο φησίν ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις Ἡρῴδου βασιλέως τῆς Ἰουδαίας ἐπὶ ἀρχιερέως Καϊάφα, ἦλθέν τις Ἰωάννης ὀνόματι βαπτίζων βάπτισμα μετανοίας ἐν τῷ Ἰορδάνῃ ποταμῷ καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς’: Epiphanius, Panarion xxx. 14.3, GCS xxv. 351, lines 12–17. Directly prior, in Panarion xxx. 14.2, GCS xxv. 351, lines 9–12, Epiphanius contrasts this Ebionites’ reconfiguration of Matthew with Cerinthus' and Carpocrates' use of the genealogies to argue that Jesus was born from two human parents. On the beginning of Matthew see Panarion xxviii. 5.1–3 (Cerinthians); xxix. 9.1 (Nazoreans).

23 ‘Scriptum est in evangelio quodam, quod dicitur “secundum Hebraeos” (si tamen placet suscipere illud, non ad auctoritatem, sed ad manifestationem propositae quaestionis): “Dixit”, inquit, “ad eum alter divitum: magister, quid bonum faciens vivam?” dixit ei: “homo, legem et prophetas fac.” respondit ad eum: “feci.” dicit ei: “vade, vende omnia quae possides et divide pauperibus, et veni, sequere me.” coepit autem dives scalpere caput suum et non placuit ei. et dixit ad eum dominus: quomodo dicis: “feci legem et prophetas”? quoniam scriptum est in lege: “diliges proximum tuum sicut teipsum”; et ecce multi fratres tui filii Abrahae amicti sunt stercore, morientes prae fame, et domus tua plena est multis bonis, et non egreditur omnino aliquid ex ea ad eos.” et conversus dixit Simoni discipulo suo sedenti apud se: “Simon, fili Ionae, facilius est camelum intrare per foramen acus quam divitem in regnum coelorum”’: Origen, Commentarium in evangelium Matthaei xv. 14, ed. Ernst Benz and Erich Klostermann, GCS xxxviii. 389–90. This passage is transmitted only as part of the fourth-century Latin translation of Origen's commentary, leading some scholars to propose that it is a later interpolation; cf. Gregory, Gospel, 130–40. If that is the case, it does not alter the present argument.

24 ‘Eπεὶ δὲ τὸ εἰς ἡμᾶς ἧκον ἑβραϊκοῖς χαρακτῆρσιν εὐαγγέλιον τὴν ἀπειλὴν οὐ κατὰ τοῦ ἀποκρύψαντος ἐπῆγεν, ἀλλὰ κατὰ τοῦ ἀσώτως ἐζηκότος· τρεῖς γὰρ δούλους περιεῖχε, τὸν μὲν καταφαγόντα τὴν ὕπαρξιν τοῦ δεσπότου μετὰ πορνῶν καὶ αὐλητρίδων, τὸν δὲ πολλαπλασιάσαντα τὴν ἐργασίαν, τὸν δὲ κατακρύψαντα τὸ τάλαντον· εἶτα τὸν μὲν ἀποδεχθῆναι, τὸν δὲ μεμφθῆναι μόνον, τὸν δὲ συγκλεισθῆναι δεσμωτηρίῳ· ἐφίστημι, μήποτε κατὰ τὸν Ματθαῖον, μετὰ τὴν συμπλήρωσιν τοῦ λόγου τοῦ κατὰ τοῦ μηδὲν ἐργασαμένου, ἡ ἑξῆς ἐπιλεγομένη ἀπειλή, οὐ περὶ αὐτοῦ ἀλλὰ περὶ τοῦ προτέρου κατ’ ἐπανάληψιν λέλεκται τοῦ ἐσθίοντος καὶ πίνοντος μετὰ τῶν μεθυόντων’: Theophania, frag. 22 (often cited as iv. 22; PG xxiv.685D–688A). This brief text appears only in Greek catena manuscripts, and not in the Syriac version of the Theophania. On the fragment and its manuscript transmission see Szesnat, H., ‘The non-canonical version of the story of entrusted money in Nicetas of Heraclea's Catena in Lucam: revisiting text and manuscripts’, Neotestamentica liii (2019), 149–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The (Eusebian?) passage describes material in ‘the Gospel that has reached us in Hebrew script’ and connects this material to Matthew (cf. Eusebius, Theophania iv. 12). It includes details that correspond to distinctive aspects of both the Matthean and Lukan versions of the parable.

