What were the beliefs of Early Ebionaen Christianity?

[ebion]

In my Early Christian Ebionaen Canon thread, I've defined Ebionean as:
* post James, and in effect post-flight to Pella (> 60 AD)
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I conjecture the Essenes from Palistina fled towards Pella/Decopolis as the Romans came,
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Ebionaen christianity is starting to look a whole lot different to catholick.

I wanted to examine the Pella flight story, which is dated to approximately 66 CE, just before or just as hostilities erupted. Unfortunately, the way Eusebius presented the story does not cohere well with the history of the revolt as told by Josephus in War 2.458.
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But, anyways, why would the city of Pella in the gentile populated Decapolis region have agreed to accept Judean refugees from the internecine war between rebel parties going on in Jerusalem?
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It does make me wonder what Really happened then, but I am pretty sure it wasn't what they made it seem to have been.

It's unclear to me when after the murder of James the Christians fled to Pella. Epiphanius says the catalyst for the flight was said to be a vision or premonition of one of the believers, and James' murder would have made clear that they wete not safe in Jerusalem. So rather than being fleeing Judean refugees, they may moved in an organized fashion before the revolt, and it may have been to a community with existing supportive Christians. And I doubt the Decapolis was exclusively gentile as it's just south of the Sea of Galilee.

Acts says they were well established in Antioch under James; the best I can do is conjecture the Christians had support in Pella not mentioned in Acts, and revise what I wrote to: I conjecture the Essenes from Palestina fled towards Pella before the Romans came.

[StephenGoranson]

Above, in part:
"....I conjecture the Essenes from Palestina fled towards Pella before the Romans came."

Did you mean "Essenes"?

[DCHindley]

In the USA (not sure where you are from, ebion) we have our share of religious sects that have withdrawn from regular society to remote places:

Old Order Mennonites & Amish: Came from Europe to places where they can practice agriculture with only human & horse power, carts/buggies, no electricity, nutten. They have interesting communities and work arounds for dealing with us "English (speakers)" especially for traffic safety as they use horse drawn buggies only. I've watched them plow a field with a team of 6 horses and a towed knife plows with no rotary parts. Speak a dialect of German not particular to them that we call here "Pennsylvania Dutch," but they can understand the old high German of Luther's bible they use in 4 hr sermons in services held in their barns.

Branch Davidian division of Adventists, subset led by "David Koresh": Ended up hoarding weapons waiting for the apocalypse to come very soon, Koresh taking child brides or concubines, and raided by US FBI, they resisted and the building caught on fire, resulting in a conflagration of their compound/farm, and just about everyone's death. Maybe 2-3 escaped the flames. I think it was James Tabor, the US scholar who had grown up in Adventist circles and knew their apocalyptic interpretations pretty thoroughly, who offered to help the FBI as an intermediary. The FBI, to their discredit, didn't understand any of it at all, not even remotely, and used Tabor as a diversion to give time for their assault on the sect's compound. Tabor doesn't like to talk about it, period, so the end result must have been disappointing from his perspective as well. What he thought he had managed to do was convince Koresh to accept his scholarly advice and complete his study of the book of Revelation, and Koresh had actually completed it and the results convinced him to consider ceasing his resistance to the FBI siege. Yet, as Tabor (or Koresh) sent the FBI this news, he learned that it was almost exactly when the FBI had started their assault on the compound.

