Ebionites

Ebionites (Ancient Greek: Ἐβιωναῖοι, romanized: Ebiōnaîoi, derived from the Hebrew wordאֶבְיוֹנִים, ʾEḇyōnīm, meaning 'the poor' or 'poor ones') were an adoptionistMosaic law-observantJewish-Christian movement that existed in and around Transjordan during the early centuries of the Common Era. They first appear in heresiographies from the latter half of the second century. Since original writings by Ebionites are scarce, fragmentary and contested, much of what is known or conjectured about them derives from the polemical reports by their proto-orthodox and later orthodox Christian opponents, the Church Fathers (Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, and Epiphanius of Salamis), who generally portrayed Ebionites as a heretical sect doctrinally distinct from other judaizing Jewish-Christian sects, such as the Nazarenes.

Most Church Fathers characterize Ebionites as holding a functional adoptionist Christology that rejects the belief that Jesus was a divine person (God the Son) at any stage of his earthly life, whether before (pre-existence), during (incarnation), or after it (exaltation), and instead presents him as a righteous human being who, through faithful observance of the Law of Moses, was adopted by God at his baptism to fulfill the role of prophet and Jewish Messiah. Condemning Paul as a false apostle and an apostate from the Law, Ebionites are said to have used a Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew, or one of the Jewish-Christian gospels, as their only additional scripture alongside the Hebrew Bible, and to have maintained faithful observance of the commandments of the Abrahamic and Mosaic covenants as binding on all followers of Jesus, with an emphasis on his authoritative teachings on the Law.

Some patristicheresiologists recognize variations in Christology among Ebionites: a majority did not believe Jesus was born of a virgin, affirming he was the natural son of Joseph and Mary, while a minority believed in the virgin birth, with both groups rejecting belief in the divinity of Jesus. Some scholars have suggested that the reported disagreement over the virgin birth reflects a patristic conflation of the Ebionites with the closely related Jewish-Christian Nazarenes, who accepted the virgin birth, and that the Ebionites themselves may have uniformly rejected it. Epiphanius is the only Church Father who claims Ebionites held a separationist "angelicpossession" Christology, opposed animal sacrifice and embraced vegetarianism. Some modern commentators regard many of Epiphanius’ additional details as unreliable, so the theological diversity among Ebionites he describes cannot be taken at face value.

Criticalscholars judge that the Church Fathers' condemnation of Ebionites as "heretics" reflects the inherently polemical perspective of Christian heresiographies. However, scholars debate whether or not core Ebionite beliefs rooted in late Second Temple Judaism, especially their emphasis on covenant faithfulness and their expectation of a fully human Messiah in the mold of a "prophet like Moses", preserve, whether through direct inheritance or later reconstruction, traditions resembling those of the early Jerusalem church under the leadership of James the Just, the brother of Jesus, and possibly certain elements of the teachings of the historical Jesus himself.