Jesus' appearances to Peter and James

[John2]

Rakovsky,

You cited Epiphanius 30.13.6:

"But their Gospel begins: ‘It came to pass in the days of Herod, king of Judaea, in the high priesthood of Caiaphas, that a certain man, John by name, came baptizing with the baptism of repentance in the river Jordan, and he was said to be of the lineage of Aaron the priest, the son of Zacharias and Elisabeth; and all went out to him.’”

And that:

"Johann Michaelis points out this historical error, 'This strange historical blunder, which makes John the Baptist preach in the time of Herod king of Judaea, who had been dead nearly thirty years, when John began to preach, is a very sufficient proof that St. Matthew was not the author of this passage: for no man who was a contemporary with John could have imagined that Herod was then 'king of Judaea.' This demonstrates that the author(s) of Gospel of the Hebrews was far removed from the time of the actual events of Jesus and the apostles.'"

I want to address the last sentence of what you cited first:

"This demonstrates that the author(s) of Gospel of the Hebrews was far removed from the time of the actual events of Jesus and the apostles.'"

My view of the big picture is that most Christian writings besides Paul's letters (and, just to be 'controversial,' some of the Dead Sea Scrolls) were written post-70 CE and thus are "far removed from the time of the actual events of Jesus and the apostles." So it doesn't matter to me if Jewish Christian gospels also demonstrate this.

But I'm not so sure that it does in the case you cite. For example, the Jewish Encyclopedia notes how the name "Herod" is used in the NT and Josephus in reference to other Herodians, including Antipas who ruled during the time of Caiaphas, and that he is called a king in Mark 6:14 even though he was technically a tetrarch:

"It is, therefore, either as a general expression of authority and power, or in cognizance of the fact that the royal title was always borne by some member of the Herodian family (Archelaus was then no longer ruling), that the epithet "king" is used (only once) in the New Testament in speaking of Antipas (Mark, vi. 14). Wherever else in the New Testament he is mentioned, the title given to him is, generally, "tetrarch": the name Antipas never occurs there, Herod being the only name used (Matt. xiv. 1; Luke, iii. 1, 19, and ix. 7). Josephus, who, in the first part of the "History of the Jewish War," speaks of him as Antipas, calls him Herod in relating the division of Judea; adding to the name the phrase, "he who was called Antipas" ("B. J." ii. 9, § 1), but using simply the patronymic throughout the rest of his work."

http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/artic ... od-antipas

[Diogenes the Cynic]

Antipas was Tetrarch only of Galilee. He never had any authority in Judea. Judea became a Roman province in 6 CE.

[John2]

I don't know what else to make of it then if we need to find a king "of Judea" named Herod who reigned during the time of Caiaphas (who I gather became high priest in 18 CE). Maybe there can't be any sense made of it.

But the canonical Matthew (now that I look at it) appears to place the beginning of John's preaching to the time of Herod Archelaus (r. 4 BCE-6 CE):

"But when he [Joseph] heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene. In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea" (Mt. 2:22-3:1).

So what days do "those days" refer to if not the reign of Herod Archelaus?

Mt. 2:22 also uses a word that can mean to reign as a king, a form of which is also used in Mk. 6:14 to describe Antipas, who was also not technically a king:

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/matthew/2-22.htm

http://biblehub.com/greek/936.htm

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/mark/6-14.htm

http://biblehub.com/greek/935.htm

When exactly did John begin his preaching anyway? Is there certainty or agreement about this in the canonical gospels? Mark doesn't appear to say when it started, while Luke 3:2 says it started "during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas," though Annas is said by Josephus to have started in 6 CE, shortly after the reign of Archelaus, and was deposed in 15 CE, three years before Caiaphas was appointed. Are any post-70 CE Christian writings (and I put all gospels in this category) clear or in agreement about this?

