Note 424 — Chapter VI
Neil Buchanan translation
Footnote 424:
(return)
Eusebius knows no more than Origen (H. E. III. 27), unless we specially credit him with the information that the Ebionites keep along with the Sabbath also the Sunday. What he says of Symmachus, the translator of the Bible, and an Ebionite, is derived from Origen (H. E. VI. 17). The report is interesting, because it declares that Symmachus wrote against Catholic Christianity, especially against the Catholic Gospel of Matthew (about the year 200). But Symmachus is to be classed with the Gnostics, and not with the common type of Jewish Christianity (see below). We have also to thank Eusebius (H. E. III. 5. 3) for the information that the Christians of Jerusalem fled to Pella, in Peræa, before the destruction of that city. In the following period the most important settlements of the Ebionites must have been in the countries east of the Jordan, and in the heart of Syria (see Jul. Afric. in Euseb. H. E. I. 7. 14; Euseb. de loc. hebr. in Lagarde, Onomast p. 301; Epiph., h. 29. 7; h. 30. 2). This fact explains how the bishops in Jerusalem and the coast towns of Palestine came to see very little of them. There was a Jewish Christian community in Beroea with which Jerome had relations (Jerom., de Vir inl 3).