chapter two
fathers were contemporaries and knew each other very well. Further-
more, they both lived for a long time in Palestine, which makes their
information about Jewish Christianity especially interesting. Although
we have good grounds for believing that they both had some personal
contacts with Jewish Christians, it is also clear that their information is
heavily biased. Therefore, it needs to be assessed in the light of their per-
sonal history and their position as representatives of “mainstream” Chris-
tianity.
The church fathers’ descriptions of the Ebionites and the Nazarenes
often differ considerably and we cannot always be sure if they are really
describing the same historical group. Therefore, in the course of the fol-
lowing discussion,I shall always specify whoseEbionites and Nazarenes I
am discussing.
.. TheProfilesoftheEbionites
... Irenaeus’Ebionites
Irenaeus’Adversus haereses(Haer. ..; around ce) includes the
following description of the Ebionites:
Those who are called Ebionites agree that the world was made by God; but
their opinions with respect to the Lord are similar to those of Cerinthus
and Carpocrates. They use the Gospel according to Matthew only, and
repudiate the Apostle Paul, maintaining that he was an apostate from the
law. As to the prophetical writings, they endeavour to expound them in a
somewhat singular manner: they practise circumcision, persevere in the
observance of those customs which are enjoined by the law, and are so
Judaic in their style of life, that they even adore Jerusalem as if it were the
house of God. (trans.ANF).Irenaeus wrote his treatise when he was bishop of Lyons but nothing in
his work suggests the Ebionites were a special problem in the environs of
Lyons. It is generally assumed that Irenaeus drew on Justin the Martyr’s
lostSyntagma. However, this probably did not include a section on the
Ebionites because Justin’s other works indicate that he did not regard
Ebioniteviewsasclearlyheretical(seeDial. –). Thus, Irenaeus must
either himself have added the information about the Ebionites on his
own or he received his information about the Ebionites from another
source. Whatever the source was, we may assume that the Ebionites
described by it were located in the Eastern parts of the Roman Empire,
Asia Minor, Syria or Palestine, where Ebionites are explicitly located in