While, however, it seems impossible to distin- guish between Nazarenes and Ebionites, and im- proper in this connexion to think of a separation into clear-cut sects, there were undoubtedly differ- ences of tendency within the general sphere of Ebionism. From the first a stricter and a more liberal party is to be discerned (the oi Sittoi 'E^mvolol of Origen, c. Cels. v. Gl), corresponding in some measure to the cleavage which emerged in the Council of Jerusalem (Ac 15'"-")— a Pliarisaic party which held the Law to be essential even for Gentile Christians, and a party of broader mind, wliich, while clinging to the Law for themselves, did not seek to impose it upon their Gentile brethren (Justin, Dial. c. TrypL 47). Finally, with the rise of the Gnostic heresy, a Gnostic or syncretistic type of Jewish Christianity makes its appearance, to which the name of Ebionism is still applied (Epiphanius, Heer. xxx. 1). This tinostic Ebionism itself assumes various forms. It already meets us within the NT in the false doctrine wliich St. Paul opposes in Colossians, and in the teaching of Cerinthus to which St. John replies in his First Epistle. At a later period it is represented in the doctrines of the Elkesaites, who combined their Ebionism with influences drawn from the Oriental heathen world (Epiphanius, Hco: xix. 2, xxx. 1 ; Hippolytus, Philos. ix. 13).
ii. The Ebionite Gcspels. — As against the Tiibingen school, wliich held that primitive Chris- tianity was itself Ebionism, and which took, in consequence, a higlily exaggerated view of the influence of Ebionitic thought upon the history and the literature of the early Church, it is now ad- mitted by nearly all modern scholars that there are no writings within the Canon of the NT which come to us directly from this circle. On tlie other hand, two of the Apocryphal Gospels, the Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles (otherwise known as the Gospel of the Ebionites), are immediate products of the Judieo-Christian spirit — the former representing Ebionism in its earlier and simpler type, and the
and Eusebius {HE iii. 27) to treat the name as derived from the 'poverty' of the Ebionites in intelligence and knowledge of Scripture, and especially from the 'beggarly' quality of their
latter that syncretistic form of Jewish Christi- anity which afterwards sprang up tlirougli contact with Gnosticism (see Gospels [Apocryphal]; and artt. ' Gospel according to the Hebrews ' and ' Apocryphal Gospels ' in Hastings' DB, Extra Vol. ). The extant fragments of the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles show that its value is quite secon- dary, and that the author has simply compiled it from the Canonical, and especially from the Syn- optic Gospels, adapting it at the same time to the views and practices of Gnostic Ebionism. Much more interest and importance attach to the Gospel according to the Hebrews. We have refer- ences to it, for the most part respectful and sym- pathetic, in the writings of Clement, Origen, Eusebius, and, above all, Jerome ; while several valuable fragments of it have been pre.served for us in the pages of Epiphanius. Eusebius {HE iii. 25, 27) and Jerome (Com. on Mt 12") Ixith testify that this was the Gospel used by the Ebionites, and it is the latter who gives it its name of the ' Gospel according to the Hebrews' {secundum Hebrceos). The numerous references in the Fathers to tliis work, and the extant fragments them- selves, if they do not justify Harnack's state- ment that Jewish-Christian (i.e. Ebionite) sources lie at the basis of our Synoptic Gospels (Hist, of Dogma, i. 295), lend some we.ght to the idea that the distinctive features of tlie document, so far from being altogether secondary, ought to be re- garded as indications of an early Aramaic tradi- tion, which still held its own among the ' Hebrews ' after the growing universalism of the Church had left it behind (see Prof. Allan Menzies in Hastings' DB, Extra Vol. 343").
iii. Ebionism and the Canonical Gospels.— Apart from the existence of special Ebionite Gos- pels, the idea has been common, both in ancient and modem times, that certain of the Canonical Gospels owe something of their substance or their form to the positive or negative influence of Ebionite sources or Ebionite surroundings. (1) The Gospel of St. Matthew.— Jerome, who testi- fies, as we have seen, to the fact that the Jewish Christians of Palestine had a Gospel of tlieir own (secundum Hebrceos), also tells us that this Gospel was regarded by many as Matthwi authsnticum, i.e. the original of Matthew (Com. on Mt 12"); and on one occasion refers to a copy of it which he himself had seen and translated as though he believed it to be the original Hebrew (ipsum- Hebraieum) of St. Matthew's Gospel (de Viris Hlust. ii. 3). Irenceus, two centuries earlier, says that the Ebionites use only the Gospel of Matthew (I. xxvi. 2) ; a statement which points, at all events, to this, that even in his time the Jewish Christians of Syria attached themselves to a particular Gos- pel, and that between that Gospel and St. Matthew the Apostle a close connexion was believed to exist. Irena>us does not seem to have been aware of the existence of the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and apparently confounded that work ^vith the Canonical Matthew. But when his statement is taken together with those of Jerome, very interest- ing questions are raised as to the origin and con- nexions of the Synoptical Gospels, and of the First Gospel in particular, with the result that in modern theories upon this subject the Gospel according to the Hebrexos has played an important rOle. It would be out of place to enter here upon any dis- cussion of the questions thus raised (see Gospels). But it may be .said that while the whole trend of recent scholarship is unfavourable to the views of those who would make the Gospel according to the Hebrews either the ' Ur-Mattha-us ' itself or an expanded edition of it, some grounds can be alleged for thinking that it represents an early Aramaic tradition of the Gospel story which was in exist-