EBIONITES, ancient heretics, who appeared in the church in the first ages, and formed themselves into a sect in the second century, denying the divinity of Jesus Christ.

Origen conceives them to have been so called from the Hebrew word ebion, signifying poor, because, according to him, they were poor in sense, and wanted understanding. Eusebius, with a view to the same etymology, is of opinion they were so called from having poor thoughts of Jesus Christ, by taking him for a mere man. But it is more probable the Jews gave this appellation to the Christians in general out of contempt; because in the firstages there were few except poor people who embraced the Christian religion. This opinion Origen himself seems to incline to in his book against Celsus, where he says that they called those among the Jews who believed that Jesus was truly the expected Messiah, Ebionites. It might even be urged, with some probability, that the primitive Christians assumed the name themselves, in conformity with their profession; and it is certain that they valued themselves on being poor, in imitation of the apostles. Epiphanius, however, is of opinion that there had been a man named Ebion, the chief and founder of the sect of Ebionites, and contemporary with the Nazarenes and Cerinthians; and he gives a long account of the origin of the Ebionites, stating that they arose after the destruction of Jerusalem, when the first Christians, called Nazarenes, went out in order to live at Pella.

The Ebionites were little else than a branch of Nazarenes, only that they altered and corrupted in many things the purity of the faith as held by the first adherents of Christianity. For this reason Origen, in his answer to Celsus, distinguishes two kinds of Ebionites; one of whom believed that Jesus Christ was born of a virgin, and the other that he was born after the manner of other men. The first were orthodox in every thing, except that to the Christian doctrine they joined the ceremonies of the Jewish law, together with the traditions of the Pharisees. They differed from the Nazarenes, however, in several things, particularly as to the authority of the sacred writings; for the Nazarenes received all as Scripture that was contained in the Jewish canon, whereas the Ebionites rejected the prophets, holding the very names of David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel in abhorrence, and also the Epistles of St Paul, whom they treated with the utmost disrespect. They received nothing of the Old Testament except the Pentateuch; a circumstance which indicates that they were descended rather from the Samaritans than from the Jews. They agreed with the Nazarenes in using the Hebrew gospel of St Matthew, otherwise called the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles; but they had corrupted their copy in many places, and, particularly, had left out the genealogy of our Saviour, which was preserved entire in that of the Nazarenes, and even in those used by the Cerinthians.

Some, however, have made this gospel canonical, and of greater value than our present Greek gospel of St Matthew. The Nazarcnes, whose sentiments as to the birth of our Saviour were the same with those of the Ebionites, built their error on this very genealogy.

Besides the Hebrew gospel of St Matthew, the Ebionites had adopted several other books, under the names of St James, St John, and the other apostles; they also made use of the travels of St Peter, which are supposed to have been written by St Clement, but altered them so that scarcely any truth was left in them; and in order the better to authorize their own practices, they even made that saint tell a number of falsehoods. (See St Epipha- 1 nius, who is very diffusive on the ancient heresy of the Ebionites, Harr. 30. But his account deserves little credit, as, by his own confession, he has confounded the other sects with the Ebionites, and has charged them with errors to which the first adherents of this sect were utter strangers.)