The Witnesses - Nazaryah

One Voice from the Early Assemblies

History is not the authority; Scripture is. But the earliest writers after the apostles speak with one voice on the language of Matthew, and not one early writer claims Matthew was first written in Greek.

Papias of Hierapolis (c. 60–130 AD), who lived within reach of the apostolic generation: “Matthew wrote the oracles in the Hebrew language, and every one interpreted them as he was able” (quoted in Eusebius, Ecclesiastical History 3.39.16). The last clause describes translation — men rendering a Hebrew text as best they could.

Irenaeus (c. 180 AD): “Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect” (Against Heresies 3.1.1).

Pantaenus, travelling east in the late second century, found believers who still held “the writing of Matthew in the Hebrew language,” left with them by the apostle Bartholomew (Ecclesiastical History 5.10.3).

Clement of Alexandria (c. 200 AD) on the letter to the Hebrews: it “was written to the Hebrews in the Hebrew language; but Luke translated it carefully and published it for the Greeks, and hence the same style of expression is found in this epistle and in the Acts” (Ecclesiastical History 6.14.2).

Origen (third century): Matthew’s Gospel was “published in the Hebrew language” (Ecclesiastical History 6.25.4). Eusebius (fourth century): Matthew “committed his Gospel to writing in his native tongue” (3.24.6).

Jerome (392 AD) gives the fullest account: Matthew “composed a gospel at first published in Judea in Hebrew… but this was afterwards translated into Greek, though by what author is uncertain. The Hebrew itself has been preserved until the present day in the library at Caesarea… I have also had the opportunity of having the volume described to me by the Nazarenes of Beroea” (Lives of Illustrious Men 3). Epiphanius, in the same century, confirms that the Nazarenes held Matthew complete in Hebrew (Panarion 29.9.4).

Seven witnesses across three centuries agree: Matthew was written in Hebrew, and the Greek came afterward, by an unknown hand. No early witness says otherwise.

Why No Hebrew Manuscript Survives

Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 AD and again after 135 AD, scattering the Hebrew-speaking assemblies of Judea.
The Nazarenes, who kept the Hebrew Matthew, were condemned by the Roman assemblies for keeping the Torah. Their books were not copied by those who condemned them.
The library at Caesarea, where Jerome saw the Hebrew text, did not survive the conquests of the seventh century.
The copying of Scripture passed into the hands of Greek and Latin scribes, who preserved what they read and let the rest fall away.

The absence of a manuscript is not evidence that no original existed. It is evidence of who controlled the copying.

Hebrew Texts That Are Not the Original

Several “Hebrew” New Testament texts are offered today as the lost originals. None of them is. Each appeared many centuries too late, or was translated from the Greek into Hebrew, and several still carry the doctrines of the later church.

Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew (c. 1380 AD) survives only inside Even Bohan, a book written to argue against belief in Yahushua. It comes thirteen centuries after the apostles, from a hostile source.
The Münster Matthew (1537) and the Du Tillet Matthew (1555) were published in Europe during the Reformation, with no line of descent to the first century.
The Delitzsch (1877) and Salkinson-Ginsburg Hebrew New Testaments are translations from the Greek into Hebrew. They show what the Greek looks like in Hebrew; they cannot show what the Hebrew said before the Greek.
“Hebraic Roots” Bibles sold today are English versions built on these late texts.
The Peshitta, the Aramaic New Testament (c. fifth century), is the Bible of a later Syrian church and follows that church’s creeds.

The honest position is this: the Hebrew original is lost, but the testimony that it existed is early, wide, and unanimous. Late texts do not fill that gap, and leaning on them weakens the case. The case rests on the witnesses above, and on the Hebrew that still shows through the Greek itself.

One of eight witnesses in a single case. The Witnesses is the testimony of history — the early writers who saw or knew of the Hebrew original, and the late texts that cannot replace it. The eight together make the case framed in the hub study, Spoken in Hebrew.