which Pampilus the
Martyr collected with much diligence. The Nazarenes, who live in
Beroca, a city of Syria, and use this volume, gave me the
opportunity of writing it out." De Vir. Illustr., 3. Here he
certainly identifies this gospel, which, as he repeatedly
informs us, he translated, with the true Hebrew gospel of
Matthew. But he afterwards speaks of it more doubtfully, as "the
gospel according to the Hebrews," and more fully as "the gospel
according to the Hebrews, which is written indeed in the Chaldee
and Syriac language, but in Hebrew letters, which the Nazarenes
use to the present day, [being the gospel] according to the
apostles, or, as most think, according to Matthew" (Against the
Pelagians, 3); "the gospel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites
use, which we have lately translated from the Hebrew language
into the Greek, and which is called by most the authentic gospel
of Matthew." Comment. in Matt. 12:13. The most probable
supposition is that Jerome, knowing that Matthew originally
wrote his gospel in Hebrew, hastily assumed at first that the
copy which he obtained from the Nazarenes was this very gospel.
The character of the quotations which he and Epiphanius give
from it forbids the supposition that it was the true Hebrew
gospel of Matthew. It may have been a corrupted form of it, or
an imitation of it.

14. Of those who, in accordance with ancient testimony, believe that the
original language of Matthew's gospel was Hebrew, some assume that the
apostle himself afterwards gave a Greek version of it. In itself
considered this hypothesis is not improbable. Matthew, writing primarily
for his countrymen in Palestine, might naturally employ the language
which was to them vernacular. But afterwards, when Christianity had
begun to spread through the Roman empire, and it became evident that the
Greek language was the proper medium for believers at large; and when
also, as is not improbable, some of the existing canonical books of the
New Testament had appeared in that language, we might well suppose that,
in view of these circumstances, the apostle himself put his gospel into
the present Greek form. But it is certainly surprising that, in this
case, no one of the ancient fathers should have had any knowledge of the
matter. In view of their ignorance it seems to be the part of modesty as
well as prudence that we also should say wit