chapter twoPATRISTIC TESTIMONIES RECONSIDEREDEarly Christian heresiologists painted stereotyped pictures of the Ebion-
ites and the Nazarenes as Christians who erroneously followed Jewish
laws and customs. Therefore, these two groups have frequently served as
the best examples of ancient Jewish Christianity.
The Ebionites and the Nazarenes are known only from the writings
of the church fathers who present short summaries of their teachings
and quotations from their writings, usually in order to confute what they
considered to be heretical ideas. The Ebionites appear for the first time
in Irenaeus’Adversus haereses, written around ce In order to find
the first description of the “heresy” of the Nazarenes, we must turn to
a work authored some two hundred years later, Epiphanius’Panarion
(ca. ce). ThePanarionalso contains the richest ancient description
of the Ebionites. Because Epiphanius was writing at the end of the fourth
century, he was able to use all the information about the Ebionites
collected by his predecessors (Irenaeus, Hippolytus, Tertullian, Pseudo-
Tertullian, Origen and Eusebius), which he supplemented with many
details obtained from his contemporaries.
My treatment of the Ebionites in this chapter will focus especially
on Irenaeus and Epiphanius since these two provide the most impor-
tant information about the Ebionites. The church fathers who followed
Irenaeus relied heavily on the information he provided, adding only
some details to the picture. I shall briefly discuss this additional infor-
mation on the basis of Origen’s and Eusebius’ works but my discussion
focuses on comparing Epiphanius’ information with the earliest infor-
mation available, namely Irenaeus’Adversus haereses.Thismakesitpos-
sible to sketch an overall view of how the information about the Ebion-
ites developed from the second to the fourth century ce and reflect upon
the question whether this development in the descriptions might mir-
ror factual changes in the Jewish-Christian profile of the Ebionite move-
ment.
In the case of the Nazarenes, there are only two church fathers whose
information provides a practical starting point for a discussion about
the history of the Nazarenes: Epiphanius and Jerome. These two church