THE GOSPEL OF THE HEBREWS (1st - mid 2nd century) Questions.

[rakovsky]

St. Jerome wrote in the 4th c. that he found the Gospel of the Hebrews in Caesarea (a Mediteranean harbor west of Jerusalem), and in Syria. Jerome repeatedly refers to what he calls a Hebrew language gospel written by Matthew, and I believe that the text that he uses is the same as that of the Gospel of the Hebrews.

For reference, fragmentary quotes about and from the Gospel according to the Hebrews can be found here:
Fragments from the Gospel of the Hebrews: www.textexcavation.com/gospelhebrews.html
Church fathers' references to and quotes from Matthew's Hebrew gospel: www.textexcavation.com/hebrewmatthew.html

(Question 1) Does it likely represents a tradition around James and the Jewish Christian community around Jerusalem that existed in the city until Hadrian destroyed the city in c. 130 AD?

Wikipedia's entry on Gospel of the Hebrews claims that it was used by some early Church fathers:

It was probably composed in Greek in the first decades of the 2nd century...
The provenance has been associated with Egypt;... The communities to which they belonged were traditional, conservative Christians ... integrating their understanding of Jesus with strict observance of Jewish customs and law... according to a list of canonical and apocryphal works drawn up in the 9th century known as the Stichometry of Nicephorus, the gospel was 2200 lines, just 300 lines shorter than Matthew.

The Alexandrian Fathers – Clement, Origen, and Didymus the Blind – relied directly on the gospel to provide prooftexts as a supplement to the canonical gospels. Clement quoted from the gospel as part of a discourse on divine Wisdom... Jerome claimed to have used the gospel as a prooftext...

If it was written in the early 2nd c. as the Wikipedia entry proposes then it probably would be less representative of the Christian traditions of the 1st c. than the canonical gospels. But really, what is there to say that this is probably an early 2nd c. text and not a 1st century one? Maybe this is just an estimate that they reached by averaging together potential dates (ie. the 1st century and mid-2nd century)?

(Question 2) What do you think about the following story of Mary being the power Michael: Was it really in the Gospel of the Hebrews or was it made up by Pseudo-Cyril? Does this idea appear elsewhere?
According to a story in a perhaps apocryphal Coptic version of St. Cyril of Jerusalem's early 6th c. Discourse (also known as Pseudo-Cyril), Cyril calls for Annarikhus, a monk from Gaza who had been instructed in the heretical teachings of Ebion and Carpocrates. In the Coptic version, the monk tells St. Cyril:

'It is written in the [Gospel] to the Hebrews that when Christ wished to come upon the earth to men the Good Father called a mighty "power" in the heavens which was called "Michael", and committed Christ to the care thereof. And the "power" came down into the world, and it was called Mary and [Christ] was in her womb for seven months. Afterwards she gave birth to Him, and he increased in stature, and He chose the Apostles, who preached Him in every place. He fulfilled the appointed time that was decreed for Him. And the Jews became envious of Him, they hated Him, they changed the custom of their Law, and they rose up against Him and laid a trap and caught Him, and they delivered Him to the governor, and he gave Him to them to crucify Him. And after they had raised Him up on the Cross the Father took Him up into heaven unto Himself.'

Daniel J. Casetllano in "The Priority of Matthew's Gospel" (2014) takes this passage to have a theology that goes against the concept of Jesus being fleshly, because, Castellano writes, it makes "Christ begotten of some heavenly power that took the form of his mother Mary, and omit[(s)] mention of his bodily resurrection. The monk's version of this Hebrew gospel evidently incorporates Gnostic teachings of Carpocrates. The monk adds that he is sent by Christ to proclaim this gospel, quoting Matthew 28:19-20." The Coptic text continues:

And the archbishop answered and said, 'Where in the Four Gospels is it said that the holy Virgin Mary, the mother of God, is a "force"?' And the monk answered and said, 'In the [Gospel] to the Hebrews.' And Apa Cyril answered and said, 'Then, according to thy words, there are Five Gospels?' And that monk replied, 'Yea, there are.' And Apa Cyril answered and said, 'What is the name of the fifth Gospel? for I should like to from whence this doctrine concerning Christ is derived, and to understand it. The Four Gospels have written above them: "[The Gospel] according to Matthew"; "[The Gospel] according to Mark"; "[The Gospel according to Luke]"; "[The Gospel] according to John." Whose is the fifth Gospel?' And that monk said unto him, 'It is [the Gospel] that was written to the Hebrews.'

The exchange ends with St. Cyril disabusing the monk of the false beliefs and burning the heretical writing.
I wonder if the Ebionites had altered the Gospel of the Hebrews and it was the altered, heretical version that ended up with the monk. The gnostics emphasized angelology and taught against fleshliness, maybe coming from a Platonic philosophy on matter. My sense was that the Ebionites had gnostic ideas, and this would help explain the teachings against Jesus' basic fleshliness that Castellano perceived in the monk's special gospel.

It's worth noting here that Philip Sidetes (c.380 - after 431) writes that g.Hebrews was rejected by the church:

But the ancients completely cast out the gospel according to the Hebrews and that called of Peter and of Thomas, saying that these were the writings of heretics.

By comparison, we have found copies of what appear to be the Gospel of Peter and the Gospel of Thomas, and scholars today debate whether these writings have any Docetic or Gnostic heretical content. This brings to mind the potential anti-flesh or weird gnostic comments (eg. about the angel Michael) in the story above.

(Question 3) What do you think about the Gospel of Hebrews' portrayal of the Holy Spirit as Jesus' mother?
In Origen's own early 3rd century quote from another part of the Gospel of the Hebrews, Jesus' "mother" is in one place given a supernatural description, referring to her as the Holy Spirit:
"Even so did my mother, the Holy Spirit, take me by one of my hairs and carry me away on to the great mountain Tabor." (QUOTED IN: Origen, Commentary on John 2.6)
The verse resembles Ezekiel 8:3, where Ezekiel says: "And he put forth the form of an hand, and took me by a lock of mine head; and the spirit lifted me up between the earth and the heaven, and brought me in the visions of God to Jerusalem".
The story also resembles Matthew 4, when "Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil", where he was tempted by the devil on a mountain.

I took the Gospel of the Hebrews in Origen's quote to mean that just as God the Father was the Logos'/Word's/Jesus' father, the Holy Spirit could be called the Logos'/ Word's/Jesus' "mother" in some theological sense. This idea that the Holy Spirit was in a sense the "parent" of the "Word"/"Logos" shows up in a few other christian writings over the centuries.

