Talk:Ebionites/wip/Archive 2

History - Mainstream / Traditional views

As the Ebionites are first mentioned as such in the 2nd century, their earlier history and their relation to the first Jerusalem church remains obscure and a matter of contention. Many scholars link the origin of the Ebionites with the First Jewish-Roman War. Prior to this, they are considered to be part of the Nazarene Christians founded by St. Peter and later lead by James the Just. Eusebius relates a tradition, probably based on Aristo of Pella, that the early Christians left Jerusalem just prior to the war and fled to Pella beyond the Jordan River. It was there that the Nazarenes and Ebionites were first recognized as a distinct group headed by Simeon of Jerusalem. They resided at Pella and the surrounding region for the next 60 years until the outbreak of the Second Jewish-Roman War, when the hereditary leadership of the Jerusalem church was persecuted by the Jewish followers of Bar Kochba for refusing to recognize his messianic claims.

These scholars relate that the Transjordan Jewish Christians receded farther from orthodox Christianity, and approximated more and more closely to pure Judaism, resulting in a "degeneration" into an exclusively Jewish sect. Some from these groups later opened themselves to either Essene Jewish or Gnostic Jewish syncretic influences, such as the book of Elchasai. The latter influence places some Ebionites in the context of the gnostic movements widespread in Syria and the lands to the east.

Persecution and decline

After the end of the First Jewish-Roman War, the importance of the Jerusalem church began to fade. Jewish Christianity became dispersed throughout the Jewish diaspora in the Levant, where it was slowly eclipsed by Pauline Christianity. The gentile orthodox Christian church now spread throughout the Roman Empire without competition from 'judaizing' Christian groups. Once the Jerusalem church, still headed by Jesus' relatives, was eliminated during the Bar Kokhba revolt in 135, the Ebionites gradually lost influence and followers. This decline was due to marginalization and persecution by both Jews and Christians. Following the defeat of the rebellion and the expulsion of all Jews from Judea, Jerusalem became the gentile city of Aelia Capitolina. Many of the Jewish Christians residing at Pella renounced their Jewish practices at this time and joined to the increasingly gentile Christian church. Those who remained at Pella and continued in obedience to the Law were deemed heretics. In 375, Epiphanius records the settlement of Ebionites on Cyprus, but by the mid-5th century, Theodorus of Cyprus reported that they were no longer present in the region. Most historians place the end of the Ebionites during this time.

History - Mainstream / Traditional views

Views according to Wace and Piercy, 1911

Ebionism and Ebionites. The name Ebionite first occurs in Irenaeus (c. 180-190). It was repeated, probably from him, by Hippolytus (c. 225-235) and Origen († a.d. 254), who first introduced an explanation of the name. Others offered different explanations (e.g. Eus. † c. 340); while other writers fabricated a leader, "Ebion," after whom the sect was called (cf. Philastrius, Pseudo-Tertullian, Pseudo-Jerome, Isidore of Spain, etc.).

These explanations owe their origin to the tendency to carry back Ebionism, or the date of its founder, as far as possible. Thus the "Ebionite" was (according to his own statement) the "poor" man (אֶבְווֹן), he who voluntarily strove to practise the Master's precept (Matt. x. 9) in Apostolic times (Acts iv. 34-37; cf. Epiphanius, Haer. xxx. c. 17); and the correctness of the etymology is not shaken by the Patristic scorn which derived the name from "poverty of intellect," or from "low and mean opinions of Christ " (see Eus. H. E. iii. 27; Origen, de Princ., and contr. Cel. ii. c. 4; Ignat., Ep. ad Philadelph. c. 6, longer recension). "Ebion," first personified by Tertullian, was said to have been a pupil of Cerinthus, and the Gospel of St. John to have been directed against them both. St. Paul and St. Luke were asserted to have spoken and written against Ebionites. The "Apostolical 284Constitutions" (vi. c. 6) traced them back to Apostolic times; Theodoret (Haer. Fab. ii. c. 2) assigned them to the reign of Domitian (a.d. 81-96). The existence of an "Ebion" is, however, now surrendered. Ebionism, like Gnosticism, had no special founder; but that its birthplace was the Holy Land, and its existence contemporary with the beginning of the Christian Church, is, with certain reservations, probably correct. A tendency to Ebionism existed from the first; gradually it assumed shape, and as gradually developed into the two special forms presently to be noticed.

The records of the church of Jerusalem contained in Acts prove how strong was the zeal for the Law of Moses among the Jewish converts to Christianity. After the fall of Jerusalem (a.d. 70), the church was formed at Pella under Symeon, and the Jewish Christians were brought face to face with two leading facts: firstly, that the temple being destroyed, and the observance of the Law and its ordinances possible only in part, there was valid reason for doubting the necessity of retaining the rest; secondly, that if they adopted this view, they must expect to find in the Jews their most uncompromising enemies. As Christians they had expected a judgment predicted by Christ, and, following His advice, had fled from the city. Both prediction and act were resented by the Jews, as is shewn not only by the contemptuous term (Minim) they applied to the Jewish Christians (Grätz, Gesch. d. Juden. iv. p. 89, etc.), but by the share they took in the death of the aged bp. Symeon (a.d. 106). The breach was further widened by the refusal of the Jewish Christians to take part in the national struggles—notably that of Bar-Cocheba (a.d. 132)—against the Romans, by the tortures they suffered for their refusal, and lastly, by the erection of Aelia Capitolina (a.d. 138) on the ruins of Jerusalem. The Jews were forbidden to enter it, while the Jewish and Gentile Christians who crowded there read in Hadrian's imperial decree the abolition of the most distinctively Jewish rites, and practically signified their assent by electing as their bishop a Gentile and uncircumcised man—Mark (Eus. H. E. iv. 6). Changes hitherto working gradually now rapidly developed. Jewish Christians, with predilections for Gentile Christianity and its comparative freedom, found the way made clear to them; others, attempting to be both Jews and Christians, ended in being neither, and exposed themselves to the contempt of Rabbin as well as Christian (Grätz, p. 433); others receded farther from Christianity, and approximated more and more closely to pure Judaism. The Ebionites are to be ranked among the last. By the time of Trajan (96-117) political events had given them a definite organization, and their position as a sect opposed to Gentile Christianity became fixed by the acts which culminated in the erection of Aelia Capitolina.

The Ebionites were known by other names, such as "Homuncionites" (Gk. "Anthropians" or " Anthropolatrians") from their Christological views, "Peratici" from their settlement at Peraea, and " Symmachians" from the one able literary man among them whose name has reached us. [Symmachus (2).] Acquaintance with Hebrew was then confined to a few, and his Greek version of O.T. was produced for the benefit of those who declined the LXX adopted by the orthodox Christians, or the Greek versions of Aquila and Theodotion accepted by the Jews. Many, if not most, of the improvements made by the Vulgate on the LXX are due to the Ebionite version (Field, Origenis Hexaplarum quae supersunt, Preface).

Ebionism presents itself under two principal types, an earlier and a later, the former usually designated Ebionism proper or Pharisaic Ebionism, the latter, Essene or Gnostic Ebionism. The earlier type is to be traced in the writings of Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, etc.; the latter in those of Epiphanius especially.

(a) Ebionism Proper.—The term expresses conveniently the opinions and practices of the descendants of the Judaizers of the Apostolic age, and is very little removed from Judaism. Judaism was to them not so much a preparation for Christianity as an institution eternally good in itself, and but slightly modified in Christianity. Whatever merit Christianity had, it possessed as the continuation and supplement of Judaism. The divinity of the Old Covenant was the only valid guarantee for the truth of the New. Hence such Ebionites tended to exalt the Old at the expense of the New, to magnify Moses and the Prophets, and to allow Jesus Christ to be "nothing more than a Solomon or a Jonas" (Tertull. de Carne Christi, c. 18). Legal righteousness was to them the highest type of perfection; the earthly Jerusalem, in spite of its destruction, was an object of adoration "as if it were the house of God" (Iren. adv. Haer. i. c. 22 [al. c. 26]); its restoration would take place in the millennial kingdom of Messiah, and the Jews would return there as the manifestly chosen people of God. The Ebionites divided the life of Jesus Christ into two parts—one preceding, the other following, His Baptism. In common with Cerinthus and Carpocrates, they represented Him to have been "the Son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation" (Iren. l.c.). They denied His birth of a Virgin, translating the original word in Isa. vii. 14 not παρθένος, but νεᾶνις. He was "a mere man, nothing more than a descendant of David, and not also the Son of God" (Tert. c. 14). But at His Baptism a great change took place. The event is described in the "Gospel according to the Hebrews" current among them, and the description is an altered expansion of the record of St. Matthew (iii. 13, 14). The Voice from heaven spake not only the words recorded by the Evangelist, but also the words, "This day have I begotten thee" (Ps. ii. 7). A great light suddenly filled the place John the Baptist asked, "Who art Thou, Lord?" and the Voice answered as before. John prostrated himself at the feet of Jesus, "I pray Thee, Lord, baptize me," but Jesus forbade him, saying, "Suffer it to be so," etc., etc. (Epiph. Haer. xxx. 13). The day of Baptism was thus the day of His "anointing by election and then becoming Christ" (cf. Justin Martyr. Dial. c. Tryph. c. xlix.), it was the turning-point in the life of Jesus: from that moment He was endued with power necessary to fill His mission as Messiah; but He was still man. The Ebionites knew nothing of either pre-existence or divinity in connexion with Him. They are said to have freed themselves from the common Jewish notion that the Messiah was to be an earthly king; they were not shocked, as were so many of the Jews, at the humbleness of the birth, the sufferings, and crucifixion of Jesus; but they agreed with them in looking upon the advent of Messiah as future, and in deferring the restitution of all things to the millennium. The Ebionites proper insisted that the Law should be strictly observed not only by themselves but by all. They quoted the words of Jesus (Matt. v. 17), and pointed to His practice (cf. Matt. xxvi. 55; John vii. 14, etc.). It was the natural tendency of this view to diminish the value of faith in Christ and a corresponding life. Of far greater moment to them, and as necessary to salvation, was the due observance of circumcision, the sabbath, the distinction between clean and unclean food, the sacrificial offerings—probably with the later Pharisaic additions (cf. Eus. H.E. vi. 17)—and the refusal of fellowship or hospitality to the Gentiles (cf. Justin, c. xlvii.). They even quoted the words of Jesus (Matt. x. 24, 25) as their warrant, and affirmed their motto to be: "We also would be imitators of Christ" (Origen, quoted by Schliemann). Jesus, they asserted, "was justified by fulfilling the Law. He was the Christ of God, since not one of the rest of mankind had observed the Law completely. Had any one else fulfilled the commandments of the Law, he would have been the Christ." Hence "when Ebionites thus fulfil the law, they are able to become Christs" (Hippolytus, Refut. Omn. Haer. vii. 34).

As might be expected, the Apostle Paul was especially hateful to them. They repudiated his official character, they reviled him personally. In language which recalls that of the Judaizers alluded to in Corinthians and Galatians, they represented him as a teacher directly opposed to SS. Peter, James, and John; they repudiated his Apostolical authority because (as they affirmed) he had not been "called of Jesus Christ Himself," nor trained in the Church of Jerusalem. They twisted into a defamatory application to himself his employment of the term "deceiver" (II. Cor. vi. 8); he was himself one of the "many which corrupted the word of God" (ii. 17); he proclaimed "deliverance from the Law" only "to please men" (Gal. i. 10) and "commend himself" (II. Cor. iii. 1). His personal character was held up to reproach as that of one who "walked according to the flesh" (x. 2), puffed up with pride, marked by levity of purpose (iii. 1) and even by dishonesty (vii. 2). They rejected his epistles, not on the ground of authenticity, but as the work of an "apostate from the Law " (Eus. iii. c. 27; Iren. l.c.). They even asserted that by birth he was not a Jew, but a Gentile (wresting his words in Acts xxi. 39 who had become a proselyte in the hope of marrying the High Priest's daughter, but that having failed in this he had severed himself from the Jews and occupied himself in writing against circumcision and the observance of the sabbath (Epiph. adv. Haer. I. xxx. 16, 25).

In common with the Nazarenes and the Gnostic-Ebionites, the Pharisaic Ebionites used a recension of the Gospel of St. Matthew, which they termed the "gospel according to the Hebrews." It was a Chaldee version written in Hebrew letters, afterwards translated into Greek and Latin by Jerome, who declared it identical with the "gospel of the Twelve Apostles" and the "gospel of the Nazarenes" (see Herzog, Real-Encyklopädie, "Apokryphen d. N. Test." p. 520, ed. 1877). In the Ebionite "gospel" the section corresponding to the first two chapters of St. Matt. was omitted, the supernatural character of the narrative being contradictory to their views about the person of Jesus Christ. It is difficult to say with certainty what other books of the N.T. were known to them; but there is reason to believe that they (as also the Gnostic-Ebionites) were familiar with the Gospels of St. Mark and St. Luke. The existence among them of the "Protevangelium Jacobi" and the Περιοδοὶ τοῦ Πέτρου indicates their respect for those Apostles.

(b) Essene or Gnostic Ebionism.—This, as the name indicates, was a type of Ebionism affected by external influences. The characteristic features of the ascetic Essenes were reproduced in its practices, and the traces of influences more directly mystical and oriental were evident in its doctrines. The different phases through which Ebionism passed at different times render it, however, difficult to distinguish clearly in every case between Gnostic and Pharisaic Ebionism. Epiphanius (adv. Haer. xxx.) is the chief authority on the Gnostic Ebionites. He met them in Cyprus, and personally obtained information about them (cf. R. A. Lipsius, Zur Quellen-Kritik d. Epiphanios, pp. 138, 143, 150 etc.).

