Note 20 — Chapter VII · GOSPEL-MAKING

From the biographical standpoint, the Ebionites and their counterparts the Nazaræans are indeed enigmatic. It is important to have a clear view of what is known as to both sects.20 Origen, noting that the Hebrew name of the former means “the poor,” angrily implies that it was given to them as describing their poverty of mind,21 but leaves open the rational inference that the name originally described their chosen social status, which connected with a belief in the speedy end of the world. In his book Against Celsus,22 he tells that they include believers in the Virgin Birth and deniers of it. Here arises the surmise that the former were the socii Ebionitarum mentioned by Jerome, who diverged from Judaic views, and may have been of the general cast of the Nazaræans.23 These bodies constituted the mass of the Christians in Judæa in the second century. According to the ecclesiastical tradition, the church of Jerusalem had withdrawn during the siege to Pella and the neighbouring region beyond the Jordan. In the reign of Hadrian, after the revolt and destruction of the Messiah Bar-Cochab, who had attempted to rebuild the temple, the new Roman city of Ælia Capitolina was built on the ruins of Jerusalem; and in that no Jews were permitted to dwell. Only those Christians who renounced Judaic usages, then, could enter; and a number of such Christians, Jew and Gentile, did so. Others, probably including both Ebionites and Nazaræans, remained at Pella, and these appear to have furnished the types of heresy discussed by Irenæus, Origen, Jerome, and Epiphanius under the head of Ebionism. Those who set up in Jerusalem were in the way of substituting for “voluntary poverty” a propaganda and organization which meant comfort. Those who stayed behind would represent the primitive type.