WHAT
THE CHURCH FATHERS WROTE ABOUT THE EBIONITES
The
so called “Church Fathers” were Christian
writers that lived in the first centuries of the Christian Era.
These
are passages of the books of the Church Fathers which are about the Ebionites:
1)
Ignatius (A.D. 67-110), Epistle to the Philadelphians, chapter VI.
“If
anyone says there is one God, and also confesses Christ Jesus, but thinks the
Lord to be a mere man, and not the only-begotten God, and Wisdom, and the Word
of God, and deems Him to consist merely of a soul and body, such an one is a
serpent, that preaches deceit and error for the destruction of men. And such a
man is poor in understanding, even as by name he is an Ebionite.”
2) Irenaeus (A.D. 130-200), Against Heresies
1:26:1-2.
“1.
Cerinthus, again, a man who was educated in the
wisdom of the Egyptians, taught that the world was not made by the primary God,
but by a certain Power far separated from him, and at a distance from that
Principality who is supreme over the universe, and ignorant of him who is above
all. He represented Jesus as having not been born of a virgin, but as being the
son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation,
while he nevertheless was more righteous, prudent, and wise than other men.
Moreover, after his baptism, Christ descended upon him in the form of a dove
from the Supreme Ruler, and that then he proclaimed the unknown Father, and
performed miracles. But at last Christ departed from Jesus, and that then Jesus
suffered and rose again, while Christ remained impassible, inasmuch as he was a
spiritual being.
2.
Those who are called Ebionites agree that the world was made by God; but their
opinions with respect to the Lord are similar to those of Cerinthus
and Carpocrates. They use the Gospel according to
Matthew only, and repudiate the Apostle Paul, maintaining that he was an
apostate from the law. As to the prophetical writings, they endeavour
to expound them in a somewhat singular manner: they practise
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.”
3)
Irenaeus (A.D. 130-200), Against Heresies 3:11:7.
“7.
Such, then, are the first principles of the Gospel: that there is one God, the
Maker of this universe; He who was also announced by the prophets, and who by
Moses set forth the dispensation of the law,-[principles] which proclaim the
Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, and ignore any other God or Father except Him. So firm is the ground upon which these Gospels
rest, that the very heretics themselves bear witness to them, and, starting
from these [documents], each one of them endeavours
to establish his own peculiar doctrine. For the Ebionites, who use Matthew's
Gospel only, are confuted out of this very same, making false suppositions with
regard to the Lord. But Marcion, mutilating that
according to Luke, is proved to be a blasphemer of the only existing God, from
those [passages] which he still retains. Those, again, who separate Jesus from
Christ, alleging that Christ remained impassible, but that it was Jesus who
suffered, preferring the Gospel by Mark, if they read it with a love of truth,
may have their errors rectified. Those, moreover, who follow Valentinus, making copious use of that according to John,
to illustrate their conjunctions, shall be proved to be totally in error by
means of this very Gospel, as I have shown in the first book. Since, then, our
opponents do bear testimony to us, and make use of these [documents], our proof
derived from them is firm and true.”
4)
Irenaeus (A.D. 130-200), Against Heresies 3:21:1.
“Chapter
XXI. - A
Vindication of the Prophecy in Isaiah (VII. 14) Against the Misinterpretations
of Theodotion, Aquila, the Ebionites, and the Jews. Authority of the Septuagint Version. Arguments
in Proof that Christ Was Born of a Virgin.
1.
God, then, was made man, and the Lord did Himself saved us, giving us the token
of the Virgin. But not as some allege, among those now presuming to expound the
Scripture, [thus: ] "Behold, a young woman shall
conceive, and bring forth a son," as Theodotion
the Ephesian has interpreted, and Aquila of Pontus,
both Jewish proselytes. The Ebionites, following these, assert that He was
begotten by Joseph.”
5)
Irenaeus (A.D. 130-200), Against Heresies 4:33:4.
“4.
