Ebionites

Definition and Meaning

The Ebionites were a group of Christians of Jewish origin during the early church period. The name is generally thought to derive from the Hebrew ebyonim ("the poor"). Some church fathers, such as Tertullian, wrote that the group had a founder named "Ebion," but scholars today commonly regard this figure as an invention inferred from the name itself.

According to the accounts of the church fathers, the Ebionites had the following characteristics:

• They held that the Mosaic Law, including circumcision and the Sabbath, must continue to be observed.
• They regarded Paul as an apostate who had abandoned the Law, and they rejected his epistles.
• They used chiefly a gospel related to the Gospel of Matthew.
• They regarded Jesus as a man born of Joseph and Mary. They understood Jesus either to have been chosen by God because he kept the Law perfectly or to have become the Messiah when he received the Holy Spirit at his baptism.

Because they denied the divinity and preexistence of Jesus (his existence before the world began), the Ebionites are often cited as an early form of adoptionism, the view that Jesus was "adopted" as the Son of God.

Biblical and Historical Background

The controversy over observance of the Law recorded in the New Testament is commonly identified as the background to the emergence of the Ebionites. Leading examples include those who required circumcision even of Gentile believers, the Council of Jerusalem convened over this issue (Acts 15), and Paul's arguments in Galatians.

Irenaeus, writing in the late second century, is regarded as the first to refer clearly to the Ebionites, whom he discussed in Against Heresies. Later, Origen distinguished two branches of Ebionites: those who accepted the virgin birth and those who rejected it. In the fourth century, Epiphanius preserved quotations from portions of the gospel they used.

Almost none of the Ebionites' own writings survive, however. Consequently, knowledge of them depends largely on the accounts of the church fathers who opposed them. Some scholars regard the Ebionites as a group that continued the traditions of the early Jewish Christian church in Jerusalem, and others have suggested a connection with the Essenes. The Ebionites disappear from the historical record around the fifth century.

Practice in the Korean Church

In the Korean church, the Ebionites are treated in seminary courses on church history and systematic theology as a representative example of early Christological heresy. They are frequently presented as the opposite extreme of Docetism: whereas Docetism denied the humanity of Jesus, the Ebionites denied his divinity. The major denominations that accept the Christology of the Council of Nicaea and the Council of Chalcedon—including the Presbyterian, Methodist, Holiness, Baptist, Full Gospel, and Anglican churches—generally regard the Ebionite understanding of Jesus as a departure from orthodoxy, and on this point there is little difference among the denominations.

In sermons and lectures on heresies, the Ebionites are sometimes mentioned as a point of comparison when explaining modern claims that emphasize observance of the Law as a condition of salvation or that deny the divinity of Jesus.