An Old Hebrew Text of St. Matthew's Gospel

Hugh Joseph Schonfield was one of the most fascinating and amazing personalities of the 20th Century. He became a source of inspiration of the thinking of such celebrities as John Lennon. For some, the ideas he proposed were challenging and revealing, whilst others found them to be preposterous or even ridiculous. For certain groups they were even blasphemous and apparently worthy of death. Apart from this obviously popular side to his work, it may be less known that he was also historian of the Suez Canal and was instrumental behind the scenes in a number of high level negotiations in the Middle East. So apart from being one of the most erudite historians of New Testament times, he was politically active in a most novel way. His official work in the Republic which he had caused to come to fruition would lead him to make proposals to governments, many of which would be integrated into final agreements. It has been suggested, for example, that his ideas played a role in the passing of the Test Ban Treaty. He was a prodigious and skilled writer and researcher and was always on the look out for uncovering the truth and discovering novel interpretations. It was these efforts and particularly his work for world peace which in fact caused him to be nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. He fought inexhaustibly for this cause to his last dying breath, convinced that there was an eternal plan for a servant people (a "Dienstvolk" instead of a "Herrenvolk") to arise as the only lasting way of saving man from seemingly inevitable disaster.. He was also the first and only Jew to have translated the New Testament into English. I might add that this rendering is also one of the most informative, beautiful and understandable versions. (From "A Life for Mankind - The Biography of Hugh Joseph Schonfield")