25 ‘In evangelio quo utuntur Nazareni et Hebionitae quod nuper in graecum de hebraeo sermone transtulimus et quod vocatur a plerisque Mathaei authenticum, homo iste qui aridam habet manum caementarius scribitur, istiusmodi vocibus auxilium precans: “Caementarius eram manibus victum quaeritans, precor te Iesu ut mihi restituas sanitatem ne turpiter mendicem cibos”’: Jerome, Commentariorum in Matthaeum libri IV xii.13, ed. David Hurst and Marc Adriaen, CCSL lxxvii. 90. Jerome attributes this text to ‘the Gospel that the Nazareans and Ebionites use’ and claims to have translated it from Hebrew into Greek.

26 ‘Iste in evangelio quod scribitur iuxta Hebraeos “filius magistri eorum” interpretatur qui propter seditionem et homicidium fuerat condemnatus’: Jerome, Commentariorum in Matthaeum libri IV xxvii.16, CCSL lxxvii. 265.

27 ‘In evangelio cuius saepe facimus mentionem superliminare templi infinitae magnitudinis fractum esse atque divisum legimus’: ibid. xxvii.51, CCSL lxxvii. 275; cf. another reference to the breaking of the lintel in ep. cxx. 8.

28 ‘In evangelio quod appellatur secundum Hebraeos pro supersubstantiali pane maar repperi, quod dicitur crastinum, ut sit sensus: “Panem nostrum crastinum, id est futurum, da nobis hodie”’: Jerome, Commentariorum in Matthaeum libri IV vi.11; cf. similar material in Jerome, Tractatus in Psalmos 135, ed. Germain Morin, CCSL lxxviii. 295. This detail could reflect either Matt. vi.11 or Luke xi.3.

29 ‘In evangelio quo utuntur Nazareni pro “filio Barachiae” “filium Ioiadae” scriptum repperimus’: Jerome, Commentariorum in Matthaeum libri IV xxiii. 35, CCSL lxxvii. 220. Jerome attributes this reading to ‘the Gospel which the Nazarenes use’. This reading makes sense only as an alternate reading for distinctive material in Matt. xxiii. 35 (cf. Old Greek-Isa. viii. 2; Zech. i. 7, which corresponds to the received text of Matthew; contrast Old Greek and Masoretic text Ezra v.1; vi.14; Nehemiah xii.16, which may correspond to the reading Ioiadae). There is no corresponding material in Mark, Luke or John.

30 The manuscripts are Gregory-Aland nos 4, 273, 566, 899, 1424, in Kurzgefaßte Liste der griechischen Handschriften des Neuen Testaments, ed. K. Aland, M. Welte, B. Köster and K. Junack, 2nd edn, Berlin 2011. Recent scholarship has often excluded this material because of its uncertain relationship to other late ancient Gospel texts: Frey, J., ‘Die scholien nach dem “Jüdischen Evangelium” und das sogenannte Nazoräerevangelium’, Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft xciv (2003), 122–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Luomanen, Recovering, 87–8; Frey, ‘Fragmente’; Gregory, Gospel, 269–74.

31 The material collected by Epiphanius reflects material familiar from both Matthew and Luke; cf. Gregory, A., ‘Prior or posterior? The Gospel of the Ebionites and the Gospel of Luke’, New Testament Studies li (2005), 344–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Gospel, 184–9.

32 On multiple circulating versions of scriptural texts see J. Knust and T. Wasserman, To cast the first stone: the transmission of a Gospel story, Princeton 2018, esp. pp. 177–81 on the Gospel according to the Hebrews.

33 Heresiological polemic against Marcion's revision of Luke (for example, Irenaeus, Adversus haereses i. 27.2) resembles Epiphanius’ complaints about Cerinthian and Ebionite alterations to Matthew (for example, Panarion xxviii. 5.1–3; xxx. 13.2). In a recent article, Chris Keith discusses ancient assertions that Marcion's editorial practice constituted physical violence against Luke: ‘The Gospel read, sliced, and burned: the material Gospel and the construction of Christian identity’, Early Christianity xii (2021), 7–27. For ancient comparisons between the textual violence of problematic reading practices and the damage caused by bookworms see C. Lambert, ‘The ancient entomological bookworm’, Arethusa liii (2020), 1–24. On the polemical analogy between textual change and physical violence against books see Coogan, J., ‘Divine truth, presence, and power: Christian books in Roman North Africa’, Journal of Late Antiquity xi (2018), 375–95 at pp. 381–2Google Scholar.

34 For the ‘sociology of texts’ see D. F. McKenzie, Bibliography and the sociology of texts, Cambridge 1999. For a comparable approach to the ‘ontology’ of texts see J. Nati, Textual criticism and the ontology of literature in early Judaism: an analysis of the Serekh ha-Yaḥad, Leiden 2022.

