The previous study, where I first brought up about the du Tillet Hebrew Matthew/Mattityahu, included information that looked at the possibility of our present Gospel of Matthew being from a scroll written with errors in it. See link to previous study below:

Matthew 1: The answer to the question is 42 not 41!

I did a search on the du Tillet and found sites that had researched and presented their information on that manuscript, links will be included below. One site also had available an old book written and published about the du Tillet including translation in English called, “An Old Hebrew Text of St. Matthew’s Gospel” by Hugh Schonfield 1927. Below is from that book:

“In the spring of 1925 the writer purchased from a London antiquarian bookseller a small volume, dated A.D. 1555, containing the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew, followed by a series of Jewish objections to the Gospel to the number of twenty-three, also in Hebrew. The text of the Gospel was accompanied at the end of the volume by a Latin translation. A dedicatory epistle to Charles de Guise, Cardinal of Lorraine, relates how Jean du Tillet, Bishop of Brieu, while travelling in Italy in the year 1553, found the Hebrew manuscript among the Jews, and brought it back with him to Paris, where he commissioned a Hebrew scholar, Jean Mercier, to translate it into Latin. Mercier, however, has a slightly different tale to tell. In his own preface he states that the Bishop of Brieu had extorted the MS. from the Jews of Rome for the purpose of examination. Confirmatory evidence of this statement appears in the fact that, on 12th August 1553, Pope Julius III. signed a decree for the suppression of the Talmud on the representation of the anti-Semitic Pietro, Cardinal Caraffa, the Inquisitor-General, afterwards Pope Paul IV. This decree was carried into effect in Rome with great ruthlessness on Rosh Hashanna (Jewish New Year’s Day), 9th September 1553, for not only were copies of the Talmud seized, on the plea that it was inimical to Christianity, but every Hebrew book on which the minions of the Inquisition could lay their hands. It is highly probable that the Bishop of Brieu found the Hebrew MS. of Matthew’s Gospel among the confiscated books.”

“When we turn to the New Testament we find that there are reasons for suspecting a Hebrew or Aramaic original for the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, and for the Apocalypse.”, from Preface page vii. On the next page, Schonfield goes into information that states he believes the canonical Gospel to be an abridged edition of a larger original work with even more information then we have today of CHRIST and HIS sayings and of which only fragments have survived. He further states that he believes the Judaean Christians were going to use it as the last book of the Old Testament canon. It has been referred to by the names “The Gospel”, “The Gospel of the Lord”, “The Gospel of the Twelve, or, of the Apostles”, “The Gospel of the Hebrews”, and “The Hebrew Matthew”. He believed the original to be in Hebrew and possibly Aramaic and that the Greek renderings were from it and could be proven as such.

This is Gail: When I was in Israel I met a scholar who stated that he believed the Greek to be secondary to the Aramaic and that it could be proven through examining the translations if one knew the languages. I found out there is an Aramaic vs Greek primacy dispute between Eastern and Western scholars in regards to the original New Testament manuscripts.

Other studies on Aramaic vs Greek primacy and the du Tillet and other Matthews:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aramaic_original_New_Testament_theory

https://biblearchaeology.org/current-events-list/5043-third-century-syriac-translation-of-the-gospel-of-matthew-found

Technology Reveals 1750-yr-old Hidden Syriac Scripture

https://www.torahapologetics.com/language–word-studies/aramaic-primacy-of-the-new-testament

http://textus-receptus.com/wiki/Aramaic_primacy

https://jesusspokearamaic.com/shop/Books/Peshitta-Comparison  [Includes a download of a book comparing the Peshitta, the old Syriac, and the Greek NT/Gospels – but it is not in english. https://jesusspokearamaic.com/Libraries/Peshitta-Comparison/Peshitta-Old-Syriac-Comparison.pdf ]

“Matthew.” in George A Kiraz (ed.), Comparative Edition of the Syriac Gospels: Aligning the Sinaiticus, Curetonianus, Peshîṭtâ and Ḥarklean Versions.  https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=matthew%20george%20kiraz&sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-topnav-_-Results&ds=20

https://hermeneutics.stackexchange.com/questions/4145/what-portions-of-the-new-testament-are-purported-to-have-originally-been-written

https://ancient-hebrew.org/studies-nt/greek-and-aramaic-manuscripts-of-the-new-testament.htm

https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.58158/page/n17/mode/2up
“The Four Gospels: A New Translation” (1933), Charles Torrey. Our Translated Gospels (1936), Torrey held that the four Gospels were Greek translations from Aramaic originals. https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?kn=charles%20torrey%20%22the%20new%20gospels&sts=t&cm_sp=SearchF-_-topnav-_-Results

In “Caesar and Christ” by Will Durant, on page 616 is this paragraph which backs up what Schonfield said above: “The literature of Christianity in the second century abounded in gospels epistles, apocalypses, and “acts.” Christians differed widely in accepting or rejecting these as authoritative expressions of the Christian creed. The Western churches accepted the Book of Revelation, the Eastern churches generally rejected it; these accepted the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Epistles of James, the Western churches discarded them. Clement of Alexandria quotes as sacred scripture a late first-century treatise, The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles. Marcion’s publication of a New Testament forced the hand of the Church. We do not know when the books of our present New Testament were determined as canonical-i.e., as authentic and inspired;; we can only say that a Latin fragment discovered by Muratori in 1740, named after him, and generally assigned to ca.180, assumes that the canon had by that time been fixed.”

On page 556 Durant says, “Orthodox tradition placed Matthew’s Gospel first. Irenaeus describes it as originally composed in “Hebrew”-i.e., Aramaic; but it has come down to us only in Greek.” This agrees with what is stated in the preface of the “Holy Bible: Ancient Eastern Text” by George Lamsa:

“With reference to….the originality of the Peshitta text, as the Patriarch and Head of the Holy Apostolic and Catholic Church of the East, we wish to state, that the Church of the East received the scriptures from the hands of the blessed Apostles themselves in the Aramaic original, the language spoken by our Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and that the Peshitta is the text of the Church of the East which has come down from the Biblical times without any change or revision.”

Mar Eshai Shimun

by Grace, Catholicos Patriarch of the East

April 5, 1957

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