Gospel of the Hebrews

Background and Biography

Background and Biography

Earthquake in the Gospel of the Hebrews

Two quotes taken from the apocryphal Gospel of the Hebrews mention Temple damage and, implicitly, the earthquake. This gospel, supposedly originally written in Hebrew or possibly Aramaic is not extant and only exists in fragments mentioned by other writers. Church Scholar Jerome⁴ obtained a copy of this gospel from the library in Caesarea. Writing around 398 CE, he stated the following in two different passages about the Gospel of the Hebrews.

In the gospel we often mention we read that the immense Temple lintel fell and broke into pieces

and

In like manner, the Gospel of the Nazarenes says that at the death of Christ the Temple lintel of great size was broken

Edwards (2009:88-90) indicates that in Jerome’s writings, the “gospel we often mention” and the Gospel of the Nazarenes both refer the Gospel of the Hebrews⁵. What is interesting about this description is it’s compatibility with the accounts in the Gospels of Matthew and Mark⁵ which state that the curtain tore from top to bottom. Although this top to bottom description has traditionally been understood to indicate that the curtain tore due to God and not man, the top to bottom tearing is consistent with a lintel breaking and tearing the curtain from the top where it would have been affixed to the Temple structure. A lintel break is a common seismic effect on stone structures as can be observed in the ~90 cases of doorway, lintel, and archway damage observed at at Qalat Nimrod due to the 1759 CE Baalbek and Safed Quakes.

Footnotes

4 Jerome was fluent in Latin, Hebrew, and Greek and translated both the Old and New Testaments into Latin more or less creating the Vulgate – a Latin Bible widely (and later officially) used by the Catholic Church until 1979.

5 Since Jerome was reading a copy of this gospel centuries after it was first produced, it is not known how faithful Jerome’s copy was to the original text.

6 Modern New Testament Scholarship makes a strong case that the author of the Gospel of Matthew had access to a copy of the Gospel of Mark so the top to bottom curtain tearing in Matthew could be redacted (i.e. copied and edited) from Mark. 90% of Mark is present in Matthew.

Online Versions and Further Reading

References