patristic testimonies reconsidered Overall, we can only say that the Ebionites’ Christology must have
been “something like” the Cerinthian Christology as it is characterized by
Irenaeus but it is impossible to give any detailed description of it. Only
thing we can be relative sure about is that Irenaeus’ Ebionites did not
accept the virgin birth because Irenaeus criticizes the Ebionites for this
elsewhere inAgainst Heresies(for instance,Haer. ..).
According to Irenaeus, the Ebionites were using only the Gospel of
Matthew. Because the canonical Matthew announces Jesus’ virgin birth,
the information seems to be in contradiction with Irenaeus’ own state-
ment that the Ebionites denied the virgin birth. There is no doubt that
Irenaeus really has in mind the canonical Matthew which he connects to
the Ebionites since one of his points is to show that the Ebionites can be
confuted by the same gospel they use.
Irenaeus was the defender of the canon of four gospels and he leveled
charges against the heretics for their use of only one gospel. These
gospels, however, also demonstrated their errors: Marcion was confuted
by Luke, those who separate Christ and Jesus (this would apply to the
Cerinthians) were confuted by Mark, Valentinus was confuted by John
and the Ebionites by Matthew (Haer. ..–). Because Irenaeus also
believed that Matthew had written his gospel for the Hebrews in their
own dialect (Haer. ..), it is quite possible that he himself invented the
idea that the Ebionites must be using the Gospel of Matthew—not least
because this gospel could also be used against them. Another possibility
is that the Ebionites really were using a gospel that was entitled the Gospel
of Matthew but in reality it was not identical with the canonical one. We
will come back to this issue below.
It seems clear that Irenaeus’ Ebionites viewed themselves first and
foremost as Jews. Most likely they were of Jewish pedigree. The borders
and identity of their religious community was defined by traditional
Jewish customs and practices. How much Christian there was on top of
that is difficult to say because Irenaeus focuses on criticizing the Jewish
side of their religion.
Did the Ebionites practice baptism in addition to circumcision? It is
most likely they did because if they had not done so, this surely would
have been recorded and condemned by Irenaeus (and his sources).
Irenaeus does not explicitly deal with the Ebionites’ Eucharistic prac-
tices but at one point he formulates his criticism of the Ebionites’ Chris-
tology in a way which suggests that the Ebionites’ chalice contained only
water instead of a mixture of wine and water: “Therefore do these men
reject the commixture of the heavenly wine and wish it to be water