Origen in his Commentary on John 2.6 suggests that the Logos/Word on the other hand preceded the Spirit:

Now if, as we have seen, all things were made through Him, we have to enquire if the Holy Spirit also was made through Him. ...
We therefore, as the more pious and the truer course, admit that all things were made by the Logos, and that the Holy Spirit is the most excellent and the first in order of all that was made by the Father through Christ. And this, perhaps, is the reason why the Spirit is not said to be God's own Son. ...
There are some passages in which the Spirit is placed above Christ; in Isaiah, for example, Christ declares that He is sent, not by the Father only, but also by the Holy Spirit. "Now the Lord has sent Me," He says, Isaiah 48:16 "and His Spirit," ... When we find the Lord saying, as He does in Isaiah, that He is sent by the Father and by His Spirit, we have to point out here also that the Spirit is not originally superior to the Saviour, but that the Saviour takes a lower place than He in order to carry out the plan which has been made that the Son of God should become man. Should any one stumble at our saying that the Saviour in becoming man was made lower than the Holy Spirit, we ask him to consider the words used in the Epistle to the Hebrews, where Jesus is shown by Paul to have been made less than the angels on account of the suffering of death. ...
The Father therefore, the principal, sends the Son, but the Holy Spirit also sends Him and directs Him to go before, promising to descend, when the time comes, to the Son of God, and to work with Him for the salvation of men. This He did, when, in a bodily shape like a dove, He flew to Him after the baptism.
...
Our examination of this point has been somewhat extended, since we were anxious to make it clear that if all things were made by Him, then the Spirit also was made through the Word, and is seen to be one of the "all things" which are inferior to their Maker. This view is too firmly settled to be disturbed by a few words which may be adduced to the opposite effect. If any one should lend credence to the Gospel according to the Hebrews, where the Saviour Himself says, "My mother, the Holy Spirit took me just now by one of my hairs and carried me off to the great mount Tabor," he will have to face the difficulty of explaining how the Holy Spirit can be the mother of Christ when it was itself brought into existence through the Word. But neither the passage nor this difficulty is hard to explain. For if he who does the will of the Father in heaven Matthew 12:50 is Christ's brother and sister and mother, and if the name of brother of Christ may be applied, not only to the race of men, but to beings of diviner rank than they, then there is nothing absurd in the Holy Spirit's being His mother, every one being His mother who does the will of the Father in heaven.

Jerome gives this same quote from the Gospel of the Hebrews in his Bible commentaries:

Quoted and explained by Jerome, Commentary on Micah (commenting on Mic 7:6):
Whoever has read the Song of Songs will understand that the word of God is also the bridegroom of the soul. And whoever gives credence to the gospel circulating under the title "Gospel of the Hebrews," which we recently translated, in which it is said by the Savior himself, "Just now my mother, the holy spirit, took me by one of my hairs," will not hesitate to say that the word of God proceeds from the spirit, and that the soul, which is the bride of the word, has the holy spirit (which in Hebrew is feminine in gender, RUA) as a mother-in-law. [Complete Gospels]

Quoted and explained by Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah 11 (commentary on Isa 40:9):
In the Gospel of the Hebrews that the Nazarenes read it says, "Just now my mother, the holy spirit, took me." Now no one should be offended by this, because "spirit" in Hebrew is feminine, while in our language (Latin) it is masculine and in Greek it is neuter. In divinity, however, there is no gender. [Complete Gospels]

The association between the Holy Spirit and motherliness shows up in a Syriac baptismal tradition:

Have mercy on us, O God the Father almighty, and send upon us and upon this water that is being consecrated, from your dwelling that is prepared, from your infinite womb, the Paraclete, your Holy Spirit, the establisher, lord and life-giver.
(Brock, Syrian Baptismal Tradition, 135, [usually attributed to Severus (465-536)])

(Question 4) Can you identify whether "Levi" is the apostle Matthew, the apostle Matthias, or both? Here are two relevant verses:

Matthew 9:9 As Jesus passed on from there, He saw a man named Matthew sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he arose and followed Him.

Mark 2:13 Then He went out again by the sea; and all the multitude came to Him, and He taught them. 14 As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting at the tax office. And He said to him, “Follow Me.” So he arose and followed Him.

Didymus the Blind wrote:

(Scripture) seems to call Matthew "Levi" in the Gospel of Luke. Yet it is not a question of one and the same person. Rather Matthias, who was installed (as apostle) in place of Judas, and Levi are the same person with a double name. This is clear from the Gospel of the Hebrews.(Didymus the Blind, Commentary on the Psalms 184.9–10)

Note however that Jerome, who was familiar with the Gospel of the Hebrews, had identified Matthew as "Levi":

Matthew, who is also Levi, the ex-publican apostle, first composed in Hebraic letters the gospel of Christ in Judea on account of those who had believed from among the circumcision;
(From: Jerome, On Famous Men 3)

One thing that could help clear up an issue in Matthew 9.9/Mark 2.13-14/Luke 5.27-28 , where "Matthew" is called Levi, is that some commentators explain that in Hebrew, Matthew=Matthai, and so the Levi and Matthew in that verse could actually be Matthias.

(Question 5) What meaning might you give to the name Barabbas in the story of Jesus' trial?
Jerome's commentary On Matthew xxvii.16 says: "This Barabbas, in the Gospel entitled (wrtten) according to the Hebrews, is interpreted 'son of their master' (teacher)."
M.R. James notes:

By 'interpreted, says Lagrange, it is not meant that the Gospel translated the name, but that it used a form of it which suggested the meaning - Bar-abban.
SOURCE: M.R. James, The Apocryphal New Testament (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1924)

(Question 6) Have you heard of the theory about the resurrection in the following quote from Vaticanus Latinus 49?

Likewise these eight days of Passover in which Christ the son of God resurrected signify eight days after the remission of Passover in which the entire seed of Adam will be judged, as is announced in the gospel of the Hebrews, and therefore wise men suppose that the day of judgment is at the time of the Passover, since on that day Christ resurrected so that on that same day the saints might rise up again.

I think that this refers to how Jesus showed up in John 20 about 8 days after the resurrection to visit His disciples. But actually that would be about ten days after Passover, since Jesus resurrected on the second day of Passover, right?

[alon]

Jan 22, 2019 17:29:46 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

St. Jerome wrote in the 4th c. that he found the Gospel of the Hebrews in Caesarea (a Mediteranean harbor west of Jerusalem), and in Syria.

(Question 1) Does it likely represents a tradition around James and the Jewish Christian community around Jerusalem that existed in the city until Hardian destroyed the city in c. 130 AD?

Jerome was a virulent anti-Semite, so I am not all that inclined to give credence to his works. That saidI’d want to know where and under what circumstances he found the document. Such documents had to be kept safe to last well over 200 yrs, and he did no have training in handling documents that old. So it would be more likely he’d destroy them before he got the chance to read them. On the other hand, many of the church fathers were not ashamed to write such things and “Oh, look what I found! And gee, it follows the doctrines we want to promote, too!”

Here we’d be more concerned with whether the Nazarene sect used it. In 130 CE the catholic (universal) church was just starting to take form, so there would have been few church communities anywhere. 

IF there was one in Jerusalem, and IF they had a copy … that is what you’d have to prove to get your answer.

(Question 2) What do you think about the following story of Mary being the power Michael: Was it really in the Gospel of the Hebrews or was it made up by Pseudo-Cyril? Does this idea appear elsewhere?

That story is pure paganism. It is the kind of thing that a superstitious Medieval mind might create and/or believe. It is not however even hinted at anywhere in scripture, nor can it be backed up in . So we would dismiss it out of hand.

(Question 3) What do you think about the Gospel of Hebrews' portrayal of the Holy Spirit as Jesus' mother?
In Origen's own early 3rd century quote from another part of the Gospel of the Hebrews, Jesus' "mother" is in one place given a supernatural description, referring to her as the Holy Spirit:

This (the Spirit being Jesus mother) alone would remove any chance of this book even being considered as holy writ, let alone canon.

Origen- famous because he self-castrated. Also for teaching the word allegorically so that he could make it say whatever he wanted.

(Question 6) Have you heard of the theory about the resurrection in the following quote from Vaticanus Latinus 49?

Likewise these eight days of Passover in which Christ the son of God resurrected signify eight days after the remission of Passover in which the entire seed of Adam will be judged, as is announced in the gospel of the Hebrews, and therefore wise men suppose that the day of judgment is at the time of the Passover, since on that day Christ resurrected so that on that same day the saints might rise up again.
I think that this refers to how Jesus showed up in John 20 about 8 days after the resurrection to visit His disciples. But actually that would be about ten days after Passover, since Jesus resurrected on the second day of Passover, right?

