Note 24 — Chapter VII · GOSPEL-MAKING

Now, neither Ebionism nor Nazaræanism offers any semblance of support for the biographical view. Some Ebionites denied the Virgin Birth; some, presumably the Nazaræans in particular, accepted it, the latter being described as accepting the canonical Matthew (or a Hebrew gospel nearly equivalent) with the present opening chapters, while the Ebionites had a Matthew without them. Of the two views, neither testified to any impression made by a “personality.” The Virgin Birth myth is a reversion to universal folk-lore by way of enlarging the supernaturalist claim: the Ebionite denial is either a rejection of all purely human claim for Jesus or only supernaturalism with a difference, inasmuch as it inferribly posits a divinization of the Founder either at the moment of his baptism or at his anointing. His “personality” is the one thing never heard of in the discussion, so far as we can trace it. In one account, “the” Ebionites are said to have alleged that Christ became so because he perfectly fulfilled the law, and that they individually might become Christs if they fulfilled it as perfectly.24 Ebionites and Nazaræans between them, on the biographical view, let slip all knowledge of the Sacred Places, of Golgotha, of the place of the Sepulchre.