Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 06-13-2010, 12:51 PM

An essay in the Guardian

Ebion, the fictional heretic: The Ebionites, said to follow a non-existent Ebion, remained closer to Jesus's Jewishness than other Christians

Quote:

Writers dismissing the Ebionites started around 200 CE to assume that if there were Ebionites there must have been an Ebion, and they countered his errors. Within a century he had acquired a birthplace and rudimentary life story, and eventually even quotations from this heretical writings turned up.

...

The misunderstanding shows how over a few centuries the early church lost touch with its Jewish roots. It was already, by 200, failing to understand the language and the traditions of the people into which it was born. A hundred years later, while the church was imagining Ebion being born in Jordan and taking missionary journeys across Asia Minor to Rome, it also started imagining it was a reasonable idea to forbid Christians to eat with Jews. It increasingly reinterpreted its own teachings to make them fit into a Platonic rather than Hebrew worldview.

jgreen44 · 06-13-2010, 01:20 PM

I like the Ebionite take on Paul (assuming this really is the Ebionite take on Paul).

Quote:

A source of information about Paul that has never been taken seriously enough is a group called the Ebionites. Their writings were suppressed by the Orthodox Church, but some of their views and traditions were preserved in the writings of their opponents, particularly in the huge "Treatise on Heresies" by Epiphanius. From this it appears that the Ebionites had a very different account to give of Paul's background and early life from that found in the New Testament and fostered by Paul himself. The Ebionites testified that Paul had no Pharisaic background or training; he was the son of Gentiles, converted to Judaism in Tarsus, came to Jerusalem when an adult, and attached himself to the High Priest as a henchman. Disappointed in his hopes of advancement, he broke with the High Priest and sought fame by founding a new religion. These accounts, while not reliable in all its details may be substantially correct. It makes far more sense of all the puzzling and contradictory features of the story of Paul than the account of the official documents of the Orthodox Church.

The mythmaker: Paul and the invention of Christianity By Hyam Maccoby

avi · 06-13-2010, 01:48 PM

Thank you for this link, Toto:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Stephen Tomkins

Ebion, the fictional heretic: The Ebionites, said to follow a non-existent Ebion, remained closer to Jesus's Jewishness than other Christians

I am not sure I agree with this reporter. I suspect that I disagree with him.

Here is what Matt Jackson-McCabe wrote in his book
"Jewish Christianity Reconsidered"
Fortress Press, Minneapolis, 2007, on page 12:

Quote:

Thus when one sees reports from subsequent centuries about ethnically Jewish communities, such as the Ebionites and Nazarenes, who combined interest in Jesus with traditional Jewish practices, their historical connection to the Jerusalem community is not immediately obvious.

In my opinion, without data to support that opinion, Christianity did not commence until after the third Jewish-Roman conflict, i.e. 135. So, I disagree with Mr. Tomkins' fundamental premise supporting the notion of an historical Jesus.

I did find some parts of his article very intriguing:

Quote:

The Ebionite gospel seems to have been a modified compilation of the familiar gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, ignoring the later John, with its more elevated and mystical ideas of who Jesus was. They also rejected all the writings of Paul from their New Testament,...

and then there is this quote, which I like very much:

Quote:

The Ebionites were vegetarians, and believed that Jesus was too. In one of the very few fragments of their gospel to have survived, John the Baptist, instead of eating locusts and wild honey, eats cakes and honey. A subtle difference in Greek (locust akris, cake enkris), ...

So, now we have a real topic, with a real dispute:
Did the original Greek, i.e. the ink drying on any one of the original documents of Mark, Matthew, or Luke, read akris or enkris?