He will judge also the Ebionites; [for] how can they be saved unless it was God
who wrought out their salvation upon earth? Or how shall man pass into God,
unless God has [first] passed into man? And how shall he (man) escape from the
generation subject to death, if not by means of a new generation, given in a
wonderful and unexpected manner (but as a sign of salvation) by God -
[I mean] that
regeneration which flows from the virgin through faith? Or how shall they
receive adoption from God if they remain in this [kind of] generation, which is
naturally possessed by man in this world? And how could He (Christ) have been
greater than Solomon, or greater than Jonah, or have been the Lord of David,
who was of the same substance as they were? How, too, could He have subdued him
who was stronger than men, who had not only overcome man, but also retained him
under his power, and conquered him who had conquered, while he set free mankind
who had been conquered, unless He had been greater than man who had thus been
vanquished? But who else is superior to, and more eminent than, that man who
was formed after the likeness of God, except the Son of God, after whose image
man was created? And for this reason He did in these last days exhibit the
similitude; [for] the Son of God was made man, assuming the ancient production
[of His hands] into His own nature, as I have shown in the immediately
preceding book.”
6)
Irenaeus (A.D. 130-200), Against Heresies 5:1:3.
“3.
Vain also are the Ebionites, who do not receive by faith into their soul the
union of God and man, but who remain in the old leaven of [the natural] birth,
and who do not choose to understand that the Holy Ghost came upon Mary, and the
power of the Most High did overshadow her: wherefore also what was generated is
a holy thing, and the Son of the Most High God the Father of all, who effected
the incarnation of this being, and showed forth a new [kind of] generation;
that as by the former generation we inherited death, so by this new generation
we might inherit life. Therefore do these men reject the commixture of the
heavenly wine, and wish it to be water of the world only, not receiving God so
as to have union with Him, but they remain in that Adam who had been conquered
and was expelled from Paradise: not considering that as, at the beginning of
our formation in Adam, that breath of life which proceeded from God, having
been united to what had been fashioned, animated the man, and manifested him as
a being endowed with reason; so also, in [the times of] the end, the Word of
the Father and the Spirit of God, having become united with the ancient
substance of Adam's formation, rendered man living and perfect, receptive of
the perfect Father, in order that as in the natural [Adam] we all were dead, so
in the spiritual we may all be made alive. For never at any time did Adam
escape the hands of God, to whom the Father speaking, said, "Let Us make
man in Our image, after Our likeness." And for
this reason in the last times, not by the will of the flesh, nor by the will of
man, but by the good pleasure of the Father, His hands formed a living man, in
order that Adam might be created [again] after the image and likeness of God.”
7)
Tertullian (A.D. 160-220), Appendix, Against All Heresies, chapter III.
“Chapter
III. - Carpocrates, Cerinthus,
Ebion.
Carpocrates, furthermore, introduced the following
sect. He affirms that there is one Virtue, the chief among the upper (regions):
that out of this were produced angels and Virtues, which, being far distant
from the upper Virtues, created this world in the lower regions: that Christ
was not born of the Virgin Mary, but was generated a mere human being-of the
seed of Joseph, superior (they admit) above all others in the practice of
righteousness and in integrity of life; that He suffered among the Jews; and
that His soul alone was received in heaven as having been more firm and hardy
than all others: whence he would infer, retaining only the salvation of souls,
that there are no resurrections of the body.
After
him broke out the heretic Cerinthus, teaching
similarly. For he, too, says that the world was originated by those angels; and
sets forth Christ as born of the seed of Joseph, contending that He was merely
human, without divinity; affirming also that the Law was given by angels;
representing the God of the Jews as not the Lord, but an angel.
His
successor was Ebion, not agreeing with Cerinthus in every point; in that he affirms the world to
have been made by God, not by angels; and because it is written, "No
disciple is above his master, nor servant above his lord", sets forth likewise the law as binding,
of course for the purpose of excluding the gospel and vindicating Judaism.”
8)
Tertullian (A.D. 160-220), On the Flesh of the Lord, chapter 14.
“This
opinion will be very suitable for Ebion, who holds
Jesus to be a mere man, and nothing more than a descendant of David, and not
also the Son of God.”