35 These criticised groups are often known in modern scholarship as ‘Jewish Christians’. Yet the term did not exist in antiquity and even the category does not make sense for heresiologists like Irenaeus or Epiphanius, who did not envision ‘Christian’ as a term which tolerated such hybridisation: ‘heresy’ (αἵρεσις) was not Christian at all. See, for example, Jackson-McCabe, Jewish Christianity, 15–21. While ‘Jewish Christianity’ did not exist in antiquity, the heresiological effort to exclude figures like ‘Ebionites’ from the category ‘Christian’ suggests real anxiety about borderline cases.

36 Texts that connect Ebionites with Jewish practices or ethnicity include Irenaeus, Adversus haereses. iii. 3.4; iii. 11.1; iii. 21.1; iv. 33.4; v. 1.3; Tertullian, De praescriptione haereticorum xxxii. 3–5; Hippolytus, Refutatio omnium haeresium vii. 34.1–2; x. 22.1; pseudo-Tertullian, Adversus omnes haereses iii; Origen, De principiis iv. 3.8; Homiliae in Genesim iii. 5; Homiliae in Jeremiam xix. 12; Commentariorum in Matthaeum libri IV xi. 12; xvi. 12; Commentarium series in evangelium Matthaei lxxix; Fragmenta in Lucam fr. 212; and Contra Celsum ii. 1; v. 61, 66. Further texts, often of incidental relevance, are collected in Klijn and Reinink, Patristic evidence. These other texts offer no detail about Gospel reading.

37 In ep. cxii.13, Jerome describes Christians who observe Torah as heretics who ‘fall into the heresies of Cerinthus and Ebion’. For Latin text see n. 47 below.

38 Greek: ‘Οἱ δὲ λεγόμενοι Ἐβιωναῖοι ὁμολογῦσι μὲν τὸν κόσμον ὑπὸ τοῦ ὄντως θεοῦ γεγονέναι, τὰ δὲ περὶ τὸν Κύριον ὁμοίως τῷ Κηρίνθῳ καὶ Καρποκράτει μυθεύουσιν’. Latin: ‘Qui autem dicuntur Ebionaei consentiunt quidem mundum a Deo factum, ea autem quae sunt erga Dominum non similiter ut Cerinthus et Carpocrates opinantur. Solo autem eo quod est secundum Matthaeum euangelio utuntur, et apostolum Paulum recusant, apostatam eum legis dicentes’: Irenaeus, Adversus haereses i. 26.2, ed. Adelin Rousseau and Louis Doutreleau, SC cclxiv. 346–7. The relevant part of the passage is preserved only in the anonymous fourth-century Latin translation.

39 ‘Ebionei etenim eo euangelio quod est secundum Matthaeum solo utentes, ex illo ipso conuincuntur non recte praesumentes de Domino’: ibid. iii. 11.7, SC ccxi. 158–9: scholars again depend on the fourth-century Latin translation.

40 ‘(1) Χρῶνται γὰρ τῷ κατὰ Ματθαῖον εὐαγγελίῳ – ἀπὸ μέρους καὶ οὐχὶ ὅλῳ, ἀλλὰ διὰ τὴν γενεαλογίαν τὴν ἔνσαρκον – καὶ ταύτην μαρτυρίαν φέρουσιν, ἀπὸ τοῦ εὐαγγελίου πάλιν λέγοντες ὅτι ἀρκετὸν τῷ μαθητῇ ἵνα γένηται ὡς ὁ διδάσκαλος. (2) τί οὖν, φησί; περιετμήθη ὁ Ἰησοῦς, περιτμήθητι καὶ αὐτός. Χριστὸς κατὰ νόμον, φησίν, ἐπολιτεύσατο, καὶ αὐτὸς τὰ ἴσα ποίησον. ὅθεν καί τινες ἐκ τούτων ὡς ὑπὸ δηλητηρίων ὑφαρπαχθέντες πείθονται ταῖς πιθανολογίαις διὰ τὸ τὸν Χριστὸν περιτετμῆσθαι. (3) τὸν δὲ Παῦλον ἀθετοῦσι διὰ τὸ μὴ πείθεσθαι τῇ περιτομῇ, ἀλλὰ καὶ ἐκβάλλουσιν αὐτὸν διὰ τὸ εἰρηκέναι ὅσοι ἐν νόμῳ δικαιοῦσθε, τῆς χάριτος ἐξεπέσατε, καὶ ὅτι ἐὰν περιτέμνησθε, Χριστὸς ὑμᾶς οὐδὲν ὠφελήσει’: Epiphanius, Panarion xxviii. 5.1–3, GCS xxv.317, lines 10–20.

