Quote from Eusebius.....

Shlama all,

Here is an interesting quote from Eusebius (courtesy of www.peshito.com):

Eusebius says, (H. E. iv. 22) that:

"Hegesippus, (who lived and wrote about A. D. 188,) made some quotations from the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and from the Syriac Gospel"

Now this claims that in the days of Hegesippus, a Syriac Gospel existed, and that it was a different book from the Gospel according to the Hebrews.

And in the Passio Sancti Procopii Martyris, (annexed by Valesius to the Hist. Eccles. of Eusebius, lib. viii. c. 1, ed. Amsterdam, 1695. Annotatt, p. 154,) the martyr is said to have been born at Jerusalem, and to have passed his life at Scythopolis, where he performed three functions in the church,- " unum in legendi officio, alterum in Syri interpretatione sermonis, et tertium adversus daemones manus impositione consummans ;" until his martyrdom, under Diocletian, A. D. 303.

The words "Syri interpretatione sermonis", explicitly, make him the public translator, (of the Scriptures, undoubtedly,) from the Syriac language into some other, the Greek, most probably: for we may suppose there were some Greeks in the Syrian church of Scythopolis, for whose benefit the Scripture lessons were translated as they were read.

Shlama w'Burkate,
Paul

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Shlama all,

A 19th century translation of Eusebius' History of the Church is available at https://www.newadvent.org/fathers/ along with many other patristic texts.

Another interesting quote from this history is in Book V, chapter 10 concerning an Egyptian father named Pantaenus who lived in the 2nd century:

"Of these Pantaenus was one:it is stated that he went as far as India, where he appears to have found that Matthew's Gospel had arrived before him and was in the hands of some there who had come to know Christ. Bartholomew, one of the apostles, had preached to them and had left behind Matthew's account in the actual Aramaic characters, and it was preserved till the time of Pantaenus's mission."

Quoted from the translation by G. A. Williamson, The History of the Church, Dorset Press, New York, 1965, pages 213-214.

John Marucci