aa5874

Please, please, please. What Hebrew Matthew!!!!! This is some kind of joke.

outhouse

and what date does this document have???

judge

I can't off the top of my head recall which of the ones (maybe all of them)from the middle ages have that.

The peshitta, in Aramaic, from much earlier also seems to include this type of solution to the problem.

Robert Wahler

Well. No, it's no joke. We have no original Hebrew Matthew it's true, BUT there was one once upon a time -- until some very bad people who didn't happen to like what it said SQUASHED the hell out of it, like they did to so many gnostics and other assorted troublemakers to them. 'Them' being orthodox church fathers like Irenaeus and Athenasius, Tertullian, Origen, etc.

There are many reasons to say that Shem Tob's and du Tillet's later Hebrew manuscripts had bonafide ancient original material to draw from. George Howard did an exhaustive study of it and pretty much put the issue to rest with dozens of Hebrew-specific wordplay puns, and other theologically derived Hebrew-only possibilities. One off the top of the head is "Jesus King of the Jews" in Greek Matthew above his head on the cross was really originally "Jesus King of Israel" like it has in both Hebrew AND Greek 5 lines later at 28:42. Howard also determined that the Hebrew Matthew Tetragrammaton would not have been inserted into a Greek original, later put into a Hebrew document, thus beautifying a text which polemicized against Jews. I think it is original for reason of its theology, specifically BECAUSE John the Baptist is seen in it as a perfect Master, as he is Sant Mat (Teaching of the Saints, a modern Eastern mystic tradition) and in correctly translated and interpreted canonical texts (and James the Just, likewise in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Gnostic gospels) without resort to Hebrew Matthew to see him as savior in his own right.

When you spend the time to look carefully and dispassionately at the issue as I have done (I have been both Christian and non-Christian in my life) one will see that there is much, much more going on in the scriptures than is first apparent. The canonical scriptures are a polemic, not a handbook for salvation, as is widely assumed. They are Greco-Roman mythic literary fiction, not history. They are certainly not inherently factual.

Hebrew Matthew is just one source among many that mutually confirm the unitary serial Mastership spirituality that undergirds all true religious traditions the world over. All speak of recurring incarnations of the Divine, in all times, and in many locations. The world it is said, by the Masters themselves, is never without a perfect living Master, or Elder Brother, or Messiah, or Sat Guru, or true Imam - at least one, maybe more than one, at any and all times.

I would love to explore the many details of the reality of Hebrew Matthew as original Matthew, but it would take another thread, and I have other interests at present. So I would direct any interested parties to OGM (Original Gospel of Matthew, Stanford Rives)
https://www.createspace.com/3760866
or Howard's book on Hebrew Matthew. Both make their respective cases. My book Saviors: Beyond Qumran, Nag Hammadi, and The New Testament Code (or via: amazon.co.uk) also deals with the evidence in Hebrew Matthew, and beyond that, the existence of living Masters, with evidence in the Bible for saviors other than Jesus Christ.

For example to you to chew on in until next time, read the John Prologue as it was intended with John as savior until John 1:14, when Jesus is introduced as his SUCCESSOR with the segue conjunctive, "AND the word was made flesh [again!] ..." John 1:10-12 are about JOHN, not Jesus. The antecedent for the pronouns in these verses is, "There was a man sent from God, whose name was John." No Jesus, not UNTIL 1:14. I learned this from a Master, Maharaj Charan Singh (1918-1990), my Master. There are many, many more examples to show how Jesus was the successor to John and the predecessor to James, and that the evidence for this was persistently covered up in the canon. It may not have been all at once, but the cover up has been amazingly thorough. There are still some telltale remains, however. Read John 9:4 with the correct C. Sinaiticus "sent US", for example, to see Jesus limit himself to work done in his lifetime ("whilst it is day"). This was purged by Pauline scribes and left emasculated and hanging out all alone as a statement devoid of meaning until you pair the original with the following verse, 9:5: "AS LONG AS I am in the world, I am the Light of the world." WHY would Jesus have said such a thing if he was the Light in some way after he was gone? He said John was the savior before him (John 5:35). James the savior after (Gospel of Thomas, logion 12). Salvation is of the living, as he said about the Patriarchs. Only a living Master one can "see" is able to save (John 6:40).

spin

Although I have no interest in the notion that Matthew was originally written in Hebrew--given that it is a literary improvement on the Greek of Mark--, it is obvious that the genealogies in Mt and Lk were aimed at giving legitimacy to Jesus through his connection with the great heroes of the Hebrew past, especially David. However, both genealogies have subsequently been circumvented by detaching Jesus from them. Jesus has lost his biological connection with Joseph, due to his elevation to being son of god not by election as is the case in Mark, but by birth. Joseph became an embarrassment to the developing tradition: the son of god cannot have Joseph as his father, so he and his genealogy were were lightly retooled. The genealogies weren't hacked out because some value was seen in them, but Jesus was only sired by Mary, Joseph being only her spouse.

This is fodder for the criterion of embarrassment. Joseph had become an embarrassment in the developing christian tradition and had to be dealt with. A mindlessly oversimple use of the criterion of embarrassment, as is popular in the non-scholarly approaches to the notion of a historical Jesus, would say that Joseph must originally have been the real father of Jesus, when the earliest tradition knows nothing about Joseph. It just goes to show the efficacy of the criterion of embarrassment.

Robert Wahler

Spin,

If I get what you're saying about "hacked out" because embarrassing, that's really the point. The Hebrew original was altered because it was embarrassing to the orthodoxy. Mark was not first, not from what I have seen of Hebrew Matthew. Stanford Rives shows dozens of reasons in his excellent work (not yet published in critical edition, but available in devotional edition, so lacking in essential footnotes) on why Hebrew Matthew was the first gospel written. There is an overwhelming case for it. I have reviewed an extensive rebuttal to Howard online, and it falls short of discrediting Howard.

https://www.createspace.com/3760866

George Howard, "Hebrew Gospel of Matthew"

stephan huller

Howard's text is not the original Gospel of the Hebrews just a Hebrew gospel related to Matthew.

Robert Wahler

Related as in preceded the Greek not translated from it. Stanford Rives goes into great detail on GATHM and how it relates to OGM (original Matthew).

Vorkosigan

The Mark-first divide is the divide between critical analysis of the texts and apologetic defense of them. Everyone on the Mark-first side is at least potentially capable of critical analysis; all others are engaged in some sort of ideological defense, as Rives clearly is:

"Standford Rives, an evangelical Christian and attorney, tries to meticulously assemble what likely was the original Matthew from all these sources. It is hoped that this will be edifying to the faithful, providing an essential devotional text for followers of Jesus Christ."