9)
Hippolytus (dead in A.D. 235), Refutation of All the
Heresies 7:22.
“Chapter
XXII. - Doctrine of the Ebionaeans.
The
Ebionaeans, however, acknowledge that the world was
made by Him Who is in reality God, but they propound
legends concerning the Christ similarly with Cerinthus
and Carpocrates. They live conformably to the customs
of the Jews, alleging that they are justified according to the law, and saying
that Jesus was justified by fulfilling the law. And therefore it was (according
to the Ebionaeans) that (the Saviour)
was named (the) Christ of God and Jesus, since not one of the rest (of mankind)
had observed completely the law. For if even any other had
fulfilled the commandments (contained) in the law, he would have been that
Christ. And the (Ebionaeans allege) that they
themselves also, when in like manner they fulfill (the law), are able to become
Christs; for they assert that our Lord Himself was a
man in a like sense with all (the rest of the human family).”
10)
Hippolytus (dead in A.D. 235), Refutation of All the Heresies
10:18.
“Chapter XVIII.—The
Ebionæans.
But the Ebionæans
assert that the world is made by the true God, and they speak of Christ in a
similar manner with Cerinthus. They live, however, in
all respects according to the law of Moses, alleging that they are thus
justified.”
11)
Origen (A.D. 185-254), Philocalia, 1:24.
“24.
If we are impressed by what has been said about Israel and the tribes and the
hundreds, when the Savior tells us that He was not sent save unto the lost
sheep of the house of Israel, we do not take the words in the same sense as the
Ebionites with their poverty of understanding (their poverty of intellect gives
them their name, for "Ebion" is the Hebrew
for "poor"), and suppose that Christ came chiefly to Israel after the
flesh; for "it is not the children of the flesh that are children of
God." Again, the Apostle gives similar teaching concerning Jerusalem when
he tells us that "the Jerusalem which is above is free, which is our
mother." And in another epistle he says, "But ye are come unto Mount
Zion, and unto the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to
innumerable hosts of angels, to the general assembly and church of the
first-born who are enrolled in heaven." If, then, Israel is a race of
souls, and there is a city, Jerusalem in heaven, it follows that the cities of
Israel, and, consequently, all Judea, have for their metropolis the heavenly
Jerusalem. Accordingly, whatever is foretold or said respecting Jerusalem, if
we listen to God as God, and hear Him speaking from the depths of His wisdom,
we must understand that the Scriptures refer to the heavenly city, and the
whole country containing the cities of the holy land. It may be that these are
the cities to which the Saviour leads us up when He
gives the command of ten or five cities to those who satisfactorily dealt with
the pounds.”
12)
Origen (A.D. 185-254), Commentary on Matthew 11:12.
“And
He called to Him the multitude and said unto them, Hear
and understand", etc. We are clearly taught in these words by the Saviour
that, when we read in Leviticus and Deuteronomy the precepts about meat clean
and unclean, for the transgression of which we are accused by the material Jews
and by the Ebionites who differ little from them, we are not to think that the
scope of the Scripture is found in any superficial understanding of them.”
13)
Origen (A.D. 185-254), Against Celsus 2:1.
“Here
he has not observed that the Jewish converts have not deserted the law of their
fathers, inasmuch as they live according to its prescriptions, receiving their
very name from the poverty of the law, according to the literal acceptation of
the word; for Ebion signifies "poor" among
the Jews, and those Jews who have received Jesus as Christ are called by the
name of Ebionites.”
14)
Origen (A.D. 185-254), Contra Celsus 5:61.
“Let
it be admitted, moreover, that there are some who accept Jesus, and who boast
on that account of being Christians, and yet would regulate their lives, like the
Jewish multitude, in accordance with the Jewish law - and these are the twofold
sect of Ebionites, who either acknowledge with us that Jesus was born of a
virgin, or deny this, and maintain that He was begotten like other human beings
- what does that avail by way of charge against such as belong to the Church,
and whom Celsus has styled those of the multitude?”
