The Original Gospel of Matthew
Standford Rives, as a follow up to his acclaimed book, Did Calvin Murder Servetus?, has released the  Original Gospel of Matthew (OGM) -- The Final Reconstruction of the Earliest Matthew. It is 106 pages of color-coded text to identify the original variant sources. This OGM is now available as of February 2012 at this Create-Space store or at this AMAZON PURCHASING LINK. Mr. Rives has painstakingly restored the original Matthew, written in Hebrew, by primarily relying upon the 49 quotes of it in the early church. Also he turned to the Agrapha, quotations of Jesus from early prominent church commentators who quote it as from Matthew yet such language is lacking in our Greek Matthew. Thus, this "Agrapha" most likely came from the Hebrew Matthew. And Mr. Rives has also extracted variants from three versions of Matthew's Gospel in Hebrew (the Shem-Tob, Tillet & Munster versions) -- dating between the 1300s-1500s -- portions of which scholars regard as containing viable original material. Finally, Mr. Rives also utilized the Didache which is the oldest sayings collection dating to about 100 AD. Ofthen it overlaps our current Matthew but also has unique variants which many believe came from the original Hebrew version of Matthew. Mr. Rives is in the process finishing volumes 1 and 2 which will provide more background material for the final volume to those who wish to study the process of reconstruction more deeply.
With copyright permission, you can listen to the OGM online at Podomatic. We link here to the audio version. We have several articles too relating to the first gospel written -- the original Hebrew Matthew:
Mr. Rives has written an article on the OGM for Knol by Google. Due to Google discontinuing the Knol project, we have reprinted Rives' article here -- The Original Gospel of Matthew.
Free Online Version of Rives' Original Gospel of Matthew Vol. III The Final Reconstruction of the Earliest Matthew is printed here with permission in English, Spanish and Italian. See this link.
The three volumes of the Original Gospel of Matthew will be divided as follow:
I: The Variants From The Earliest Matthew -- This volume collects all viable earliest variants for Matthew overlaid on the framework of the American Standard Version of Matthew from 1901. These variants are color coded for easy identification. The variants are footnoted so the reader can read its source, and weigh its strength and viability. 231 pages, full color.
II: The Appendices To Explain The Earliest Matthew -- This volume collects important scholarly material on the validity of variants, and the significance of the changes to the tradtional text. 225 pages, black & white
III: The Final Reconstruction of the Earliest Matthew --- This volume represents the best estimate of what the Original Gospel of Matthew contained. There is no commentary. It is simply a smooth flowing text with the best variants reflected in the text using color coding to know the source of each variant. The purpose of volume three is that it can be used for devotional reading. However, to know the actual citation for a variant, the color code is not enough. One must go back to Volume 1. The first and third volument are separated solely to keep costs down, and allow readers to select whether they wish one or both of these two versions. 110 pages, color. Now available at this PURCHASING LINK.
More Info on Rives' OGM
For early information on the OGM project, see Rive's webpage:
https://sites.google.com/site/gospelofmatthewinhebrew/
For his knol on the OGM, see Rives' knol: http://knol.google.com/k/the-original-gospel-of-matthew#
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