Ebionites

Jesus's expounding of the Law during a sermon he gave, around 30 CE, on a mountainside to his disciples and a large crowd, may have been a central issue to Jewish Christians such as the Ebionites. Image: The Sermon on the Mount by Carl Heinrich Bloch, 1890

The Ebionites (Greek: Ebionaioi from Hebrew; אביונים, Evyonim, "the Poor Ones") were an early Jewish Christian sect that lived in and around the land of Israel in the 1st to the 5th century CE.

Their name was at first, like "Nazarenes", a common name for all early Christians, signifying their religious poverty, which was especially characteristic of the early Jerusalem Church. Following schisms within the early Christian communities the "Ebionite" application was limited to Jewish Christians who rejected the emerging influence of Paul of Tarsus. Later in the 4th century, the name was retrospectively used for a separate party within the Jewish Christian community distinct from the Nazarenes.

Without authenticated archaeological evidence for the existence of the Ebionites, their views and practices can only be reconstructed from textual references. The little that is known about them comes from polemics by early and influential theologians and writers in the Christian Church who considered them to be heretics. Several modern scholars, however, contest the traditional portrayal of Ebionites as "Judaizers" by asserting that they were not only the legitimate spiritual successors to the original disciples of John the Baptist, his cousin Jesus the Nazarene and Jesus' brother James the Just, but that they were more faithful than the followers of Paul to the original teachings of the historical Jesus.

Patristic sources

The Ebionites are mentioned or referred to by various Fathers of the Church. The earliest reference to a group that might fit the description of the Ebionites appears in Justin Martyr's Dialogue with Trypho (c. 140). Justin distinguishes between Jewish Christians who observe the Law of Moses but do not require its observance of others, and those who believe the Mosaic Law to be obligatory on all. Irenaeus (c. 180) was the first to use the term "Ebionites" to describe a heretical judaizing sect, which he regarded as stubbornly clinging to the Law. Origen in c. 212 remarks that the name derives from the Hebrew word "evyon," meaning "poor." Epiphanius of Salamis in the 4th century gives the most complete but also questionable account in his heresiology called Panarion, denouncing eighty heretical sects, among them the Ebionites. Epiphanius mostly gives general descriptions of their religious beliefs and includes quotations from their gospels, which have not survived.

The Church Fathers distinguished the Ebionites from the Carpocratians, the Cerinthians, the Elcesaites, the Nasoraeans, the Nazarenes, the Nazoraeans, and the Sampsaeans, most of whom were early sects of Jewish disciples of Jesus who held Pauline or gnostic Christian views rejected by the Ebionites. Eusebius, however, mentions that a minority of Ebionites came to embrace some of these views despite keeping their name.

History

Several established academics and fringe researchers, some of whom are engaged in the third quest for the historical Jesus, have sought to reconstruct the history of the Ebionites. They critically reexamine the few historical facts which exist, with an eye towards rewriting history with newly discovered information. Their assumption is that the history of Jewish Christian sects as it has been traditionally told by the Christian Church is neither fair nor accurate. However, their methodologies and conclusions are often at variance with mainstream scholarship.

Although it remains an open question whether the Ebionites, denounced by the Church Fathers, were direct descendants of the earliest Jersualem church or the first Judeo-Christian synagogue built on Mount Zion, some argue that the first self-identified Ebionites were poor Jewish peasants who began to follow John the Baptist as an alternative to what they perceived to be the culture of corruption surrounding the Temple in Jerusalem. After the death of John, many of them joined the ministry of Jesus, who they believed was the Messiah come to fulfill the Law of Moses. The ministry sparked a movement which organized itself into communes in several cities overseen from Jerusalem by Jesus' brother, James the Just, after his death. It was during this time that Paul of Tarsus joined the movement. This eventually led to a dispute with regard to the circumcision of gentile converts, which Paul maintained was unnecessary. The book of the Acts of the Apostles records the compromise that James allegedly brokered during the Council of Jerusalem c. 49, which did not require that gentile converts circumcise. However, in 58, Paul complains, in his second epistle to the Corinthians, that some of the Jesus' twelve apostles were questioning his honesty and continuing to counter his mission with their "judaizing teachings". After the death of James in 62, Simeon of Jerusalem, another of Jesus' relatives, was chosen as the new leader. Although it is a matter of debate whether or not the movement fled across the Jordan River to Pella, Jordan before the siege of Jerusalem in 70, after the end of the First Jewish-Roman War, the importance of the Jerusalem church began to fade and Jewish Christianity dispersed itself throughout the Jewish diaspora in Southwest Asia; it was slowly eclipsed by Pauline Christianity, which had previously been struggling to survive against the disapproval of Jerusalem but now could spread throughout the Roman Empire without impediment.Once the Jewish leadership of the movement was eliminated during the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135, so-called Judaizers gradually lost the struggle for their claim to being the true followers of Jesus. This defeat was due to marginalization and persecution by both Jews and Christians.