Their principal tenets were as follows: Christianity they identified with primitive religion or genuine Mosaism, as distinguished from what they termed accretions to Mosaism, or the post-Mosaic developments described in the later books of O.T. To carry out this distinction they fabricated two classes of "prophets," προφῆται ἀληθείας, and προφῆται συνέσεως οὐκ ἀληθείας. In the former class they placed Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Aaron, Moses, and Jesus; in the latter David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, etc. In the same spirit they accepted the Pentateuch alone among the O.T. writings, and emasculated it; rejecting whatever reflected questionably upon their favourites. They held that there were two antagonistic powers appointed by God—Christ and devil; to the former was allotted the world to come, to the latter the present world. The conception of Christ was variously entertained. Some affirmed that He was created (not born) of the Father, a Spirit, and higher than the angels; that He had the power of coming to this earth when He would, and in various modes of manifestation; that He had been incarnate in Adam, and had appeared to the patriarchs in bodily shape; others identified Adam and Christ. In these last days He had come in the person of Jesus. Jesus was therefore to them a successor of Moses, and not of higher authority. They quoted from their gospel a saying attributed to Him, "I am He concerning Whom Moses prophesied, saying, A prophet shall the Lord God raise unto you like unto me," etc. (Clem. Hom. iii. c. 53), and this was enough to identify His teaching with that of genuine Mosaism. But by declining to fix the precise moment of the union of the Christ with the man Jesus—a union assigned by Pharisaic Ebionites to the hour of Baptism—they admitted His miraculous origin.

In pursuance of their conception that the devil was the "prince of this world" they were strict ascetics. They abjured flesh-meat, repudiating passages (e.g. Gen. xviii. 8) which contradicted their view; they refused to taste wine, and communicated with unleavened bread and water. Water was to them "in the place of a god"; ablutions and lustrations were imperative and frequent. But they held the married life in honour, and recommended early marriages. To the observance of the Jewish sabbath they added that of the Christian Lord's day. Circumcision was sacred to them from the practice of the patriarchs and of Jesus Christ; and they declined all fellowship with the uncircumcised, but repudiated the sacrifices of the altar and the reverence of the Jew for the Temple. In common with the Ebionites proper, they detested St. Paul, rejected his epistles, and circulated stories discreditable to him. The other Apostles were known to them by their writings, which they regarded as inferior to their own gospel.

The conjecture appears not improbable that as the siege of Jerusalem under Titus gave an impetus to Ebionism proper, so the ruin under Hadrian developed Gnostic Ebionism. Not that Gnosticism began then to affect it for the first time, but that Gnostic ideas hitherto held in solution were precipitated and found a congenial home among men who through contact with oriental systems in Syria were already predisposed to accept them (cf. Mansel, The Gnostic Heresies, lect. viii.). This is further evident from the book of Elchasai and the Clementine literature. These works are the production of the Essene Ebionites; and where they speak of Jesus Christ and His Apostles, His sayings and their lives, they do so, not in the words of the canonical Gospels and Epistles, but with additions or omissions, and a colouring which transforms (e.g.) St. Peter, St. Matthew, and St. James the Just into Essenes, and yet with that Gnostic tendency of thought which makes them lineal descendants of the Judaizers who imperilled the church at Colossae. (See Lightfoot, Colossians, p. 73, etc., and Essenism and Christianity, p. 397, etc.)

The Essene or Gnostic-Ebionites differed from the Pharisaic Ebionites in another respect. By missionary zeal, as well as by literary activity, they sought to obtain converts to their views. In the earlier part of the 3rd cent. the Ebionite Alcibiades of Apamea (Syria) repaired to Rome. He brought with him the book of Elchasai, and "preached unto men a new remission of sins (proclaimed) in the third year of Trajan's reign" (a.d. 101). Hippolytus, who gives an account of the matter (Haer. ix. c. viii. etc., ed. Clark), exposed the decided antinomianism which penetrated the teaching of the mythical teacher and of the pupil, but it is evident that many "became victims of the delusion." The immorality which the book—in imitation of the teaching of Callistus—indirectly encouraged probably attracted some, but would discredit the dogmatic views of the missionary.

Ebionite Christianity did not, however, last very long, neither did it exercise much influence west of Syria while it lasted. In Palestine the discomfiture accorded to "a certain one" (probably Alcibiades) who came to Caesarea c. a.d. 247 maintaining the "ungodly and wicked error of the Elkesaites" (Eus. vi. 38; cf. Redepenning, Origines, ii. p. 72) was in keeping with the reception accorded to less extreme Ebionite views from the time of the reconstitution of the mother-church at Aelia Capitolina. Judaism of every kind gradually passed out of favour. The attitude of the bishops of Palestine in the Paschal controversy of the 2nd cent. was that of men who wished to stand clear of any sympathy with Jewish customs; the language of Justin Martyr and of Hegesippus was the language of the representatives of the Samaritan and the Hebrew Christianity of the day, not of the Ebionite. Outside of Palestine Ebionism had even less chance of survival. From the very first, the instructions and memories of St. Paul and St. John excluded it from Asia Minor; in Antioch the names of Ignatius, Theophilus, and Serapion were vouchers for Catholic doctrine and practice; and the daughter-churches of Gaul and Alexandria naturally preferred doctrine supplied to them by teachers trained in the school of these Apostles. Even in the church of Rome, whatever tendency existed in Apostolic times towards Ebionism, the separation—also in Apostolic times—of the Judaizers was the beginning of the end which no after-amalgamation under Clement could retard. The tone of the Shepherd of Hermas—a work which emanated from the Roman church during the first half of the 2nd cent. (see Lightfoot, Galatians, p. 99, n. 3)—however different from the tone of Clement and St. Paul, is not Ebionite, as a comparison with another so-called Roman and certainly later Ebionite work—the Clementine writings—shews. The end of Ebionism had actually come in the Roman church when in the 2nd cent. Jewish practices—notably as regards the observance of Easter—were unhesitatingly rejected. The creed of the Christian in Rome was the creed which he held from Irenaeus in Gaul and Polycarp in Asia Minor, and not from the Ebionite. When the above-named Alcibiades appeared in Rome (a.d. 219), Hippolytus denounced his teaching (that of Elchasai) as that of "a wolf risen up against many wandering sheep, whom Callistus had scattered abroad": it came upon him as a novelty; it had "risen up," he says, "in our own day" (Haer. ix. cc. 8, 12). This language is a proof of the oblivion which had certainly befallen any previous propagation of Ebionism in Rome.

For 200 years more Ebionism—especially of the Essene form—lingered on. A few Ebionites were left in the time of Theodoret, about the middle of 5th cent.; the rest had returned to strict Judaism and the utter rejection of Christianity, or to a purer Christianity than that which Ebionism favoured.

The Patristic notices on the Ebionites will be found in the works referred to (cf. on their value, R. A. Lipsius, Die Quellen d. ältesten Ketzergeschichte, 1875). The literature on the subject is further collected by (int. al.) Schliemann, Die Clementinen (1844); Ritschl, Die Entstehung d. alt-katholischen Kirche (1857); Lightfoot, Galatians, Dissertation III. St. Paul and the Three (1876).

Views according to Gibbon

The Progress Of The Christian Religion, And The Sentiments, Manners, Numbers, And Condition Of The Primitive Christians.

Excerpt from Chp. 15.1

The enfranchisement of the church from the bonds of the synagogue was a work, however, of some time and of some difficulty. The Jewish converts, who acknowledged Jesus in the character of the Messiah foretold by their ancient oracles, respected him as a prophetic teacher of virtue and religion; but they obstinately adhered to the ceremonies of their ancestors, and were desirous of imposing them on the Gentiles, who continually augmented the number of believers. These Judaizing Christians seem to have argued with some degree of plausibility from the divine origin of the Mosaic law, and from the immutable perfections of its great Author. They affirmed, that if the Being, who is the same through all eternity, had designed to abolish those sacred rites which had served to distinguish his chosen people, the repeal of them would have been no less clear and solemn than their first promulgation: that, instead of those frequent declarations, which either suppose or assert the perpetuity of the Mosaic religion, it would have been represented as a provisionary scheme intended to last only to the coming of the Messiah, who should instruct mankind in a more perfect mode of faith and of worship: 15 that the Messiah himself, and his disciples who conversed with him on earth, instead of authorizing by their example the most minute observances of the Mosaic law, 16 would have published to the world the abolition of those useless and obsolete ceremonies, without suffering Christianity to remain during so many years obscurely confounded among the sects of the Jewish church. Arguments like these appear to have been used in the defence of the expiring cause of the Mosaic law; but the industry of our learned divines has abundantly explained the ambiguous language of the Old Testament, and the ambiguous conduct of the apostolic teachers. It was proper gradually to unfold the system of the gospel, and to pronounce, with the utmost caution and tenderness, a sentence of condemnation so repugnant to the inclination and prejudices of the believing Jews.

15 These arguments were urged with great ingenuity by the Jew Orobio, and refuted with equal ingenuity and candor by the Christian Limborch. See the Amica Collatio, (it well deserves that name,) or account of the dispute between them.]

16 Jesus . . . circumcisus erat; cibis utebatur Judaicis; vestitu simili; purgatos scabie mittebat ad sacerdotes; Paschata et alios dies festos religiose observabat: Si quos sanavit sabbatho, ostendit non tantum ex lege, sed et exceptis sententiis, talia opera sabbatho non interdicta. Grotius de Veritate Religionis Christianae, l. v. c. 7. A little afterwards, (c. 12,) he expatiates on the condescension of the apostles.]

The history of the church of Jerusalem affords a lively proof of the necessity of those precautions, and of the deep impression which the Jewish religion had made on the minds of its sectaries. The first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were all circumcised Jews; and the congregation over which they presided united the law of Moses with the doctrine of Christ. 17 It was natural that the primitive tradition of a church which was founded only forty days after the death of Christ, and was governed almost as many years under the immediate inspection of his apostle, should be received as the standard of orthodoxy. 18 The distant churches very frequently appealed to the authority of their venerable Parent, and relieved her distresses by a liberal contribution of alms. But when numerous and opulent societies were established in the great cities of the empire, in Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus, Corinth, and Rome, the reverence which Jerusalem had inspired to all the Christian colonies insensibly diminished. The Jewish converts, or, as they were afterwards called, the Nazarenes, who had laid the foundations of the church, soon found themselves overwhelmed by the increasing multitudes, that from all the various religions of polytheism enlisted under the banner of Christ: and the Gentiles, who, with the approbation of their peculiar apostle, had rejected the intolerable weight of the Mosaic ceremonies, at length refused to their more scrupulous brethren the same toleration which at first they had humbly solicited for their own practice. The ruin of the temple of the city, and of the public religion of the Jews, was severely felt by the Nazarenes; as in their manners, though not in their faith, they maintained so intimate a connection with their impious countrymen, whose misfortunes were attributed by the Pagans to the contempt, and more justly ascribed by the Christians to the wrath, of the Supreme Deity. The Nazarenes retired from the ruins of Jerusalem * to the little town of Pella beyond the Jordan, where that ancient church languished above sixty years in solitude and obscurity. 19 They still enjoyed the comfort of making frequent and devout visits to the Holy City, and the hope of being one day restored to those seats which both nature and religion taught them to love as well as to revere. But at length, under the reign of Hadrian, the desperate fanaticism of the Jews filled up the measure of their calamities; and the Romans, exasperated by their repeated rebellions, exercised the rights of victory with unusual rigor. The emperor founded, under the name of Aelia Capitolina, a new city on Mount Sion, 20 to which he gave the privileges of a colony; and denouncing the severest penalties against any of the Jewish people who should dare to approach its precincts, he fixed a vigilant garrison of a Roman cohort to enforce the execution of his orders. The Nazarenes had only one way left to escape the common proscription, and the force of truth was on this occasion assisted by the influence of temporal advantages. They elected Marcus for their bishop, a prelate of the race of the Gentiles, and most probably a native either of Italy or of some of the Latin provinces. At his persuasion, the most considerable part of the congregation renounced the Mosaic law, in the practice of which they had persevered above a century. By this sacrifice of their habits and prejudices, they purchased a free admission into the colony of Hadrian, and more firmly cemented their union with the Catholic church. 21

17 Paene omnes Christum Deum sub legis observatione credebant Sulpicius Severus, ii. 31. See Eusebius, Hist. Ecclesiast. l. iv. c. 5.]

18 Mosheim de Rebus Christianis ante Constantinum Magnum, page 153. In this masterly performance, which I shall often have occasion to quote he enters much more fully into the state of the primitive church than he has an opportunity of doing in his General History.]

• This is incorrect: all the traditions concur in placing the abandonment of the city by the Christians, not only before it was in ruins, but before the seige had commenced. Euseb. loc. cit., and Le Clerc. — M.]

19 Eusebius, l. iii. c. 5. Le Clerc, Hist. Ecclesiast. p. 605. During this occasional absence, the bishop and church of Pella still retained the title of Jerusalem. In the same manner, the Roman pontiffs resided seventy years at Avignon; and the patriarchs of Alexandria have long since transferred their episcopal seat to Cairo.]

20 Dion Cassius, l. lxix. The exile of the Jewish nation from Jerusalem is attested by Aristo of Pella, (apud Euseb. l. iv. c. 6,) and is mentioned by several ecclesiastical writers; though some of them too hastily extend this interdiction to the whole country of Palestine.]

21 Eusebius, l. iv. c. 6. Sulpicius Severus, ii. 31. By comparing their unsatisfactory accounts, Mosheim (p. 327, &c.) has drawn out a very distinct representation of the circumstances and motives of this revolution.]