Yes, it was on the 2nd day of Pesach, on Saturday between sundown and midnight. By Jewish reckoning, that would be on the 1st day of the week. The Hebrews follow the biblical day, from sundown to sundown. Gentiles then and now say a day starts and ends at midnight. So Shabbat goes from Fri sundown to Sat sundown.

However those feasts are prophetic. The Hebrew term is “moed,” plural “moedim.” And it does not mean “feast” in contemporary terms. Feast used to be thought of more like a festival, but today we think of “food!” A moed is an appointed time; a time when God has chosen to prophetically interact with mankind. It carries connotations of a dress rehearsal. Pesach is one of the spring feasts, and they have mostly been fulfilled. So the church fathers were all wrong about this one. The day we will likely be judged is Yom Kippur, one of the fall feasts. And far from being a feast, we are commanded to fast on this day.

Interestingly, pesach was a minute by minute dress rehearsal for the crucifixion and events leading up to it and afterwards. The last of the spring feasts is Shavuot, which was fulfilled at Pentacost (the Gentile name for it). So, if God does not change, and the events of His 1st advent- coming to ascending and His Spirit falling on the apostles- were all prophesied in the spring feasts; where might we think the events of His 2nd advent might be prophesied? ... Yep! In the fall feasts!

Dan C

PS: You are obviously well read on these things; and you study them as well. However they are all apparently from Catholicism, and I have not read them. Therefore I can only comment on what you give me there. nd the church fathers you quote are virulent anti-Semites. So as believers in Messianic Judaism, we would tent to view them less than charitably. 

Also in your writings I can see you believe there was an unbroken line from Jesus to the apostles to the church (Apostolic Succession). Therefore the early assemblies of believers were a part of the church. This is false. That line went to and with the sect of the Nazarenes which, in the words of the church fathers themselves flourished into the 4th cen BCE, and probably much longer than that! The universal (catholic) church formed completely apart from the Nazarenes, who were Jews (by birth and by conversion) and who the church fathers virulently hated.

[rakovsky]

Alon,
Thanks for thinking about and trying to answer the questions. I edited the OP to link to fragments from the Text Excavation site, whose editor I have had alot of nice correspondence with. I think that it's not a polemic website, but you can delete the links if you link.

You are right to want to know the circumstances for Jerome's finding the document. He said that an original Hebrew language version of Matthew's gospel was held in the library in Caesarea, adding: "There was an opportunity for me from the Nazaraeans to copy this volume, which is used in Beroea, a city of Syria." There are alot of quotes preserved from the Gospel of the Hebrews, but few from what Jerome calls Matthew's Hebrew text. I believe that Jerome is referring to the same document, because he says that the Nazarenes in Syria gave him Matthew's Hebrew text and he also repeatedly quotes from what he calls "The Gospel of the Hebrews".

You made a good, insightful point about the feasts being prophetic in your answer to question 6. This is why I like to ask questions about these texts here.

If one supposes that the Christian community's Jewish Christians generally remained -observant and later became a separate, Nazarene sect, this separation or division would have had to occur some time after the destruction of Jerusalem in c. 135 AD, because the line of bishops of Jerusalem (like James, Symeon, etc.) are known to have been Jewish Christians up until that point. The Church fathers don't mention a schism between the first to mid-second century Jerusalem Church and the rest of the Christian community, and refer to it with respect. I would conclude that the bishops across the Mediterranean respected and were in communion with the Jerusalem Church at the time. Hegesippus was a Jewish chronicler of Church history in c.165-175 AD and speaks respectfully of James and the Jerusalem Church.

[alon]

Jan 23, 2019 8:48:52 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

Alon,
Thanks for thinking about and trying to answer the questions. I edited the OP to link to fragments from the Text Excavation site, whose editor I have had alot of nice correspondence with. I think that it's not a polemic website, but you can delete the links if you link.

You are right to want to know the circumstances for Jerome's finding the document. He said that an original Hebrew language version of Matthew's gospel was held in the library in Caesarea, adding: "There was an opportunity for me from the Nazaraeans to copy this volume, which is used in Beroea, a city of Syria." There are alot of quotes preserved from the Gospel of the Hebrews, but few from what Jerome calls Matthew's Hebrew text. I believe that Jerome is referring to the same document, because he says that the Nazarenes in Syria gave him Matthew's Hebrew text and he also repeatedly quotes from what he calls "The Gospel of the Hebrews".

You made a good, insightful point about the feasts being prophetic in your answer to question 6. This is why I like to ask questions about these texts here.

If one supposes that the Christian community's Jewish Christians generally remained -observant and later became a separate, Nazarene sect, this separation or division would have had to occur some time after the destruction of Jerusalem in c. 135 AD, because the line of bishops of Jerusalem (like James, Symeon, etc.) are known to have been Jewish Christians up until that point. The Church fathers don't mention a schism between the first to mid-second century Jerusalem Church and the rest of the Christian community, and refer to it with respect. I would conclude that the bishops across the Mediterranean respected and were in communion with the Jerusalem Church at the time. Hegesippus was a Jewish chronicler of Church history in c.165-175 AD and speaks respectfully of James and the Jerusalem Church.

There is a Hebrew Matthew, Shim Tov's Matthew, however it has notes in it and so is not considered a valid copy. Apparently there was an earlier copy of the Hebrew text, as it is referenced in some of the writings of the church fathers.

You have it backwards as far as the Nazarenes leaving the church. According to the church fathers they never were a part of the church. Later when I have time I'll try and find a reference/quote for you. However according to the Bible the Nazarenes were the sect of the apostles which formed shortly after the Ascension. Remember, Rabbi Shaul (Paul) was accused of being a ringleader of this sect:

Acts 24:5 (ESV) For we have found this man a plague, one who stirs up riots among all the Jews throughout the world and is a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes.

Since the church did not even start to take form until the mid 2nd cen CE, the Nazarenes predated the church by almost 100 yrs. And like the apostles, they met in synagogues, kept Shabbat and the other moedim, and they were observant Jews. However many Gentiles were converting at the time, and many more were soon led away by this new "universal church." 

James was not a "Jewish Christian," he was the heir to the leadership of the sect of the Nazarenes being the brother of Yeshua. nd again, there were no CHristians as you understand them in James time. The reference to believers being called "Christians" was a slur against them:

Acts 11:26c (ESV)  ... And in Antioch the disciples were first called Christians.

It says they "were first called Christians," not that they called themselves that. The pagan leadership there, as everywhere Nazarene communities were established, had a real problem with them. Tweak the devil's nose, he tends to get a might upset. So these believers were given a derogatory name. We are not told whether it was them or later the church who turned it back on the old boy and more or less threw it back in his face, but the term was taken up by the church when they started to come together in the mid 2nd cen CE. He got us back though, as the church was taken as far from Judaism as the founders could take it.

Dan C

[rakovsky]

Dan,

For Question 1 (Does it likely represents a tradition around James and the Jewish Christian community before Jerusalem's destruction in 135 AD?),

you made a good point at looking at the sources' status when Jerome found it. It looks hard to answer the question exactly, but it appears that the document probably was respected by the Nazarene community in Jerusalem at that time. The uncertainty about its status is due to a lack of exact dating for its authorship as well as clarity on what it contained.

