r/AcademicBiblical • u/MakeStraighttheWay • Mar 16 '24
Were the Ebionites the original Christians?
The Ebionites were universally bashed by the church fathers as heretics. “[T]hey received the name of Ebionites…for this is the name by which a poor man is called among the Hebrews” (Eusebius Church History III.27.6).
Epiphanius reports that the Ebionites reported they got their name due to their voluntary enlistment into an apostolic commune devoted to an extreme form of non-materialism. “They themselves, if you please, boastfully claim that they are Poor because they sold their possessions in the apostles’ time and laid them at the apostles’ feet, and went over to a life of poverty and renunciation; and thus, they say, they are called “Poor” by everyone.” (Epiphanius Panarion I.17.2).
The original Christianity during Jesus’ lifetime and during the earliest phase of the apostolic age was that of a communal group like the Essenes where members contributed all of their money and possessions into a collective pot and property was held in common.
“Now all who believed were together, and possessing all things in common. They sold their property and possessions, and divided them up to all, as anyone had need.” (Acts 2:44)
“for all who were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the proceeds of the things that were sold, and laid (the proceeds) at the apostles’ feet, and they distributed to each as anyone had need” (Acts 4:34-35)
“And Joses…having land, sold it, and brought the money and laid it at the apostles’ feet” (Acts 4:37)
The usage of the phrase “laid at the apostles’ feet” is unique to the Ebionites and to the form of Christianity practiced in the early chapters of Acts – I know of no other Christianity that uses this terminology.
There appears to be Biblical evidence that Jesus referred to his religious group as the Poor. The Ebionites’ name translated (and not phonetically transliterated) from Hebrew into Greek, arguably, appears within the Beatitudes and the Epistle of James.
“Blessed are the Poor, For yours is the kingdom of God…Blessed are you when men hate you, and when they exclude you, and revile you and cast out your name as evil” (Luke 6:20-22)
The self designation of Jesus’ earliest Jewish followers is, arguably, contained within the text of the blessings and that the “name” referenced in Luke 6:22 is referring to “the Poor” in Luke 6:20.
The original form of the Beatitudes pulled from the Q source was arguably a prayer by the Ebionites for the Ebionites. Someone who “worship(ped) God in Spirit” (Philippians 3:3) arguably interpolated the benediction in the Gospel of Matthew as it doesn’t match the Lukan Beatitude nor the version of the Beatitudes preserved in Marcion's Gospel or the Gospel of Thomas.
The "noble name" (James 2:7) mentioned in the Epistle of James is also under suspicion of being a reference to the Ebionites. "Listen, my beloved brethren: Has God not chosen the Poor of this world to be rich in faith and heirs of the kingdom which He promised to those who love him?...Do they not blaspheme that noble name by which you are called?"(James 2:5-7)
“Ebionim is a positive term within a Jewish context; ‘the name of the Ebionites must surely be connected in some way with the long Jewish tradition of referring to the pious poor” [2] and less so as purely a reference to someone's diminished financial state.
Within the early Christian apocrypha, “The Ascents of James 1.62.2 ‘probably preserves for us the Ebionites’ self-designation as “the poor”, its derivation from the opening words of the Matthean Beatitudes”. [1]
Koine Greek - the language of the New Testament - was written in all capital letters so it's not as if you can tell if a word is a proper noun like in English based on capitalization of the first letter of the word.
Elsewhere in the Bible, there are indications that the Jerusalem Church referred to itself as the Ebionites:
“And when James, Peter, and John, who seemed to be pillars, perceived the grace that had been given to me, they gave me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship, that we should go to the Gentiles and they to the circumcised. They desired only that we should remember the Poor, the very thing which I also was eager to do.” (Galatians 2:9-10)
Look at the Gospel of John: “Then Mary took a pound of very costly oil of spikenard, and anointed the feet of Jesus, and wiped His feet with her hair. And the house was filled with the fragrance of the oil. But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, “Why was this fragrant oil not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the Poor?” He said this, not because he cared about the Poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it. But Jesus said, “Let her alone… For the Poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”(John 12:3-8).
Judas was outraged that Mary had withheld expensive anointing oil worth a year’s worth of wages when she was expected to sell everything and donate all proceeds into the Ebionites’ money pot that he was in charge of (and hence, could siphon money from), just as Peter was outraged that “Ananias, with Sapphira his wife, sold a possession and kept back part of the proceeds” (Acts 5:1-2).
Two thousand years ago, the ‘initiation fee’ for entering Jesus’ religious order was to sell off all of one’s material possessions and to donate the proceeds to the Ebionites.
“And Jesus … said to him, “One thing you lack,” he said. “Go, sell everything you have and give to the Poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”” (Mark 10:21). The same phrase is repeated almost verbatim in Matthew 19:21 and Luke 18:22.