When the name and honors of the church of Jerusalem had been restored to Mount Sion, the crimes of heresy and schism were imputed to the obscure remnant of the Nazarenes, which refused to accompany their Latin bishop. They still preserved their former habitation of Pella, spread themselves into the villages adjacent to Damascus, and formed an inconsiderable church in the city of Beroea, or, as it is now called, of Aleppo, in Syria. 22 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. 23 In a few years after the return of the church of Jerusalem, it became a matter of doubt and controversy, whether a man who sincerely acknowledged Jesus as the Messiah, but who still continued to observe the law of Moses, could possibly hope for salvation. The humane temper of Justin Martyr inclined him to answer this question in the affirmative; and though he expressed himself with the most guarded diffidence, he ventured to determine in favor of such an imperfect Christian, if he were content to practise the Mosaic ceremonies, without pretending to assert their general use or necessity. But when Justin was pressed to declare the sentiment of the church, he confessed that there were very many among the orthodox Christians, who not only excluded their Judaizing brethren from the hope of salvation, but who declined any intercourse with them in the common offices of friendship, hospitality, and social life. 24 The more rigorous opinion prevailed, as it was natural to expect, over the milder; and an eternal bar of separation was fixed between the disciples of Moses and those of Christ. 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. 25

22 Le Clerc (Hist. Ecclesiast. p. 477, 535) seems to have collected from Eusebius, Jerome, Epiphanius, and other writers, all the principal circumstances that relate to the Nazarenes or Ebionites. The nature of their opinions soon divided them into a stricter and a milder sect; and there is some reason to conjecture, that the family of Jesus Christ remained members, at least, of the latter and more moderate party.]

23 Some writers have been pleased to create an Ebion, the imaginary author of their sect and name. But we can more safely rely on the learned Eusebius than on the vehement Tertullian, or the credulous Epiphanius. According to Le Clerc, the Hebrew word Ebjonim may be translated into Latin by that of Pauperes. See Hist. Ecclesiast. p. 477.

Note: The opinion of Le Clerc is generally admitted; but Neander has suggested some good reasons for supposing that this term only applied to poverty of condition. The obscure history of their tenets and divisions, is clearly and rationally traced in his History of the Church, vol. i. part ii. p. 612, &c., Germ. edit. — M.]

24 See the very curious Dialogue of Justin Martyr with the Jew Tryphon. The conference between them was held at Ephesus, in the reign of Antoninus Pius, and about twenty years after the return of the church of Pella to Jerusalem. For this date consult the accurate note of Tillemont, Memoires Ecclesiastiques, tom. ii. p. 511.

Note: Justin Martyr makes an important distinction, which Gibbon has neglected to notice. * * * There were some who were not content with observing the Mosaic law themselves, but enforced the same observance, as necessary to salvation, upon the heathen converts, and refused all social intercourse with them if they did not conform to the law. Justin Martyr himself freely admits those who kept the law themselves to Christian communion, though he acknowledges that some, not the Church, thought otherwise; of the other party, he himself thought less favorably. The former by some are considered the Nazarenes the atter the Ebionites — G and M.]

25 Of all the systems of Christianity, that of Abyssinia is the only one which still adheres to the Mosaic rites. (Geddes’s Church History of Aethiopia, and Dissertations de La Grand sur la Relation du P. Lobo.) The eunuch of the queen Candace might suggest some suspicious; but as we are assured (Socrates, i. 19. Sozomen, ii. 24. Ludolphus, p. 281) that the Aethiopians were not converted till the fourth century, it is more reasonable to believe that they respected the sabbath, and distinguished the forbidden meats, in imitation of the Jews, who, in a very early period, were seated on both sides of the Red Sea.

Circumcision had been practised by the most ancient Aethiopians, from motives of health and cleanliness, which seem to be explained in the Recherches Philosophiques sur les Americains, tom. ii. p. 117.]

((skip the section on the Gnostics))

It has been remarked with more ingenuity than truth, that the virgin purity of the church was never violated by schism or heresy before the reign of Trajan or Hadrian, about one hundred years after the death of Christ. 31 We may observe with much more propriety, that, during that period, the disciples of the Messiah were indulged in a freer latitude, both of faith and practice, than has ever been allowed in succeeding ages. As the terms of communion were insensibly narrowed, and the spiritual authority of the prevailing party was exercised with increasing severity, many of its most respectable adherents, who were called upon to renounce, were provoked to assert their private opinions, to pursue the consequences of their mistaken principles, and openly to erect the standard of rebellion against the unity of the church.

31 Hegesippus, ap. Euseb. l. iii. 32, iv. 22. Clemens Alexandrin Stromat. vii. 17.

Note: The assertion of Hegesippus is not so positive: it is sufficient to read the whole passage in Eusebius, to see that the former part is modified by the matter. Hegesippus adds, that up to this period the church had remained pure and immaculate as a virgin. Those who labored to corrupt the doctrines of the gospel worked as yet in obscurity — G]

Views according to Uhlhorn

Ebionites,

A term used in Christian heresiologies since Irenause (adv. haer. 1, 26, 2) denoting the Jewish Christianity grown from the Jerusalem Urgemeinde, which after the exodus of 66/67 AD degenerated (the German term "Rückbildung" is less derogatory) into a sect. The derivation of the name from a heresiarch Ebion (Tertullian, Epiphanius) is based on fiction; it propably goes back to a honarary title of the Jerusalem congregation (the poor = ptôchoi, 'æbjônîm; see Rom 15, 26; Gal 2, 10), who then could draw links to the self-given term of pious Jewish circles (aside from Ps 25, 9; 68, 11 especially PsSal 10, 6; 15, 1; 1 QpHab XII, 3.6.10) and the Macarisms of Jesus (Mt 5, 3; Lk 6, 20) (see poverty: I,2). The actual scope of the term Ebionites of course remains unclear, since the contradictory accounts of the Church Fathers (primarily Epihanius, Panarion 30) allow no clear distinction to other heresy-names (e.g. Nazorenas, Elchesaites). Also in other respects does the history of the Ebionites remain obscure in many regards. Their theology had no more influence on the development of Christianity, but very well on Islam. Ebionitic literature encompasses apart from fragments of the Gospel of the Ebionites primarily certain passages of the Pseudo-Clementines (Kerygma of Peter), as well as the work of Symmachus (Schoeps). The Church Fathers accuse the Ebionites of christological heresy (rejection of the virgin birth; Christology II, 1b) and heretical legalism. Other attributes are: rejection of the whole sacrifical and sacerdotial institutions, polemics against the Samaritans, against John the Baptist and especially against Paul, furthermore a tendentious textual criticism: the Ebionites used a Pentateuch cleansed from "false pericopes" as well as a reworked Gospel of Matthew (Gospel of the Ebionites). They knew ritual bathings (baptism: II), communual meals (with bread and salt - maybe a old custom of the Urgemeinde) and a strict arcane disciple. The process of degeneration (the German term "Rückbildung" is less derogatory) into a heretical sect is linked with the fact, that the transjordan Jewish Christianity opened itself to all kinds of gnostic-syncretist and Jewish influences. One will have to link the Ebionites with widespread gnostic baptism movement in Syria and Palestine; the strong connections of their thoughts with those of the Essene sect of Qumran is obvious. Possibly remnants of the sect of Qumran have merged into Ebionitic groups east of the Jordan after the disaster of 70 AD. H. J. SCHOEPS, Theol. u. Gesch. des Judenchristentums, 1949 (Lit.) – S. G. F. BRANDON, The [Ebioniten. Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart, S. 7435 (vgl. RGG Bd. 2, S. 297-298) (c) J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck) http://www.digitale-bibliothek.de/band12.htm ]

Added the English translation by Str1977 of the original German article. Ovadyah 00:49, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Views according to Encyclopedia Britannica, 1911

EBIONITES (Heb. a i i?? K "poor men"), a name given to the ultra-Jewish party in the early Christian church. It is first met with in Irenaeus (Adv. Haer. i. 26.2), who sheds no light on the origin of the Ebionites, but says that while they admit the world to have been made by the true God (in contrast to the Demiurge of the Gnostics), they held Cerinthian views on the person of Christ, used only the Gospel of Matthew (probably the Gospel according to the Hebrews - so Eusebius), and rejected Paul as an apostate from the Mosaic Law, to the customs and ordinances of which, including circumcision, they steadily adhered. A similar account is given by Hippolytus (Haer. vii. 35), who invents a founder named Ebion. Origen (Contra Celsum, v. 61; In Matt. tom. xvi. 12) divides the Ebionites into two classes according to their acceptance or rejection of the virgin birth of Jesus, but says that all alike reject the Pauline epistles. This is confirmed by Eusebius, who adds that even those who admitted the virgin birth did not accept the pre-existence of Jesus as Logos and Sophia. They kept both the Jewish Sabbath and the Christian Lord's day, and held extreme millenarian ideas in which Jerusalem figured as the centre of the coming Messianic kingdom. Epiphanius with his customary confusion makes two separate sects, Ebionites and Nazarenes. Both names, however, refer to the same people 1 (the Jewish Christians of Syria), the latter going back to the designation of apostolic times (Acts xxiv. 5), and the former being the term usually applied to them in the ecclesiastical literature of the 2nd and 3rd centuries.

The origin of the Nazarenes or Ebionites as a distinct sect is very obscure, but may be dated with much likelihood from the edict of Hadrian which in 135 finally scattered the old church of Jerusalem. While Christians of the type of Aristo of Pella and Hegesippus, on the snapping of the old ties, were gradually assimilated to the great church outside, the more conservative section became more and more isolated and exclusive. "It may have been then that they called themselves the Poor Men, probably as claiming to be the true representatives of those who had been blessed in the Sermon on the Mount, but possibly adding to the name other associations." Out of touch with the main stream of the church they developed a new kind of pharisaism. Doctrinally they stood not so much for a theology as for a refusal of theology, and, rejecting the practical liberalism of Paul, became the natural heirs of those early Judaizers who had caused the apostle so much annoyance and trouble.

Though there is insufficient justification for dividing the Ebionites into two separate and distinct communities, labelled respectively Ebionites and Nazarenes, we have good evidence, not only that there were grades of Christological thought among them, but that a considerable section, at the end of the 2nd century and the beginning of the 3rd, exchanged their simple Judaistic creed for a strange blend of Essenism and Christianity. These are known as the Helxaites or Elchasaites, for they accepted as a revelation the "book of Elchasai," and one Alcibiades of Apamea undertook a mission to Rome about 220 to propagate its teaching. It was claimed that Christ, as an angel 96 miles high, accompanied by the Holy Spirit, as a female angel of the same stature, had given the revelation to Elchasai in the 3rd year of Trajan (A.D. Ioo), but the book was probably quite new in Alcibiades' time. It taught that Christ was an angel born of human parents, and had appeared both before (e.g. in Adam and Moses) and after this birth in Judea. His coming did not annul the Law, for he was merely a prophet and teacher; Paul was wrong and circumcision still necessary. Baptism must be repeated as a means of purification from sin, and proof against disease; the sinner immerses himself "in the name of the mighty 1 So A. Harnack, Hist. of Dogma, i. 301, and F. J. A. Hort, Judaistic Christianity, p. 199. Th. Zahn and J. B. Lightfoot (" St. Paul and the Three,"in Commentary on Galatians) maintain the distinction.

and most high God," invoking the "seven witnesses" (sky, water, the holy spirits, the angels of prayer, oil, salt and earth), and pledging himself to amendment. Abstinence from flesh was also enjoined, and a good deal of astrological fancy was interwoven with the doctrinal and practical teaching. It is highly probable, too, that from these Essene Ebionites there issued the fantastical and widely read "Clementine" literature (Homilies and Recognitions) of the 3rd century. Ebionite views lingered especially in the country east of the Jordan until they were absorbed by Islam in the 7th century.

In addition to the literature cited see R. C. Ottley, The Doctrine of the Incarnation, part iii. § ii.; W. Moeller, Hist. of the Christian Church, i. 99; art. in Herzog - Hauck, Realencyklopeidie, s.v. " Ebioniten"; also Clementine Literature.

Online link to Ebionites article in 1911 Enclyclopedia Britannica Ovadyah 04:02, 16 August 2007 (UTC)

Views according to Harnack - The History of Dogma

CHAPTER VI. APPENDIX: THE CHRISTIANITY OF THE JEWISH CHRISTIANS

1. Original Christianity was in appearance Christian Judaism, the creation of a universal religion on Old Testament soil. It retained therefore, so far as it was not hellenised, which never altogether took place, its original Jewish features. The God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was regarded as the Father of Jesus Christ, the Old Testament was the authoritative source of revelation, and the hopes of the future were based on the Jewish ones. The heritage which Christianity took over from Judaism, shews itself on Gentile Christian soil, in fainter or distincter form, in proportion as the philosophic mode of thought already prevails, or recedes into the background.403 To describe the appearance of the Jewish, Old Testament, heritage in the [pg 288] Christian faith, so far as it is a religious one, by the name Jewish Christianity, beginning at a certain point quite arbitrarily chosen, and changeable at will, must therefore necessarily lead to error, and it has done so to a very great extent. For this designation makes it appear as though the Jewish element in the Christian religion were something accidental, while it is rather the case that all Christianity, in so far as something alien is not foisted into it, appears as the religion of Israel perfected and spiritualised. We are therefore not justified in speaking of Jewish Christianity, where a Christian community, even one of Gentile birth, calls itself the true Israel, the people of the twelve tribes, the posterity of Abraham; for this transfer is based on the original claim of Christianity and can only be forbidden by a view that is alien to it. Just as little may we designate Jewish Christian the mighty and realistic hopes of the future which were gradually repressed in the second and third centuries. They may be described as Jewish, or as Christian; but the designation Jewish Christian must be rejected; for it gives a wrong impression as to the historic right of these hopes in Christianity. The eschatological ideas of Papias were not Jewish Christian, but Christian; while, on the other hand, the eschatological speculations of Origen were not Gentile Christian, but essentially Greek. Those Christians who saw in Jesus the man chosen by God and endowed with the Spirit, thought about the Redeemer not in a Jewish Christian, but in a Christian manner. Those of Asia Minor who held strictly to the 14th of Nisan as the term of the Easter festival, were not influenced by Jewish Christian, but by Christian or Old Testament, considerations. The author of the "Teaching of the Apostles," who has transferred the rights of the Old Testament priests with respect to the first fruits, to the Christian prophets, shews himself by such transference not as a Jewish Christian, but as a Christian. There is no boundary here; for Christianity took possession of the whole of Judaism as religion, and it is therefore a most arbitrary view of history which looks upon the Christian appropriation of the Old Testament religion, after any point, as no [pg 289] longer Christian, but only Jewish Christian. Wherever the universalism of Christianity is not violated in favour of the Jewish nation, we have to recognise every appropriation of the Old Testament as Christian. Hence this proceeding could be spontaneously undertaken in Christianity, as was in fact done.