First, there is circumstantial evidence from its contents. It's the only material to narrate Yeshua's appearance to James, the leader of the Nazarene community. Papias (c. 125) says that Matthew first wrote a Gospel in Hebrew, and Papias also tells a story that Eusebius says is found in the Gospel according to The Hebrews. So one could theorize that Papias knew the Gospel according to the Hebrews, quoted from it, and that this was the same as the one that he said Matthew wrote in Hebrew. Justin Martyr (c. 150) gave a quote about fire at Yeshua's Baptism and Epiphanius says that in the gospel According to the Hebrews, when the voice came from heaven at Yeshua's baptism, "immediately a great light illuminated the place."

Second, Hegesippus, a Jewish Christian or Nazarene who wrote a history of the Church in c. 165, apparently used it, since Eusebius wrote:

"[Hegesippus] sets out something from the gospel according to the Hebrews and from the Syriac, and likewise from the Hebrew dialect, making apparent that he himself had come to faith out of the Hebrews." Hegesippus was writing close enough in time to the Jewish Church in Jerusalem to be connected with their teachings and writings.

Third, Clement of Alexandria (c. 190) and Origen (c. 220) clearly quoted from this text, so the document existed under this name by their era. Origen seems ambivalent about how much to respect it when quoting it, saying, "It is written in a certain gospel, which is called according to the Hebrews, if yet it pleases one to accept it, not as an authority, but as a manifestation of the proposed question".

Finally, it is noteworthy that in the 4th century, Jerome wrote that the Nazarenes in Syria used it and that he found it in the library of Caesarea (at the time in Roman Palestine), which suggests it had significant currency among the 1st or 2nd century Nazarenes. Eusebius wrote that the Ebionites only used the Gospel According to the Hebrews. But since they were writing 300 years later, their comments are not as reliable as observations for how the document was treated originally.

To answer my own question, <<But really, what is there to say that this is probably an early 2nd c. text and not a 1st century one? Maybe this is just an estimate that they reached by averaging together potential dates (ie. the 1st century and mid-2nd century)?>>, the scholars don't have certainty on whether the text is a first or second century document. Other than averaging the full range to make an estimate, they could also theorize that it was written before the time of writing of Papias and Hegesippus (c. 125 and 165, respectively).

[rakovsky]

For Question 2 (Mary as the power Michael), certainly this idea would be in conflict with normal Biblical and Orthodox angelology, since it would be confusing a known named male angel, Michael, with a known human, Mary. Some anonymous angels are interpreted to be God, like those who met with Abraham in Genesis. But this is not the same thing as confusing known, named angels with known humans.

It also isn't clear whether this story was actually in the Gospel according to the Hebrews. It comes from an apocryphal 6th century Coptic narrative of Cyril of Jerusalem's 4th century homily. The Coptic narrative could be a legendary fictional story that included a fictionalized version of the Gospel of the Hebrews. The Coptic fictional story could have expanded on the known saying in the real Gospel of the Hebrews that the Holy Spirit was Christ's mother and turned it into Mary being the power Michael. Or the Coptic homily could be talking about a different "Gospel according to the Hebrews" than the one that early Fathers like Clement of Alexandria were talking about. After all, the Diatessaron was also called by some "The Gospel According to the Hebrews" according to Epiphanius. Also, the Nazarenes were known to have orthodox theology and used the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and their orthodoxy tends to suggest that the document wouldn't have something so theologically strange like this.

In "The Thousand Faces of the Virgin Mary", George Henry Tavard gives Cyril's quotation from the Gospel According to the Hebrews and comments:

Thus Mary is the archangel Michael and his heavenly power, which is implicitly the Holy Spirit. In keeping with this, Jesus speaks of 'my mother, the Holy Spirit.' This process of angelization and divinization of Mary is a characteristic of gnostic speculation. It recurs in the Gospel of Philip, a Valentinian writing of the second century, where the orthodox belief, 'Mary conceived from the Holy Spirit,' is refuted by the question, 'When did a woman conceive by a woman?'

[The author of the Gospel of Philip] means that the Spirit is himself the Virgin from whom Christ was born: "The Father of everything united with the Virgin who came down, and a fire shone for him on that day."

[/quote][/div]

In her book Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership, Ally Kaleusz comments about the apocryphal homily by St. Cyril that earlier in the homily, St Cyril

[100]
complained that some Christians believed, "She was a force (or abstract power) of God which took the form of a woman, and came upon the earth, and was called 'Mary,' and this force gave birth to Emmanuel for us."Although the homilist quoted Jesus' mother as a 'power' who came down, and Origen quoted his mother as the Holy Spirit who descended, both were discussing Jesus' mother according to the Gospel of the Hebrews. Later, the homilist invoked Mary in the role of Holy Spirit in the baptismal ritual, and did so by using the same ritual formula, 'in the name of Mary,' which both the liturgical manual embedded in the Six Books, as well as the 'collyridian' women priests whom Epiphanius of Salamis described, used when sacrificing bread to Mary on the altar. The homilist wrote that after he burned the monk's Gospel of the Hebrews... 'I baptised him [the monk] in the name of the Lady of us all, Saint Mary."

Footnotes
[100] Cyril, Discourse on Mary Theotokos. Most scholars either accept the passage as genuinely from the Gospel of the Hebrews or at a minimum leave open the possibility that the passage is from the Gospel of the Hebrews, as the author presents it; see Edwards, Hebrew Gospel, 59; Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, 150, 177; Klijn, Jewish-Christian Gospel Tradition, 135; Burch, "Gospel According to the Hebrews," 310;... Gregory, "Gospel According to the Hebrews, 280-81, most recently makes the argument that it probably is not.

Kaleusz seems to be theorizing that St Cyril baptized the monk by using Mary in the role of the Holy Spirit because he baptized the monk in Mary's name, whereas normally believers are baptized in the name of the Trinity and are considered to receive the Holy Spirit in connection with their baptism. I think that it is not clear that her theory is correct, since he could have just been baptizing the monk in Mary's honor, especially since Cyril had himself just refuted the idea that Mary was a "force". People are often baptized with a saint's name and thus in connection with a saint, but it would be weird if Cyril actually baptized someone without invoking the Trinity. The institutional Church's position in the patristic era was that people had to be baptised with an invocation of the Trinity.

Wikipedia's entry for Gospel of the Hebrews notes about the apocryphal Coptic homily of Cyril that

Cyril condemns the monk's teaching as a heresy, which the author attributes to Carpocrates, Satornilus, and Ebionites.[27]
Footnotes
[27] van den Broek regards the attribution of the monk's 'quotation' to the Gospel of the Hebrews to be spurious

Carpocrates was an early 2nd century Gnostic in Alexandria, Egypt.

For Question 3 (The Holy Spirit as the Logos' mother), the simplest way in which this is acceptable is the way that Origen gave, ie. as "every one being His mother who does the will of the Father in heaven", since as Christ said in Matthew's gospel that everyone who does His Father's will is his mother, brother, and sister.

In her book Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership, Ally Kateusz writes:

Worthy of a note here is that until the end of the fourth-century, 'spirit' was grammatically feminine gendered in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic. In Ancient Syria, scribes described Holy Spirit not only as female, but also as mother. Evidence of this is preserved in the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of the Egyptians, the Odes of Solomon, the Acts of Thomas, the Acts of Philip, as well as other writings. Even in the Latin West, the femaleness of Holy Spirit was apparently so important that some Latin Christians feminized the masculine-gendered spiritus- 'spirit' in Latin-making it the feminine spirita. In any case, some Christian funeral epigraphs in Latin in the city of Rome and northern Africa, including one dated 291, use spirita sancta for Holy Spirit, instead of the grammatically correct masculine spiritus sanctus. Around the end of the fourth century, however, scribes began to masculinize the gender of Holy Spirit, most notably in Ancient Syria, where 'spirit' had always been grammatically feminine.