15)
Origen (A.D. 185-254), Against Celsus 5:65.
“For
there are certain heretical sects which do not receive
the Epistles of the Apostle Paul, as the two sects of Ebionites, and those who
are termed Encratites. Those, then, who do not regard
the apostle as a holy and wise man, will not adopt his language, and say,
"The world is crucified to me, and I unto the world."
16)
Eusebius of Caesarea (A.D. 264-340), Ecclesiastical History 3:27.
“Chapter
XXVII. The Heresy of the Ebionites.
1
The evil demon, however, being unable to tear certain others from their
allegiance to the Christ of God, yet found them susceptible in a different
direction, and so brought them over to his own purposes. The ancients quite
properly called these men Ebionites, because they held poor and mean opinions
concerning Christ.
2
For they considered him a plain and common man, who was justified only because
of his superior virtue, and who was the fruit of the intercourse of a man with
Mary. In their opinion the observance of the ceremonial law was altogether
necessary, on the ground that they could not be saved by faith in Christ alone
and by a corresponding life.
3
There were others, however, besides them, that were of
the same name, but avoided the strange and absurd beliefs of the former, and
did not deny that the Lord was born of a virgin and of the Holy Spirit. But
nevertheless, inasmuch as they also refused to acknowledge that he pre-existed,
being God, Word, and Wisdom, they turned aside into the impiety of the former,
especially when they, like them, endeavored to observe strictly the bodily
worship of the law.
4
These men, moreover, thought that it was necessary to reject all the epistles
of the apostle, whom they called an apostate from the law; and they used only
the so-called Gospel according to the Hebrews and made small account of the
rest.
5
The Sabbath and the rest of the discipline of the Jews they observed just like
them, but at the same time, like us, they celebrated the Lord's days as a
memorial of the resurrection of the Saviour.
6
Wherefore, in consequence of such a course they received the name of Ebionites,
which signified the poverty of their understanding. For this is the name by
which a poor man is called among the Hebrews.“
17)
Eusebius of Caesarea (A.D. 264-340), Ecclesiastical History 6:17.
“CHAPTER
XVII — The Translator Symmachus.
As
to these translators, it should be stated that Symmachus
was an Ebionite. But the heresy of the Ebionites, as it is called, asserts that
Christ was the son of Joseph and Mary, considering him a mere man, and insists
strongly on keeping the law in a Jewish manner, as we have seen already in this
history. Commentaries of Symmachus are still extant
in which he appears to support this heresy by attacking the Gospel of Matthew.
Origen states that he obtained these and other commentaries of Symmachus on the Scriptures from a certain Juliana, who, he
says, received the books by inheritance from Symmachus
himself.”
18)
Jerome (A.D. 340-420), Letter to Augustine 4:13.
“13. The matter in
debate, therefore, or I should rather say your opinion regarding it, is summed
up in this: that since the preaching of
the gospel of Christ, the believing Jews do well in observing the precepts of
the law, i.e. in offering sacrifices as Paul did, in circumcising their
children, as Paul did in the case of Timothy, and keeping the Jewish Sabbath,
as all the Jews have been accustomed to do.
If this be true, we fall into the heresy of Cerinthus
and Ebion, who, though believing in Christ, were
anathematized by the fathers for this one error, that
they mixed up the ceremonies of the law with the gospel of Christ, and
professed their faith in that which was new, without letting go what was old.
Why do I speak of the Ebionites, who make pretensions to the name of Christian?
In our own day there exists a sect among the Jews throughout all the synagogues
of the East, which is called the sect of the Minei,
and is even now condemned by the Pharisees.