2. But the Jewish religion is a national religion, and Christianity burst the bonds of nationality, though not for all who recognised Jesus as Messiah. This gives the point at which the introduction of the term "Jewish Christianity" is appropriate.404 It should be applied exclusively to those Christians who really maintained in their whole extent, or in some measure, even if it were to a minimum degree, the national and political forms of Judaism and the observance of the Mosaic law in its literal sense, as essential to Christianity, at least to the Christianity of born Jews, or who, though rejecting these forms, nevertheless assumed a prerogative of the Jewish people even in Christianity (Clem., Homil. XI. 26: εαν 'ο αλλοφυλος τον νομον πραξηι, Ιουδαιος εστιν, μη πραξας δε 'Ελλην; "If the foreigner observe the law he is a Jew, but if not he is a Greek.")405 To this Jewish Christianity is opposed, not Gentile Christianity, but the Christian religion, in so far as it is conceived as universalistic and anti-national in the strict sense of the term (Presupp. § 3), that is, the main body of Christendom in so far as it has freed itself from Judaism as a nation.406

It is not strange that this Jewish Christianity was subject [pg 290] to all the conditions which arose from the internal and external position of the Judaism of the time; that is, different tendencies were necessarily developed in it, according to the measure of the tendencies (or the disintegrations) which asserted themselves in the Judaism of that time. It lies also in the nature of the case that, with one exception, that of Pharisaic Jewish Christianity, all other tendencies were accurately parallelled in the systems which appeared in the great, that is, anti-Jewish Christendom. They were distinguished from these, simply by a social and political, that is, a national element. Moreover, they were exposed to the same influences from without as the synagogue, and as the larger Christendom, till the isolation to which Judaism as a nation, after severe reverses condemned itself, became fatal to them also. Consequently, there were besides Pharisaic Jewish Christians, ascetics of all kinds who were joined by all those over whom Oriental religious wisdom and Greek philosophy had won a commanding influence (see above, p. 242 f.)

In the first century these Jewish Christians formed the majority in Palestine, and perhaps also in some neighbouring provinces. But they were also found here and there in the West.

Now the great question is, whether this Jewish Christianity as a whole, or in certain of its tendencies, was a factor in the development of Christianity to Catholicism. This question is to be answered in the negative, and quite as much with regard to the history of dogma as with regard to the political history of the Church. From the stand-point of the universal history of Christianity, these Jewish Christian communities appear as rudimentary structures which now and again, as objects of curiosity, engaged the attention of the main body of Christendom in the East, but could not exert any important influence on it, just because they contained a national element.

The Jewish Christians took no considerable part in the Gnostic controversy, the epoch-making conflict which was raised within the pale of the larger Christendom about the decisive question, whether, and to what extent, the Old Testament should remain a basis of Christianity, although they themselves were no less [pg 291] occupied with the question.407 The issue of this conflict in favour of that party which recognised the Old Testament in its full extent as a revelation of the Christian God, and asserted the closest connection between Christianity and the Old Testament religion, was so little the result of any influence of Jewish Christianity, that the existence of the latter would only have rendered that victory more difficult, unless it had already fallen into the background, as a phenomenon of no importance.408 How completely insignificant it was is shewn not only by the limited polemics of the Church Fathers, but perhaps still more by their silence, and the new import which the reproach of Judaising obtained in Christendom after the middle of the second century. In proportion as the Old Testament, in opposition to Gnosticism, became a more conscious and accredited possession in the Church, and at the same time, in consequence of the naturalising of Christianity in the world, the need of regulations, fixed rules, statutory enactments etc., appeared as indispensable, it must have been natural to use the Old Testament as a holy code of such enactments. This procedure was no falling away from the original anti-Judaic attitude, provided nothing national was taken from the book, and some kind of spiritual interpretation given to what had been borrowed. The "apostasy" rather lay simply in the changed needs. But one now sees how those parties in the Church, to which for any reason this progressive legislation was distasteful, raised the reproach of "Judaising,"409 and [pg 292] further, how conversely the same reproach was hurled at those Christians who resisted the advancing hellenising of Christianity, with regard, for example, to the doctrine of God, eschatology, Christology, etc.410 But while this reproach is raised, there is nowhere shewn any connection between those described as Judaising Christians and the Ebionites. That they were identified off-hand is only a proof that "Ebionitism" was no longer known. That "Judaising" within Catholicism which appears, on the one hand, in the setting up of a Catholic ceremonial law (worship, constitution, etc.), and on the other, in a tenacious clinging to less hellenised forms of faith and hopes of faith, has nothing in common with Jewish Christianity, which desired somehow to confine Christianity to the Jewish nation. 411 Speculations that take no account of history may make out that Catholicism became more and more Jewish Christian. But historical observation, which reckons only with concrete quantities, can discover in Catholicism, besides Christianity, no element which it would have to describe as Jewish [pg 293] Christian. It observes only a progressive hellenising, and in consequence of this, a progressive spiritual legislation which utilizes the Old Testament, a process which went on for centuries according to the same methods which had been employed in the larger Christendom from the beginning. 412 Baur's brilliant attempt to explain Catholicism as a product of the mutual conflict and neutralising of Jewish and Gentile Christianity, (the latter according to Baur being equivalent to Paulinism) reckons with two factors, of which, the one had no significance at all, and the other only an indirect effect, as regards the formation of the Catholic Church. The influence of Paul in this direction is exhausted in working out the universalism of the Christian religion, for a Greater than he had laid the foundation for this movement, and Paul did not realise it by [pg 294] himself alone. Placed on this height Catholicism was certainly developed by means of conflicts and compromises, not, however, by conflicts with Ebionitism, which was to all intents and purposes discarded as early as the first century, but as the result of the conflict of Christianity with the united powers of the world in which it existed, on behalf of its own peculiar nature as the universal religion based on the Old Testament. Here were fought triumphant battles, but here also compromises were made which characterise the essence of Catholicism as Church and as doctrine.413

A history of Jewish Christianity and its doctrines does not therefore, strictly speaking, belong to the history of dogma, especially as the original distinction between Jewish Christianity and the main body of the Church lay, as regards its principle, not in doctrine, but in policy. But seeing that the opinions of the teachers in this Church regarding Jewish Christianity, throw light upon their own stand-point, also that up till about the middle of the second century Jewish Christians [pg 295] were still numerous and undoubtedly formed the great majority of believers in Palestine,414 and finally, that attempts—unsuccessful ones indeed—on the part of Jewish Christianity to bring Gentile Christians under its sway, did not cease till about the middle of the third century, a short sketch may be appropriate here.415

[pg 296] Justin vouches for the existence of Jewish Christians, and distinguishes between those who would force the law even on Gentile-Christians, and would have no fellowship with such as did not [pg 297] observe it, and those who considered that the law was binding only on people of Jewish birth, and did not shrink from fellowship with Gentile Christians who were living without the law. How the latter could observe the law and yet enter into intercourse with those who were not Jews, is involved in obscurity, but these he recognises as partakers of the Christian salvation and therefore as Christian brethren, though he declares that there are Christians who do not possess this large heartedness. He also speaks of Gentile Christians who allowed themselves to be persuaded by Jewish Christians into the observance of the Mosaic law, and confesses that he is not quite sure of the salvation of these. This is all we learn from Justin,416 but it is instructive enough. In the first place, we can see that the question is no longer a burning one: "Justin here represents only the interests of a Gentile Christianity whose stability has been secured." This has all the more meaning that in the Dialogue Justin has not in view an individual Christian community, or the communities of a province, but speaks as one who surveys the whole situation of Christendom.417 The very fact that Justin has devoted to the whole question only one chapter of a work containing 142, and the magnanimous way in which he speaks, shew that the phenomena in question have no longer any importance for the main body of Christendom. Secondly, it is worthy of notice that Justin distinguishes two tendencies in Jewish Christianity. We observe these two tendencies in the Apostolic age (Presupp. § 3); they had therefore maintained themselves to his time. Finally, we must not overlook the circumstance that he adduces only the εννομος πολιτεια, "legal polity," as characteristic of this Jewish Christianity. He speaks only incidentally of a difference in doctrine, nay, he manifestly presupposes that the διδαγματα Χριστου, "teachings of Christ," are essentially found among them just as among the Gentile Christians; for he regards the more liberal among them as friends and brethren.418

[pg 298] The fact that, even then, there were Jewish Christians here and there who sought to spread the εννομος πολιτεια among Gentile Christians, has been attested by Justin and also by other contemporary writers.419 But there is no evidence of this propaganda having acquired any great importance. Celsus also knows Christians who desire to live as Jews according to the Mosaic law (V. 61), but he mentions them only once, and otherwise takes no notice of them in his delineation of, and attack on, Christianity. We may perhaps infer that he knew of them only from hearsay, for he simply enumerates them along with the numerous Gnostic sects. Had this keen observer really known them he would hardly have passed them over, even though he had met with only a small [pg 299] number of them.420 Irenæus placed the Ebionites among the heretical schools,421 but we can see from his work that in his day they must have been all but forgotten in the West. 422 This was not yet the case in the East. Origen knows of them. He knows also of some who recognise the birth from the Virgin. He is sufficiently intelligent and acquainted with history to judge that the Ebionites are no school, but as believing Jews are the descendants of the earliest Christians, in fact he seems to suppose that all converted Jews have at all times observed the law of their fathers. But he is far from judging of them favourably. He regards them as little better than the Jews (Ιουδαιοι και 'οι ολιγω διαφεροντες αυτων Εβιωναιοι, "Jews and Ebionites who differ little from them"). Their rejection of Paul destroys the value of their recognition of Jesus as Messiah. They appear only to have assumed [pg 300] Christ's name, and their literal exposition of the Scripture is meagre and full of error. It is possible that such Jewish Christians may have existed in Alexandria, but it is not certain. Origen knows nothing of an inner development in this Jewish Christianity.423 Even in Palestine, Origen seems to have occupied himself personally with these Jewish Christians, just as little as Eusebius. 424 They lived apart by themselves and were not aggressive. Jerome is the last who gives us a clear and certain account of them.425 He, who associated with them, assures us that their attitude was the same as in the second century, only they seem to have made progress in the recognition of the birth from the Virgin and in their more friendly position towards the Church. 426 Jerome [pg 301] at one time calls them Ebionites and at another Nazarenes, thereby proving that these names were used synonymously.427 There is not the least ground for distinguishing two clearly marked groups of Jewish Christians, or even for reckoning the distinction of Origen and the Church Fathers to the account of Jewish Christians themselves, so as to describe as Nazarenes those who recognised the birth from the Virgin, and who had no wish to compel the Gentile Christians to observe the law, and the others as Ebionites. Apart from syncretistic or Gnostic Jewish Christianity, there is but one group of Jewish Christians holding various shades of opinion, and these from the beginning called themselves Nazarenes as well as Ebionites. From the beginning, likewise, one portion of them was influenced by the existence of a great Gentile Church which did not observe the law. They acknowledged the work of Paul and experienced in a slight degree influences emanating from the great Church.428 But the gulf which separated them from that Church did not thereby become narrower. That gulf was caused by the social and political separation of these Jewish Christians, whatever mental attitude, hostile or friendly, they might take up to the great Church. This Church stalked over hem with iron feet, [pg 302] as over a structure which in her opinion was full of contradictions throughout ("Semi-christiani"), and was disconcerted neither by the gospel of these Jewish Christians nor by anything else about them.429 But as the Synagogue also vigorously condemned them, their position up to their extinction was a most tragic one. These Jewish Christians, more than any other Christian party, bore the reproach of Christ.

