Hebrew Gospel of John & Luke!?

[Philo Sofee]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUOJMopNKrI&t=119s

If Nehemiah Gordon isn't pulling our leg, this discovery is absolutely over the top HUUUUUUUUUGE!!!

The Hebrew of John 1 is astonishing compared to the Greek! The Hebrew of Luke is breath-taking compared to the Greek. I am very, VERY interested in seeing if this has made it anywhere in print yet...

Ah, ask Google, and you shall receive...
https://www.hebrewgospels.com/_files/ug ... index=true

Still more https://www.hebrewgospels.com/john

[msnobody]

Please point out a few things you find intriguing.

[Bret Ripley]

Please point out a few things you find intriguing.

I'm curious too. These appear to be late 15th century translations from Catalan to Hebrew, and they are interesting but I'm not sure what puts them into 'over the top' territory.

A 2014 paper about these gospel translations can be accessed (for free!) at https://www.academia.edu/25584921/Title ... om_Catalan.

[drumdude]

Some context found on Reddit here:

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskBibleSchola ... f_john_in/

There actually is a known Hebrew translation of the gospels in the Vatican Library, known as Vat. ebr. 100.

It's from the fifteenth century, and wasn't translated directly from Greek, but rather is a translation of a translation in Catalan.

Shem Tov's Hebrew Matthew is from a similar time. I'd imagine any and all such manuscripts are.

[Edit:] I've found an extensive catalogue of Hebrew mss in the Vatican Library. Apparently the manuscript that Gordon came across is in Vat. ebr. 530, which is actually a pretty big collection of different texts. The particular extracts of Luke and John that Gordon mentions are Fragm. 11; and the catalogue notes actually suggest it's from the 18th century (!), from Italy. This is a bit later than other works in the collection, which are mostly from the 14th and 15th century. There are some other later works there, though: one from the 17th century (Fragment 5) and one from 1698; one from the 18th century (Fragment 17), and even some notes from the 18–19th century.

Here is a direct link to the first page of Luke that Gordon discussed in his YouTube video:

https://digi.vatlib.it/pub/digit/MSS_Va ... native.jpg

And here is the first page of John:

https://digi.vatlib.it/pub/digit/MSS_Va ... native.jpg

These are clearly not early manuscripts (notice the full niqqud), and Yaaqov Sussmann in an article in Medieval Hebrew Manuscripts Reused as Book-bindings in Italy (Brill, 2022) mentions that the assorted fragments in Vat. ebr. 530 represent a collection of genizah fragments reused as bookbindings including pages from the Palestinian Talmud (the tractate Bava Qamma in particular); that is why there is such a mixed collection in that folder. Like most medieval Hebrew versions of the gospels, this represents a translation into Hebrew, not an original Hebrew gospel.

Sounds like these are simply very late translations into Hebrew, not Hebrew originals.

[Physics Guy]

If you google "Hebrew gospels" you learn some interesting things.

Some early Christian writers mention a "gospel of the Hebrews", and even quote a few passages from it. Although purportedly used by early Jewish Christians, this gospel text was not in Hebrew, but Greek. There may have been as many as three separate gospels of this kind—it is hard to be sure whether different writers quoting from "the gospel of the Hebrews" are really referring to the same text. Only these few quotations survive, anyway. One of them presents a theory which evidently didn't catch on, that the Holy Spirit was the Mother of Jesus.

There has also long been a hypothesis that the Greek Gospel of Matthew is a translation of a lost original version in Hebrew or Aramaic. It doesn't seem to be considered a likely hypothesis by scholars in general because Matthew doesn't show enough signs of being a translation. It could just have been a really good translation but this seems to be doubtful; I don't know why it's considered so. Maybe quite a lot of ancient translations into Greek from local languages have survived and most are not all that good, so any theory that requires great translation is a long shot?

The oldest oral Christian traditions were presumably in Aramaic, which had supplanted Hebrew as a vernacular language, to the point where the books of Daniel and Ezra in the "Hebrew Bible" are actually in Aramaic. As "the language of the Hebrews," Aramaic may have been confused by non-Jewish ancient writers with Hebrew. So in some sense the oldest Christian sources were probably at least Hebrew-ish, but it's not clear that these existed in written form.

Then there are these late medieval translations of the canonical gospels into Hebrew. The translations were made by rabbis living in Christian states, in order to study Christianity and argue against it. The arguments given in the papers in the OP links, to say that these are not late translations but Hebrew originals, seem awfully weak to me.

The first argument for authenticity which is made in the linked text of John is to say, in effect,

The Hebrew text of John says "ben" (son) instead of "logos"!

Um, yeah: Jewish Christians who didn't speak Greek probably would not have written "logos", but neither would anyone who was translating "ben" into Greek. They would have written "uios" (son), which lots of Greek Christians obviously did use for Jesus. "Ben" may make some sense as a Hebrew translation for "logos," at least in translating the Gospel of John, but "logos" does not make sense as a Greek translation of "ben". So this first argument for authenticity is actually a strong argument for late translation. The fact that the author does not realise this is not an encouraging sign for the rest of their effort.

Arguments from wordplay are as tenuous here as they are when they are used to support the Book of Mormon as a translation from Hebrew. Taking a clunky passage in Greek or English, and rendering it into snappier Hebrew, doesn't prove that the clunky passage was translated from a snappy Hebrew original. It just proves that the Greek or English is clunky, and can be rewritten more snappily into any language, if a writer with enough flair for prose takes the time to rewrite it.

It also helps that we can all recognise clunky English, and some can tell clunky Greek, but there are no ancient Hebrew poets around to raise their eyebrows when we say how natural and elegant our Hebrew version would have been for them.

[Kishkumen]

My guess is, as others have said, that these are late translations, not pre-Greek gospels.

[Philo Sofee]

Yes, they are later, I was aware of that. What got me to thinking is how the Jews viewed the Gospel of John. Thanks for all your inputs. I love this group!

[msnobody]

Yes, they are later, I was aware of that. What got me to thinking is how the Jews viewed the Gospel of John. Thanks for all your inputs. I love this group!

That would be interesting. On my bucket list is to visit our local Messianic Jewish (term?) congregation to hopefully gain deeper insight.