It was not till the middle of the 19th cent, that a careful investigation of the phenomena of earth- quakes was begun. Seismology is now an exact science, in wliich remarkable progress has been made in Japan, a land of earthquakes. But while man rationalizes such calamities, and can no longer regard them as strictly supernatural, he is practi- cally as helpless as ever in their presence. In the (iarthqualce of 1908 which destroyed Messina and Reggio (tlie Rhegium of Ac 28'^) the loss of life was appalling. JAMES SXRAHAN.
EASTER.— See Passover.
EBIONISM. — Ebionism is best understood as the .^^eneric name under which may be included a variety of movements, diverging more or less from Catholic Christianity, and primarily due to a con- ception of the permanent validity of the Jewish Law. Of tliese, some were merely tolerable and tolerant peculiarities ; some were intolerable and intolerant perversions of Christianity.
As soon as Christianity became conscious of its world-wide mission, the problem arose as to its relation to the Judaism out of which it sprang. This produced what we might a priori expect — a ditlerence within the primitive Christian com- munity between a liberal and a conservative tendency. It was a liberalism which steadily advanced, a conservatism which as steadily hard- ened and became more intolerant, and drifted further out of likeness to normal Christianity. Jewish Christian conservatism in its different degrees and phases gives rise to the various species of Ebionism.
1. Characteristics. — All Ebionites are distin- guished by two main and common characteristics : (1) an over-exaltation of the Jewish Law; (2) a defective Christology. We may take the first as fundamental. The second is deducible from it. To hold by the validity of the LaAV is obviously to find no adequate place for the work of a Redeemer (Gal 5'*). Christ tends to be recognized merely as a new prophet enforcing the old truth. And de- fective views of the work of Christ logically issue in, if they are not based upon, defective views of His Person. It is clear also, that those who hold the Law to be permanent, cannot consistently accept the authority of St. Paul, so we find that (3) hostility to St. Paul, involving the rejection of his Epistles, was a characteristic common, not to all, but to many, Ebionites.
2. Main groups.— There are three distinct classes of Ebionites. Ancient authorities speak of two sects of Ebionites, the more nearly orthodox of which they call Nazarenes. It is necessary, how- ever, to add as a third group those Ebionites whose system results from a union of other elements with the original mixture of Judaism and Cliristianity. Our classification, therefore, of the Ebionite sects is: (1) Nazarenes, (2) Ebionites proper, (3) Syncre- tistic Ebionites.
The clear division into two sects, named Naza- renes and Ebionites, appears in the 4th cent, in Epiphanius [Ucer. xxx. 1) and Jerome (Ep. 112, ad August. 13). But in the preceding cent. Origen speaks of ' the two-fold sect of the Ebionites ' (c. Cels. V. 61), though he has not the name Nazarene. In the 2nd cent. Justin Martyr divides Jewish Christians into two classes : those who, while they observed the Law themselves, did not require believing Gentiles to comply therewith, and who were willing to associate with them ; and those who refused to recognize all Avho had not complied with the Law (Dial. c. Tryph. xlvii.). Justin has neither name. At the end of the same cent., we find the name Ebionite for the first time in Irenaeus {adv. Hcer. I. xxvi. 2, etc.). He has no distinction Ijetween Ebionites and Nazarenes, and in this Hippolytus and Tertullian follow him. It is not surprising that only writers who had special oppor- tunity of familiarity with Palestinian Christianity should be aware of the distinction.
8. Name. — In all probability both names, Naza- renes and Ebionites, applied originally to all Jewish Christians, It was not unnatural that they should be called Nazarenes (Ac 24') ; it was not unnatural that they should call themselves Ebionites, a name signifying ' the poor ' (Heb. |V3x, 'ebyon). We know that the Ebionites identified themselves with the Cliristians of Ac 4*'"-, and claimed the blessing of Lk 62°(Epiphan. xxx. 17). (Gal2"'is an interesting verse in this connexion. It seems clear that ' the poor,' if not a name for the whole Christian community of Jerusalem, is to be understood at least of Jewish Christian poor.) Or, on the other hand, the name may iiave been attached to Jewish Christians in contempt. At all events, ■we may take it as highly probable that the two names were originally desig- nations of Jewish Christians generally, and the
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retention of those primitive names is in keeping \\ith the essentialiy conservative character of Ebionism.
Some of the Fathers (the earliest of them TertuUian) derive the name Ebionite from a certain teaclier, Ebion. In modern times Hilgen- feld is inclined to support this view {Ketzer- geschichte, 1884, p. 422 tt.). hut it is liiglily probable that this is a mistake, and that Ebion had no more existence than Gnosticus, the supposed founder of Gnosticism. Origen has another exjjlanation of the name Ebionite as descriptive of the poverty of the dogmatic conceptions of the sect. This is but an interesting coincidence.
4. Nazarenes. — We begin with the Nazarenes, who came nearest orthodoxy, and are to be con- sidered not as heretics, but as a sect of Jewish Christians. Our information regarding them is scantj', and several details are obscure. Our main and almost sole authorities are Jerome (de Vir. illustr. iii., and some references scattered in his Commentaries) and Epiphanius (Hcer. xxix.). The latter, who on almost every subject must be used with the greatest caution, is in this particular case specially confused, but has the candour to admit that his knowledge of the Nazarenes is limited. Jerome had opportunity of gaining accurate ac- quaintance with their views, and unless we admit his authority, we have practically no knowledge of the sect at all.