Footnotes
[87] For Holy Spirit imaged as female and mother, and its change to masculine gender at the end of the fourth century, see Borck, "Holy Spirit in the Syrian Baptismal Tradition", 19-26; Harvey, "Feminine Imagery for the Divine, 111-22; Murray, "Symbols of Church, 312-20, and Kateusz, Finding Holy Spirit Mother.
[88] Gospel of Thomas, 101, "My mother gave me death, but my true Mother gave me life (NHL, 124). Also translated as, "My mother gave birth to me, but my true Mother gave me life" (Smith, Gospel of Thomas, 172).
[94] Notably well over half of the codices in the Nag Hammadi Library describe a female Being, often named as 'mother.'

The Gospel of Philip is Gnostic and the other writings that she lists are rather arcane, and possibly gnostic. The Greek Gospel of the Egyptians doesn't discuss the Holy Spirit, but she probably means the Gnostic Gospel of the Egyptians.

KONTAKION (TONE 6) for December 26 - Second Day of celebration of the Nativity of Christ/Synaxis of The Theotokos suggests that Christ didn't have the Holy Spirit as a mother:

He who before the birth of the Morning Star was born of the Father, without a mother, became incarnate on earth of you, O mother of God, without a father.

It is hard for me to answer Question 3 easily. In the Nicene Creed, the Virgin Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father.

My best guess would be that calling the Holy Spirit Christ's mother is an allegorical expression, like references to Christ's womb.

the Eleventh Council of Toledo in 675 said of the Son that “he was begotten or born from the Father’s womb—that is, of his substance”. In other words, being born from the Father's womb is an expression meaning of his substance. This seems to be what Jerome means when he comments on the passage in the Gospel of the Hebrews by saying that divinity does not have a gender, ie. the Holy Spirit is not literally male or female:

"Now no one should be offended by this, because "spirit" in Hebrew is feminine, while in our language (Latin) it is masculine and in Greek it is neuter. In divinity, however, there is no gender." ~Jerome

On the other hand, traditional Christians have at times emphasized that God, and particularly the Father, is male.

Out of what I quoted in the OP, the clearest patristic statement that the Spirit was the mother of the Logos was from Jerome's commentary about Micah 7:6, but it turns out that a better translation of Jerome's words aren't so explicit about that, referring to God's discourse or speech, rather than "Word":

From Jerome, On Micah 2, commentary on Micah 7.6 (de Santos 16):

("non dubitabit dicere sermonem dei ortum esse de spiritu, et animam, quae sponsa sermonis est, habere socrum sanctum spiritum, qui apud Hebraeos genere dicitur feminino rua.")

But he who reads the Song of Songs and understands the spouse of the soul to be the speech of God, and believes the gospel which we recently translated, that published as according to the Hebrews, in which from the person of the savior it is said: Just now my mother, the holy spirit, bore me by one of my hairs, [such a reader] will not doubt to say that the speech of God springs from the spirit, and that the soul, which is the spouse of the speech, has the holy spirit as a mother-in-law, which among the Hebrews is said by the female gender, rua (רוח).

[/quote]
[/div]

[alon]

I just wrote a LONG reply, then dumped it just before I posted it! Aaugh!

I'll try again tomorrow if I get the chance.

Dan (tryin hard not t' cuss) C

[rakovsky]

I know what you mind. Sometimes I save long posts to Text Files in case that happens. There are Browser Extensions that save your work as you type. I learned from having the same thing happen.

[rakovsky]

For Question 4 (Whether the apostle Levi is Matthai), I want to lay out what I found on the identity of Matthew, Matthai, and Levi. But the short version of my answer is that it looks like Levi is Matthew, and that Didymus was misreading the Hebrew word for Matthew in the Hebrew language "Gospel of the Hebrews" as referring to the apostle Matthai, since they are the same in Hebrew.

Levi and Matthew in the Gospels
The callings of Levi and Matthew run as follows:

Matthew 9.9: As Jesus went on from there, He saw a man called Matthew, sitting in the publican's booth; and He says to him, "Follow Me!" And he got up and followed Him.

Mark 2.13-14: 13. And He went out again by the seashore; and all the people were coming to Him, and He was teaching them. 14. As He passed by, He saw Levi the son of Alphaeus sitting in the tax booth, and He says to him, "Follow Me!" And he got up and followed Him.

Luke 5.27-28: 27. After that He went out and noticed a publican named Levi sitting in the tax booth, and He said to him, "Follow Me." 28. And he left everything behind, and got up and began to follow Him.

Whereas Levi son of Alphaeus is called as a follower in Mark 2, James the son of Alphaeus is one of the 12 apostles.
One problem with equating Levi and Matthew is that it could mean that the same person had two Semitic personal names (Matthew being a Greek translation of Mattathyah), which is different from having a nickname or a second, Greek name. But one could theorize that "Matthew" was a Greek name that he used for his work as a publican. Also, Matthew's gospel is considered directed at a Jewish audience, so one could theorize that Matthew was the "Christian" name that Levi was given. It could be that whereas Matthew called himself "Matthew" in his own gospel, the other writers referred to him as "Levi" by his Hebrew name.

Levi is not mentioned much in early Christian writings, although they sometimes differentiate him from Matthew. For example, in the early 3rd century, Origen wrote that Matthew was a publican and an apostle, adding:

And Leves (Λευὴς) also, who was a follower of Jesus, may have been a publican; but he was not of the number of the apostles, except according to a statement in one of the copies of Mark's Gospel.

In other words, one copy of Mark's gospel had "Levi" as one of the apostles.

If you arrange the gospels in a harmony, the publican Matthew's calling lines up with the publican Levi's calling, which suggests that they are the same person as many theologians have theorized:
Event__________Matthew__Mark____Luke
Circuit round Galilee 4:23-25; 1:35-39; 4:42-44
Healing a leper 8:1-4; 1:40-45; 5:12-16
Christ stills the storm 8:18-27; 4:35-41; 8:22-25
Demoniacs in the land of the Gadarenes 8:28-34; 5:1-20; 8:26-39
Jairus' daughter. Woman healed 9:18-26; 5:21-43; 8:40-56
Blind men and demoniac 9:27-34
Healing the paralytic 9:1-8 ; 2:1-12 ; 5:17-26
Calling of Levi / Matthew the publican: Matthew 9:9-13 ; Mark 2:13-17 ; Luke 5:27-32
“Thy disciples fast not” 9:14-17 ; 2:18-22 ; 5:33-39

Equating Matthew with Levi would clear up the problem that although Mark and Luke narrate the calling of the publican Levi, most manuscripts don't list Levi among the 12 Apostles. Matthew 10 lists "Matthew the tax collector" among the twelve apostles. Apostles like Simon got Christian names like Peter, so it would make sense for Matthew to be Levi's Christian name.

Matthew apparently hinted that he had two names in Matthew 9:9, when instead of saying that Jesus passed by the publican Matthew, the evangelist wrote that the man was "called Matthew" (Maththaion legomenon) (<<As Jesus passed on from there, he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax booth, and he said to him, “Follow me.” And he rose and followed him.>>).

