jewish-christian gospels recovered Irenaeus was the first church father who provided specific informa-
tion about the Ebionites but according to him, the Ebionites only used
the Gospel of Matthew. Irenaeus was the defender of the canon of four
gospels and he argued that heretics erred precisely for the reason that they
used either more or less than the four gospels.^82 Eusebius’ description of
the “second” group of the Ebionites is clearly based on Irenaeus (Haer.
..) with the exception that Eusebius replaces Matthew’s Gospel with
theGospel of the Hebrews. Because Eusebius’ description totally relies on
the information he derived from his predecessors, Irenaeus, Hippolytus
and Origen, it is unlikely that he could have personally known Ebion-
ites who used theGospel of the Hebrews. Instead, he adopted the gen-
eral description of the Ebionites’ doctrine from Irenaeus, elaborating it
with two pieces of information that Origen had written about Jewish
Christians: () There were two different groups of Ebionites and () there
was a gospel called theGospel of the Hebrews. Eusebius’ list of canonical
books shows that, in Eusebius’ view, the heretics tended to use gospels of
their own (see above). By Eusebius’ time, the reputation of the Ebion-
ites as stupid heretics was well known—Origen, for instance, thought
the Ebionites received their name because of their poor intellect. Thus,
it would have been embarrassing had a heretical group based its teaching
on the Gospelof Matthew. In the light of Eusebius’ categories, it was more
appropriate that they based their teaching on the half-canonicalGospel
of the Hebrews.
A Woman Accused of Many Sins
Eusebius’ third reference to theGospel of the Hebrewsis in the context
where he first discusses the reliability of the writings of Ignatius, Polycarp
and Clement. He records by name only those authors whose writings of
the teaching of the apostles have survived to his time (Hist. Eccl. .–
). After dealing with the writings of Clement, he moves on to Papias
(Hist. Eccl. .).
First, he corrects Irenaeus by saying that Papias did not himself meet
the apostles but learned the basics of faith from those who knew the
apostles (..–). Then he presents the famous quotation where Papias
relates that he relied more on the living word than on the information
gained from the books (..–). In modern scholarship, Eusebius’ quo-
tation of Papias is often referred to in order to show that by Papias’ time,
(^82) Irenaeus,Haer. ..–.