As for the Decapolis region, those were Greek cities (so in the town part was mostly gentile) but I agree that the arable land was leased to peasants, a probable mixture of Aramaic speakers of Aramean extraction, Judeans and maybe free Greeks from Damascus area. So yeah, they could have worked out a deal to run a commune in the Chora around Pella before the war broke out. To the Pella city council members, this was just business, maybe the Jesus community had offered the lowest bid. But wouldn't their fields and barns have been devastated by the assaulting Judean rebels in 66? If they had been spared as observant Judeans, then the Pella council would probably have thought twice about extending their contract. They would be viewed as a "third column" working against them. I think the link I provided previously covers all this. Pella may have been one of the Greek cities that was willing to quarantine them (some places made them go to an amphitheater where the Greeks could "keep an eye on them" but not go as far as kill them, but there were Greek cities that did decide the threat was too great, and rushed in unexpectedly and slew them all. If this sounds like Bosnia-Herzegovina, where one group of about 7,000 young men was bussed out of their soccer stadium to the woods and summarily executed by ethnic Serbian partisans. A decade or so earlier and Tito had everyone living in peace, at least on the surface.

I just have to wonder how the Jesus followers managed to navigate that unschathed. No church father talks about their history other than the story that they went there and about when. They may have hopped around afterward and ended up somewhere else in the general Damascus region. We just don't know.

This could be explained if the community that went to Pella were principally the gentile converts associated with the Jesus movement, or possibly just from that part of it who had not yet been circumcised, expecting tensions to rise to boiling point and they could be in danger from the extreme factions among rebel Judeans.

DCH

[GakuseiDon]

According to Epiphanius in his Panarion, the first disciples moved to the area of Bashan, which included Pella and Cocabe. Epiphanius claimed that Ebion himself was connected to Cocabe. This is from where the heretical sects the Nazoraeans and the Ebionites arose, according to Epiphanius.

First, the Nazoraens:

Part 29. Epiphanius Against the Nazoraeans

6:7 Thus Christ's holy disciples too called themselves 'disciples of Jesus' then, as indeed they were. But when others called them Nazoraeans they did not reject it, being aware of the intent of those who were calling them that. They were calling them Nazoraeans because of Christ, since our Lord Jesus was called 'the Nazoraean' himself—as the Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles say...
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7:4 They are perfectly versed in the Hebrew language, for the entire Law, the prophets, and the so-called Writings—I mean the poetic books, Kings, Chronicles, Esther and all the rest—are read in Hebrew among them, as of course they are among the Jews.

7:5 They are different from Jews, and different from Christians, only in the following ways. They disagree with Jews because of their belief in Christ; but they are not in accord with Christians because they are still fettered by the Law—circumcision, the Sabbath, and the rest
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7:7 This sect of Nazoraeans is to be found in Beroea near Coelesyria, in the Decapolis near Pella, and in Bashanitis at the place called Cocabe38—Khokhabe in Hebrew.

7:8 For that was its place of origin, since all the disciples had settled in Pella after their remove from Jerusalem—Christ having told them to abandon Jerusalem and withdraw from it39 because of the siege it was about to undergo. And they settled in Peraea for this reason and, as I said, lived their lives there. It was from this that the Nazoraean sect had its origin.

So the disciples, who were called "Nazoraeans", moved to the Pella area before the Jewish war, and that's where the Jewish Christian sects -- whom believed that Jesus was born from Mary and Joseph -- arose according to Epiphanius. To me, that's strong circumstantial evidence that the first Christians believed in a Jesus who was just a man, assuming Epiphanius is reliable on that information.

Epiphanius continues in the next chapter with the Ebionites and Ebion:

Part 30. Epiphanius Against the Ebionites

2:7 Their origin came after the fall of Jerusalem. For since practically all who had come to faith in Christ had settled in Peraea then, in Pella, a town in the 'Decapolis'10 the Gospel mentions, which is near Batanaea and Bashanitis—as they had moved there then and were living there, this provided an opportunity for Ebion.

2:8 And as far as I know, he first lived in a village called Cocabe in the district of Qarnaim—also called Ashtaroth—in Bashanitis. There he began his evil teaching—the place, if you please, where the Nazoraeans I have spoken of came from.

2:9 For since Ebion was connected with them and they with him, each party shared its own wickedness with the other. Each also differed from the other to some extent, but they emulated each other in malice. But I have already spoken at length, both in other works and in the other Sects, about the locations of Cocabe and Arabia.

