Concept
Gilyonim, or avon gilyon, are terms used by the Mishnah and Talmud to refer to certain heretical works. The Jewish Christians of Palestine had a Gospel of their own, the so-called Hebrew Gospel, from which still later Church Fathers quote. Matthew was, likewise, often thought to have been originally written in Hebrew (that is, Aramaic); if so, many copies must, therefore, have been in circulation, and doubts must naturally have arisen concerning the manner in which they were to be disposed of, since they contained mention of the divine name. Indeed, the correct reading in this passage has gilyon in the singular; the gnostic writings (which were sometimes called gilyonim also), however, were many; and had reference to these been intended here the plural would have been used. However, the 3rd century Aramaic writings of the religion of Manichaeism, did have a single book called evangelion, written in Aramaic, the Gospel of Mani, which was one of their seven sacred writings. Mani was a contemporary of Rav, and from the same area of Babylonia. The central doctrine of Manichaeism was a belief in two powers (a good god versus an evil god), and in Aramaic they were called Maninaya, which in Hebrew would have been Manim. Regarding the Tosefta passage, Moritz Friedlander argued that attempts to identify these books with Christian gospels in which divine names do not occur are strained. Even R. T. Herford identified the word gilyon as "the unwritten portion of a [heretical] book, the margin ... used for annotations; and it is reasonable to suppose that these annotations would include texts of scripture, quoted as illustrations." Birger Pearson cites Herford as an example of flawed attempts after Friedlander to interpret all occurrences of gilyonim and gilyon as references to Jewish Christianity. Rabbinic discussion of gilyonim does not always rely on identifying it with Christians or any other heretics in particular.