The Gospel, at the time when it was proclaimed among the Jews, was not only law, but theology, and indeed syncretistic theology. On the other hand, the temple service and the sacrificial system had begun to lose their hold in certain influential circles. 430 We have pointed out above (Presupp. §§. 1. 2. 5) how great were the diversities of Jewish sects, and that there was in the Diaspora, as well as in Palestine itself, a Judaism which, on the one hand, followed ascetic impulses, and on the other, advanced to a criticism of the religious tradition without giving up the national claims. It may even be said that in theology the boundaries between the orthodox Judaism of the Pharisees and a syncretistic Judaism were of an elastic kind. Although religion, in those circles, seemed to be fixed in its legal aspect, yet on its theological side it was ready to admit very diverse speculations, in which angelic powers especially played a great rôle.431 [pg 303] That introduced into Jewish monotheism an element of differentiation, the results of which were far-reaching. The field was prepared for the formation of syncretistic sects. They present themselves to us on the soil of the earliest Christianity, in the speculations of those Jewish Christian teachers who are opposed in the Epistle to the Colossians, and in the Gnosis of Cerinthus (see above, p. 246). Here cosmological ideas and myths were turned to profit. The idea of God was sublimated by both. In consequence of this, the Old Testament records were subjected to criticism, because they could not in all respects be reconciled with the universal religion which hovered before men's minds. This criticism was opposed to the Pauline in so far as it maintained, with the common Jewish Christians, and Christendom as a whole, that the genuine Old Testament religion was essentially identical with the Christian. But while those common Jewish Christians drew from this the inference that the whole of the Old Testament must be adhered to in its traditional sense and in all its ordinances, and while the larger Christendom secured for itself the whole of the Old Testament by deviating from the ordinary interpretation, those syncretistic Jewish Christians separated from the Old Testament, as interpolations, whatever did not agree with their purer moral conceptions and borrowed speculations. Thus, in particular, they got rid of the sacrificial ritual, and all that was connected with it, by putting ablutions in their place. First the profanation, and afterwards, the abolition of the temple worship, after the destruction of Jerusalem, may have given another new and welcome impulse to this by coming to be regarded as its Divine confirmation (Presupp. § 2). Christianity now appeared as purified Mosaism. In these Jewish Christian undertakings we have undoubtedly before us a series of peculiar attempts to elevate the Old Testament religion into the universal [pg 304] one, under the impression of the person of Jesus; attempts, however, in which the Jewish religion, and not the Jewish people, was to bear the costs by curtailment of its distinctive features. The great inner affinity of these attempts with the Gentile Christian Gnostics has already been set forth. The firm partition wall between them, however, lies in the claim of these Jewish Christians to set forth the pure Old Testament religion, as well as in the national Jewish colouring which the constructed universal religion was always to preserve. This national colouring is shewn in the insistence upon a definite measure of Jewish national ceremonies as necessary to salvation, and in the opposition to the Apostle Paul, which united the Gnostic Judæo-Christians with the common type, those of the strict observance. How the latter were related to the former, we do not know, for the inner relations here are almost completely unknown to us.432

Apart from the false doctrines opposed in the Epistle to the Colossians, and from Cerinthus, this syncretistic Jewish Christianity which aimed at making itself a universal religion, meets us in tangible form only in three phenomena:433 in the Elkesaites of Hippolytus and Origen, in the Ebionites with their associates of Epiphanius, sects very closely connected, in fact to be viewed as one party of manifold shades,434 and [pg 305] in the activity of Symmachus. 435 We observe here a form of religion as far removed from that of the Old Testament as from the Gospel, subject to strong heathen influences, not Greek, but Asiatic, and scarcely deserving the name "Christian," because it appeals to a new revelation of God which is to complete that given in Christ. We should take particular note of this in judging of the whole remarkable phenomenon. The question in this Jewish Christianity is not the formation of a philosophic school, but to some extent the establishment of a kind of new religion, that is, the completion of that founded by Christ, undertaken by a particular person basing his claims on a revealed book which was delivered to him from heaven. This book which was to form the complement of the Gospel, possessed, from the third century, importance for all sections of Jewish Christians so far as they, in the phraseology of Epiphanius, were not Nazarenes.436 The whole system reminds one of Samaritan Christian syncretism;437 but we must be on [pg 306] our guard against identifying the two phenomena, or even regarding them as similar. These Elkesaite Jewish Christians held fast by the belief that Jesus was the Son of God, and saw in the "book" a revelation which proceeded from him. They did not offer any worship to their founder,438 that is, to the receiver of the "book," and they were, as will be shewn, the most ardent opponents of Simonianism. 439

Alcibiades of Apamea, one of their disciples, came from the East to Rome about 220-230, and endeavoured to spread the doctrines of the sect in the Roman Church. He found the soil prepared, inasmuch as he could announce from the "book" forgiveness of sins to all sinful Christians, even the grossest transgressors, and such forgiveness was very much needed. Hippolytus opposed him, and had an opportunity of seeing the book and becoming acquainted with its contents. From his account and that of Origen we gather the following: (1) The sect is a Jewish Christian one, for it requires the νομου πολιτεια (circumcision and the keeping of the Sabbath), and repudiates the Apostle Paul; but it criticises the Old Testament and rejects a part of it. (2) The objects of its faith are the "Great and most High God", the Son of God (the "Great King"), and the Holy Spirit (thought of as female); Son and Spirit appear as angelic powers. Considered outwardly, and according to his birth, Christ is a mere man, but with this peculiarity, that he has already been frequently born and manifested (πολλακις γεννηθεντα και γεννωμενον πεφηνεναι και φυεσθαι, αλλασσοντα [pg 307] γενεσεις και μετενσωματουμενον, cf. the testimony of Victorinus as to Symmachus). From the statements of Hippolytus we cannot be sure whether he was identified with the Son of God,440 at any rate the assumption of repeated births of Christ shews how completely Christianity was meant to be identified with what was supposed to be the pure Old Testament religion. (3) The "book" proclaimed a new forgiveness of sin, which, on condition of faith in the "book" and a real change of mind, was to be bestowed on every one, through the medium of washings, accompanied by definite prayers which are strictly prescribed. In these prayers appear peculiar Semitic speculations about nature ("the seven witnesses: heaven, water, the holy spirits, the angels of prayer, oil, salt, earth"). The old Jewish way of thinking appears in the assumption that all kinds of sickness and misfortune are punishments for sin, and that these penalties must therefore be removed by atonement. The book contains also astrological and geometrical speculations in a religious garb. The main thing, however, was the possibility of a forgiveness of sin, ever requiring to be repeated, though Hippolytus himself was unable to point to any gross laxity. Still, the appearance of this sect represents the attempt to make the religion of Christian Judaism palatable to the world. The possibility of repeated forgiveness of sin, the speculations about numbers, elements, and stars, the halo of mystery, the adaptation to the forms of worship employed in the "mysteries", are worldly means of attraction which shew that this Jewish Christianity [pg 308] was subject to the process of acute secularization. The Jewish mode of life was to be adopted in return for these concessions. Yet its success in the West was of small extent and short-lived.

Epiphanius confirms all these features, and adds a series of new ones. In his description, the new forgiveness of sin is not so prominent as in that of Hippolytus, but it is there. From the account of Epiphanius we can see that these syncretistic Judæo-Christian sects were at first strictly ascetic and rejected marriage as well as the eating of flesh, but that they gradually became more lax. We learn here that the whole sacrificial service was removed from the Old Testament by the Elkesaites and declared to be non-Divine, that is non-Mosaic, and that fire was consequently regarded as the impure and dangerous element, and water as the good one.441 We learn further, that these sects acknowledged no prophets and men of God between Aaron and Christ, and that they completely adapted the Hebrew Gospel of Matthew to their own views. 442 In addition to this book, however, (the Gospel of the 12 Apostles), other writings, such as Περιοδοι Πετρου δια Κλημεντος, Αναβαθμοι Ιακωβου and similar histories of Apostles, were held in esteem by them. In these writings the Apostles were represented as zealous ascetics, and, above all, as vegetarians, while the Apostle Paul was most bitterly opposed. They called him a Tarsene, said he was a Greek, and heaped on him gross abuse. Epiphanius also dwells strongly upon their Jewish mode of life (circumcision, Sabbath), as well as their daily washings,443 and gives some information about the constitution and form of worship of these sects (use of baptism: Lord's Supper with bread and water). Finally, Epiphanius [pg 309] gives particulars about their Christology. On this point there were differences of opinion, and these differences prove that there was no Christological dogma. As among the common Jewish Christians, the birth of Jesus from the Virgin was a matter of dispute. Further, some identified Christ with Adam, others saw in him a heavenly being (ανωθεν ον), a spiritual being, who was created before all, who was higher than all angels and Lord of all things, but who chose for himself the upper world; yet this Christ from above came down to this lower world as often as he pleased. He came in Adam, he appeared in human form to the patriarchs, and at last appeared on earth as a man with the body of Adam, suffered, etc. Others again, as it appears, would have nothing to do with these speculations, but stood by the belief that Jesus was the man chosen by God, on whom, on account of his virtue, the Holy Spirit—'οπερ εστιν 'ο Χριστος—descended at the baptism. 444 (Epiph. h. 30. 3, 14, 16). The account which Epiphanius gives of the doctrine held by these Jewish Christians regarding the Devil, is specially instructive (h. 30. 16): δυο δε τινας συνιστωσιν εκ θεου τεταγμενους, ενα μεν τον Χριστον, ενα δε τον διαβολον. και τον μεν Χριστον λεγουσι του μελλοντος αιωνος ειληφεναι τον κληρον, τον δε διαβολον τουτον πεπιστευσθαι ον αιωνα, εκ προσταγης δηθεν του παντοκρατοπος κατα αιτησιν εκατερων αυτων. Here we have a very old Semitico-Hebraic idea preserved in a very striking way, and therefore we may probably assume that in other respects also, these Gnostic Ebionites preserved that which was ancient. Whether they did so in their criticism of the Old Testament, is a point on which we must not pronounce judgment.

We might conclude by referring to the fact that this syncretistic Jewish Christianity, apart from a well-known missionary [pg 310] effort at Rome, was confined to Palestine and the neighbouring countries, and might consider it proved that this movement had no effect on the history and development of Catholicism,445 were it not for two voluminous writings which still continue to be regarded as monuments of the earliest epoch of syncretistic Jewish Christianity. Not only did Baur suppose that he could prove his hypothesis about the origin of Catholicism by the help of these writings, but the attempt has recently been made on the basis of the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions and Homilies, for these are the writings in question, to go still further and claim for Jewish Christianity the glory of having developed by itself the whole doctrine, worship and constitution of Catholicism, and of having transmitted it to Gentile Christianity as a finished product which only required to be divested of a few Jewish husks.446 It is therefore necessary to subject these writings to a brief examination. Everything depends on the time of their origin, and the tendencies they follow. But these are just the two questions that are still unanswered. Without depreciating those worthy men who have earnestly occupied themselves with the Pseudo-Clementines,447 it may be asserted, that in this region everything [pg 311] is as yet in darkness, especially as no agreement has been reached even in the question of their composition. No doubt such a result appears to have been pretty nearly arrived at as far as the time of composition is concerned, but that estimate (150-170, or the latter half of the second century) not only awakens the greatest suspicion, but can be proved to be wrong. The importance of the question for the history of dogma does not permit the historian to set it aside, while, on the other hand, the compass of a manual does not allow us to enter into an exhaustive investigation. The only course open in such circumstances is briefly to define one's own position.

1. The Recognitions and Homilies, in the form in which we have them, do not belong to the second century, but at the very earliest to the first half of the third. There is nothing, however, to prevent our putting them a few decades later.448

[pg 312] 2. They were not composed in their present form by heretical Christians, but most probably by Catholics. Nor do they aim at forming a theological system,449 or spreading the views of a sect. Their primary object is to oppose Greek polytheism, immoral mythology, and false philosophy, and thus to promote edification.450

3. In describing the authors as Catholic, we do not mean that they were adherents of the theology of Irenæus or Origen. The instructive point here rather, is that they had as yet no fixed theology, and therefore could without hesitation regard and use all possible material as means of edification. In like manner, they had no fixed conception of the Apostolic age, and could therefore appropriate motley and dangerous material. Such Christians, highly educated and correctly trained too, were still to be found, not only in the third century, but even later. But the authors do not seem to have been free from a bias, inasmuch as they did not favour the Catholic, that is, the Alexandrian apologetic theology which was in process of formation.

4. The description of the Pseudo-Clementine writings, naturally derived from their very form, as "edifying, didactic romances for the refutation of paganism", is not inconsistent with the idea, that the authors, at the same time, did their utmost to oppose heretical phenomena, especially the Marcionite church and Apelles, together with heresy and heathenism in general, as represented by Simon Magus.

5. The objectionable materials which the authors made use of were edifying for them, because of the position assigned [pg 313] therein to Peter, because of the ascetic and mysterious elements they contained, and the opposition offered to Simon, etc. The offensive features, so far as they were still contained in these sources, had already become unintelligible and harmless. They were partly conserved as such and partly removed.

6. The authors are to be sought for perhaps in Rome, perhaps in Syria, perhaps in both places, certainly not in Alexandria.

7. The main ideas are: (1) The monarchy of God. (2) the syzygies (weak and strong). (3) Prophecy (the true Prophet). (4) Stoical rationalism, belief in providence, good works. Φιλανθρωπια, etc.—Mosaism. The Homilies are completely saturated with stoicism, both in their ethical and metaphysical systems, and are opposed to Platonism, though Plato is quoted in Hom. XV. 8, as 'Ελληνων σοφιστια (a wise man of the Greeks). In addition to these ideas we have also a strong hierarchical tendency. The material which the authors made use of was in great part derived from syncretistic Jewish Christian tradition, in other words, those histories of the Apostles were here utilised which Epiphanius reports to have been used by the Ebionites (see above). It is not probable, however, that these writings in their original form were in the hands of the narrators; the likelihood is that they made use of them in revised forms.

8. It must be reserved for an accurate investigation to ascertain whether those modified versions which betray clear marks of Hellenic origin, were made within syncretistic Judaism itself, or whether they are to be traced back to Catholic writers. In either case, they should not be placed earlier than about the beginning of the third century, but in all probability one or two generations later still.

9. If we adopt the first assumption, it is most natural to think of that propaganda which, according to the testimony of Hippolytus and Origen, Jewish Christianity attempted in Rome in the age of Caracalla and Heliogabalus, through the medium of the Syrian, Alcibiades. This coincides with the last great advance of Syrian cults into the West, and is, at the [pg 314] same time, the only one known to us historically. But it is further pretty generally admitted that the immediate sources of the Pseudo-Clementines already presuppose the existence of Elkesaite Christianity. We should accordingly have to assume that in the West, this Christianity made greater concessions to the prevailing type, that it gave up circumcision and accommodated itself to the Church system of Gentile Christianity, at the same time withdrawing its polemic against Paul.

