The Gospel of the Ebionites

The Ebionites were a group of Jewish Christians located in different regions of the Mediterranean from at least the second to the fourth centuries.1 What distinguished this group of Christians from many others was their attempt to combine Jewish views and lifestyles with the belief that Jesus was the messiah. In particular, they were said to have emphasized belief in only one God to such an extent that they denied, as a consequence, Jesus’ own divinity. At the same time, the Ebionites differed from non-Christian Jews in asserting that Jesus was the sacriﬁce for the sins of the world and that all other sacriﬁces had therefore become meaningless. Among other things, this belief led them to embrace a vegetarian diet, since most meat was procured, in the ancient world, through the religious act of sacriﬁcing an animal. One of the sacred books these Jewish Christians appealed to in support of their views was known in antiquity as the Gospel of the Ebionites. Regrettably, the book as whole has been lost; but we are fortunate to have some quotations of it in the writings of an opponent of the Ebionites, the fourth-century heresy-hunter, Epiphanius of Salamis. These quotations give us a good idea of what the entire Gospel must have looked like. It was written in Greek, and represented a kind of harmony of the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke. This can be seen most clearly in the account of the voice at Jesus’ baptism. In the three canonical accounts, the voice says slightly different things. These differences are harmonized, however, in the Gospel according to the Ebionites, where the voice comes from heaven three times, saying something slightly different on each occasion, corresponding to the words found in each of the three earlier Gospels. Some of the Ebionites’ distinctive concerns are embodied in their

See Ehrman, Lost Christianities, chap. 6.

Translation by Bart D. Ehrman based on the Greek text found in Egbert Schlarb and Dieter Lührmann, Fragmente apocryph gewordener Evangelien in griechischer und lateinischer Sprache (Marburg: N. G. Elwert, 2000) 35–39.

THE GOSPEL OF THE EBIONITES

Gospel. This is shown, for example, in the reference to the diet of John the Baptist, in which the canonical statement that he ate locusts (i.e., meat) and wild honey was modiﬁed by the change of simply one letter, so that now the Baptist, in anticipation of the Ebionites themselves, maintains a vegetarian cuisine: here he is said to have eaten pancakes and wild honey. It is difﬁcult to assign a date to this Gospel, but since it betrays a knowledge of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and presupposes a thriving community of Jewish Christians, it is perhaps best to locate it sometime early in the second century. The following extracts are all that remain of the Gospel, drawn from Epiphanius’s work, the Panarion (⫽The Medicine Chest), Book 30.

The beginning of the Gospel they use reads as follows: “And so in the days of Herod, King of Judea, John came baptizing a baptism of repentance in the Jordan River. He was said to have come from the tribe of Aaron, the priest, and was the child of Zacharias and Elizabeth. And everyone went out to him.” (Epiphanius, Panarion, 30, 13, 6)

For by chopping off the genealogies of Matthew they make their Gospel begin as we indicated before, with the words: “And so in the days of Herod, King of Judea, when Caiaphas was high priest, a certain one named John came baptizing a baptism of repentance in the Jordan River.” (Epiphanius, Panarion, 30, 14, 3)

And so John was baptizing, and Pharisees came to him and were baptized, as was all of Jerusalem. John wore a garment of camel hair and a leather belt around his waist; and his food was wild honey that tasted like manna, like a cake cooked in oil. (Epiphanius, Panarion, 30, 13, 4–5)

And after a good deal more, it says: “When the people were baptized, Jesus also came and was baptized by

John. When he came up out of the water, the heavens opened and he saw the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, descending and entering him. And a voice came from heaven, ‘You are my beloved Son, in you I am well pleased.’ Then it said, ‘Today I have given you birth.’ Immediately a great light enlightened the place. When John saw this,” it says, “he said to him, ‘Who are you Lord?’ Yet again a voice came from heaven to him, ‘This is my beloved Son, with whom I am well pleased.’ And then,” it says, “John fell before him and said, ‘I beg you, Lord— you baptize me!’ But Jesus restrained him by saying, ‘Let it be, for it is ﬁtting that all things be fulﬁlled in this way.’ ” (Epiphanius, Panarion, 30, 13, 3–4)

In the Gospel that they call “according to Matthew”—which is not at all complete, but is falsiﬁed and mutilated—which they refer to as the Hebrew Gospel, the following is found: “And so there was a certain man named Jesus, who was about thirty years old. He is the one who chose us. When he came to Capernaum he entered the house of Simon, also called Peter, and he opened his mouth to say, ‘As I was passing by the lake of Tiberias I chose John and James, the sons of Zebedee, and Simon,

NON-CANONICAL GOSPELS

Andrew, Thaddaeus, Simon the Zealot, and Judas Iscariot; and I called you, Matthew, while you were sitting at the tax collector’s booth, and you followed me. I want you, therefore, to be the twelve apostles as a witness to Israel.” (Epiphanius, Panarion, 30, 13, 2–3)

Again they deny that he was a man, even basing their view on the word the Savior spoke when it was reported to him, “See, your mother and brothers are standing outside.” “Who,” he asked, “is my mother and brothers?” Stretching out his hand to his disciples he said, “These are my brothers and mother and sisters— those who do the will of my Father.” (Epiphanius, Panarion, 30, 14, 5)

They do not allege that he was born from God the Father, but that he

was created as one of the archangels, yet was made greater than they, since he rules over the angels and all things made by the Almighty. And, as found in their Gospel, they say that when he came he taught, “I have come to destroy the sacriﬁces. And if you do not stop making sacriﬁce, God’s wrath will not stop afﬂicting you.” (Epiphanius, Panarion, 30, 16, 4–5)

They have changed the saying and abandoned its true sequence, as is clear to everyone who considers the combination of the words. For they have the disciples say, “Where do you want us to make preparations for you to eat the Passover lamb?” And they indicate that he responded, “I have no desire to eat the meat of this Passover lamb with you.” (Epiphanius, Panarion, 30, 22, 4)