Ebionites. By this name were designated one or more early Christian sects infected with Judaistic errors.
The word Ebionites, or rather, more correctly, Ebionaeans, Ἑβιωναῖοι, is a transliteration of the Aramean ABYONYA, meaning "poor men". It first occurs in Irenaeus, Adv. Haer., I., xxvi, 2, but without designation of meaning. Origen (C. Celsum, II, i; De Princ., IV, i, 22) and Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., III, xxvii) refer the name of these sectaries either to the poverty of their understanding, or to the poverty of the Law to which they clung, or to the poor opinions they held concerning Christ. This, however, is obviously not the historic origin of the name. Other writers, as Tertullian (De Praescr., xxxiii; De Carne Chr., xiv, 18), Hippolytus (eft. Pseudo-Tert., Adv. Haer., III, as reflecting Hippolytus's lost "Syntagma"), and Epiphanius (Haeres., xxx), derive the name of the sect from a certain Ebion, its supposed founder. Epiphanius even mentions the place of his birth, a hamlet called Cochabe in the district of Bashan, and relates that he travelled through Asia and even came to Rome. Of modern scholars Hilgenfeld has maintained the historical existence of this Ebion, mainly on the ground of some passages ascribed to Ebion by St. Jerome (Comm. in Gal., iii, 14) and by the author of a compilation of patristic texts against the Monothelites. But these passages are not likely to be genuine, and Ebion, otherwise unknown to history, is probably only an invention to account for the name Ebionites. The name may have been self-imposed by those who gladly claimed the beatitude of being poor in spirit, or who claimed to live after the pattern of the first Christians in Jerusalem, who laid their goods at the feet of the Apostles. Perhaps, however, it was first imposed by others and is to be connected with the notorious poverty of the Christians in Palestine (cf. Gal., ii, 10). Recent scholars have plausibly maintained that the term did not originally designate any heretical sect, but merely the orthodox Jewish Christians of Palestine who continued to observe the Mosaic Law. These, ceasing to be in touch with the bulk of the Christian world, would gradually have drifted away from the standard of orthodoxy and become formal heretics. A stage in this development is seen in St. Justin's "Dialogue with Trypho the Jew", chapter xlvii (about A.D. 140), where he speaks of two sects of Jewish Christians estranged from the Church: those who observe the Mosaic Law for themselves, but do not require observance thereof from others; and those who hold it of universal obligation. The latter are considered heretical by all; but with the former St. Justin would hold communion, though not all Christians would show them the same indulgence. St. Justin, however, does not use the term Ebionites, and when this term first occurs (about A.D. 175) it designates a distinctly heretical sect.
The doctrines of this sect are said by Irenieus to be like those of Cerinthus and Carpocrates. They denied the Divinity and the virginal birth of Christ; they clung to the observance of the Jewish Law; they regarded St. Paul as an apostate, and only used a Gospel according to St. Matthew (Adv. Haer., I, xxvi, 2; III, xxi, 2; IV, xxxiii, 4; V, i, 3). Their doctrines are similarly described by Hippolytus (Philos., VIII, xxii, X, xviii) and Tertullian (De carne Chr., xiv, 18), but their observance of the Law seems no longer so prominent a feature of their system as in the account given by Irenaeus. Origen is the first (C. Cels., V, lxi) to mark a distinction between two classes of Ebionites, a distinction which Eusebius also gives (Hist. Eccl., III, xxvii). Some Ebionites accept, but others reject, the virginal birth of Christ, though all reject His pre-existence and His Divinity. Those who accepted the virginal birth seem to have had more exalted views concerning Christ and, besides observing the Sabbath, to have kept the Sunday as a memorial of His Resurrection. The milder sort of Ebionites were probably fewer and less important than their stricter brethren, because the denial of the virgin birth was commonly attributed to all. (Origen, Horn. in Luc., xvii.) St. Epiphanius calls the more heretical section Ebionites, and the more Catholic-minded, Nazarenes. But we do not know whence St. Epiphanius obtained his information or how far it is reliable. It is very hazardous, therefore, to maintain, as is sometimes done, that the distinction between Nazarenes and Ebionites goes back to the earliest days of Christianity.