Ebionites
Ideology | Defunct
100 CE to 450 CE
Ebionites, or Ebionaioi (Greek: derived from Hebrew ebyonim, ebionim, meaning "the poor" or "poor ones"), is a patristic term referring to a Jewish Christian sect or sects that existesduring the first centuries of the Christian Era.
They regarded Jesus as the Messiah and insiste on the necessity of following Jewish religious law and rites.
The Ebionites use only one of the Jewish Gospels, revere James the Just and reject Paul of Tarsus as an apostate from the Law.
Their name suggests that they place a special value on voluntary poverty.Since historical records by the Ebionites are scarce, fragmentary and disputed, much of what is known or conjectured about the Ebionites derives from the Church Fathers, who wrote polemics against the Ebionites, whom they deemed heretical Judaizers.
Consequently, very little about the Ebionite sect or sects is known with certainty, and most, if not all, statements about them are conjectural.Many scholars distinguish the Ebionites from other Jewish Christian groups, e.g., the Nazarenes; others consider them identical with the Nazarenes.
Related Events
Showing 1 events out of 1 total
Cerinthus, a Jewish-Christian teacher, establishes a gnostic sect in the Roman province of Asia that flourishes around 100.
All we know about Cerinthus comes from the writing of his theological opponents.
Contrary to proto-orthodox Christianity, Cerinthus's school follows the Jewish law, denying that the Supreme God had made the physical world, and denying the divinity of Jesus.
Teaching that the world was created either by a Demiurge (inferior deity) or by angels, he maintains that Jesus was merely human until his baptism, when he received a divine energy that had guided him in his ministry but left him at the crucifixion.
Like many early Christians, Cerinthus teaches that Jesus would establish a thousand-year reign of sensuous pleasure after the Second Coming but before the General Resurrection, a view that would be defined as heretical at the Council of Nicea in 325.
Cerinthus uses a version of the gospel of Matthew as scripture.
Teaching at a time when Christianity's relation to Judaism and to Greek philosophy has not yet been clearly defined, in his association with the Jewish law and his modest assessment of Jesus, he is similar to the Ebionites, a Jewish Christian sect that lives in and around Judea and Palestine, and to other Jewish Christians.
In defining the world's creator as the demiurge, he matches Greek philosophy and anticipates Alexandrine gnosticism.
His description of Christ as a bodiless spirit that dwelled temporarily in the man Jesus matches the Gnosticism of Valentius.