Since the entire fable was, in my view, a myth, why not include eating locusts, as seems to me, at least, far more befitting of a romance/tragedy/travelogue, about the region of the Decapolis and the land beyond, further East, than eating cakes, which implies growing wheat, (i.e. need for access to water for irrigation, not so easy to find in the desert), harvesting wheat, (not easily accomplished in a period of strife and warfare), grinding wheat (source of energy), and then baking the ingredients, which further implies having a domicile, not the lifestyle of a penniless itinerant, as John the Baptist is often presented....

avi

aa5874 · 06-13-2010, 03:49 PM

In Church History Eusebius did NOT claim the leader of the Ebionites was called Ebion.

"Church History 3.27.1

Quote:

1. The evil demon, however, being unable to tear certain others from their allegiance to the Christ of God, yet found them susceptible in a different direction, and so brought them over to his own purposes.

The ancients quite properly called these men Ebionites, because they held poor and mean opinions concerning Christ.

In the entire Church History by Eusebius, there is no leader of the Ebionites called Ebion.

It was supposedly their ideology of Christ that created the name of "Ebionites".

spin · 06-13-2010, 07:54 PM

Most regulars on this forum will be quite at home with the notion that people can assume the existence of a figure who plainly didn't exist -- after having heard about Ebion so often.

The existence of the non-existent Ebion has killed the silly argument that says there has to be a real core to a tradition.

It's good though that Ebion has made it out into the scrutiny of a wider audience.

spin

Minimalist · 06-13-2010, 08:03 PM

Quote:

if there were Ebionites there must have been an Ebion

Yes...as in because there are christians there must have been a christ.

aa5874 · 06-13-2010, 10:31 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Minimalist

Quote:

if there were Ebionites there must have been an Ebion

Yes...as in because there are christians there must have been a christ.

Oh Oh!

The word "Christ" was was NOT derived from a human figure but from the "anointing with oil".

The HJ is irrelevant to the origin of Christ.

This is Tertullian in "Ad Nationes" 1.3

Quote:

...The name Christian, however, so far as its meaning goes, bears the sense of anointing....

And Theophilus to Autolycus 1. 12

Quote:

Wherefore we are called Christians on this account, because we are anointed with the oil of God.

arnoldo · 06-14-2010, 04:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by aa5874

In Church History Eusebius did NOT claim the leader of the Ebionites was called Ebion.

"Church History 3.27.1

Quote:

1. The evil demon, however, being unable to tear certain others from their allegiance to the Christ of God, yet found them susceptible in a different direction, and so brought them over to his own purposes.

The ancients quite properly called these men Ebionites, because they held poor and mean opinions concerning Christ.

In the entire Church History by Eusebius, there is no leader of the Ebionites called Ebion.
. . .

Origen also does not write that Ebion is a leader of a heretical cult. . .

Quote:

Here he has not observed that the Jewish converts have not deserted the law of their fathers, inasmuch as they live according to its prescriptions, receiving their very name from the poverty of the law, according to the literal acceptation of the word; for Ebion signifies "poor" among the Jews, and those Jews who have received Jesus as Christ are called by the name of Ebionites.
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/04162.htm

:constern01:

Minimalist · 06-14-2010, 04:26 PM

Quote:

The word "Christ" was was NOT derived from a human figure but from the "anointing with oil".

Preaching to the choir, aa.

aa5874 · 06-14-2010, 06:36 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Minimalist

Quote:

The word "Christ" was was NOT derived from a human figure but from the "anointing with oil".

Preaching to the choir, aa.

You may be surprised how many people who post here for years who believe Jesus was the FIRST Christian or that if there was no Jesus there would have been NO Christians.

But, it can be shown that are billions of people called Christians TODAY even though there was no actual Jesus as described in the NT.

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06-13-2010, 07:54 PM	#5
spin Contributor Join Date: Mar 2002 Location: nowhere Posts: 15,747	Most regulars on this forum will be quite at home with the notion that people can assume the existence of a figure who plainly didn't exist -- after having heard about Ebion so often. The existence of the non-existent Ebion has killed the silly argument that says there has to be a real core to a tradition. It's good though that Ebion has made it out into the scrutiny of a wider audience. spin

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