Gospel of The Ebionites - Background

Background

Epiphanius is believed to have come into possession of a gospel that he attributed to the Ebionites when he was bishop of Salamis. He alone among the Church Fathers identifies Cyprus as one of the "roots" of the Ebionites. The Gospel survives only in brief quotations by Epiphanius in his heresiology Panarion Chapter 30. as a polemic against the Ebionites. His citations are often contradictory and thought to be based in part on his own conjecture. The various, sometimes conflicting, sources of information were combined to point out inconsistencies in Ebionite beliefs and practices relative to Nicene orthodoxy, possibly to serve, indirectly, as a polemic against the Arians of his time.

The term Gospel of the Ebionites is a scholarly convention in use at least as early as the French priest Richard Simon (1689), however, no surviving document of the Early Church mentions a gospel by that name. Epiphanius identifies the gospel only as "in the Gospel used by them, called 'according to Matthew'" and "they call it 'the Hebrew '". The name is used by modern scholars as a convenient way to distinguish a gospel text that was probably used by the Ebionites from Epiphanius' mistaken belief that it was a Hebrew version of the Gospel of Matthew. Nothing is known for certain about its place of origin. One speculation is that it was composed in the region East of the Jordan where the Ebionites were said to have been present, according to the accounts of the Church Fathers. It is thought to have been composed during the first half of the 2nd century, since several other gospel harmonies are known to be from this period.