Map showing the region of Hejaz outlined in red

The Ebionites might be represented in history as the sect encountered by the Muslim historian Abd al-Jabbar c. 1000, almost 500 years later than most Western historians allow for their survival. Another possible reference to surviving Ebionite communities in northwestern Arabia, specifically the cities of Tayma and Tilmas, around the 11th century, appears in Sefer Ha'masaot, the "Book of the Travels" of Rabbi Benjamin of Tudela, a rabbi from Spain. 12th century Muslim historian Mohammad al-Shahrastani, in his book Religious and Philosophical Sects, mentions Jews living in nearby Medina and Hejaz who accepted Jesus as a prophetic figure and followed traditional Judaism, rejecting mainstream Christian views.

Legacy

The legacy of the Ebionites is debated. Scholar Hans-Joachim Schoeps argued that the primary influence of the Ebionites was on the nontrinitarian origins of Islam due to their exchanges with the first Muslims. In the late 20th and early 21st centuries, several small yet competing new religious movements, such as the Ebionite Jewish Community, have emerged claiming to be revivalists of the views and practices of early Ebionites, although their idiosyncratic claims to authenticity cannot be verified. The counter-missionary group Jews for Judaism favorably mentions the historical Ebionites in their literature in order to argue that "Messianic Judaism", as promoted by missionary groups such as Jews for Jesus, is Pauline Christianity misrepresenting itself as Judaism. Some Messianic groups have expressed concern over leaders in Israel that deny Jesus' divinity and the possible collapse of the Messianic movement due to a resurgence of Ebionitism. In a recent polemic on the Torah-observance of neo-Ebionites, a Messianic leader asked whether Christians should do likewise.

Views and practices

Judaism

Most patristic sources portray the Ebionites as traditional yet ascetic Jews, who zealously followed the Law of Moses, revered Jerusalem as the holiest city, and restricted table fellowship only to gentiles who converted to Judaism. They celebrated a commemorative meal annually, on or around Passover, with unleavened bread and water only, in contrast to the Christian practice of performing a mystical meal in commemoration of Jesus through the daily use of bread containing leaven and wine mixed with water.

Jewish or Gnostic Christianity

Epiphanius of Salamis is the only Church Father who describes some Ebionites as departing from traditional Jewish principles of faith and practice; specifically by engaging in excessive ritual bathing, possessing an angelology which claimed that the Christ is a great archangel who was incarnated in Jesus when he was adopted as the son of God, opposing animal sacrifice, denying parts or most of the Law, and practicing religious vegetarianism.

The reliability of Epiphanius' account of the Ebionites is questioned by some scholars. Shlomo Pines, for example, argues that the heterodox views and practices he ascribes to some Ebionites originated in Gnostic Christianity rather than Jewish Christianity, and are characteristics of the Elcesaite sect, which Epiphanius mistakenly attributed to the Ebionites.

Essenism

Most biblical scholars accept some Essene influence on the nascent Jerusalem church in some organizational, administrative and cultic respects.

Regarding the Ebionites specifically, Robert Eisenman, James Tabor, James H. Charlesworth, Martin A. Larson, and Keith Akers argue that the Ebionites developed from a messianic Essene sect within Judaism. In this view, the Ebionites drew much of their original inspiration from rules, customs, theology, beliefs, and even their name from the Essenes through the founding influence of John the Baptist. The fact that both the Qumran community and the early Jerusalem church under James the Just referred to themselves by many epithets, including "the poor"; the religious vegetarianism of the Ebionite and Essene communities and of the Ebionite leaders John the Baptist and Jesus (as portrayed in the Gospel of the Ebionites) and James the Just (as reported by Hegesippus); and the shared customs of religious poverty, religious communism and ritual bathing of the Ebionites and the authors of the Dead Sea scrolls; are all cited as evidence for this view.

Jesus

The majority of Church Fathers agree that the Ebionites rejected many of the central Christian views of Jesus such as the pre-existence, divinity, virgin birth, atoning death, and physical resurrection of Jesus. The Ebionites are described as emphasizing the oneness of God and the humanity of Jesus as the biological son of both Mary and Joseph, who by virtue of his righteousness, was chosen by God to be the messianic "prophet like Moses" (foretold in Deuteronomy 18:14-22) when he was anointed with the holy spirit at his baptism.

Of the books of the New Testament, the Ebionites are said to have accepted only a Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew, referred to as the Gospel of the Hebrews, as additional scripture to the Hebrew Bible. This version of Matthew, Irenaeus reports, omitted the first two chapters (on the nativity of Jesus), and started with the baptism of Jesus by John.

