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Originally Posted by Yuri Kuchinsky
Really, Andrew?
So you believe that all those stories about the Magi, the star appearing in the sky, etc. are real history?
And that someone made an effort to deny them later?
Or is it more likely perhaps that those folk tales were later additions?
From a realistic position, which one is the likelier possibility?
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Hippolytus in Book VII of Refutation of all Heresies says of the Ebionites
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They live conformably to the customs of the Jews alleging that they are justified according to the Law and saying that Jesus was justified by following the Law. And therefore it was that he was named the Christ of God and Jesus since not one of the rest had observed completely the Law For if even any other had fulfilled the commandments in the Law he would have been that Christ And they claim that they themselves also when in like manner they observe the Law are able to become Christs for they assert that our Lord Himself was a man in a like sense with all.
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My point is that these ideas of achieving Christhood by one's own efforts are unlikely to be primitive and those who held them would be unsympathetic to the idea of an extraordinary birth of Christ even if it was known to them.
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Originally Posted by Yuri Kuchinsky
Which ones do you mean?
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Origen refers to the Ebionites in Contra Celsus
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Let it be admitted, moreover, that there are some who accept Jesus, and who boast on that account of being Christians, and yet would regulate their lives, like the Jewish multitude, in accordance with the Jewish law,-and these are the twofold sect of Ebionites, who either acknowledge with us that Jesus was born of a virgin, or deny this, and maintain that He was begotten like other human beings
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This indicates that some Ebionites accepted the Virgin Birth.
Andrew Criddle
04-19-2006, 12:06 PM
