towards the history of early jewish christianity The Jewish-Christian profile of theElchasaitemissionariesas they were
described by Origen and Hippolytus would fit with the assumption that
the missionaries were originally “ordinary” Ebionites of the Irenaean
and/or the Hellenistic-Samaritan type who had adopted a Jewish apoc-
alyptic book and interpreted its “Great Power” as the Christian Christ.
Both types of Ebionites were open to the message of the book because of
their interest in water rites and the distinction they made between Christ
and Jesus.
The religious profile ofEpiphanius’ Nazareneswas ingeniously devel-
oped by Epiphanius himself because he also needed a pure category of
“Jewish Christianity” in hisPanarion. The Ebionites of his day had too
many peculiar beliefs and practices to serve as the only example of a
“heresy” that tried to combine Judaism with Christianity.
Jerome had probably learned from Epiphanius that Christians who
were “too Jewish” can also be called Nazarenes. Nevertheless, the profile
ofJerome’s own Nazarenesremained fuzzy. On the one hand, he used the
term interchangeably with the term Ebionites, referring to “Jewish Chris-
tians” in general. On the other hand, he had met Syriac Christians who
were called “Nazarenes” and had acquired from them two anti-rabbinic
collections: explanations of some chapters of Isaiah and a hand-picked
collection of anti-rabbinic passages from the Gospel of Matthew. Judg-
ing from the basis of these collections, the religious profile of Jerome’s
Nazarenes includes mainly Christian elements. The Nazarenes had a clear
Christian self-understanding and were pro-Pauline. Thus, they differed
considerably from both branches of the Ebionites. Since the Nazarenes
used Hebrew/Aramaic gospels and their commentaries involved word
plays with Hebrew/Aramaic script, it is probable that they were of Jewish
pedigree. In the light of their pro-Pauline statements, it seems unlikely
that their Jewishness would have gone much beyond that.
.. Jewish-Christian Gospels (cf. Appendix )The third main chapter of this book approached the history of early Jew-
ish Christians from the view point of their surviving gospel fragments.
It is clear that when theGospel of Thomaswas found, the foundations
on which the categorizations of the Three Gospel Hypothesis (the GH)
were built had actually collapsed but it was not realized. The categoriza-
tions of the GH have been based on a false assumption about pure syn-
optic and “Gnostic” gospel genres. In the present volume, I have sought