10. Meanwhile the existence of such a Jewish Christianity is not as yet proved, and therefore we must reckon with the possibility that the remodelled form of the Jewish Christian sources, already found in existence by the revisers of the Pseudo-Clementine Romances, was solely a Catholic literary product. In this assumption, which commends itself both as regards the aim of the composition and its presupposed conditions, we must remember that, from the third century onwards, Catholic writers systematically corrected, and to a great extent reconstructed, the heretical histories which were in circulation in the churches as interesting reading, and that the extent and degree of this reconstruction varied exceedingly, according to the theological and historical insight of the writer. The identifying of pure Mosaism with Christianity was in itself by no means offensive when there was no further question of circumcision. The clear distinction between the ceremonial and moral parts of the Old Testament, could no longer prove an offence after the great struggle with Gnosticism.451 The strong insistence upon the unity of God, and the rejection of the doctrine of the Logos, were by no means uncommon in the beginning of the third century; and in the [pg 315] speculations about Adam and Christ, in the views about God and the world and such, like, as set before us in the immediate sources of the Romances, the correct and edifying elements must have seemed to outweigh the objectionable. At any rate, the historian who, until further advised, denies the existence of a Jewish Christianity composed of the most contradictory elements, lacking circumcision and national hopes, and bearing marks of Catholic and therefore of Hellenic influence, judges more prudently than he who asserts, solely on the basis of Romances which are accompanied by no tradition and have never been the objects of assault, the existence of a Jewish Christianity accommodating itself to Catholicism which is entirely unattested.

11. Be that as it may, it may at least be regarded as certain that the Pseudo-Clementines contribute absolutely nothing to our knowledge of the origin of the Catholic Church and doctrine, as they shew at best in their immediate sources a Jewish Christianity strongly influenced by Catholicism and Hellenism.

12. They must be used with great caution even in seeking to determine the tendencies and inner history of syncretistic Jewish Christianity. It cannot be made out with certainty, how far back the first sources of the Pseudo-Clementines date, or what their original form and tendency were. As to the first point, it has indeed been said that Justin, nay, even the author of the Acts of the Apostles, presupposes them, and that the Catholic tradition of Peter, in Rome, and of Simon Magus, are dependent on them (as is still held by Lipsius); but there is so little proof of this adduced, that in Christian literature up to the end of the second century (Hegesippus?) we can only discover very uncertain traces of acquaintance with Jewish Christian historical narrative. Such indications can only be found, to any considerable extent, in the third century, and I do not mean to deny that the contents of the Jewish Christian histories of the Apostles contributed materially to the formation of the ecclesiastical legends about Peter. As is shewn in the Pseudo-Clementines, these [pg 316] histories of the Apostles especially opposed Simon Magus and his adherents (the new Samaritan attempt at a universal religion), and placed the authority of the Apostle Peter against them. But they also opposed the Apostle Paul, and seem to have transferred Simonian features to Paul, and Pauline features to Simon. Yet it is also possible that the Pauline traits found in the magician were the outcome of the redaction, in so far as the whole polemic against Paul is here struck out, though certain parts of it have been woven into the polemic against Simon. But probably the Pauline features of the magician are merely an appearance. The Pseudo-Clementines may, to some extent, be used, though with caution, in determining the doctrines of syncretistic Jewish Christianity. In connection with this we must take what Epiphanius says as our standard. The Pantheistic and Stoic elements which are found here and there must of course be eliminated. But the theory of the genesis of the world from a change in God himself (that is from a προβολη), the assumption that all things emanated from God in antitheses (Son of God—Devil; heaven—earth; male—female; male and female prophecy), nay, that these antitheses are found in God himself (goodness, to which corresponds the Son of God—punitive justice, to which corresponds the Devil), the speculations about the elements which have proceeded from the one substance, the ignoring of freedom in the question about the origin of evil, the strict adherence to the unity and absolute causality of God, in spite of the dualism, and in spite of the lofty predicates applied to the Son of God—all this plainly bears the Semitic-Jewish stamp.

We must here content ourselves with these indications. They were meant to set forth briefly the reasons which forbid our assigning to syncretistic Jewish Christianity, on the basis of the Pseudo-Clementines, a place in the history of the genesis of the Catholic Church and its doctrine.

Bigg, The Clementine Homilies (Studia Biblica et Eccles. II. p. 157 ff.), has propounded the hypothesis that the Homilies are an Ebionitic revision of an older Catholic original (see p. 1841: [pg 317] "The Homilies as we have it, is a recast of an orthodox work by a highly unorthodox editor." P. 175: "The Homilies are surely the work of a Catholic convert to Ebionitism, who thought he saw in the doctrine of the two powers the only tenable answer to Gnosticism. We can separate his Catholicism from his Ebionitism, just as surely as his Stoicism"). This is the opposite of the view expressed by me in the text. I consider Bigg's hypothesis well worth examining, and at first sight not improbable; but I am not able to enter into it here.

Footnote 403: (return) The attitude of the recently discovered "Teaching of the twelve Apostles" is strictly universalistic, and hostile to Judaism as a nation, but shews us a Christianity still essentially uninfluenced by philosophic elements. The impression made by this fact has caused some scholars to describe the treatise as a document of Jewish Christianity. But the attitude of the Didache is rather the ordinary one of universalistic early Christianity on the soil of the Græco-Roman world. If we describe this as Jewish Christian, then from the meaning which we must give to the words "Christian" and "Gentile Christian", we tacitly legitimise an undefined and undefinable aggregate of Greek ideas, along with a specifically Pauline element, as primitive Christianity, and this is perhaps not the intended, but yet desired, result of the false terminology. Now, if we describe even such writings as the Epistle of James and the Shepherd of Hermas as Jewish Christian, we therewith reduce the entire early Christianity, which is the creation of a universal religion on the soil of Judaism, to the special case of an indefinable religion. The same now appears as one of the particular values of a completely indeterminate magnitude. Hilgenfeld (Judenthum und Juden-christenthum, 1886; cf. also Ztschr f. wiss. Theol. 1886, II. 4) advocates another conception of Jewish Christianity in opposition to the following account. Zahn, Gesch. des N.T-lich. Kanons, II. p. 668 ff. has a different view still.

Footnote 404: (return) Or even Ebionitism; the designations are to be used as synonymous.

Footnote 405: (return) The more rarely the right standard has been set up in the literature of Church history, for the distinction of Jewish Christianity, the more valuable are those writings in which it is found. We must refer, above all, to Diestel, Geschichte des A. T. in der Christl. Kirche, p. 44, note 7.

Footnote 406: (return) See Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1883. Col. 409 f. as to the attempt of Joël to make out that the whole of Christendom up to the end of the first century was strictly Jewish Christian, and to exhibit the complete friendship of Jews and Christians in that period ("Blicke in die Religionsgesch." 2 Abth. 1883). It is not improbable that Christians like James, living in strict accordance with the law, were for the time being respected even by the Pharisees in the period preceding the destruction of Jerusalem. But that can in no case have been the rule. We see from, Epiph., h. 29. 9. and from the Talmud, what was the custom at a later period.

Footnote 407: (return) There were Jewish Christians who represented the position of the great Church with reference to the Old Testament religion, and there were some who criticised the Old Testament like the Gnostics. Their contention may have remained as much an internal one, as that between the Church Fathers and Gnostics (Marcion) did, so far as Jewish Christianity is concerned. There may have been relations between Gnostic Jewish Christians and Gnostics, not of a national Jewish type, in Syria and Asia Minor, though we are completely in the dark on the matter.

Footnote 408: (return) From the mere existence of Jewish Christians, those Christians who rejected the Old Testament might have argued against the main body of Christendom and put before it the dilemma: either Jewish Christian or Marcionite. Still more logical indeed was the dilemma: either Jewish, or Marcionite Christian.

Footnote 409: (return) So did the Montanists and Antimontanists mutually reproach each other with Judaising (see the Montanist writings of Tertullian). Just in the same way the arrangements as to worship and organisation, which were ever being more richly developed, were described by the freer parties as Judaising, because they made appeal to the Old Testament, though, as regards their contents, they had little in common with Judaism. But is not the method of claiming Old Testament authority for the regulations rendered necessary by circumstances nearly as old as Christianity itself? Against whom the lost treatise of Clement of Alexandria "κανων εκκλησιαστικος 'η προς τους Ιουδαιζοντας" (Euseb., H. E. VI. 13. 3) was directed, we cannot tell. But as we read, Strom., VI. 15, 125, that the Holy Scriptures are to be expounded according to the εκκλησιαστικος κανων, and then find the following definition of the Canon: κανων δε εκκλησιαστικος 'η συνωδια και συμφωνια νομον τε και προφητων τη κατα την του κυριου παρουσιαν παραδιδομενηι διαθηκηι, we may conjecture that the Judaisers were those Christians, who, in principle, or to some extent, objected to the allegorical interpretation of the Old Testament. We have then to think either of Marcionite Christians or of "Chiliasts," that is, the old Christians who were still numerous in Egypt about the middle of the third century (see Dionys. Alex, in Euseb., H. E. VII. 24). In the first case, the title of the treatise would be paradoxical. But perhaps the treatise refers to the Quarto-decimans, although the expression κανων εκκλησιαστικος seems too ponderous for them (see, however, Orig., Comm. in Matth. n. 76, ed. Delarue III. p. 895) Clement may possibly have had Jewish Christians before him. See Zahn, Forschungen, vol. III. p. 37 f.

Footnote 410: (return) Cases of this kind are everywhere, up to the fifth century, so numerous that they need not be cited. We may only remind the reader that the Nestorian Christology was described by its earliest and its latest opponents as Ebionitic.

Footnote 411: (return) Or were those western Christians Ebionitic who, in the fourth century still clung to very realistic Chiliastic hopes, who, in fact, regarded their Christianity as consisting in these?

Footnote 412: (return) The hellenising of Christianity went hand in hand with a more extensive use of the Old Testament; for, according to the principles of Catholicism, every new article of the Church system must be able to legitimise itself as springing from revelation. But, as a rule, the attestation could only be gathered from the Old Testament, since religion here appears in the fixed form of a secular community. Now the needs of a secular community for outward regulations gradually became so strong in the Church as to require palpable ceremonial rules. But it cannot be denied, that from a certain point of time, first by means of the fiction of Apostolic constitutions (see my edition of the Didache, Prolegg. p. 239 ff.), and then without this fiction, not, however, as a rule, without reservations, ceremonial regulations were simply taken over from the Old Testament. But this transference (See Bk. II.) takes place at a time when there can be absolutely no question of an influence of Jewish Christianity. Moreover, it always proves itself to be catholic by the fact that it did not in the least soften the traditional anti-Judaism. On the contrary, it attained its full growth in the age of Constantine. Finally, it should not be overlooked that at all times in antiquity, certain provincial churches were exposed to Jewish influences, especially in the East and in Arabia, that they were therefore threatened with being Judaised, or with apostasy to Judaism, and that even at the present day, certain Oriental Churches shew tokens of having once been subject to Jewish influences (see Serapion in Euseb, H. E. VI. 12. 1, Martyr. Pion., Epiph. de mens. et pond. 15. 18; my Texte u. Unters. I. 3. p. 73 f., and Wellhausen, Skizzen und Vorarbeiten, Part. 3. p. 197 ff.; actual disputations with Jews do not seem to have been common, though see Tertull. adv. Jud. and Orig. c. Cels. I. 45, 49, 55: II. 31. Clement also keeps in view Jewish objections.) This Jewish Christianity, if we like to call it so, which in some regions of the East was developed through an immediate influence of Judaism on Catholicism, should not, however, be confounded with the Jewish Christianity which is the most original form in which Christianity realised itself. This was no longer able to influence the Christianity which had shaken itself free from the Jewish nation (as to futile attempts, see below), any more than the protecting covering stripped from the new shoot, can ever again acquire significance for the latter.

Footnote 413: (return) What is called the ever-increasing legal feature of Gentile Christianity and the Catholic Church is conditioned by its origin, in so far as its theory is rooted in that of Judaism spiritualised and influenced by Hellenism. As the Pauline conception of the law never took effect and a criticism of the Old Testament religion which is just law neither understood nor ventured upon in the larger Christendom—the forms were not criticised, but the contents spiritualised—so the theory that Christianity is promise and spiritual law is to be regarded as the primitive one. Between the spiritual law and the national law there stand indeed ceremonial laws, which, without being spiritually interpreted, could yet be freed from the national application. It cannot be denied that the Gentile Christian communities and the incipient Catholic Church were very careful and reserved in their adoption of such laws from the Old Testament, and that the later Church no longer observed this caution. But still it is only a question of degree for there are many examples of that adoption in the earliest period of Christendom. The latter had no cause for hurry in utilizing the Old Testament so long as there was no external or internal policy or so long as it was still in embryo. The decisive factor lies here again in enthusiasm and not in changing theories. The basis for these was supplied from the beginning. But a community of individuals under spiritual excitement builds on this foundation something different from an association which wishes to organise and assert itself as such on earth. (The history of Sunday is specially instructive here, see Zahn, Gesch. des Sonntags, 1878, as well as the history of the discipline of fasting, see Linsenmayr, Entwickelung der Kirchl Fastendisciplin, 1877, and Die Abgabe des Zehnten. In general, Cf. Ritschl Entstehung der Altkath Kirche 2 edit. pp. 312 ff., 331 ff., 1 Cor. IX. 9, may be noted).

Footnote 414: (return) Justin. Apol. I. 53, Dial. 47, Euseb. H. E. IV. 5, Sulpic Sev. Hist. Sacr. II. 31, Cyrill. Catech. XIV. 15. Important testimonies in Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius and Jerome.