Lebbaeus and Thaddaeus
Codex Bezae, one of the Biblical manuscripts, has "Lebbaeus" instead of Thaddaeus in the list of the 12 apostles in Mark 3.18 and in Matthew 10.3. One manuscript also has "Thaddaeus who is called Lebbaeus."

In the Apostolic Constitutions, Chapter 8:25 says:

And I, Lebbaeus, surnamed Thaddaeus, make this constitution in regard to widows...

One theory is that calling Thaddaeus "Levi" was an attempt made long after the Bible's writing to include Levi among the 12 apostles after Levi's calling as a follower. Luke's gospel lists St Jude or "Judas of James" instead of Thaddaeus or Lebbaeus as one of the 12 apostles. Pseudo-Hippolytus, who wrote much later, equates Lebbaeus with Jude/Judas.

Matthew as possibly Matthai
One could theorize that Matthew is the same person as Matthias, because they are both Greek translations of the same Hebrew name, and because they are both considered to have written gospels, since there are apocryphal Gospels and "Traditions" of Matthias. But equating Matthew and Matthias appears impossible because in Acts 1, Matthias is chosen to replace Judas among the 12 apostles, who already included Matthew.

Matthias as possibly Levi
In the Fourth Century, Didymus the Blind wrote based on the Gospel of the Hebrews:

It seems that in the one according to Luke Matthew is named Levi, but it is not the same [person], but rather the Matthias who was installed instead of Judas and Levi are one [person] with a double name. This appears in the gospel according to the Hebrews.

One theory is that since "Matthew" and "Matthai" in Hebrew are the same name, then when Matthew 9 described the calling of "Matthew" the publican in parallel with Mark and Luke's passage about the calling of Levi the publican, Matthew's gospel was really talking about "Matthai".
Another theory that appears more likely to me is that the Gospel according to the Hebrews just used the Hebrew word for Matthew/Matthai, and Didymus interpreted it as "Matthai", because the "Gospel of the Hebrews" was written in Hebrew and "Matthai" sounds more like the Hebrew name, "Mattityahu". Also in the Fourth Century, Jerome in On Famous Men III equated Matthew, rather than Matthai, with Levi:

Matthew, who is also Levi, the ex-publican apostle, first composed in Hebraic letters the gospel of Christ in Judea on account of those who had believed from among the circumcision;

So it looks like Jerome was reading the same Hebrew Gospel text as Didymus and Didymus interpreted the publican Mattityahu in the story as the apostle Matthias, whereas Jerome interpreted Mattityahu as Matthew the author of the first gospel.

Matthew as Zacchaeus
Matthew and Zacchaeus were both tax collectors, but Zacchaeus, although a real name, refers to purity in Hebrew (Zakah means "to be pure"). So according to one theory, they could be the same person.
Clement of Alexandria wrote in his Miscellanies:

It is said, therefore, that Zacchaeus, or, according to some, Matthias [Ματθίαν], the chief of the publicans, on hearing that the Lord had deigned to come to him, said, Lord, and if I have taken anything by false accusation, I restore him fourfold...

But it is also hard to equate either Matthew or Levi with Zacchaeus, because Luke's gospel mentions the calling of both Levi and Zacchaeus in Luke 5.27-32 and Luke 19, respectively. And the calling of Matthew from his booth is different from the calling of Zacchaeus from the sycamore tree.

[alon]

Aug 12, 2019 7:43:56 GMT -8 rakovsky said:

Dan,

For Question 1 (Does it likely represents a tradition around James and the Jewish Christian community before Jerusalem's destruction in 135 AD?),

you made a good point at looking at the sources' status when Jerome found it. It looks hard to answer the question exactly, but it appears that the document probably was respected by the Nazarene community in Jerusalem at that time. The uncertainty about its status is due to a lack of exact dating for its authorship as well as clarity on what it contained.

Your question said it was used by the church fathers. They were all pagans, and almost all hated the Jews. I doubt the Nazarene community themselves had any regard for this document at all. But yes, lack of clarity, dating, and specious authorship would be a problem, then and now.

rakovsky said: First, there is circumstantial evidence from its contents. It's the only material to narrate Yeshua's appearance to James, the leader of the Nazarene community. Papias (c. 125) says that Matthew first wrote a Gospel in Hebrew, and Papias also tells a story that Eusebius says is found in the Gospel according to The Hebrews. So one could theorize that Papias knew the Gospel according to the Hebrews, quoted from it, and that this was the same as the one that he said Matthew wrote in Hebrew. Justin Martyr (c. 150) gave a quote about fire at Yeshua's Baptism and Epiphanius says that in the gospel According to the Hebrews, when the voice came from heaven at Yeshua's baptism, "immediately a great light illuminated the place."

A great light- seems that is noteworthy enough that, had it really happened one of the Gospels would have mentioned it. Kind of like Hollywood. If yours is the third remake, you'd better add some visual effects to sell it!

Also I have a problem with the assumption that Yeshua had to appear to Ya'akov. 

Papias, Eusebius, and Justin Martyr are all Christians, not Nazarenes. So othe than helping establish a timeline, their quotes and statements have little meaning. Likewise Hegesippus below.

rakovsky said: Second, Hegesippus, a Jewish Christian or Nazarene who wrote a history of the Church in c. 165, apparently used it, since Eusebius wrote:
"[Hegesippus] sets out something from the gospel according to the Hebrews and from the Syriac, and likewise from the Hebrew dialect, making apparent that he himself had come to faith out of the Hebrews." Hegesippus was writing close enough in time to the Jewish Church in Jerusalem to be connected with their teachings and writings.

He can be (Rabbinically) Jewish, Christian, or Nazarene; but only one. He cannot be 2, and certainly not all 3. Because in the time period you are talking about the Split between the Notsarim sect and mainstream Judaism was about to occur with a vengence. And one born Jewish who converted to Christianity ceased to be Jewish.

rakovsky said: Finally, it is noteworthy that in the 4th century, Jerome wrote that the Nazarenes in Syria used it and that he found it in the library of Caesarea (at the time in Roman Palestine), which suggests it had significant currency among the 1st or 2nd century Nazarenes. Eusebius wrote that the Ebionites only used the Gospel According to the Hebrews. But since they were writing 300 years later, their comments are not as reliable as observations for how the document was treated originally.

Christianity has always gotten the Ebionites and the Notsarim confused. SO the currency generated by those writerrs is Monopoly money, nothing more.

rakovsky said: To answer my own question, <<But really, what is there to say that this is probably an early 2nd c. text and not a 1st century one? Maybe this is just an estimate that they reached by averaging together potential dates (ie. the 1st century and mid-2nd century)?>>, the scholars don't have certainty on whether the text is a first or second century document. Other than averaging the full range to make an estimate, they could also theorize that it was written before the time of writing of Papias and Hegesippus (c. 125 and 165, respectively).

I knew you could get it! 

Dan C

[alon]

rakovsky said: For Question 2 (Mary as the power Michael), certainly this idea would be in conflict with normal Biblical and Orthodox angelology, since it would be confusing a known named male angel, Michael, with a known human, Mary. Some anonymous angels are interpreted to be God, like those who met with Abraham in Genesis. But this is not the same thing as confusing known, named angels with known humans.

Right conclusion, wrong premise. It’s wrong because it conflicts with scripture in every way! This is early Catholic theology, that Mary is somehow divine.

