Whence the Gospel according to the Hebrews?

Abstract

After an introductory reflection about general problems of dating and locating early Christian texts, the present contribution focuses on a particularly interesting example which is, however, extremely difficult to contextualise: It is a fragmentarily preserved gospel text that might be a relatively early example of a gospel that in the end was not included in the New Testament canon, but instead was almost forgotten, together with its original tradents or communities. The Gospel according to the Hebrews, as it is called already in Antiquity¹, might also be one of the earliest preserved Christian texts from the ancient intellectual “hub”², the...