The Ebionites believed that all Jews and gentiles must observe the commandments in the Law of Moses, in order to become righteous and seek communion with God; but that these commandments must be understood in the light of Jesus' expounding of the Law, revealed during his sermon on the mount. The Ebionites may have held a form of "inaugurated eschatology" positing that the ministry of Jesus had ushered in the Messianic Age so that the kingdom of God might be understood as present in an incipient fashion, while at the same time awaiting consummation in the future age.

John the Baptist

In one excerpt from the Gospel of the Ebionites quoted by Epiphanius, John the Baptist is portrayed as a vegetarian Nazirite teacher and a prophetic forerunner to Jesus.

James the Just

Although he is not mentioned in patristic descriptions of the Ebionites, some scholars argue that the Ebionites may have claimed unique legitimacy in terms of apostolic succession from James the Just, the first bishop of Jerusalem, whom they believed the rightful leader of the Church (due to a patrilineal succession of relatives of Jesus) rather than Peter. Futhermore, they argue that the Ebionites viewed James as the legitimate high priest of Israel, by virtue of his righteousness, in opposition to the officially recognized high priest.

Paul of Tarsus

Patristic sources report Ebionites as denouncing Paul of Tarsus as an apostate from the Law of Moses. Epiphanius relates that some Ebionites alleged that Paul was a Greek who converted to Judaism in order to marry the daughter of a high priest of Israel but apostasized when she rejected him. Hyam Maccoby argues that Paul was an apostate and developed the early Christian church as a Gnostic Jewish mystery religion.

Writings

Few writings of the Ebionites have survived, and these are 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 beliefs. The exact relationship between the Ebionites and these writings is debated, but Epiphanius's description of some Ebionites in Panarion 30 bears a striking similarity to the ideas in the Recognitions and Homilies. Scholar Glenn Alan Koch speculates that Epiphanius likely relied upon a version of the Homilies as a source document.

The 1908 Catholic Encyclopedia mentions four classes of Ebionite writings:

• Gospel of the Ebionites. According to Irenaeus, the Ebionites used only the Gospel of Matthew. Eusebius of Caesarea (Historia Ecclesiae IV, xxi, 8) mentions a Gospel of the Hebrews, often identified as the Aramaic original of Matthew, written with Hebrew letters. Such a work was known to Hegesippus (according to Eusebius, Historia Eccl., ), Origen (according to Jerome's De viris illustribus ii, and to Clement of Alexandria (Strom., II, ix, 45). Epiphanius of Salamis attributes this gospel to Nazarenes, and claims that Ebionites only possessed an incomplete, falsified, and truncated copy. (Adversus Haereses, xxix, 9). The question remains whether or not Epiphanius was able to make a genuine distinction between Nazarenes and Ebionites.
• New Testament apocrypha: The Circuits of Peter and Acts of the Apostles, including the work usually titled the Ascents of James. The first-named books are substantially contained in the Homilies of Clement under the title of Clement's Compendium of Peter's itinerary sermons, and also in the Recognitions attributed to Clement. They form an early Christian didactic fiction to express Jewish Christian views, i.e. the primacy of James the Just, their connection with the episcopal see of Rome, and their antagonism to Simon Magus, as well as gnostic doctrines. Scholar Robert Van Voorst opines of the Ascents of James (R 1.33-71), "There is, in fact, no section of the Clementine literature about whose origin in Jewish Christianity one may be more certain". Despite this assertion, he expresses reservations that the material is genuinely Ebionite in origin.
• The Works of Symmachus the Ebionite, i.e. his Koine Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, used by Jerome, fragments of which exist, and his lost Hypomnemata, written to counter the canonical Gospel of Matthew. The latter work, which is totally lost (Eusebius, Hist. Eccl., VI, xvii; Jerome, De vir. ill., liv), is probably identical with De distinctione præceptorum, mentioned by Ebed Jesu (Assemani, Bibl. Or., III, 1).
• The Book of Elchesai (Elxai), or of "The Hidden power", claimed to have been written about 100 CE and brought to Rome in c. 217 CE by Alcibiades of Apamea. Ebionites who accepted its gnostic doctrines were judged to be apostates and called Elcesaites. (Hipp., Philos., IX, xiv-xvii; Epiphanius., Adv. Haer., xix, 1; 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 or gnostic document. The existence and origin of this source continues to be debated by scholars.

Archaeology

In his 2004 book Buried Angels, biblical scholar Jacob Rabinowitz suggests that artifacts discovered by Franciscan biblical archaeologists in Jerusalem, Hebron and Nazareth may have belonged to the first Ebionites. The artifacts, which include ossuaries, figurines and ritual objects, incorporate the cross as a decorative motif combined with other biblical symbols. The Franciscans believe they are the work of a late 3rd or 4th century heretical judaizing sect.

Primary sources

• Ebionites according to the Church Fathers