History records that there was an original Gospel of Matthew written in Hebrew. It was written down by him approximately 4 to 6 years following the establishment of the church. It included possibly all the materials in our present day Synoptic Gospels, plus the book of Acts through 15:35. This original Gospel was in existence well into the 4th century in its original Hebrew form. Jerome, the translator of the Bible into Latin, used it. He gives us some 19 references to it in his writings. This Hebrew Gospel was in the library of Caesarea where it was assembled by Pamphilias. This library was destroyed in the 4th century. Other early church writers such as Tertulian and Origen also mention this original Hebrew Gospel in their writings. There is very little doubt of its existence, although there is not a copy of this document in existence today that we know of. Two writings available today claim to be copies to this Hebrew Matthew, but are questionable. They are the “DuTillet” Hebrew Matthew and the “Shem Tob” Hebrew Matthew.
Very quickly it became necessary for there to be a Greek translation of the Hebrew Matthew. This was because of all the Hellenistic Jews that had gathered in Jerusalem for the Festival of Shavuoth or Pentecost (Acts 2:5-11). A Greek translation of the Old Testament called the Septuagint was already available. This N.T. translation was a slavishly literal translation, but it retained all its Hebrewisms. However, the Hebrew translation was all cut up into fragments. The reason for this was because the Rabbis of that day had a habit of arranging their sermons in three parts. One third was “hagadah” or legends, which were the great themes of faith. One third was “halakah” or Law. The last third was a closing of at least two parables, because “out of the mouth of two witnesses a thing is established” (Deut. 17:6; 19:15). The Rabbis would cut up the text and just use the parts they needed for their sermons. The Greek writers used a pieced together text for translation. This is the reason the text of the Synoptic Gospels do not necessarily agree chronologically. The important thing to realize is that the Bible we have today is actually of Hebrew origin and when we study it we must look at it from the perspective of the Jewish people of the first century. This requires more time than just sitting around reading the Bible for half an hour each day if we are to really grasp its truths. It is also important to make sure that when we select other materials to use in our studies that we make sure that the author has a background in Middle Eastern studies. If we don’t, the materials we choose may be flawed through misunderstanding the times and customs of the Jewish people that God entrusted His Oracles to.
But, along with this, how about some hard, physical evidence? Lets start with what has been called the most important archaeological discovery of the 20th century – the Dead Sea Scrolls. Among these writings were found commentaries on just about every book of the Old Testament. Every one of these books was written in Hebrew. A commentary is normally written by some scholar to help other people with less education to understand a certain literary work. It stands to reason that the commentary would be written in the language that the people needing the commentary would be able to read. Just from this it would seem that the common people of Yeshua’s day spoke Hebrew.
How about the money the people used? According to Dr. Roy Blizzard, one of the chief archaeologists on the Temple Mount in the late 60's and early 70's, hundreds and even thousands of coins from the time of Yeshua were found. Not one of them had inscriptions stamped in Aramaic or Greek. They were all in Hebrew
It is unfortunate, but there is still a very strong anti-Semitic undercurrent in the church today. It still even reaches into the highest level of scholarship. Unfortunately, very few people even realize that it is still there. But people still simply do not want to face the fact that Yeshua was a Jew. None of His teachings crossed the boundaries of the Judaism of His day. He was as orthodox in His teachings as any Jew ever was, or would be, on this earth. Approximately one-third of His teachings came from the Jewish Oral Law (Mishnah). We call these the parables. And yes, He spoke Hebrew, not Aramaic or Greek. The quicker we come to understand and accept this, the quicker our real understanding of God’s Holy Word will be realized.
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