41 Ibid. xxx. 3.7, GCS xxv. 337, line 9–338, line 3. See the full text in n. 16 above. Cf. Epiphanius’ account of an ‘illegitimate and mutilated’ Matthew in Panarion xxx. 13.2. There, Epiphanius identifies this Ἑβραϊκόν with ‘the Gospel which among them is called according to Matthew’ (‘τῷ … παρ’ αὐτοῖς εὐαγγελίῳ κατὰ Ματθαῖον ὀνομαζομένῳ’: GCS xxv. 349, lines 1–2). Epiphanius thinks the Ebionites have damaged the text of Matthew; this is his way of analysing that textual difference, but the relationship to Matthew is not disputed.

42 ‘Apostolum Paulum beatum non accipit, Iudam traditorem honorat, et euangelium secundum Mattheum solum accipit, tria euangelia spernit, Actus Apostolorum abicit, beatos martyres blasphemat’: Filastrius, Diversarum hereseon liber xxxvi. 3, ed. F. Heylen, CCSL ix. 233: Filastrius’ discussion of Ebion follows in Haereseon 37; Ebion is described as Cerinthus’ disciple and is said to err similarly.

43 ‘(4) οὗτοι δὲ τοῦ μὲν ἀποστόλου πάμπαν τὰς ἐπιστολὰς ἀρνητέας ἡγοῦντο εἶναι δεῖν, ἀποστάτην ἀποκαλοῦντες αὐτὸν τοῦ νόμου, εὐαγγελίῳ δὲ μόνῳ τῷ καθ’ Ἑβραίους λεγομένῳ χρώμενοι, τῶν λοιπῶν σμικρὸν ἐποιοῦντο λόγον⋅ (5) καὶ τὸ μὲν σάββατον καὶ τὴν ἄλλην Ἰουδαϊκὴν ἀγωγὴν ὁμοίως ἐκείνοις παρεφύλαττον, ταῖς δ’ αὖ κυριακαῖς ἡμέραις ἡμῖν τὰ παραπλήσια εἰς μνήμην τῆς σωτηρίου ἀναστάσεως ἐπετέλουν⋅ (6) ὅθεν παρὰ τὴν τοιαύτην ἐγχείρησιν τῆς τοιᾶσδε λελόγχασι προσηγορίας, τοῦ Ἐβιωναίων ὀνόματος τὴν τῆς διανοίας πτωχείαν αὐτῶν ὑποφαίνοντος⋅ ταύτῃ γὰρ ἐπίκλην ὁ πτωχὸς παρ’ Ἑβραίοις ὀνομάζεται’: Eusebius, HE iii. 27.4–6, ed. Eduard Schwartz and Theodor Mommsen, GCS NF vi/1. 256, lines 13–22; trans. in J. Schott, The history of the Church: a new translation, Berkeley, Ca 2019, 151, here modified.

44 ‘(4) ἐν τοῖς νόθοις κατατετάχθω καὶ τῶν Παύλου Πράξεων ἡ γραφὴ ὅ τε λεγόμενος Ποιμὴν καὶ ἡ Ἀποκάλυψις Πέτρου καὶ πρὸς τούτοις ἡ φερομένη Βαρναβᾶ ἐπιστολὴ καὶ τῶν ἀποστόλων αἱ λεγόμεναι Διδαχαὶ ἔτι τε, ὡς ἔφην, ἡ Ἰωάννου Ἀποκάλυψις, εἰ φανείη⋅ ἥν τινες, ὡς ἔφην, ἀθετοῦσιν, ἕτεροι δὲ ἐγκρίνουσιν τοῖς ὁμολογουμένοις. (5) ἤδη δ’ ἐν τούτοις τινὲς καὶ τὸ καθ’ Ἑβραίους εὐαγγέλιον κατέλεξαν, ᾧ μάλιστα Ἑβραίων οἱ τὸν Χριστὸν παραδεξάμενοι χαίρουσιν’: Eusebius, HE iii. 25.4–5, GCS NF vi/1. 252, lines 1–8; trans. in Schott, History, 148–9, here modified.