3:1 And at first, as I said, Ebion declared that Christ is the offspring of a man, that is, of Joseph.

The prophecy by Christ that caused all the disciples to move to Pella might well be the one recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, which was apparently the favored Gospel of the Ebionites:

Matt.24

[4] And Jesus answered and said unto them, Take heed that no man deceive you.
[5] For many shall come in my name, saying, I am Christ; and shall deceive many.
[6] And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
[7] For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
[8] All these are the beginning of sorrows.
[9] Then shall they deliver you up to be afflicted, and shall kill you: and ye shall be hated of all nations for my name's sake.
[10] And then shall many be offended, and shall betray one another, and shall hate one another...

I wonder if this isn't partly a reaction to Josephus' claim that Vespasian was the leader that was supposed to come out of Judea?

Whether the history of the first Christians settling in the Pella area is accurate or not I don't know. It may have been a legend that had become history by Epiphanius' time. But that an orthodox Christian writer had the first Christians settling in the area from whom the Nazoraeans and Ebionites originated seems significant to me.

[ebion]

I just have to wonder how the Jesus followers managed to navigate that unschathed. No church father talks about their history other than the story that they went there and about when. They may have hopped around afterward and ended up somewhere else in the general Damascus region. We just don't know.

I think we do know, those who look east. Pella was on the road to Damascus, and then to Antioch. Both of these would have been outside the area of the sack of Titus, and Caesarea was important too - it had the library where the HAramaic Matthew was kept.

The Christian Churches of the East were/are headquartered in Damascus, and Antioch from then until now, plus another headquarters in Iraq (the Persians churches) starting a bit latter (give or take a genocide or two). As an American you may know as little of the East as you do Waco, Texas :-,) these were the biggest church in the world for almost a millenium. And they developed early: you have Christian kings crowned by bishops in place by 100 AD; and patriarchical lineages that included the relatives of Mary.

Pella was sorta on-the-border (the river Jordan), but on the safe (east) side, and in the Decapolis administratively under the Syrian province. The Essene communities were out of the cities, but still in the area the Romans were going to attack. Qumran was not a Essene community, but there were others near there (i.e. "down south"). And Pella is not far from the Qumran area. I reador somewhere that there was an indication that Essenes fled the Romans towards the north and east, and this may have been to where the Jamesian church had already fled, maybe a couple of years before.

The Essenes were friends of the Christians dating back to Jesus, and may have been the healers that tended to him if he survived the crucification (the Ointment of Jesus or the Dodecapharmacum), so they would be natural friends of the Pella Christians. At which point some former distinctions would start to blurr: like on marriage and children, being vegetarian, etc, so we ignore those in our criteria. The Essenes were not Zealots, and I don't think the Ebionaens were either. After Titus arrived they would have both tried to find refuge, perhaps together in Pella.

[ebion]

Thanks - this is very helpful, and I need to go through this in this fine detail.

According to Epiphanius in his Panarion, the first disciples moved to the area of Bashan, which included Pella and Cocabe. Epiphanius claimed that Ebion himself was connected to Cocabe. This is from where the heretical sects the Nazoraeans and the Ebionites arose, according to Epiphanius.

First, the Nazoraens:
...
Part 29. Epiphanius Against the Nazoraeans

....
So the disciples, who were called "Nazoraeans", moved to the Pella area before the Jewish war, and that's where the Jewish Christian sects -- whom believed that Jesus was born from Mary and Joseph -- arose according to Epiphanius. To me, that's strong circumstantial evidence that the first Christians believed in a Jesus who was just a man, assuming Epiphanius is reliable on that information.

Everything there fits my definition of Ebionaen+Nazoreans - there's nothing according to our criteria to
distinguish the two, So I'll invent a new word we can use: NEbionaen :=,)

Epiphanius continues in the next chapter with the Ebionites and Ebion:
Part 30. Epiphanius Against the Ebionites

...
... Each also differed from the other to some extent, but they emulated each other

I agree: too close to call and no point, except for the 3 things in our criteria.

