The tradition of the scene of Christ’s nativity having been a cave was peculiarly Jewish. It is found in the Apocryphal Gospels of the Nativity and the Protevangelium, both of which unquestionably grew up in Judaea. That Justin should endorse this tradition leads to the conclusion that he found it so stated in his Gospel. I shall speak of the light and voice at the baptism presently. St. Epiphanius says that the Ebionite Gospel began with, “In the days of Herod, Caiaphas being the high‐priest, there was a man whose name was John,” and so on, like the 3rd chap. St. Matthew. But this was the mutilated Gospel of the Hebrews used by the Gnostic Ebionites, who were heretical on the doctrine of the nativity of our Lord, and whom Justin Martyr speaks of as rejecting the supernatural birth of Christ.(160) Among the Nazarenes, orthodox and heretical, but one Gospel was recognized, and that the Hebrew Gospel of the Twelve; but the Gospel in use among the Gnostic Ebionites became more and more corrupt as they diverged further from orthodoxy. But the primitive Hebrew Gospel was held “in high esteem by those Jews who received the faith.”(161) “It is the Gospel,” says St. Jerome, “that the Nazarenes use at the present day.”(162) “It is the Gospel of the Hebrews that the Nazarenes read,” says Origen.(163) Was this Gospel of the Twelve, or of the Hebrews, the original of St. Matthew’s Canonical Greek Gospel, or was it a separate compilation? This is a question to be considered presently. The statement of the Fathers that the Gospel of St. Matthew was first written in Hebrew, must of course be understood to mean that it was written in Aramaic or Palestinian Syriac. Now we have extant two versions of the Gospels, St. Matthew’s included, in Syriac, the Peschito and the Philoxenian. The latter needs only a passing mention; it was avowedly made from the Greek, A.D. 508. But the Peschito is much more ancient. The title of “Peschito” is an emphatic Syrian term for that which is “simple,” “uncorrupt” and “true;” and, applied from the beginning to this version, it strongly indicates the veneration and confidence with which it has ever been regarded by all the Churches of the East.(164) When this version was made cannot be decided by scholars. A copy in the Laurentian Library bears so early a date as A.D. 586; but it existed long before the translation was made by Philoxenus in 508. The first Armenian version from the Greek was made in 431, and the Armenians already, at that date, had a version from the Syriac, made by Isaac, Patriarch of Armenia, some twenty years previously, in 410. Still further back, we find the Peschito version quoted in the writings of St. Ephraem, who lived not later than A.D. 370.(165)