Footnote 415: (return) No Jewish Christian writings have been transmitted to us even from the earliest period, for the Apocalypse of John, which describes the Jews as a synagogue of Satan, is not a Jewish Christian book (III. 9 especially shews that the author knows of only one covenant of God, viz. that with the Christians). Jewish Christian sources lie at the basis of our synoptic Gospels, but none of them in their present form is a Jewish Christian writing. The Acts of the Apostles is so little Jewish Christian, its author seemingly so ignorant of Jewish Christianity, at least so unconcerned with regard to it that to him the spiritualised Jewish law, or Judaism as a religion which he connects as closely as possible with Christianity, is a factor already completely detached from the Jewish people (see Overbeck's Commentar z Apostelgesch and his discussion in the Ztschr f wiss. Theol. 1872 p. 305 ff.) Measured by the Pauline theology we may indeed, with Overbeck, say of the Gentile Christianity, as represented by the author of the Acts of the Apostles, that it already has germs of Judaism, and represents a falling off from Paulinism; but these expressions are not correct, because they have at least the appearance of making Paulinism the original form of Gentile Christianity. But as this can neither be proved nor believed, the religious attitude of the author of the Acts of the Apostles must have been a very old one in Christendom. The Judaistic element was not first introduced into Gentile Christianity by the opponents of Paul, who indeed wrought in the national sense, and there is even nothing to lead to the hypothesis that the common Gentile Christian view of the Old Testament and of the law should be conceived as resulting from the efforts of Paul and his opponents, for the consequent effect here would either have been null, or a strengthening of the Jewish Christian thesis. The Jewish element, that is the total acceptance of the Jewish religion sub specie aeternitatis et Christi, is simply the original Christianity of the Gentile Christians itself considered as theory. Contrary to his own intention, Paul was compelled to lead his converts to this Christianity, for only for such Christianity was "the time fulfilled" within the empire of the world. The Acts of the Apostles gives eloquent testimony to the pressing difficulties which under such circumstances stand in the way of a historical understanding of the Gentile Christians in view of the work and the theology of Paul. Even the Epistle to the Hebrews is not a Jewish Christian writing, but there is certainly a peculiar state of things connected with this document. For, on the one hand, the author and his readers are free from the law; a spiritual interpretation is given to the Old Testament religion, which makes it appear to be glorified and fulfilled in the work of Christ; and there is no mention of any prerogative of the people of Israel. But, on the other hand, because the spiritual interpretation, as in Paul, is here teleological, the author allows a temporary significance to the cultus as literally understood, and therefore, by his criticism he conserves the Old Testament religion for the past, while declaring that it was set aside, as regards the present, by the fulfilment of Christ. The teleology of the author, however, looks at everything only from the point of view of shadow and reality, an antithesis which is at the service of Paul also, but which in his case vanishes behind the antithesis of law and grace. This scheme of thought, which is to be traced back to a way of looking at things which arose in Christian Judaism, seeing that it really distinguishes between old and new, stands midway between the conception of the Old Testament religion entertained by Paul, and that of the common Gentile Christian as it is represented by Barnabas. The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews undoubtedly knows of a twofold covenant of God. But the two are represented as stages, so that the second is completely based on the first. This view was more likely to be understood by the Gentile Christians than the Pauline, that is, with some seemingly slight changes, to be recognised as their own. But even it at first fell to the ground, and it was only in the conflict with the Marcionites that some Church Fathers advanced to views which seem to be related to those of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Whether the author of this Epistle was a born Jew or a Gentile—in the former case he would far surpass the Apostle Paul in his freedom from the national claims—we cannot, at any rate, recognise in it a document containing a conception which still prizes the Jewish nationality in Christianity, nay, not even a document to prove that such a conception was still dangerous. Consequently, we have no Jewish Christian memorial in the New Testament at all, unless it be in the Pauline Epistles. But as concerns the early Christian literature outside the Canon, the fragments of the great work of Hegesippus are even yet by some investigators claimed for Jewish Christianity. Weizsäcker (Art "Hegesippus" in Herzog's R. E. 2 edit) has shewn how groundless this assumption is. That Hegesippus occupied the common Gentile Christian position is certain from unequivocal testimony of his own. If, as is very improbable, we were obliged to ascribe to him a rejection of Paul, we should have to refer to Eusebius, H. E. IV. 29. 5. (Σευηριανοι βλασφημουντες Παυλον τον αποστολον αθετουσιν αυτου τας επιστολας μηδε τας πραξεις των αποστολων καταδεχομενοι, but probably the Gospels; these Severians therefore, like Marcion, recognised the Gospel of Luke, but rejected the Acts of the Apostles), and Orig. c. Cels. V. 65: (εισι γαρ τινες 'αιρεσεις τας Παυλου επιστολας του αποστολου μη προσιεμεναι 'ωσπερ Εβιωναιοι αμφοτεροι και 'οι καλουμενοι Ενκρατηται). Consequently, our only sources of knowledge of Jewish Christianity in the post-Pauline period are merely the accounts of the Church Fathers, and some additional fragments (see the collection of fragments of the Ebionite Gospel and that to the Hebrews in Hilgenfeld, Nov. Test, extra can. rec. fasc. IV. Ed 2, and in Zahn, l. c. II. p 642 ff.). We know better, but still very imperfectly, certain forms of the syncretistic Jewish Christianity, from the Philosoph. of Hippolytus and the accounts of Epiphanius, who is certainly nowhere more incoherent than in the delineation of the Jewish Christians, because he could not copy original documents here, but was forced to piece together confused traditions with his own observations. See below on the extensive documents which are even yet as they stand, treated as records of Jewish Christianity, viz., the Pseudo-Clementines. Of the pieces of writing whose Jewish Christian origin is controverted, in so far as they may be simply Jewish, I say nothing.

Footnote 416: (return) As to the chief localities where Jewish Christians were found, see Zahn, Kanonsgesch. II. p. 648 ff.

Footnote 417: (return) Dialogue 47.

Footnote 418: (return) Yet it should be noted that the Christians who, according to Dial. 48, denied the pre-existence of Christ and held him to be a man, are described as Jewish Christians. We should read in the passage in question, as my recent comparison of the Parisian codex shews, απο του υμετερου γενους. Yet Justin did not make this a controversial point of great moment.

Footnote 419: (return) The so-called Barnabas is considerably older than Justin. In his Epistle (4. 6) he has in view Gentile Christians who have been converted by Jewish Christians, when he utters a warning against those who say 'οτι α διαθηκη εκεινον (the Jews) και 'ημων (εστιν). But how great the actual danger was cannot be gathered from the Epistle. Ignatius in two Epistles (ad Magn. 8-10, ad Philad. 6. 9) opposes Jewish Christian intrigues, and characterises them solely from the point of view that they mean to introduce the Jewish observance of the law. He opposes them with a Pauline idea (Magn. 8 1: ει γαρ μεχρι νυν κατα νομον. Ιουδαισμον ζωμεν 'ομολογουμεν χαριν μη ειληφεναι), as well as with the common Gentile Christian assumption that the prophets themselves had already lived κατα Χριστον. These Judaists must be strictly distinguished from the Gnostics whom Ignatius elsewhere opposes (against Zahn, Ignat. v. Ant. p. 356 f.). The dangers from this Jewish Christianity cannot have been very serious, even if we take Magn. 11. 1, as a phrase. There was an active Jewish community in Philadelphia (Rev. III. 9), and so Jewish Christian plots may have continued longer there. At the first look it seems very promising that in the old dialogue of Aristo of Pella, a Hebrew Christian, Jason, is put in opposition to the Alexandrian Jew, Papiscus. But as the history of the little book proves, this Jason must have essentially represented the common Christian and not the Ebionite conception of the Old Testament and its relation to the Gospel, etc; see my Texte u. Unters. I. 1 2. p. 115 ff.; I. 3 p. 115-130. Testimony as to an apostasy to Judaism is occasionally though rarely given; see Serapion in Euseb., H. E. VI. 12, who addresses a book to one Domninus, εκπεπτωκοτα παρα τον του διωγμου καιρον απο της εις Χριστον πιστεως επι την Ιουδαικην εθελοθρησκειαν; see also Acta Pionii, 13. 14. According to Epiphanius, de mens. et pond. 14, 15, Acquila, the translator of the Bible, was first a Christian and then a Jew. This account is perhaps derived from Origen, and is probably reliable. Likewise according to Epiphanius (l. c. 17. 18), Theodotion was first a Marcionite and then a Jew. The transition from Marcionitism to Judaism (for extremes meet) is not in itself incredible.

Footnote 420: (return) It follows from c. Cels II. 1-3, that Celsus could hardly have known Jewish Christians.

Footnote 421: (return) Iren. I. 26. 2; III 11. 7; III. 15. 1, 21. 1; IV. 33. 4; V. 1. 3. We first find the name Ebionæi, the poor, in Irenæus. We are probably entitled to assume that this name was given to the Christians in Jerusalem as early as the Apostolic age, that is, they applied it to themselves (poor in the sense of the prophets and of Christ, fit to be received into the Messianic kingdom). It is very questionable whether we should put any value on Epiph. h. 30. 17.

Footnote 422: (return) When Irenæus adduces as the points of distinction between the Church and the Ebionites, that besides observing the law and repudiating the Apostle Paul, the latter deny the Divinity of Christ and his birth from the Virgin, and reject the New Testament Canon (except the Gospel of Matthew), that only proves that the formation of dogma has made progress in the Church. The less was known of the Ebionites from personal observation, the more confidently they were made out to be heretics who denied the Divinity of Christ and rejected the Canon. The denial of the Divinity of Christ and the birth from the Virgin was, from the end of the second century, regarded as the Ebionite heresy par excellence, and the Ebionites themselves appeared to the Western Christians, who obtained their information solely from the East, to be a school like those of the Gnostics, founded by a scoundrel named Ebion for the purpose of dragging down the person of Jesus to the common level. It is also mentioned incidentally, that this Ebion had commanded the observance of circumcision and the Sabbath; but that is no longer the main thing (see Tertull, de carne 14, 18, 24: de virg. vel. 6: de præscr. 10. 33; Hippol, Syntagma, (Pseudo-Tertull, 11; Philastr. 37; Epiph. h. 30); Hippol, Philos. VII. 34. The latter passage contains the instructive statement that Jesus by his perfect keeping of the law became the Christ). This attitude of the Western Christians proves that they no longer knew Jewish Christian communities. Hence it is all the more strange that Hilgenfeld (Ketzergesch. p. 422 ff.) has in all earnestness endeavoured to revive the Ebion of the Western Church Fathers.

Footnote 423: (return) See Orig. c. Cels II. 1; V. 61, 65; de princip. IV. 22; hom. in Genes. III. 15 (Opp. II. p. 65); hom. in Jerem XVII. 12 (III. p. 254); in Matth. T. XVI. 12 (III. p. 494), T. XVII. 12 (III. p. 733); cf. Opp. III. p. 895; hom in XVII. (III. p. 952). That a portion of the Ebionites recognised the birth from the Virgin was according to Origen frequently attested. That was partly reckoned to them for righteousness and partly not, because they would not admit the pre-existence of Christ. The name "Ebionites" is interpreted as a nickname given them by the Church ("beggarly" in the knowledge of scripture, and particularly of Christology).

Footnote 424: (return) Eusebius knows no more than Origen (H. E. III. 27), unless we specially credit him with the information that the Ebionites keep along with the Sabbath also the Sunday. What he says of Symmachus, the translator of the Bible, and an Ebionite, is derived from Origen (H. E. VI. 17). The report is interesting, because it declares that Symmachus wrote against Catholic Christianity, especially against the Catholic Gospel of Matthew (about the year 200). But Symmachus is to be classed with the Gnostics, and not with the common type of Jewish Christianity (see below). We have also to thank Eusebius (H. E. III. 5. 3) for the information that the Christians of Jerusalem fled to Pella, in Peræa, before the destruction of that city. In the following period the most important settlements of the Ebionites must have been in the countries east of the Jordan, and in the heart of Syria (see Jul. Afric. in Euseb. H. E. I. 7. 14; Euseb. de loc. hebr. in Lagarde, Onomast p. 301; Epiph., h. 29. 7; h. 30. 2). This fact explains how the bishops in Jerusalem and the coast towns of Palestine came to see very little of them. There was a Jewish Christian community in Beroea with which Jerome had relations (Jerom., de Vir inl 3).

Footnote 425: (return) Jerome correctly declares (Ep. ad. August. 122 c. 13, Opp. I. p. 746), "(Ebionitæ) credentes in Christo propter hoc solum a patribus anathematizati sunt, quod legis cæremonias Christi evangelio miscuerunt, et sic nova confessi sunt, ut vetera non omitterent."

Footnote 426: (return) Ep. ad August. l. c.: "Quid dicam de Hebionitis, qui Christianos esse se simulant? usque hodie per totas orientis synagogas inter Judæos(!) hæresis est, que dicitur Minæorum et a Pharisæis nunc usque damnatur, quos vulgo Nazaræos nuncupant, qui credunt in Christum filium dei natum de Virgine Maria et eum dicunt esse, qui sub pontio Pilato passus est et resurrexit, in quem et nos credimus; sed dum volunt et Judæi esse et Christiani, nec Judæi sunt nec Christiani." The approximation of the Jewish Christian conception to that of the Catholics shews itself also in their exposition of Isaiah IX. 1. f. (see Jerome on the passage). But we must not forget that there were such Jewish Christians from the earliest times. It is worthy of note that the name Nazarenes, as applied to Jewish Christians, is found in the Acts of the Apostles XXIV. 5, in the Dialogue of Jason and Papiscus, and then first again in Jerome.

Footnote 427: (return) Zahn, l. c. p. 648 ff. 668 ff. has not convinced me of the contrary, but I confess that Jerome's style of expression is not everywhere clear.

Footnote 428: (return) Zahn, (l. c.) makes a sharp distinction between the Nazarenes, on the one side, who used the Gospel of the Hebrews, acknowledged the birth from the Virgin, and in fact the higher Christology to some extent, did not repudiate Paul, etc., and the Ebionites on the other, whom he simply identifies with the Gnostic Jewish Christians, if I am not mistaken. In opposition to this, I think I must adhere to the distinction as given above in the text and in the following: (1) Non-Gnostic, Jewish Christians (Nazarenes, Ebionites) who appeared in various shades, according to their doctrine and attitude to the Gentile Church, and whom, with the Church Fathers, we may appropriately classify as strict or tolerant (exclusive or liberal). (2) Gnostic or syncretistic Judæo-Christians who are also termed Ebionites.

