Note 16 — Chapter VII · GOSPEL-MAKING

In reply to my argument16 that texts in which Jesus figures as a natural man would at most represent only Ebionitic views, Professor Schmiedel puts the perplexing challenge, concerning the Ebionites:—“Were they not also worshippers of Jesus as well? Were they really men of such wickedness that they sought to bring the true humanity of Jesus into acceptance by falsifying the Gospels? And if they were, was it in their power to effect this falsification with so great success?”17 I cannot think that Dr. Schmiedel, who is invariably candid, has thought out the positions here taken up. The point that the Ebionites were “worshippers” of Jesus is surely fatal to his own thesis. “Worshippers” could in their case go on worshipping while maintaining that the worshipped one was a mortal. Then to assert that he avowed himself a mortal was not inconsistent with “worship.” But the challenge obscures the issue; and it is still more obscured when the Professor goes on to ask: “Had they [the Ebionites] no predecessors in this view of his person? Must we not suppose that precisely the earliest Christians, the actual companions of Jesus—supposing Him really to have lived—were their predecessors?” This argument, the Professor must see, has small bearing on my position.