Angels- the term Catholicism (and all Christianity) translates “angels” is “malach,” which means “messenger.” It can be a heavenly being. It can be God, God as Yeshua, or it can be your child! Any person can be a messenger, official or not. Just like in English- one of those rare words that almost translates directly.

rakovsky said: It also isn't clear whether this story was actually in the Gospel according to the Hebrews. It comes from an apocryphal 6th century Coptic narrative of Cyril of Jerusalem's 4th century homily. The Coptic narrative could be a legendary fictional story that included a fictionalized version of the Gospel of the Hebrews. The Coptic fictional story could have expanded on the known saying in the real Gospel of the Hebrews that the Holy Spirit was Christ's mother and turned it into Mary being the power Michael. Or the Coptic homily could be talking about a different "Gospel according to the Hebrews" than the one that early Fathers like Clement of Alexandria were talking about. After all, the Diatessaron was also called by some "The Gospel According to the Hebrews" according to Epiphanius. Also, the Nazarenes were known to have orthodox theology and used the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and their orthodoxy tends to suggest that the document wouldn't have something so theologically strange like this.

No, the early church used this because the early church fathers were unrepentant pagans, and it fed into their pagan theology that gods are born of other gods (not always, but this is no minor god they were speaking of here). Christianity intentionally confused the Nazarenes and the early church because they wanted to protect their doctrine of “apostolic succession.” Then on the other hand, the church fathers hated them so much they wrote of the Nazarenes being completely separate from them:

“These sectarians didn’t call themselves Christians but Nazarenes, however they are simply complete Jews. They use not only the New Testament but the Old Testament as well. They have no different ideas but profess everything exactly as the Law proclaims it in the Jewish fashion. Except for their belief in Messiah if you please! For they acknowledge the resurrection of the dead and the divine creation of all things and declare that God is one and that his son, Yeshua is the Messiah. They are trained to a nicety in Hebrew for among them the entire Law, the prophets and the entire Writings are read in Hebrew as they surely are by the Jews. They disagree with Jews because they have come to faith in Messiah but since they are still fettered in the Law, circumcision, the Sabbath and the rest they are not in accord with Christians, they are nothing but Jews. They have the good news in Mathew in it’s entirety in Hebrew. For it is clear that they still preserve this in the Hebrew alphabet as it was originally written.
(Epiphanius; Panarion 29)

rakovsky said: In "The Thousand Faces of the Virgin Mary", George Henry Tavard gives Cyril's quotation from the Gospel According to the Hebrews and comments:
Thus Mary is the archangel Michael and his heavenly power, which is implicitly the Holy Spirit. In keeping with this, Jesus speaks of 'my mother, the Holy Spirit.' This process of angelization and divinization of Mary is a characteristic of gnostic speculation. It recurs in the Gospel of Philip, a Valentinian writing of the second century, where the orthodox belief, 'Mary conceived from the Holy Spirit,' is refuted by the question, 'When did a woman conceive by a woman?’ [The author of the Gospel of Philip] means that the Spirit is himself the Virgin from whom Christ was born: "The Father of everything united with the Virgin who came down, and a fire shone for him on that day."

I think even Catholicism agrees Mary, a virgin, was impregnated by God manifest as the Holy Spirit. But all the other doctrines that sprang up around her are pure hogwash! Things like she was without sin, she had a divine nature, etc. Nor did God “unite” with her, as this term implies sexual relations. That is heresy of the first order!

rakovsky said: In her book Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership, Ally Kaleusz comments about the apocryphal homily by St. Cyril that earlier in the homily, St Cyril [100]
complained that some Christians believed, "She was a force (or abstract power) of God which took the form of a woman, and came upon the earth, and was called 'Mary,' and this force gave birth to Emmanuel for us."Although the homilist quoted Jesus' mother as a 'power' who came down, and Origen quoted his mother as the Holy Spirit who descended, both were discussing Jesus' mother according to the Gospel of the Hebrews. Later, the homilist invoked Mary in the role of Holy Spirit in the baptismal ritual, and did so by using the same ritual formula, 'in the name of Mary,' which both the liturgical manual embedded in the Six Books, as well as the 'collyridian' women priests whom Epiphanius of Salamis described, used when sacrificing bread to Mary on the altar. The homilist wrote that after he burned the monk's Gospel of the Hebrews... 'I baptised him [the monk] in the name of the Lady of us all, Saint Mary."

Agree with Cyril in everything except baptizing in the name of Mary. Mary had no following in her day. The cult of Mary rose later in Catholicism, along with all the doctrines I spoke of just prior.

rakovsky said: Footnotes
[100] Cyril, Discourse on Mary Theotokos. Most scholars either accept the passage as genuinely from the Gospel of the Hebrews or at a minimum leave open the possibility that the passage is from the Gospel of the Hebrews, as the author presents it; see Edwards, Hebrew Gospel, 59; Schneemelcher, New Testament Apocrypha, 150, 177; Klijn, Jewish-Christian Gospel Tradition, 135; Burch, "Gospel According to the Hebrews," 310;... Gregory, "Gospel According to the Hebrews, 280-81, most recently makes the argument that it probably is not.

Most scholars are blinded by their own theology. This is not a "Gospel According to the Hebrews,” but according to the church. It’s possible that some misguided spin off sect wrote it, but it looks suspiciously Christian in origin to me.

rakovsky said: Kaleusz seems to be theorizing that St Cyril baptized the monk by using Mary in the role of the Holy Spirit because he baptized the monk in Mary's name, whereas normally believers are baptized in the name of the Trinity and are considered to receive the Holy Spirit in connection with their baptism. I think that it is not clear that her theory is correct, since he could have just been baptizing the monk in Mary's honor, especially since Cyril had himself just refuted the idea that Mary was a "force". People are often baptized with a saint's name and thus in connection with a saint, but it would be weird if Cyril actually baptized someone without invoking the Trinity. The institutional Church's position in the patristic era was that people had to be baptised with an invocation of the Trinity.

And this does seem to be more in line with Christian doctrines.

rakovsky said: Wikipedia's entry for Gospel of the Hebrews notes about the apocryphal Coptic homily of Cyril that
Cyril condemns the monk's teaching as a heresy, which the author attributes to Carpocrates, Satornilus, and Ebionites.[27]
Footnotes
[27] van den Broek regards the attribution of the monk's 'quotation' to the Gospel of the Hebrews to be spurious

“Spurious” is putting it mildly. Again, the church tends to confuse the Ebionim with the Notsarim, especially when it suits them. Then they turn around and call the Notsarim “Jewish Christians” when that more suits their cause. Just be careful how you interpret that here.

Once they left the doctrine of Yeshua’s eternal deity some sects of Ebionim really went off the rails. So I won’t rule out their possible involvement in at least some of this “gospel.” I’ll just admit I don’t really know. But since I hold them to be heretics, it  doesn’t matter if they wrote parts of it or even the entire thing!

[alon]

rakovsky said: For Question 3 (The Holy Spirit as the Logos' mother), the simplest way in which this is acceptable is the way that Origen gave, ie. as "every one being His mother who does the will of the Father in heaven", since as Christ said in Matthew's gospel that everyone who does His Father's will is his mother, brother, and sister.