Footnote 429: (return) This Gospel no doubt greatly interested the scholars of the Catholic Church from Clement of Alexandria onwards. But they have almost all contrived to evade the hard problem which it presented. It may be noted, incidentally, that the Gospel of the Hebrews, to judge from the remains preserved to us, can neither have been the model nor the translation of our Matthew, but a work independent of this, though drawing from the same sources, representing perhaps to some extent an earlier stage of the tradition. Jerome also knew very well that the Gospel of the Hebrews was not the original of the canonical Matthew, but he took care not to correct the old prejudice. Ebionitic conceptions, such as that of the female nature of the Holy Spirit, were of course least likely to convince the Church Fathers. Moreover, the common Jewish Christians hardly possessed a Church theology, because for them Christianity was something entirely different from the doctrine of a school. On the Gospel of the Hebrews, see Handmann (Texte u. Unters V. 3), Resch, Agrapha (I. c. V. 4), and Zahn, 1. c. p. 642 ff.

Footnote 430: (return) We have as yet no history of the sacrificial system, and the views as to sacrifice in the Græco-Roman epoch, of the Jewish Nation. It is urgently needed.

Footnote 431: (return) We may remind readers of the assumptions, that the world was created by angels, that the law was given by angels, and similar ones which are found in the theology of the Pharisees Celsus (in Orig. I. 26; V. 6) asserts generally that the Jews worshipped angels, so does the author of the Prædicatio Petri, as well as the apologist Aristides. Cf Joel, Blicke in die Religionsgesch I. Abth, a book which is certainly to be used with caution (see Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1881. Coll. 184 ff.).

Footnote 432: (return) No reliance can be placed on Jewish sources, or on Jewish scholars, as a rule. What we find in Joël, l. c. I. Abth. p. 101 ff. is instructive. We may mention Grätz, Gnosticismus und Judenthum (Krotoschin, 1846), who has called attention to the Gnostic elements in the Talmud, and dealt with several Jewish Gnostics and Antignostics, as well as with the book of Jezira. Grätz assumes that the four main dogmatic points in the book Jezira, viz., the strict unity of the deity, and, at the same time, the negation of the demiurgic dualism, the creation out of nothing with the negation of matter, the systematic unity of the world and the balancing of opposites, were directed against prevailing Gnostic ideas.

Footnote 433: (return) We may pass over the false teachers of the Pastoral Epistles, as they cannot be with certainty determined, and the possibility is not excluded that we have here to do with an arbitrary construction; see Holtzman, Pastoralbriefe, p. 150 f.

Footnote 434: (return) Orig. in Euseb. VI. 38; Hippol., Philos. IX. 13 ff., X. 29; Epiph., h. 30, also h. 19, 53; Method, Conviv. VIII. 10. From the confused account of Epiphanius who called the common Jewish Christians Nazarenes, the Gnostic type Ebionites and Sampsæi, and their Jewish forerunners Osseni, we may conclude, that in many regions where there were Jewish Christians they yielded to the propaganda of the Elkesaite doctrines, and that in the fourth century there was no other syncretistic Jewish Christianity besides the various shades of Elkesaites.

Footnote 435: (return) I formerly reckoned Symmachus, the translator of the Bible, among the common Jewish Christians; but the statements of Victorinus Rhetor on Gal. I. 19. II. 26 (Migne T. VIII. Col. 1155, 1162) shew that he has a close affinity with the Pseudo-Clementines, and is also to be classed with the Elkesaite Alcibiades. "Nam Jacobum apostolum Symmachiani faciunt quasi duodecimum et hunc secuntur, qui ad dominum nostrum Jesum Christum adjungunt Judaismi observationem, quamquam etiam Jesum Christum fatentur; dicunt enim eum ipsum Adam esse et esse animam generalem, et aliæ hujusmodi blasphemiæ." The account given by Eusebius, H. E. VI. 17 (probably on the authority of Origen, see also Demonstr. VII. I) is important: Των γε μεν 'ερμηνευτων αυτων δη τουτων 'ιστεον, Εβιωναιον τον Συμμαχον γεγονεναι ... και 'υπομνηματα δε του Συμμαχου εισετι νυν φερεται, 'εν οις δοκει προς το κατα Ματυαιον αποτεινομενος ευαγγελιον την δεδηλωμενην αιρεσιν κρατυνειν. Symmachus therefore adopted an aggressive attitude towards the great Church, and hence we may probably class him with Alcibiades who lived a little later. Common Jewish Christianity was no longer aggressive in the second century.

Footnote 436: (return) Wellhausen (l. c. Part III. p. 206) supposes that Elkesai is equivalent to Alexius. That the receiver of the "book" was a historical person is manifest from Epiphanius' account of his descendants (h. 19. 2; 53. 1). From Hipp, Philosoph. IX. 16, p. 468, it is certainly probable, though not certain, that the book was produced by the unknown author as early as the time of Trajan. On the other hand, the existence of the sect itself can be proved only at the beginning of the third century, and therefore we have the possibility of an ante-dating of the "book." This seems to have been Origen's opinion.

Footnote 437: (return) Epiph. (h. 53. 1) says of the Elkesaites: ουτε χριστιανοι 'υπαρχοντες ουτε Ιουδαιοι ουτε Ελληνες, αλλα μεσον απλως υπαρχοντες. He pronounces a similar judgment as to the Samaritan sects (Simonians), and expressly (h. 30. 1) connects the Elkesaites with them.

Footnote 438: (return) The worship paid to the descendants of this Elkesai, spoken of by Epiphanius, does not, if we allow for exaggerations, go beyond the measure of honour which was regularly paid to the descendants of prophets and men of God in the East. Cf. the respect enjoyed by the blood relations of Jesus and Mohammed.

Footnote 439: (return) If the "book" really originated in the time of Trajan, then its production keeps within the frame-work of common Christianity, for at that time there were appearing everywhere in Christendom revealed books which contained new instructions and communications of grace. The reader may be reminded, for example, of the Shepherd of Hermas. When the sect declared that the "book" was delivered to Elkesai by a male and a female angel, each as large as a mountain, that these angels were the Son of God and the Holy Spirit, etc., we have, apart from the fantastic colouring, nothing extraordinary.

Footnote 440: (return) It may be assumed from Philos. X. 29, that, in the opinion of Hippolytus, the Elkesaites identified the Christ from above with the Son of God, and assumed that this Christ appeared on earth in changing and purely human forms, and will appear again (αυτον μεταγγιζομενον εν σωμασι πολλοις πολλακις, και νυν δε εν τω Ιησου, 'ομοιως ποτε μεν εκ του θεου γεγενησθαι, ποτε δε πνευμα γεγονεναι, ποτε δε εκ παρθενου, ποτε δε ου και τουτου δε μετεπειτα αει εν σωματι μεταγγιζεσθαι και εν πολλοις κατα καιρους δεικνυσθαι). As the Elkesaites (see the account by Epiphanius) traced back the incarnations of Christ to Adam, and not merely to Abraham, we may see in this view of history the attempt to transform Mosaism into the universal religion. But the Pharisitic theology had already begun with these Adam-speculations, which are always a sign that the religion in Judaism is feeling its limits too narrow. The Jews in Alexandria were also acquainted with these speculations.

Footnote 441: (return) In the Gospel of these Jewish Christians Jesus is made to say (Epiph. h. 30. 16) ηλθον καταλυσαι τας θυσιας, και εαν μη παυσησθε του θυειν, ου παυσεται αφ' 'υμων 'η οργη. We see the essential progress of this Jewish Christianity within Judaism, in the opposition in principle to the whole sacrificial service (vid. also Epiph., h. 19. 3).

Footnote 442: (return) On this new Gospel see Zahn, Kanongesch II. p. 724 ff.

Footnote 443: (return) It is incorrect to suppose that the lustrations were meant to take the place of baptism, or were conceived by these Jewish Christians as repeated baptisms. Their effect was certainly equal to that of baptism. But it is nowhere hinted in our authorities that they were on that account made equivalent to the regular baptism.

Footnote 444: (return) The characteristic here, as in the Gentile Christian Gnosis, is the division of the person of Jesus into a more or less indifferent medium, and into the Christ. Here the factor constituting his personality could sometimes be placed in that medium, and sometimes in the Christ spirit, and thus contradictory formulæ could not but arise. It is therefore easy to conceive how Epiphanius reproaches these Jewish Christians with a denial, sometimes of the Divinity, and sometimes of the humanity of Christ (see h. 30. 14).

Footnote 445: (return) This syncretistic Judaism had indeed a significance for the history of the world, not, however, in the history of Christianity, but for the origin of Islam. Islam, as a religious system, is based partly on syncretistic Judaism (including the Zabians, so enigmatic in their origin), and, without questioning Mohammed's originality, can only be historically understood by taking this into account. I have endeavoured to establish this hypothesis in a lecture printed in MS form, 1877. Cf. now the conclusive proofs in Wellhausen, l. c. Part III. p. 197-212. On the Mandeans, see Brandt, Die Mandäische Religion, 1889; (also Wellhausen in d. deutschen Lit. Ztg., 1890 No. 1. Lagarde i. d. Gött. Gel. Anz., 1890, No. 10).

Footnote 446: (return) See Bestmann, Gesch. der Christl. Sitte Bd. II. 1 Part: Die juden-christliche Sitte, 1883; also, Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1883. Col. 269 ff. The same author, Der Ursprung des Katholischen Christenthums und des Islams, 1884; also Theol. Lit. Ztg. 1884, Col. 291 ff.

Footnote 447: (return) See Schliemann, Die Clementinen etc. 1844; Hilgenfeld, Die Clementinischen Recogn. u. Homil, 1848; Ritschl, in d Allg Monatschrift f. Wissensch. u. Litt., 1852. Uhlhorn, Die Homil. u. Recogn., 1854; Lehmann, Die Clement. Schriften, 1869; Lipsius, in d. Protest. K. Ztg., 1869, p. 477 ff.; Quellen der Römische Petrussage, 1872. Uhlhorn, in Herzog's R. Encykl. (Clementinen) 2 Edit. III. p. 286, admits: "There can be no doubt that the Clementine question still requires further discussion. It can hardly make any progress worth mentioning until we have collected better the material, and especially till we have got a corrected edition with an exhaustive commentary." The theory of the genesis, contents and aim of the pseudo-Clementine writings, unfolded by Renan (Orig. T. VII. p. 74-101) is essentially identical with that of German scholars. Langen (die Clemensromane, 1890) has set up very bold hypotheses, which are also based on the assumption that Jewish Christianity was an important church factor in the second century, and that the pseudo-Clementines are comparatively old writings.

Footnote 448: (return) There is no external evidence for placing the pseudo-Clementine writings in the second century. The oldest witness is Origen (IV. p. 401, Lommatzsch); but the quotation: "Quoniam opera bona, quæ fiunt ab infidelibus, in hoc sæculo iis prosunt," etc., is not found in our Clementines, so that Origen appears to have used a still older version. The internal evidence all points to the third century (canon, composition, theological attitude, etc.) Moreover, Zahn (Gött. Gel. Anz. 1876. No. 45) and Lagarde have declared themselves in favour of this date; while Lipsius (Apokr. Apostelgesch II. 1) and Weingarten (Zeittafeln, 3 Edit. p. 23) have recently expressed the same opinion. The Homilies presuppose (1) Marcion's Antitheses, (2) Apelles' Syllogisms, (3) perhaps Callistus' edict about penance (see III. 70), and writings of Hippolytus (see also the expression επισκοπος επισκοπων, Clem. ep. ad Jacob I, which is first found in Tertull, de pudic I.) (4) The most highly developed form of polemic against heathen mythology. (5) The complete development of church apologetics, as well as the conviction that Christianity is identical with correct and absolute knowledge. They further presuppose a time when there was a lull in the persecution of Christians, for the Emperor, though pretty often referred to, is never spoken of as a persecutor, and when the cultured heathen world was entirely disposed in favour of an eclectic monotheism. Moreover, the remarkable Christological statement in Hom. XVI. 15, 16. points to the third century, in fact probably even presupposes the theology of Origen; Cf. the sentence: του πατρος το μη γεγεννησθαι εστιν, 'υιου δε το γεγεννησθαι γεννητον δε αγεννητω η και αυτογεννητω ου συνκρινεται. Finally, the decided repudiation of the awakening of Christian faith by visions and dreams, and the polemic against these is also no doubt of importance for determining the date; see XVII. 14-19. Peter says, § 18: το αδιδακτως ανευ οπτασιας και ονειρων μαθειν αποκαλυψις εστιν, he had already learned that at his confession (Matt. XVI.). The question, ει τις δι οπτασιαν προς διδασκαλιαν σοφισθηναι δυναται, is answered in the negative, § 19.

Footnote 449: (return) This is also acknowledged in Koffmane. Die Gnosis, etc, p. 33

. Footnote 450: (return) The Homilies, as we have them, are mainly composed of the speeches of Peter and others. These speeches oppose polytheism, mythology and the doctrine of demons, and advocate monotheism, ascetic morality and rationalism. The polemic against Simon Magus almost appears as a mere accessory.

Footnote 451: (return) This distinction can also be shewn elsewhere in the Church of the third century. But I confess I do not know how Catholic circles got over the fact that, for example, in the third book of the Homilies many passages of the old Testament are simply characterised as untrue, immoral and lying. Here the Homilies remind one strongly of the Syllogisms of Apelles, the author of which, in other respects, opposed them in the interest of his doctrine of creating angels. In some passages the Christianity of the Homilies really looks like a syncretism composed of the common Christianity, the Jewish Christianity, Gnosticism, and the criticism of Apelles. Hom. VIII. 6-8 is also highly objectionable.

Online link to Harnack's The History of Dogma Ovadyah 04:18, 16 August 2007 (UTC)