On August 12th, 1553 Pope Julius III signed a decree banning the Talmud in Rome. The decree was executed on Rosh HaShanna, and anything that looked like the Talmud, (anything written in Hebrew letters) was confiscated. Jean DuTillet, Bishop of Brieu, France was visiting Rome at the time. DuTillet was astounded to take notice of a Hebrew manuscript of Matthew among the other Hebrew manuscripts. DuTillet acquired the manuscript and returned to France, depositing it in the Bibliotheque Nationale, Paris. It remains there to this day as Hebrew ms. No. 132.
While most scholars have ignored the DuTillet Hebrew version of Matthew, Hugh Schonfield stated his opinion that this Hebrew text underlies our current Greek text. Schonfield writes:
....certain linguistic proofs ... seem to show that the Hebrew text [DuTillet] underlies the Greek, and that certain
renderings in the Greek, may be due to a misread Hebrew original.
(An Old Hebrew Text of St. MatthewÕs Gospel; 1927, p. 17)