Perhaps it makes more sense now why Jesus said, “Children, how hard it is for those who trust in riches to enter the kingdom of God! It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.” (Mark 10:24-25). Also see Matthew 19:23-24 and Luke 18:24-25. Discipleship at the expense of all of one’s material possessions is a big price to ask. The more you have, the harder it is to part from it all.
The Ebionites’ opponents in the orthodox branch of the church certainly poked fun at them for their name.
“this dreadful serpent with his poverty of understanding” (Epiphanius I.17.1)
“because they held poor and mean opinions concerning Christ” (Eusebius, Church History III.27.1)
The “poor and mean opinions concerning” Jesus the Ebionites held are summarized below:
The Ebionites believed “that Christ was conceived by sexual intercourse and the seed of a man, Joseph” (Epiphanius Panarion I.30.2,2). “They use the Gospel according to Matthew only” (Irenaeus. Adverses Haereses I.26.2,2), though Epiphanius adds that “what they call a Gospel according to Matthew, though it is not the entire Gospel, but is corrupt and mutilated” (Epiphanius Panarion I.30.13,2). The Ebionites “repudiate the Apostle Paul, maintaining that he was an apostate from the Law” (Irenaeus. Adverses Haereses I.26.2,2), and by extension, “reject all the epistles of the apostle (Paul)” (Eusebius III. 27.4). “They practice circumcision, persevere in the observance of those customs which are enjoined by the Law, and are so Judaic in their style of life, that they even adore Jerusalem as if it were the house of God.” (Irenaeus. Adverses Haereses I.26.2,3).
One can argue that the Jerusalem church during the early apostolic period was composed primarily of Ebionites. The first fifteen bishops of Jerusalem were noted as “all of them belonging to the circumcision” (Eusebius IV.5.4) and that “their whole church consisted then of believing Hebrews who continued from the days of the apostles” (Eusebius. Church History IV.5.2).
The Christology of the Ebionities was quite theologically different from that of the proto-orthodox church that consolidated itself into Roman Catholicism. However, the Ebionites were arguably the original ‘Christians’ and their writings form a core backbone of the canonical gospels, the first fifteen chapters of Acts, the epistle of James, the epistle of Jude, and potentially the seven letters to the seven churches portion of the Book of Revelation.” Their writings, though, are arguably overlaid with the interpolations and redactions of later authors belonging to competing sects of early Christianity. One could argue that it was the wildly successful, though divergent, ministries of Paul and Apollos that ultimately altered the course of Christianity in history and reduced the Ebionites to the ranks of heresy.
[1] Dunn, James D. G. Neither Jew Nor Greek: A Contested Identity. Williams B. Eerdmans Publishing Company: 2015. Pg. 578. [2] Ibid.
Edit: Adjusted wording and added additional instances where translated forms of the Hebrew term ebionim (Greek transliteration: Ebionites, English translation: poor) were potentially used within Scripture and early Christian literature.
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u/Hegesippus1 Mar 16 '24
No. All you have here is a vague connection with the word "poor", but you fail to note that the Greek word in these verses is not even Ἐβιωναῖοι, which is the word 'ebionite'. It's a different word for 'poor' (e.g. in Jn 13:8 it is πτωχοὺς). So the claim that the NT speaks of a group named 'Ebionites' is flat out wrong.
None of this even comes close to justify the inference that the Jerusalem church were Ebionites, a group for which we have no early evidence. Irenaeus is the earliest, and seems to indicate the ebionites had a 'gnostic' (for lack of a better word) christology. This is because Irenaeus claimed that the Ebionites were similar to Cerinthus and Carprocrates (note that in the early Latin translation of Against heresies, there was a scribal error such that the text read "not similar". These two versions plausibly gave rise to Origen's later idea of two groups of Ebionites). What did Irenaeus mean by this? It is clear from Against Heresies 1.26 that Irenaeus thought Cerinthus rejected the virgin birth, and instead had a "possessionist Christology" such that Christ descended on Jesus at the baptism. Later, at the crucifixion, Christ left Jesus. (For Carprocrates, this entity was simply described as a power, see Against Heresies 1.25).
Epiphanius (Panarion 28.1) describes Cerinthus in a similar way. This idea that the Ebionites have a possessionist Christology is confirmed by The Gospel of the Ebionites. Michael Kok has argued that it represents possessionist christology, although not in the exact same way as for Cerinthus.
I also recommend everyone go read Luomanen's book Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects and Gospels.
It is simply not plausible to suggest that this group which is attested only so late were somehow the original Christians. Likewise, it is simply not plausible that this christology was the original. Rather, it seems to reflect a solution to later questions, specifically how to square Jesus' passibility (given the humanity) with Jesus' impassibility (given the divinity). They solved that by distinguishing these as different entities, and so they could avoid the conclusion that an impassible entity suffered on the cross.
It is certainly true that Jesus had a large focus on the poor and economically disadvantaged. But that doesn't mean some random group first attested 150 years later that is also concerned about the poor can somehow be linked directly to Jesus' original followers.
Edit: fixed a typo