chapter two
use of the gospels may also indicate that the Elchasaites were using a
gospel harmony comparable to theGospel of the Ebionites.Hippolytus,
for his part, states that Alcibiades, the Elchasaite missionary in Rome,
required men to be circumcised and to live according to the law. He also
taught that Christ was born like all the other men (in conjunction with
his Adam-Christology; Hippolytus,Haer. ..). Undoubtedly, on the
basis of these beliefs alone—if Alcibiades had not made use of theBook of
Elchasai—he would have been as easily called an Ebionite. We also learn
from Epiphanius that theBook of Elchasaiordered all people to turn their
faces to Jerusalem while praying (Pan. ..). This practice was already
connected to the Ebionites by Irenaeus.
While none of these descriptions matches Irenaeus’ description of the
Ebionites in every detail, it is possible to see in them the central Ebionite
ideas dispersed among the various representatives of the Elchasaite mis-
sionary movement. This justifies the hypothesis that the JewishBook of
Elchasaiwas received by some “traditional Ebionites” who adopted some
new ideas from it and initiated relatively extensive missionary activities,
traces of which can be found both in Rome and in Caesarea. In these
cities they had no success—apparently because other forms of Chris-
tianity had the upper hand—but they were welcomed by other Jewish-
Christian communities which had “heretical” views about the Jewish
canon of scriptures, that is Epiphanius’ Ebionites.
The Profile of Epiphanius’ Ebionites
Inthelastanalysis,theextenttowhichtheEbionitesreallyagreed
with all that was written in the literature Epiphanius received from
them remains an open question. Nonetheless, the substantial agreement
between Epiphanius’ contemporary information about the Ebionites and
the information paralleled in their literature enables us to draw an overall
picture of the Ebionites’ religious profile.
On the one hand, the Jewish Christianity of Epiphanius’ Ebionites
is characterized by adherence to customs that traditionally have been
boundary markers between Jews and gentiles: circumcision, purity laws
and Jewish institutions (synagogue, leadership, marriage). On the other
hand, their ideology and interpretation of scriptures had features that
were more Samaritan than Judaean in nature, and they had adopted rites
and incantations based on the revelation of a “Hidden Power,” who they
probably interpreted as the Christian Christ, but who is not attested in
the scriptures that “mainstream” Judaism and Christianity had begun to
regard as authoritative by the end of the fourth century.