And at first, as I said, Ebion declared that Christ is the offspring of a man, that is, of Joseph.

This is key, and a hugely important part of what I want to examine the consquences of. The way I read what you've presented, he's saying it is a key feature of the Ebionaen rather than the Nazoraeans so I should add it to my criteria list. Right now it's on the shared list, but I'd need a citation to say the Nazoraeans rejected that to take it off shared.

The prophecy by Christ that caused all the disciples to move to Pella might well be the one recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, which was apparently the favored Gospel of the Ebionites:

More than favored - I'd say Matthew is the bedrock they cling to. And remember, they have no Faulines. I find it very simplifying to have Matthew priority, with no Faulines.

Matt.24
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I wonder if this isn't partly a reaction to Josephus' claim that Vespasian was the leader that was supposed to come out of Judea?

Personally I recall someone else saying it was a vision/dream, which is easier to me than a prophecy. And the murder of James must have been a huge GTFO signal - he was their protector, tight with the Sadducees, and the Sadducees turned on him and murdered him.

Whether the history of the first Christians settling in the Pella area is accurate or not I don't know. It may have been a legend that had become history by Epiphanius' time. But that an orthodox Christian writer had the first Christians settling in the area from whom the Nazoraeans and Ebionites originated seems significant to me.

I'll take it as given, because it leads somewhere: Antioch Caesarea, and Damascus, and from there the churches of the east.

Please re-read for me the first 2 posts and make any suggestions for changes.

[ebion]

Yes, could be. But do you think the Ebionaens' Gospel that they spread was about a Jesus who survived the cross (assuming they believed that), or did they teach about a Jesus who was killed on the cross (i.e. they were preaching something they knew wasn't true)?

I'm sticking with the current (PeshittA) Matthew because after looking at the whole range of other citations, I don't see anything major that calls it significantly into question, So it's only a question of interpreting the current Matthew.

Of course, it is probably the most theologically important feature of Ebionaen Christianity. What the churches or the councils added on later as dogma is of NO importance: we are Sola Scriptura. In which case, there was no resurrection.

PS: There is also a huge gargantuan side-benefit of this: a meaningful dialogue between Christianity and Islam becomes possible.

[GakuseiDon]

Everything there fits my definition of Ebionaen+Nazoreans - there's nothing according to our criteria to distinguish the two, So I'll invent a new word we can use: NEbionaen :=,)

I'd be cautious there. The history being presented by Epiphanius (its accuracy is another question) is:

1. Before the War, there were Nazoreans. They moved to the Pella district before Jerusalem was destroyed.
2. After the War, Ebion -- living in the Pella district and influenced by the Nazoreans -- developed his heresy and the Ebionites were the result.

So there is a connection but they aren't necessarily the same. If Eisenman is right about a self-described 'Ebion' being the writer of some of the scrolls found at Qumran, then Ebion might have had his own ideas that resulted in his own sect, much as Marcion did a few decades later.

Epiphanius writes that the Gospel of Matthew was "used alone" by a number of early sects:

3:7 They [the Ebionites] too accept the Gospel according to Matthew. Like the Cerinthians and Merinthians, they too use it alone. They call it, 'According to the Hebrews,' and it is true to say that only Matthew expounded and preached the Gospel in the Hebrew language and alphabet16 in the New Testament.

He also writes that the Nazoraeans and the Carpocratians also held to the Gospel of Matthew. It seems that all the early sects that regarded Jesus as born of Joseph and Mary used only the Gospel of Matthew.

[ebion]

Everything there fits my definition of Ebionaen+Nazoreans - there's nothing according to our criteria to distinguish the two, So I'll invent a new word we can use: NEbionaen :=,)

I'd be cautious there. The history being presented by Epiphanius (its accuracy is another question) is:

1. Before the War, there were Nazoreans. They moved to the Pella district before Jerusalem was destroyed.
2. After the War, Ebion -- living in the Pella district and influenced by the Nazoreans -- developed his heresy and the Ebionites were the result.

