Apocryphal Jeremiah

Jason Filley jfilley@primary.net
Tue, 01 Dec 1998 00:17:47 -0600 (00912514667, 36638A0B.C9560636@primary.net) 

JASON

Old subject, but I've never heard some of this before; thought I'd share
the wealth.  Typing practice -- some recent readings on Matthew's
quotation of Jeremiah at Matt. 27:9,10 (among others).

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"Tatian's Diatessaron: Its Creation, Dissemination, Significance, and
History in Scholarship," William Petersen, E.J. Brill, NY: 1994, pg
409-10:

"The second group of non-Diatessaronic texts with this variant ['dead'
instead of 'those who have fallen asleep' in Matt 27:52] is of greater
interest, for some of the sources antedate the Diatessaron.  One of the
charges Justin Martyr brings against the Jews is that they excised parts
of the Hebrew Bible in order to prevent Christian use of the passages
(cp. Dial. 72 and 73).  Among the examples Justin provides is the
following:

	"And from the words of the same Jeremiah these [words] have been cut
out [by the Jews]: 'The Lord God remembered his dead from Israel, who
lay in the dust of the earth, and he descended to them to preach to them
his salvation.'" ----
[http://ccel.wheaton.edu/fathers2/ANF-01/anf01-48.htm#P4699_1004419]

"Iraenaeus also seems to know the same tradition cited by Justin, for he
cites the passage--with minor variations--six times [adv. haer.
III.20.4; IV.22.1; IV.33.1; IV.33.12; IV.34.5 V.31.1 -- 
http://ccel.wheaton.edu/fathers2/ANF-01/TOC.htm];"

"Adv Haer IV.22.1 is representative:

	"As Jeremiah states: 'The holy Lord remembered his dead Israel, who
slept in the land of burial, and descended to them in order to make
known to them his salvation that they might be saved.'"

"Earlier in the same chapter (Dial 72.2-3) Justin [Martyr] presents
another passage which he says has also been excised by the Jews from
Jeremiah.  Is there substance to the charges Justin makes?  The evidence
suggests not, since neither of the passages appears in any known edition
of Jeremiah.  What then can explain Justin's allegations and the
citations of Irenaeus?"

"A piece of evidence used by the great connoisseur of extracanonical
traditions, A. Resch, to solve this riddle was Matthew 27.9-10:  'Then
was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying: 
'And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him. . . and
they gave them for the potter's field, as the Lord directed me.'" 
Although Matthew attributes the quotation to 'the prophet Jeremiah,' our
present book of Jeremiah -- in either the Hebrew or LXX versions --
contains no such passage.  The closest text is Zech. 11.12-13, which
mentions 'thirty shekels of silver'; but other than that, even the
Zechariah passage offers no further parallels.  Resch concluded that
both the non-existent 'quotation' from 'Jeremiah' at Matt 27.9-10 and
the non-existent 'citations' from 'Jeremiah' known to Justin and
Irenaeus came from an apocryphal 'Jeremiah' used by early Christians.
Resch's crowning piece of evidence was a remark of Jerome's (Comm. in
Matt at Matt 27.9):  "Legi nuper, in quodam hebraico uolumine quem
Nazarenae secae mihi Hebraeus obtulit Hieremiae apocryphum, in quo haec
ad verbum scripta reperi" ("Recently I read in a certain Hebrew volume
which a Hebrew of the Nazarene sect brought to me, an apocryphal
Jeremiah, in which I discovered these writings word for word.")."  [also
see Origen, Commentary on Matthew, at 27:9]"

"It would seem, then, that in the mid-second century the passage cited
by Justin and Irenaeus (in which the 'dead' are remembered, and 'he'
descended to preach to them for their 'salvation') probably came from an
apocryphal, Judaic-Christian 'Jeremiah.'"

	[A. Resch, "Agrapha.  Aussercanonische Schriftfragmente", TU 15 (Band
13, Heft 4) (Leipzig 1906; reprinted: Darmstadt 1967), 320-322, 304-05,
and esp 23-24.  Resch also discusses the passage in his
"Aussercanonische Paralleltexte zu den Evangelien, II (Paralleltexte zu
Matthaeus und Marcus), TU 10.2 (Leipzip 1894), 372-75.]  

=============

And I've been thinking about the online annotated Bible, and the most
practical document collaboration groupware I can think of is Lotus
Domino.  With any luck I'll have a dedicated 128K ISDN within 2 months
and can host anything; but I don't want to pay for the licenses.  Anyone
here any good with PERL, Jeff?  Modify /. a tad?

Regards,
Jason