Note (return) — Chapter VI

The fact that, even then, there were Jewish Christians here and there who sought to spread the εννομος πολιτεια among Gentile Christians, has been attested by Justin and also by other contemporary writers.419 But there is no evidence of this propaganda having acquired any great importance. Celsus also knows Christians who desire to live as Jews according to the Mosaic law (V. 61), but he mentions them only once, and otherwise takes no notice of them in his delineation of, and attack on, Christianity. We may perhaps infer that he knew of them only from hearsay, for he simply enumerates them along with the numerous Gnostic sects. Had this keen observer really known them he would hardly have passed them over, even though he had met with only a small number of them.420 Irenæus placed the Ebionites among the heretical schools,421 but we can see from his work that in his day they must have been all but forgotten in the West.422 This was not yet the case in the East. Origen knows of them. He knows also of some who recognise the birth from the Virgin. He is sufficiently intelligent and acquainted with history to judge that the Ebionites are no school, but as believing Jews are the descendants of the earliest Christians, in fact he seems to suppose that all converted Jews have at all times observed the law of their fathers. But he is far from judging of them favourably. He regards them as little better than the Jews (Ιουδαιοι και 'οι ολιγω διαφεροντες αυτων Εβιωναιοι, "Jews and Ebionites who differ little from them"). Their rejection of Paul destroys the value of their recognition of Jesus as Messiah. They appear only to have assumed Christ's name, and their literal exposition of the Scripture is meagre and full of error. It is possible that such Jewish Christians may have existed in Alexandria, but it is not certain. Origen knows nothing of an inner development in this Jewish Christianity.423 Even in Palestine, Origen seems to have occupied himself personally with these Jewish Christians, just as little as Eusebius.424 They lived apart by themselves and were not aggressive. Jerome is the last who gives us a clear and certain account of them.425 He, who associated with them, assures us that their attitude was the same as in the second century, only they seem to have made progress in the recognition of the birth from the Virgin and in their more friendly position towards the Church.426 Jerome at one time calls them Ebionites and at another Nazarenes, thereby proving that these names were used synonymously.427 There is not the least ground for distinguishing two clearly marked groups of Jewish Christians, or even for reckoning the distinction of Origen and the Church Fathers to the account of Jewish Christians themselves, so as to describe as Nazarenes those who recognised the birth from the Virgin, and who had no wish to compel the Gentile Christians to observe the law, and the others as Ebionites. Apart from syncretistic or Gnostic Jewish Christianity, there is but one group of Jewish Christians holding various shades of opinion, and these from the beginning called themselves Nazarenes as well as Ebionites. From the beginning, likewise, one portion of them was influenced by the existence of a great Gentile Church which did not observe the law. They acknowledged the work of Paul and experienced in a slight degree influences emanating from the great Church.428 But the gulf which separated them from that Church did not thereby become narrower. That gulf was caused by the social and political separation of these Jewish Christians, whatever mental attitude, hostile or friendly, they might take up to the great Church. This Church stalked over hem with iron feet, as over a structure which in her opinion was full of contradictions throughout ("Semi-christiani"), and was disconcerted neither by the gospel of these Jewish Christians nor by anything else about them.429 But as the Synagogue also vigorously condemned them, their position up to their extinction was a most tragic one. These Jewish Christians, more than any other Christian party, bore the reproach of Christ.