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Updated: September 26, 2025
In addition to the various Gnostic theories, there was a deep mark of division between the Jewish and the Gentile Christians; the former developed into the sects, of Nazarenes and Ebionites, but were naturally never very powerful in the Church.
The sect of Ebionites, who represented the earliest doctrine and practice of Christianity before it had been modified by Paul, differed from the Essenes in no essential respect save in the acknowledgment of Jesus as the Messiah, and the expectation of his speedy return to the earth.
One class, the Ebionites, regarded Him as a being essentially human, though begotten of the Spirit, by whom He was anointed above measure; while another, the Docetae, regarded Him as a Divine Being seemingly bearing human form and united with the man Jesus.
He owns that the Cerinthians and Ebionites long before that had affirmed that Jesus had no existence previous to Mary's conception, and was literally and physically the carpenter's son, and so asserted the mere humanity of the Redeemer, 'but, he adds, 'they admitted I know not what unintelligible exaltation of His nature upon His Ascension by which He became no less the object of worship than if His nature had been originally divine. He acknowledges that the Cerinthian Gnostics denied the proper divinity of Christ, but, he adds very pertinently, 'if you agree with me in these opinions, it is little to your purpose to insist that Justin Martyr's reflections are levelled only at the Gnostics.
Luke. The apostolic and the immediately post-apostolic Fathers never mention Luke as having written a history of our Lord at all. There was indeed a Gospel in use among the Marcionites which resembled that of St. Luke, as the Gospel of the Ebionites resembled that of St. Matthew.
And a voice was heard from heaven, saying, 'Thou art my beloved Son, in Thee I am well pleased; and again, 'This day have I begotten Thee. And immediately a great light shone in that place. Epiphanius extracts this passage from the version in use among the Ebionites, but it is well known that there were many other varying forms of the same Gospel; and Hilgenfeld, with all probability, conjectures that the version known to Epiphanius was no longer in the same purity as that used by Justin, but represents the transition stage to the Canonical Gospels, adopting the words of the voice which they give without yet discarding the older form."
Again, Paley should have known, when he asserted that the uncanonical writings were not alleged as of authority, that the heretics did appeal to gospels other than the canonical. Marcion, for instance, maintained a Gospel varying from the recognised one, while the Ebionites contended that their Hebrew Gospel was the only true one. Hist," bk. iii., ch. 25.
The name of Nazarenes was deemed too honorable for those Christian Jews, and they soon received, from the supposed poverty of their understanding, as well as of their condition, the contemptuous epithet of Ebionites.
This gave great offense. In these ill-reputed houses there was a risk of meeting bad society. We shall often see him thus, caring little to shock the prejudices of well-disposed persons, seeking to elevate the classes humiliated by the orthodox, and thus exposing himself to the liveliest reproaches of the zealots. Gospel of the Ebionites, in Epiph., Adv. Hær., xxx. 13.
The Ebionites who were simply Judaizing Christians, holding in nearly its original form the doctrine of Peter, James, and John were ejected from the Church as the most pernicious of heretics; and so completely was their historic position misunderstood and forgotten, that, in order to account for their existence, it became necessary to invent an eponymous heresiarch, Ebion, who was supposed to have led them astray from the true faith!
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