In the 20th century, three French scholars have suggested that Matthew as well as Mark was originally written in Hebrew, although they are an extreme minority. Jean Carmignac studied the Dead Sea Scrolls and found that translating Mark from Greek to Hebrew was surprisingly easy. He wrote the 1987 book The Birth of the Synoptics defending the idea of a Hebrew Mark/Matthew. Likewise, Claude Tresmontant hypothesized a Hebrew originals for all four Gospels in his book The Hebrew Christ (1989). Jean-Marie Van Cangh has supported Carmignac's hypothesis since and authored in 2005 a Hebrew retroversion of the Gospel according to Mark under the title L'Evangile de Marc : un original hébreu ?