The adherents to this sect are known commonly as Nazarenes; they believe
in Christ the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary; and they say that He who
suffered under Pontius Pilate and rose again, is the same as the one in whom we
believe. But while they desire to be
both Jews and Christians, they are neither the one nor the other. I therefore beseech you, who think that you
are called upon to heal my slight wound, which is no more, so to speak, than a
prick or scratch from a needle, to devote your skill in the healing art to this
grievous wound, which has been opened by a spear driven home with the impetus
of a javelin. For there is surely no
proportion between the culpability of him who exhibits the various opinions
held by the fathers in a commentary on Scripture, and the guilt of him who
reintroduces within the Church a most pestilential heresy. If, however, there is for us no alternative
but to receive the Jews into the Church, along with the usages prescribed by
their law; if, in short, it shall be declared lawful for them to continue in
the Churches of Christ what they have been accustomed to practise
in the synagogues of Satan, I will tell you my opinion of the matter: they will not become Christians, but they
will make us Jews.”
19)
Jerome (A.D. 340-420), Letter to Augustine, 4:16.
“16. We have learned
from you what evil things peculiar to the Jews Paul had abandoned; let us now
learn from your teaching what good things which were Jewish he retained. You will reply: “The ceremonial observances in which they
continued to follow the practice of their fathers, in the way in which these
were complied with by Paul himself, without believing them to be at all
necessary to salvation.” I do not fully
understand what you mean by the words, “without believing them to be at all
necessary to salvation.” For if they do
not contribute to salvation, why are they observed? And if they must be observed, they by all
means contribute to salvation; especially seeing that, because of observing
them, some have been made martyrs: for
they would not be observed unless they contributed to salvation. For they are not things
indifferent—neither good nor bad, as philosophers say. Self-control is good, self-indulgence is
bad: between these, and indifferent, as
having no moral quality, are such things as walking, blowing one’s nose,
expectorating phlegm, etc. Such an
action is neither good nor bad; for whether you do it or leave it undone, it
does not affect your standing as righteous or unrighteous. But the observance of legal ceremonies is not
a thing indifferent; it is either good or bad.
You say it is good. I affirm it
to be bad, and bad not only when done by Gentile converts, but also when done
by Jews who have believed. In this
passage you fall, if I am not mistaken, into one error while avoiding
another. For while you guard yourself
against the blasphemies of Porphyry, you become entangled in the snares of Ebion, pronouncing that the law is binding on those who
from among the Jews have believed.
Perceiving, again, that what you have said is a dangerous doctrine, you
attempt to qualify it by words which are only superfluous: viz., “The law must be observed not from any
belief, such as prompted the Jews to keep it, that this is necessary to
salvation, and not in any misleading dissimulation such as Paul reproved in
Peter.”
20)
Augustin (A.D. 354-430), Letter to Jerome, 3:16.
“16. Shall I also sum up
“the matter in debate, or rather your opinion concerning it” (to quote your own expression)? It seems to me to be this: that after the gospel of Christ has been
published, the Jews who believe do rightly if they offer sacrifices as Paul
did, if they circumcise their children as Paul circumcised Timothy, and if they
observe the “seventh day of the week, as the Jews have always done, provided
only that they do all this as dissemblers and deceivers.” If this is your doctrine, we are now
precipitated, not into the heresy of Ebion, or of
those who are commonly called Nazarenes, or any other known heresy, but into
some new error, which is all the more pernicious because it originates not in
mistake, but in deliberate and designed endeavour to
deceive.”
Through
these passages of the books of the Church Fathers, we know what were the
beliefs of the Ebionites, and so we can see that the Ebionites were the true followers of Jesus Christ (Yeshua hamashiach), and that it is necessary to obey all the
commandments of the Law of God, and that the true Bible is the Bible of the Ebionites,
which is composed only by the books of the Old Testament (Tanach), and that the
true history of Jesus Christ
is in the
gospel that was used by the Ebionites,
which was written in Hebrew, and does not contain all the passages that are in
the Gospel according to Matthew in Greek that is used by the Christians.
See
also this page:
http://www.servosdejave.org.br/orthodox_ebionites_and_heterodox_ebionites.htm
.
Yahveh bless you.
João Paulo Fernandes Pontes.
Published
in June 26, 2005.
Updated
in December 16, 2011.
EN FRANÇAIS EN ESPAÑOL EM PORTUGUÊS בעיברית