OK - I agree. We'll take Epiphanius as the starting point, align ourselves with him, and document our path from the starting point.

?1) Does anyone else talk of them both in the same text? Is it only Epiphanius that is a source for distinctions?

?2) "Before the War, there were Nazoreans" but were they distinct from what I call the Jamesian church, and if so how? Was I wrong in arguing to John2 that under the Jamesian church the Nazarenes were the followers of Paul? You say: "So there is a connection but they aren't necessarily the same." so I'm taking a pragmatic approach:

• Before the murder of James, there were Nazoreans, but they "aren't necessarily the same", so it's pointless to talk of Ebionaens or Nazoreans during the Jamesian church, expect for the Nazarenes in Acts.
• My reading of Acts is that the Nazarenes were followers of Paul not Christ.
• After the murder of James, (even before the War) there were Ebionaen and Nazoreans according to our pragmatic definition in the OP, assumed to be in not major conflict with Epiphanius.

3) I'll go over the first OP1 and OP2 thread posts to make the semantics conform with this: is there anything you see that needs fixing?

If Eisenman is right about a self-described 'Ebion' being the writer of some of the scrolls found at Qumran, then Ebion might have had his own ideas that resulted in his own sect, much as Marcion did a few decades later.

I don't trust Eisenman's logic about anything, although I often agree with his conclusions. I don't trust Qumran about anything, and am focussing on Nag Hammadi - we have 3 Christian gems in our canon from there.

4) I'll downplay the personification into Ebion, (lone-gunman scroll writer) simply as a matter of style.

Epiphanius writes that the Gospel of Matthew was "used alone" by a number of early sects:

3:7 They [the Ebionites] too accept the Gospel according to Matthew. Like the Cerinthians and Merinthians, they too use it alone. They call it, 'According to the Hebrews,' and it is true to say that only Matthew expounded and preached the Gospel in the Hebrew language and alphabet16 in the New Testament.

He also writes that the Nazoraeans and the Carpocratians also held to the Gospel of Matthew. It seems that all the early sects that regarded Jesus as born of Joseph and Mary used only the Gospel of Matthew.

"the Nazoraeans ... held to the Gospel of Matthew" ALONE is not my understanding; I heard the Nazoraeans accepted Faul, which is in our criteria, which by construction is our definition of Nazoraeans. I also don't want to get drawn off into (very interesting) later evolutions of the Nazoraeans; I'm only interested in the early period to get a working definition of the Ebionaen theology.

I've addes a Who Cares List to OP. I'm trying to be cautoius, but want to be pragmatic and move forward on the consequences of these, which are huge.

[StephenGoranson]

Given evidence presented in this and other threads, it seems (to me) plain that the terms Ebionites, Nazarenes, Nazarites, Early Christians, and Essenes are not synonymous, even if in some cases two of them overlapped in some time or place from some perspective.

The comment above
"Everything there [the text commented on] fits my definition of Ebionaen+Nazoreans - there's nothing according to our criteria to
distinguish the two, So I'll invent a new word we can use: NEbionaen :=,)."
At least that has an emoticon.
And note again the plural "our criteria." For what group is this effectively anonymous writer claiming to speak? Anyone else here (or identifiable as currently alive anywhere) a member of that implied group?

The neologism HAramaic obscures. For one thing, again, the earliest Christians did not speak Syriac.
And the term Faul, as false Paul--even though it's widely accepted that not everything sometimes attributed to Paul was by him--has a strange origin, the claim that Paul McCartney died in 1966 and was replaced by an imposter. (No one familiar with his music or voice--nor family and friends--will believe that.)

Taken together, these observations do little to lend credibility to the claims from that source about history. imo.