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The unfortunate Ebionites, rejected from one religion as apostates, and from the other as heretics, found themselves compelled to assume a more decided character; and although some traces of that obsolete sect may be discovered as late as the fourth century, they insensibly melted away, either into the church or the synagogue.

The earliest known Hebrew, or Syro-Chaldee version was that used by the Ebionites, which materially differed from our present Greek version; but which is the original and which the recession has never been settled.

It is now established by recent theological criticism that the Clementine writings were the work of some member or members of the Elkesaites, a sect of the Ebionites, and that they were written at Rome somewhere in the third century.

Text: Bibliotheca Patrum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum Selecta, Vol. B. Constitutiones. A. The priority of the two varying accounts, in the Homilies and Recognitiones, of the same story is in much dispute, but this is a question of no importance in the present enquiry. The latest scholarship is of the opinion that "the Clementines are unmistakably a production of the sect of the Ebionites."

Irene, who lived before that time, reports that the Valentinians, like several other sects of the Christians, accused the scriptures of being filled with imperfections, errors, and contradictions. The Ebionites, or Nazarenes, who were the first Christians, rejected all the Epistles of Paul, and regarded him as an impostor.

They were familiar with the notion of "the gods coming down to them in the likeness of men." Greek mythology abounds in instances of docetic incarnations. The gods of the popular religion constantly assumed visible form during their temporary manifestations. The ebionites threatened the Faith from the opposite quarter. They taught that Christ was real man and only man.

I persist in the belief that, though a refuse of the persecuted and from neglect degenerating Jew-Christians may have sunk into the mean and carnal notions of their unconverted brethren respecting the Messiah, no proper sect of Ebionites ever existed, but those to whom St. Paul travelled with the contributions of the churches, nor any such man as Ebion; unless indeed it was St.

According to them, the whole value of His life and work lay in His moral teaching and His noble example; there is no mystery, no contact of divine and human in Christ; what He attained, we all may attain. The ebionites were recruited from the Jewish element in the Church.

The natural meaning of the words is that even in apostolic times some denied the flesh and bone Jesus, and regarded him as an idea or an apparition something like the Holy Ghost. All church historians admit the existence of sects that denied the New Testament Jesus the Gnostics, the Essenes, the Ebionites, the Marcionites, the Cerinthians, etc.

About fifty years afterwards, the Ebionites, whose errors are mentioned by Justin Martyr with less severity than they seem to deserve, formed a very inconsiderable portion of the Christian name. II. The Gnostics, who were distinguished by the epithet of Docetes, deviated into the contrary extreme; and betrayed the human, while they asserted the divine, nature of Christ.