I find it wholly unacceptable! The Holy Spirit is not “everyone,” but rather a manifestation of Almighty God! This is however a good example of Christianity's penchant for ‘spiritualizing’ anything they cannot otherwise makes sense of.

rakovsky said: In her book Mary and Early Christian Women: Hidden Leadership, Ally Kateusz writes:
Worthy of a note here is that until the end of the fourth-century, 'spirit' was grammatically feminine gendered in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic. In Ancient Syria, scribes described Holy Spirit not only as female, but also as mother. Evidence of this is preserved in the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Philip, the Gospel of the Egyptians, the Odes of Solomon, the Acts of Thomas, the Acts of Philip, as well as other writings. Even in the Latin West, the femaleness of Holy Spirit was apparently so important that some Latin Christians feminized the masculine-gendered spiritus- 'spirit' in Latin-making it the feminine spirita. In any case, some Christian funeral epigraphs in Latin in the city of Rome and northern Africa, including one dated 291, use spirita sancta for Holy Spirit, instead of the grammatically correct masculine spiritus sanctus. Around the end of the fourth century, however, scribes began to masculinize the gender of Holy Spirit, most notably in Ancient Syria, where 'spirit' had always been grammatically feminine.

The Ruach HaKodesh is not just grammatically feminine, but is figuratively and allegorically feminine. This refers to the role of the Spirit as comforter and giver of life, things we associate with the role of women. God has no gender, however in many languages a gender is assigned to everything, even if in some it is neutral. Hebrew does not have a neuter-gender, so all words are either masculine or feminine. Therefore this whole argument on gender is due to confusion between languages; which if you look closely at what was written above you can clearly see.

rakovsky said: Footnotes
[87] For Holy Spirit imaged as female and mother, and its change to masculine gender at the end of the fourth century, see Borck, "Holy Spirit in the Syrian Baptismal Tradition", 19-26; Harvey, "Feminine Imagery for the Divine, 111-22; Murray, "Symbols of Church, 312-20, and Kateusz, Finding Holy Spirit Mother.
[88] Gospel of Thomas, 101, "My mother gave me death, but my true Mother gave me life (NHL, 124). Also translated as, "My mother gave birth to me, but my true Mother gave me life" (Smith, Gospel of Thomas, 172).
[94] Notably well over half of the codices in the Nag Hammadi Library describe a female Being, often named as 'mother.'

The Gospel of Philip is Gnostic and the other writings that she lists are rather arcane, and possibly gnostic. The Greek Gospel of the Egyptians doesn't discuss the Holy Spirit, but she probably means the Gnostic Gospel of the Egyptians.

KONTAKION (TONE 6) for December 26 - Second Day of celebration of the Nativity of Christ/Synaxis of The Theotokos suggests that Christ didn't have the Holy Spirit as a mother:
He who before the birth of the Morning Star was born of the Father, without a mother, became incarnate on earth of you, O mother of God, without a father.

It is hard for me to answer Question 3 easily. In the Nicene Creed, the Virgin Mary conceived by the Holy Spirit. And the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father.
My best guess would be that calling the Holy Spirit Christ's mother is an allegorical expression, like references to Christ's womb.
the Eleventh Council of Toledo in 675 said of the Son that “he was begotten or born from the Father’s womb—that is, of his substance”. In other words, being born from the Father's womb is an expression meaning of his substance. This seems to be what Jerome means when he comments on the passage in the Gospel of the Hebrews by saying that divinity does not have a gender, ie. the Holy Spirit is not literally male or female:
"Now no one should be offended by this, because "spirit" in Hebrew is feminine, while in our language (Latin) it is masculine and in Greek it is neuter. In divinity, however, there is no gender." ~Jerome

On the other hand, traditional Christians have at times emphasized that God, and particularly the Father, is male.

Out of what I quoted in the OP, the clearest patristic statement that the Spirit was the mother of the Logos was from Jerome's commentary about Micah 7:6, but it turns out that a better translation of Jerome's words aren't so explicit about that, referring to God's discourse or speech, rather than "Word":
From Jerome, On Micah 2, commentary on Micah 7.6 (de Santos 16):

("non dubitabit dicere sermonem dei ortum esse de spiritu, et animam, quae sponsa sermonis est, habere socrum sanctum spiritum, qui apud Hebraeos genere dicitur feminino rua.")

But he who reads the Song of Songs and understands the spouse of the soul to be the speech of God, and believes the gospel which we recently translated, that published as according to the Hebrews, in which from the person of the savior it is said: Just now my mother, the holy spirit, bore me by one of my hairs, [such a reader] will not doubt to say that the speech of God springs from the spirit, and that the soul, which is the spouse of the speech, has the holy spirit as a mother-in-law, which among the Hebrews is said by the female gender, rua (רוח).

“Oh, what a tangled web we weave” when we use documents so clearly and thoroughly lies in order to form or even just understand our doctrine. This is why I do not waste a lot of time studying such documents.

[alon]

rakovsky said: For Question 4 (Whether the apostle Levi is Matthai), …

This confusion of names is part of what the enemy, ha’satan had in mind when he inspired the church fathers to eliminate all “taint” of Judaism from their new religion; translating all their “New Testament" into Greek and seeking out and destroying all Hebrew copies. Changing the language changes the entire character, and confusing names can make people doubt.

Yes, many Hebrews also had pagan Greek or Latin names. They preferred their Hebrew names, however those like Paul born citizens of Rome had to have two names. Others had names they used in business, and tax collectors would have been ones who had to take another Greco-Roman name.

The first thing ha’satan did was to de-Judaize the Galilee region, saying few Jews were there. Archaeology has proven that entirely false! But if you can say the region where Yeshua grew up was Gentile, and the language was Greek, you can begin to change His character from Hebrew to Gentile Greek. And voilà, you have the start of your “new” religion- a.k.a. Christianity, a.k.a. Catholicism. And this being pagan in origin, it is not only acceptable, but expected you will make changes to suit the “storyteller,” a.k.a. the church fathers.

[alon]

rakovsky, and others:

I apologize for the straightforward manner in which I answer many of these posts. In particular my portrayal of the church fathers as unrepentant pagans, the origins of the church as pagan, my absolute acceptance of Hebrew primacy, my stating that the doctrine of apostolic succession in the church is false, and other negative characterizations of church doctrine. However I must qualify my apology by saying that any other portrayal of these people, institutions, or teachings on a Messianic forum would be a lie. Further, your understanding of these views (all of which I have backed up individually with pastors who have Doctorates of Theology in different denominations) is crucial to your understanding of what I am saying. So to water it down would be to risk misunderstanding.

As I've said before, my problem is not with Christianity as a whole. They have been deceived! My problem is with the church fathers who built this system structured on paganism, with the scholars and men with doctorates who instead of thinking for themselves just parrot the party line, and somewhat with pastors who are given the task of digging out the truth in scripture and disseminating it to their congregations. And getting at the truth through study is possible! I and most Messianics did it, and all I have is an Associates in Engineering. The pastor at the Assembly church where I sometimes accompany my wife does research and dig out truths. I've told him after some sermons if he isn't careful, I will have to start calling him Rabbi! 

Dan (sorry ... kinda) C

[rakovsky]

Well, I don't want you to feel bad for expressing your views. You were not being hostile toward me. I appreciate your replies and that we can have the discussion. There is another Messianic forum called Eliyah that I would like to join, but it requires "Belief that we should... use the original names for the Father and the Messiah instead of substitutes... such as Adonai, the LORD, HaShem." I don't know that I would be truthful if I signed up for such a forum, since I think it's fine to refer to the Most High in such ways as He is called by holy people in the Bible. So I am glad that you and I can have this discussion and being allowed to ask and answer our questions instead of being censored out. I've seen Orthodox writers point to Messianic Judaism as evidence for the validity of basic belief in Yeshua as the Messiah, so actually Messianic Judaism appears to have value even for Eastern Orthodox, even if in other ways Orthodox were to disagree with it. There are also Eastern Orthodox who keep like Messianic Jews. But that is a topic for another thread.