Gospel of The Ebionites - Inferences About The Ebionites

Inferences About The Ebionites

The Ebionites known to Irenaeus (first mentioned in Adversus Haereses 1.26.2, written around 185) and other Church Fathers prior to Epiphanius were described as a Jewish sect that regarded Jesus as the Messiah but not as divine. They insisted on the necessity of following Jewish law and rites and they used only the Jewish-Christian Gospel. The Ebionites rejected the epistles of Paul of Tarsus, who they regarded as an apostate from the Law.

In Epiphanius' polemic against the Ebionites found in Panarion 30, a complex picture emerges of the beliefs and practices of the 4th century Ebionites that cannot easily be separated from his method of combining together disparate sources. While scholars such as H.J. Schoeps literally interpreted Epiphanius' account as describing a later syncretistic development of Ebionism, more recent scholarship has found it difficult to reconcile his report with those of the earlier Church Fathers, leading to a conjecture that a second group of Hellenistic-Samaritan Ebionites may also have been present. The rejection of the Jewish sacrifices and the implication of an end-time prophet Christology due to the lack of a birth narrative lend support for the association of the Gospel of the Ebionites with a group or groups of Ebionites different than the Ebionites known to Irenaeus.