stephan huller

I have always suspected the latter possibility - i.e. that ALL members of the presbytery in Egypt were ritually castrated - but I don't want to get too deeply into the reasons for this, I just wanted to make a small tangential point.

Most of us know that Irenaeus and many others speak of a 'Gospel of the Hebrews' where 'Hebrew' is presumed by many to be a designation for 'Jewish Aramaic.' The problem of course is that outside of Christianity we have no attestation for identifying 'Hebrew' as 'Aramaic.' Indeed Jews themselves did not identify Hebrew as 'Hebrew' until the late second century BCE (the Greek prologue of Ecclesiasticus) and it was still called 'the Holy Tongue' in Aramaic speaking communities into the third century CE.

Interesting it is only Greek texts related to Christianity which identify Aramaic (the language Jews and Samaritans actually spoke to one another) as 'Hebrew.' This has always puzzled me. There are - theoretically at least - two terms which Jews in Palestine, Syria and Arabia could have used to denote the Aramaic language - aramy or sursi. Aramy was the original term which dates back to the legendary figure Aram who was the father of the Syrian people. But what few people realize is that it is highly unlikely that Jewish converts to Christianity living in Palestine would have called their language aramy. As Stern notes:

http://books.google.com/books?id=ekh...lly%22&f=false

The identification of Jewish Aramaic as Sursi is evident from contemporary references in the Mishnah too. R. Judah HaNasi declared "No one should speak Sursi in Palestine. Let him speak either Hebrew or Greek!" (Sotah 49b)

As such one can only expect that the term which Irenaeus translates as the 'Gospel of the Hebrews' into the Greek language was originally 'the Gospel of the Sursi.' The same would be true of other Aramaic references which are (strangely) translated as 'Hebrew' in the received texts of the NT (John 19:20).

Indeed the Peshitta seems to anticipate this when it substitutes the word 'Greek' and 'Gentile' for 'Syrian' throughout the Apostlikon:

Jews demand miraculous signs and Syrians look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Syrians, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Syrians, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.[1 Cor 22-24]

and again:

Tribulation and anguish, upon every soul of man that doeth evil, of the Jew first, and also of the Syrian; But glory, honour, and peace, to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the Syrian [Rom 2:9 - 10]

Was Syrian a technical term which perhaps meant or was related to the class of 'proselyte'? Perhaps but for the moment it is enough to say SINCE the 'Gospel of the Hebrews' is almost always taken to mean 'the Aramaic gospel' I think there is a possibility that the text was never identified by the Jewish-Christians by this title but more likely 'the Sursi Gospel' owing to the fact that Aramaean not only meant Babylonian but ALWAYS an 'outsider' and even - an enemy to Israel (aramy is frequently used to designate 'Rome' owing to self-censorship on the part of the scribes).

Origen references what he calls the 'Gospel of the Hebrews' on a number of occasions. He obviously used it as his preferred text. Origen was also a saris (a self-castrated man). A Sursi gospel would clearly have a second meaning of the 'gospel of the castrated' or the 'castrated gospel.' Jastrow compares it to the meaning of the Greek apokopos.

I wonder if the term had a double meaning that was known to Origen and his secret community of Christian eunuchs which included - according to Severus of Al'Ashmunein - the Patriarch Demetrius himself!

darstec

In which exact text of Irenaeus can we find this mention of "The Gospel of the Hebrews" of which "most of us know"?

stephan huller

Chronological references:

I'm sorry I didn't include all of this but took longer to get to the actual question about whether all or just some of the Patristic authors were eunuchs. I wasn't sure whether I should keep going. If there's an interest, we could continue and talk about the private parts of known Christian figures from the early period. It is amazing to see how many CONFIRMED Christian eunuchs there are (as well as making a list of ones 'under suspicion).

darstec

We don't have anything by Papias, and don't even know if he really existed. So anything by any supposed Papias is out.

I see. You were using a rather loose paraphrase of the translation.

This is a better one and demonstrates the problems scholars have with the passage:
I wish we had any approximating the original Greek. But looking at that passage it does not say "Gospel of the Hebrews" but rather gives the idea that Matthew wrote a gospel that was circulated among the Hebrews, and not in their language but rather in their dialect. Who knows what he might have meant by in their dialect.

You weren't the first to say that Irenaeus said Matthew wrote a gospel of the Hebrews so I wanted to make sure it was just the poor paraphrase (but who knows) that caused the confusion.

stephan huller

To be honest, I got lazy and I just copied the whole section in the Wikipedia article on the Gospel of the Hebrews (except for Papias) but the Latin of Irenaeus is in front of me now:

Ita Matthaeus in Hebraeis ipsorum lingua scripturam edidit Evangeli ...