45 ‘(2) ‘ἐν τῷ γοῦν παρ’ αὐτοῖς εὐαγγελίῳ κατὰ Ματθαῖον ὀνομαζομένῳ, οὐχ ὅλῳ δὲ πληρεστάτῳ ἀλλὰ νενοθευμένῳ καὶ ἠκρωτηριασμένῳ Ἑβραϊκὸν δὲ τοῦτο καλοῦσιν ἐμφέρεται ὅτι ‘ἐγένετό τις ἀνὴρ ὀνόματι Ἰησοῦς, καὶ αὐτὸς ὡς ἐτῶν τριάκοντα, ὃς ἐξελέξατο ἡμᾶς. καὶ ἐλθὼν εἰς Καφαρναοὺμ εἰσῆλθεν εἰς τὴν οἰκίαν Σίμωνος τοῦ ἐπικληθέντος Πέτρου καὶ ἀνοίξας τὸ στόμα αὐτοῦ εἶπεν⋅ (3) παρερχόμενος παρὰ τὴν λίμνην Τιβεριάδος ἐξελεξάμην Ἰωάννην καὶ Ἰάκωβον, υἱοὺς घεβεδαίου, καὶ Σίμωνα καὶ Ἀνδρέαν καὶ Θαδδαῖον καὶ Σίμωνα τὸν ζηλωτὴν καὶ Ἰοῦδαν τὸν Ἰσκαριώτην, καὶ σὲ τὸν Ματθαῖον καθεζόμενον ἐπὶ τοῦ τελωνίου ἐκάλεσα καὶ ἠκολούθησάς μοι. ὑμᾶς οὖν βούλομαι εἶναι δεκαδύο ἀποστόλους εἰς μαρτύριον τοῦ Ἰσραήλ’: Epiphanius, Panarion xxx. 13.2–3, GCS xxv.349, line 1–350, line 2.

46 On Epiphanius’ thinking with and about books see Jacobs, A., ‘Epiphanius of Salamis and the antiquarian's bible’, JECS xxi (2013), 437–64Google Scholar, and ‘Epiphanius's library’, in L. Nasrallah, A.-M. Luijendijk and C. Bakirtzis (eds), From Roman to early Christian Cyprus: studies in religion and archaeology, Tübingen 2020, 133–52.

47 ‘Haec ergo summa est quaestionis, immo sententiae tuae: ut post euangelium Christi, bene faciant credentes Iudaei, si Legis mandata custodiant, hoc est, si sacrificia offerant, quae obtulit Paulus, si filios circumcidant, si sabbatum seruent, ut Paulus, in Timotheo et omnes obseruauere Iudaei. Si hoc uerum est, in Cerinthi et Hebionis heresim delabimur, qui credentes in Christo propter hoc solum a parentibus anathematizati sunt, quod Legis caerimonias Christi euangelio miscuerunt; et sie noua confessi sunt, ut uetera non ammitterent. Quid dicam de Hebionitis, qui Christianos esse se simulant. Usque hodie per totas Orientis synagogas inter Iudaeos haeresis est, quae dicitur Minaeorum, et a Pharisaeis huc usque damnatur: quos uulgo Nazaraeos nuncupant, qui credunt in Christum, Filium Dei, natum de Maria uirgine, et eum dicunt esse, qui sub Pontio Pilato passus est, et resurrexit, in quem et nos credimus: sed dum uolunt et Iudaei esse et Christiani, nec Iudaei sunt, nec Christiani’: Jerome, ep. cxii. 13, ed. Jérôme Labourt, Budé iv. 31–2. Jerome treats the designations Ebionites and Nazoreans as interchangeable.

48 Jerome, Adversus Pelagianos dialogi III iii. 2, CCSL lxxx. 99. See the text in n.18 above. Jerome mentions the Gospel according to the Hebrews as a physical artefact found in the Caesarean library; cf. Anne-Marie Luijendijk's discussion of the reception of Matthew in the Acts of Barnabas: ‘The Gospel of Matthew in the Acts of Barnabas through the lens of a book's history: healing and burial with books’, in Nasrallah, Luijendijk and Bakirtzis, From Roman to early Christian Cyprus, 169–94.

49 See A. Le Boulluec's arguments about the discursive creation of heresy and orthodoxy: La Notion d'hérésie dans la littérature grecque IIe–IIIe siècles, Paris 1985.

50 Keith, ‘The Gospel read, sliced, and burned’, 13.

51 For similar rabbinic thinking about problematic reading see Wollenberg, R. S., ‘The dangers of reading as we know it: sight reading as a source of heresy in early rabbinic traditions’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion lxxxv (2017), 709–45CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

52 Cf. Boyarin, D., Border lines: the partition of Judaeo-Christianity, Philadelphia 2004CrossRefGoogle Scholar,