Endnote 23 – Was The Gospel of Matthew Originally Written In Hebrew?

Cf. the famous rabbinic passage, Tosefta Shabbath, 13.5: “The margins and books of the minim do not save.” The debate that follows about what is to be done with heretical books concerns the issue of the divine names in them. Rabbi José suggests the divine name should be cut out and the rest of the document burned. Rabbi Tarphon and Rabbi Ishmael say the books in their entirety including the divine name should be destroyed. See R. Travers Herford, Christianity in Talmud and Midrash (Clifton, NJ: Reference Book Publishers, 1966), pp. 155–157. By incorporating the Hebrew Matthew into his Even Bohan, Shem-Tob apparently felt compelled to preserve the divine name along with the rest of the text.

The evidence from Shem-Tob’s Matthew coincides with my earlier conclusions about the use of the tetragrammaton in the Greek New Testament (Howard, “The Tetragram and the New Testament,” JBL 96 [1977], pp. 63–83; “The Name of God in the New Testament,” BAR 04:01.