chapter four
themselves recklessly speaking the words: “I did not desire earnestly to
eat meat with you this Passover.” It is clearly demonstrated that he both
celebrated Passover and ate meat, as I said before.
(Panarion..–; trans. Klijn & Reinink , modified).Epiphanius first makes his own case by paraphrasing Luke’s description
about preparations for the Last Supper. The preparations culminate in
Jesus’ exclamation: “With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with
you.” Epiphanius points out that Jesus explicitly refers to “this Passover”
and not just to a Passover in general. In Epiphanius’ view, this makes
it clear that the Jewish Passover, which involved eating meat, is meant.
Epiphanius complains, however, that the Ebionites have changed the
wording of the passage and added “mu” and “eta” and have also added
the word “meat” to Jesus’ words. Thus, in the Ebionites’ gospel, Jesus says:
“I did not earnestly desire to eat meat with you this Passover.”
The disciples’ question—as it is quoted by Epiphanius and as it appears
to have been in theGospel of the Ebionites—is paralleled only in Mark
and Matthew (Mark :; Matt :). The wording of theGospel of
the Ebionitesis closer to Matthew, the only difference being a slightly
different word order. On the other hand, Jesus’ answer is paralleled only
in Luke (cf. Luke :–) because there is no parallel for this section in
Mark or Matthew. Thus, in this section, theGospel of the Ebionitesseems
to have used at least Matthew and Luke. It also seems obvious that there
was some sort of passion narrative in theGospel of the Ebionitesand that
it was composed, somewhat creatively, using Matthew and Luke, at least.
Unfortunately, Epiphanius does not present any other quotations from
theGospel of the Ebionitesthat could be located in the passion narrative.
However, it is possible to draw some conclusions about the passion
narrative on the basis of this passage and other passages Epiphanius
quotes from theGospel of the Ebionites, especially if we also make use
of other information about the Ebionites’ practices and theology.^17 In the
(^17) It is clear that this kind of argumentation remains hypothetical since the logic is
to try to figure out what there must have been or what there cannot have been in the
Ebionites’ passion narrative. However, the argumentation is not too precarious since we
have some examples of cases where the contents of theGospel of the Ebionitesfit with
other information about the Ebionites. For example, Epiphanius seems to know about
the Ebionites’ practice of not eating meat from his own experience—he probably met
EbionitesinCypruswherehewasactingasbishop(Pan. ..–). On the other hand,
he presents two examples from theGospel of the Ebioniteswhere the Ebionites have
changed the synoptic wording in order to support their own practice. For a discussion of
what Epiphanius knew from his own experience and what he derived from his sources,
see above ...