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NAZOREANS, GOSPEL OF THE

A Jewish-Christian apocryphal Gospel, written in Hebrew or Aramaic in Palestine ca. 100-150 c.e. It was apparently known and used by Hegesippus (ca. 110-180), Eusebius (ca. 260-340), Jerome (ca. 342-420), and the Nazoreans, an early Jewish Christian sect who lived in Beroea. Quotations from this Gospel are also found in the Latin translation of Origen’s commentary on Matthew and in the marginal notations of five medieval manuscripts of the NT that refer to To Ioudaïkon, “The Jewish (Gospel).”

According to Jerome, the Gospel of the Nazoreans was present in the library of Caesarea which Pamphilus had collected. Jerome himself received permission from the Nazoreans of Beroea to make a copy of their version of it. Eusebius, who speaks of the Gospel in “Hebrew letters,” apparently also had access to the Gospel in the library of Caesarea.

The contents of the Gospel are not fully known, but they may be inferred from its extant fragments as including the baptism of John, the temptation of Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, the ministry of Jesus (miracles, parables, various narratives and sayings), the sending out of the Twelve, Peter’s confession at Caesarea Philippi, predictions of the Passion, Peter’s denial at the trial, the Crucifixion, and burial.

Although the Gospel of the Nazoreans is closely associated with Matthew, its accounts of the rich young man (Matt. 19:16-24) and the parable of the talents (25:14-30) are sufficiently different from Matthew to suggest a separate origin from the canonical Gospel. Both Gospels appear to come from a common environment in which traditions used by one were also used by the other.

Bibliography. R. Cameron, ed., The Other Gospels (Philadelphia, 1982), 97-106; J. K. Elliott, “The Gospel of the Nazaraeans,” in The Apocryphal New Testament, rev. ed. (Oxford, 1993), 10-14; A. F. J. Klijn, Jewish-Christian Gospel Tradition. VCSup 17 (Leiden, 1992); Klijn and G. J. Reinink, Patristic Evidence for Jewish-Christian Sects. NovTSup 36 (Leiden, 1973); P. Vielhauer, “The Gospel of the Nazaraeans,” in New Testament Apocrypha, ed. E. Hennecke-W. Schneemelcher, 1 (Philadelphia, 1963), 139-53.

George Howard

Prayer Tents Bible References - Prayer Tents

NAZOREANS, GOSPEL OF THE

Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (2000)