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Updated: July 26, 2025
If there be any book which may seem to form an exception to the observation, it is a Hebrew Gospel, which was circulated under the various titles of, the Gospel according to the Hebrews, the Gospel of the Nazarenes, of the Ebionites, sometimes called of the Twelve, by some ascribed to St Matthew.
But whatever difference of opinion might subsist between the Orthodox, the Ebionites, and the Gnostics, concerning the divinity or the obligation of the Mosaic law, they were all equally animated by the same exclusive zeal; and by the same abhorrence for idolatry, which had distinguished the Jews from the other nations of the ancient world.
On the Jewish side, the Ebionites clung to the Old Testament ritual observances, a part of them being bitterly hostile to the Apostle Paul, and another part, the Nazareans, not sharing this fanatical feeling, but still adhering to the Jewish ceremonies.
It appears however from Epiphanius that precisely this very portion of the first Gospel was wanting in the Gospel according to the Hebrews as used both by the Ebionites and by the Nazarenes. In support of the inference from Jerome, the author refers to De Wette, Schwegler, and an article in a periodical publication by Ewald.
Besides the genera design of fixing on a perpetual basis the divine honors of Christ, the most ancient and respectable of the ecclesiastical writers have ascribed to the evangelic theologian a particular intention to confute two opposite heresies, which disturbed the peace of the primitive church. I. The faith of the Ebionites, perhaps of the Nazarenes, was gross and imperfect.
Though long maintained by the Ebionites or primitive Christians, it was very soon rejected by the great body of the Church, which asserted instead that Jesus had been inspired by the Holy Spirit from the moment of his conception.
"The following positions are deducible from St. Jerome's writings: 1. The authentic Gospel of Matthew was written in Hebrew. 2. The Gospel according to the Hebrews was used by the Nazarenes and Ebionites. 3. To these arguments may be added the significant fact that the quotations in Matthew from the Old Testament are taken from the Septuagint, and not from the Hebrew version.
Oxlee would be delighted in reading Jacob Rhenferd's Disquisition on the Ebionites and other supposed heretics among the Jewish Christians. And I cannot help thinking that Rhenferd, who has so ably anticipated Mr.
The Marcionites repudiated as bad, the whole of the Old Testament, and rejected the greater part of the four Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul. The Ebionites accepted but the Gospel of St. Matthew, rejecting the three others, and the Epistles of St. Paul. The Marcionites published a Gospel under the name of St. Matthias, in order to confirm their doctrine.
The Ebionites were Christians in a large sense, men of Christian profession, nominal Christians, as Justin allowed the worst of heretics to be. And this is all he could mean by allowing the Ebionites to be Christians. But I do not believe that such men, as are here described, ever professed themselves Christians, or were, or could have been, baptized. Ib. p. 292.
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