[John2]

However it may be, I still think it would make the most sense if it refers to Herod Antipas. He is called a king even in Mark. He is called Herod in the NT and Josephus, and he ruled during the time of Caiaphas. The only thing missing is the "of Judea" part, and that is understandable enough in a broad sense (and forgivable in a post-70 CE sense) given that Galilee was a district of Judea proper, as seems to be implied in the word used for "district" in Mt. 2:22 ("part, portion, share"):

http://biblehub.com/greek/3313.htm

What was Galilee a "part, portion or share" of if not Judea proper?

And note that Epiphanius, the one citing (and criticizing) this gospel, does not point out any problem here.

[John2]

The Gospel of Peter 1 also refers to (presumably Antipas, given the chronology) "Herod the king."

I also get a broader sense of Judea from Luke 23:5:

"But they insisted, 'He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching. He started in Galilee and has come all the way here.'"

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/luke/23-5.htm

And for someone whose jurisdiction was Galilee, Luke (and the Gospel of Peter) presents Antipas and his soldiers as being involved in Jesus' execution (in Judea proper):

"When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform a sign of some sort. He plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer ... Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him. Dressing him in an elegant robe, they sent him back to Pilate" (Lk. 23:8-11).

[rakovsky]

Unfortunately we don't have that much info about the Gospel of the Hebrews, not enough to decide when it was written and how much it related to the original story told by the apostles.
We know that it existed by the mid or late 2nd century when Origen quoted from it.

It was being used by Jewish Christians apart from gentile ones in Hebrew/Aramaic, not in Greek. So it probably was not the main gospel story that the apostles had been trying to evangelize the world with.

It's true that there was some division between Jewish Christians who followed Torah and gentile Christians. The first of those two groups would be the ones who would be keeping the Gospel of the Hebrews. There was a group of Jewish Christians who stayed in the Jewish synagogues, and as we see in Acts, even a part who wanted to demand gentiles get circumcised (although the Church leadership like James countermanded that proposal). So it isn't clear how much the Torah keeping Christians of the 1st century represented the leadership, but I tend to think based on Acts that they were not a majority.

So was there some gospel held by the Torah keeping Christians that they didn't put into Greek for their mission work? It seems more likely that there was another gospel that was written as another version, but still was not the main gospel.

And finally, we do not really know what it said besides a few quotations in the church fathers. They probably eventually decided that it was a heretical text and destroyed it to avoid polluting the minds with heresy or other mistaken ideas about Jesus' life. But were the ideas in it really heretical? That is really ahrd to say because Origen and Jerome seemed to give it potential credence.

[John2]

"Unfortunately we don't have that much info about the Gospel of the Hebrews, not enough to decide when it was written and how much it related to the original story told by the apostles. We know that it existed by the mid or late 2nd century when Origen quoted from it."

The canonical gospels are also not clearly in evidence until the second century CE. The first to be identified by name are Mark and Matthew by Papias (c. 130 CE?). As I said, in my view all gospels were written post-70 CE and are "far removed from the time of the actual events of Jesus and the apostles.'"

"So it probably was not the main gospel story that the apostles had been trying to evangelize the world with."

Were Jewish Christians trying to evangelize the world? Paul says:

"James, Cephas and John, those esteemed as pillars, gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship when they recognized the grace given to me. They agreed that we should go to the Gentiles, and they to the circumcised" (Gal. 2:9).

And for what it may be worth, Howard notes that the Shem Tov Hebrew Matthew 28:19 "lacks reference to 'the Gentiles,' which is found in the majority Greek text'":

https://books.google.com/books?id=4tdEB ... es&f=false

[Diogenes the Cynic]

I don't know what else to make of it then if we need to find a king "of Judea" named Herod who reigned during the time of Caiaphas (who I gather became high priest in 18 CE). Maybe there can't be any sense made of it.

There can't be. Luke made a mistake. There was no king of Judea during the time of Caiaphas.