Papias was older than Irenaeus. We don't need to know anything about him in this case because Irenaeus is undoubtedly our ultimate source for Papias. If Irenaeus changed Papias's opinions - as some may charge - we are still left with the idea that Irenaeus implicitly accepted these ideas.

There can be no doubt that the Aramaic gospel existed and it forms the core of the Islamic argument against Roman Christianity:

and again:

IMO this argument against Christianity has far greater weight against Romanized Christianity than anything from the mythicist position, but then again I'd have to say I was biased ...

mountainman

This cannot be true because it is Eusebius, who states he is preserving Irenaeus, who is undoubtedly our ultimate source on not just Papias and Irenaeus, but on every item of literary information furnished by every author and identity mentioned in his "Historia Ecclesiastica" and "In Preparation for the God Spell", etc, etc, etc.


We are not compelled to entertain this idea at all - and it would be foolish to turn one's back on Eusebius (and his Roman sponsors) even for a minute.

A second problem with the OP is that we now know that there were most likely two separate and distinct "Origens" in the period. For details see the WIKI disampbiguation page, or some notes. Which Origen is Eusebius talking about? Which Ammonias Saccas (the teacher of Origen) is Eusebius talking about? The answers to these questions are not immediately apparent because of the duality of identities for a person called Origen - one a christian and the other a neoplatonist. Who are we to believe and why?

The absence of any Aramaic evidence raises serious doubt on this question. The concensus points at an exclusive Greek authorship, a language also understood by the Persians, the Arabians and those who, centuries after the Council of Nicaea, would become Islamic.

Those who would become Islamic saw how Constantine and his successors ruled by means of a little red book which had been canonised and made the "Holy Writ" of the Roman Empire. Constantine had copied Ardashir's exploits c.224 CE, and Muhammad copied Constantine's. It was efficient to rule large nations by means of a canonised holy writ and its monotheistic state religion -- the codex was High Technology at that epoch in history, and the rulers exploited it.

stephan huller

Yes Eusebius is preserving something problematic but that doesn't mean we can reject it merely because we don't like what it tells us.

We have to at least EXPLAIN what's wrong with the text, how it got corrupted, why Irenaeus wanted to (allegedly) falsify Papias. We just can't shut down a tradition merely because we don't like what it says AND we have to agree that if enough of these testimonials come together THAT ARE INDEPENDENT of one another THEY WIN.

I sometimes get the feeling that certain people got an idea in their head years ago and are now trying to arrange the evidence to suit their thesis.

Yes the religious scholars do this who occupy many of the seats of higher learning but, we're better than they are - aren't we?

OAO

'Hebrew" in "The Gospel of the Hebrews" doesn't refer to the Jewish language, but the Jewish people.

stephan huller

The evidence isn't clear either way. Origen certainly seems to think otherwise. The rest of the reports appear quite murky. One other possibility. Epiphanius connects the Gospel of the Hebrews to the Diatessaron. Tatian was intimately attached to the Diatessaron. He is called 'the Assyrian.' People think Clement is referencing him when he speaks of his 'Assyrian' teacher. Is it possible that Clement is really referring to his text - i.e. 'the Assyrian' (Strom i.1) or the gospel written in distinctive eastern Aramaic (Assyrian) script. In Jewish culture the Babylonian Talmud is always identified merely as Babli - i.e. 'the Babylonian.'

Just a thought.

darstec

How does that help? It is still more than 1000 years removed from his supposed lifetime and was passed down or even created in the hands of the biased Catholic Church. What secular documents exist verifying that even Irenaeus lived?

How can he be older if he was a figment of Eusebius' imagination? You haven't shown any evidence that either Papias or Irenaeus were real, living people. You know, it is really difficult carrying on a conversation with a True Believer who takes all that was passed down by a biased church as undeniably true.


No we don't. We don't actually have anything by Irenaeus. You seem to like ignoring that fact. We don't even have evidence he really existed. Name any secular source that mentions him. Name anything we can undeniably identify as having been written by him in the 180s CE.

We have quite a bit of doubt. Even the scholars are not sure what was meant by "in the dialect of the Hebrews". It could be Hebrew, or maybe Aramaic [both forgotten languages by the end of the second century CE], or it could even be Greek. There is no evidence that any gospel or any other book in the NT was written in any other language besides Greek in the beginning. The Aramaic and Coptic and every other language shows traits as having been originally translated from the Greek.

None of what you wrote is Greek so it has no revelance.

As to being biased, you have demonstrated that beyond all doubt. Your acceptance of those early Christian writers and translations of of them which are at least 1000 years old and passed down by a biased Catholic church is evidence of that.

No how many times you say Papias, or Ignatius, or Polycarp, or Irenaeus, or Tertullian, or even Eusebius wrote such and such you will still be wrong. We have nothing by them. We have nothing that is not 1000 years removed from when they might have written if in fact the majority of them were even real and not a figment of Eusebius' imagination.