Ebionites - History, Ebionite writings

Literally, ‘poor men’; a Judaeo-Christian sect of the early Christian era, opposed by Irenaeus in the late 2nd-c AD. They were apparently ascetic, and continued to observe rigorously the Jewish Law. They also believed that Jesus was the Messiah, a virtuous man anointed by the Spirit, but not truly ‘divine’.

אביונים, Ebyonim, "the poor ones") were an early sect of mostly Jewish followers of Jesus, which flourished in the early centuries of the Common Era, one of several ancient "Jewish Christian" groups that existed during the Roman and Byzantine periods in the Levant. The Ebionites believed in the necessity of following the Law and observed all the Jewish rites, such as circumcision and the seventh-day Shabbat, while rejecting the writings of Paul of Tarsus as those of an apostate.

Ebionites were in theological conflict with other streams of early Christianity. Some even contend that Ebionites were more faithful than Paul to the original and authentic teachings of Jesus.

History

Much of what we know about the Ebionites comes from brief references by Christian theologians, such as Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, and Epiphanius of Salamis, who considered them to be "heretics" and "Judaizers". The most complete of these comes from Epiphanius of Salamis, who wrote his Panarion in the 4th century, denouncing 80 heretical sects, among them Ebionites, described in Panarion 30.

The Church Fathers sometimes distinguished Ebionites from Nazarenes, another early sect of Jewish followers of Jesus also believed to be an offshoot of the first Judeo-Christian synagogue, one author often depending upon another for his assessment. However, Jerome clearly thinks that Ebionites and Nazoraeans were a single group (Letter 112).

Most of these Christian sources agree that Ebionites denied the divinity of Jesus, the doctrine of the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, and the death of Jesus as an atonement for sin. Ebionites seemed to have emphasized the humanity of Jesus as the mortal son of Mary and Joseph who became the messianic "prophet like Moses" when he was anointed with the holy spirit at his baptism. Some sources also suggest that Ebionites believed all Jews and Gentiles must observe the Law of Moses; Therefore, of the books of the New Testament Ebionites only accepted an Aramaic version of the Gospel of Matthew, referred to as the Gospel of the Hebrews, as additional scripture. This version of Matthew, critics reported, omitted the first two chapters (on the nativity of Jesus), and started with the baptism of Jesus by John.

James Tabor argues that Ebionites rejected doctrines and traditions, which they believed had been added to Mosaic Law, including scribal alterations of the texts of scripture; Shlomo Pines counters that all these teachings are "Gnostic Christian" in origin and are characteristics of the Elcesaite sect, which have been mistakenly or falsely attributed to Ebionites.

Ebionites revered John the Baptizer as the precursor to Jesus, and the Desposyni (a sacred name reserved only for Jesus' blood relatives), especially James the Just, as his legitimate successors, rather than Peter. Ebionites, however, denounced Paul as an apostate from the Law and a false apostle. Epiphanius claims that some Ebionites gossiped that Paul was a Greek who converted to Judaism in order to marry the High Priest's daughter, and then apostasized when she rejected him (Panarion 16:9).

The influence of Ebionites is debated. Ebionites may be represented in history as the sect encountered by the Muslim historian Abd al-Jabbar (c. 1000) almost 500 years later than most Christian historians admit for the survival of Ebionites. An additional possible mention of surviving Ebionite communities existing in the lands of the east, Theyma and Thilmes, around the 11th century, is said to be in Sefer Ha'masaoth, the "Book of the Travels" of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, a sephardic rabbi of Spain. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, several small yet competing new religious movements, such as the Ebionite Jewish Community and the Ebionite Restoration Movement, have emerged claiming be the legitimate descendants in teaching and practice of ancient Ebionites. However, they possess no authentic historical ties to the early Ebionites.

Ebionite writings

Few writings of Ebionites have survived, and in uncertain form. The Recognitions of Clement and the Clementine Homilies, two 3rd-century Christian works, are regarded by general scholarly consensus as largely or entirely Jewish Christian in origin and reflect Jewish Christian ideas and beliefs. The exact relationship between Ebionites and these writings is debated, but Epiphanius's description of the Ebionites in Panarion 30 bears repeated and striking similarity to the ideas in the Recognitions and Homilies.

The Catholic Encyclopedia, 1908, mentions four classes of Ebionite writings:

Gospel of the Ebionites. Ebionites used only the Gospel of Matthew (according to Irenaeus). Epiphanius of Salamis attributes this gospel to Nazarenes, and claims that Ebionites only possessed an incomplete, falsified, and truncated copy. The question remains whether or not Epiphanius was able to make a genuine distinction between Nazarenes and Ebionites. They form an early Christian didactic fiction to express Ebionite views, i.e. The Works of Symmachus the Ebionite, i.e. liii, 1.)

It is also speculated that the core of the Gospel of Barnabas, beneath a polemical medieval Muslim overlay, may have been based upon an Ebionite document.