But the canonical Matthew (now that I look at it) appears to place the beginning of John's preaching to the time of Herod Archelaus (r. 4 BCE-6 CE):

"But when he [Joseph] heard that Archelaus was reigning in Judea in place of his father Herod, he was afraid to go there. Having been warned in a dream, he withdrew to the district of Galilee, and he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets, that he would be called a Nazarene. In those days John the Baptist came, preaching in the wilderness of Judea" (Mt. 2:22-3:1).

So what days do "those days" refer to if not the reign of Herod Archelaus?

According to Josephus, Herod Antipas.

When exactly did John begin his preaching anyway? Is there certainty or agreement about this in the canonical gospels? Mark doesn't appear to say when it started, while Luke 3:2 says it started "during the high-priesthood of Annas and Caiaphas," though Annas is said by Josephus to have started in 6 CE, shortly after the reign of Archelaus, and was deposed in 15 CE, three years before Caiaphas was appointed. Are any post-70 CE Christian writings (and I put all gospels in this category) clear or in agreement about this?

Josephus says John the Baptist happened during the reign of Herod Antipas and that Antipas killed him (not in Judea, but in Perea - a territory East of the Jordan which was part of the Tetrarchy of Antipas.

[Diogenes the Cynic]

The Gospel of Peter 1 also refers to (presumably Antipas, given the chronology) "Herod the king."

I also get a broader sense of Judea from Luke 23:5:

"But they insisted, 'He stirs up the people all over Judea by his teaching. He started in Galilee and has come all the way here.'"

http://biblehub.com/interlinear/luke/23-5.htm

And for someone whose jurisdiction was Galilee, Luke (and the Gospel of Peter) presents Antipas and his soldiers as being involved in Jesus' execution (in Judea proper):

"When Herod saw Jesus, he was greatly pleased, because for a long time he had been wanting to see him. From what he had heard about him, he hoped to see him perform a sign of some sort. He plied him with many questions, but Jesus gave him no answer ... Then Herod and his soldiers ridiculed and mocked him. Dressing him in an elegant robe, they sent him back to Pilate" (Lk. 23:8-11).

In Luke's Passion, Antipas just happens to be in Jerusalem for the Passover, not becaise he has any jurisdiction there. Pilate sends Jesus to him because he is technically Antipas' subject, but Antipas is depicted as becoming uninterested when Jesus can't do magic tricks and so he sends him back to Pilate.

[rakovsky]

It's tough now 1800 years later to know why the church fathers rejected gHebrews. We know that fake heretical gospels were made in the second century. Maybe the Church fathers saw gHebrews then, and learned from others like the bishops in Syria and Asia Minor that no one had heard of it outside some limited circles, so they rejected it.

A related question is how much the Torah keeping Nazarenes represented the early Church of Jerusalem. Jesus in the NT had, I think, begun to disregard rules of ritual purity. Peter had a vision to eat all kinds of foods in Acts. Jerome recorded that the Nazarenes were in the Jewish synagogues. John's Gospel and Matthew's I think have an Aramaic base, so it's not as if the Jewish Church's writings were simply unknown and unavailable to the gentile Christians. Supposedly the Jewish Christians, the Nazarenes had a positive view of Paul's mission to the gentiles, according I think to Jerome. Likewise, James and other Jewish Christians like Hegesippus are given a very positive image and held in esteem by the gentile Christians and Fathers. So it's not as if in the 1st-2nd centuries there was a clear, pure break between the Jewish and gentile Christians.

Cyril of Alexandria found it saying strange things like Mary being a "force" and I think being the Holy Spirit, and so he burned it. But was the version he burned the same as the original one? I doubt it now after talking with Ben C Smith a bit.

So, some relevant questions are:
1. When was it written (40 AD to 180 AD?)
2. How much circulation and authority did it have among Jewish Christians as a whole (as opposed to only some of the Torah keeping Nazarenes)?
3. How much did its ideas conflict with the standard ideas of the 1st century Christians and with the canonical gospels?