ancient heretics, who rose in the church in the very first age thereof, and formed themselves into a sect in the second century, denying the divinity of Jesus Christ.
Origen takes them to have been so called from the Hebrew word ebion, which in that language signifies poor; because, says he, they were poor in sense, and wanted understanding. Eusebius, with a view to the same etymology, is of opinion they were thus called, as having poor thoughts of Jesus Christ, taking him for no more than a mere man.
It is more probable the Jews gave this appellation to the Christians in general out of contempt; because in the first times there were few but poor people that embraced the Christian religion. This opinion Origen himself seems to give into, in his book against Celus, where he says, that they called Ebionites, such among the Jews as believed that Jesus was truly the expected Messiah.
It might even be urged, with some probability, that the primitive Christians assumed the name themselves, in conformity to their profession. It is certain, Epiphanius observes, they valued themselves on being poor, in imitation of the apostles. The same Epiphanius, however, is of opinion, that there had been a man of the name EBION, the chief and founder of the sect of Ebionites, contemporary with the Nazarenes and Cerinthians. He gives a long and exact account of the origin of the Ebionites, making them to have risen after the destruction of Jerusalem, when the first Christians, called Nazarenes, went out of the same to live at Pella.
The Ebionites are little else than a branch of Nazarenes; only that they altered and corrupted, in many things, the purity of the faith held among those first adherents to Christianity. For this reason, Origen distinguishes two kinds of Ebionites, in his answer to Celus: the one 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, with the Jews, Samaritans, and Nazarenes; together with the traditions of the Pharisees. They differed from the Nazarenes, however, in several things, chiefly as to what regards the authority of the sacred writings; for the Nazarenes received all for scripture contained in the Jewish canon; whereas the Ebionites rejected all the prophets, and held the very names of David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, in abhorrence. They also rejected all St Paul's epistles, whom they treated with the utmost disrespect.
They received nothing of the Old Testament but the Pentateuch; which should intimate them to have descended rather from the Samaritans than from the Jews. They agreed with the Nazarenes in using the Hebrew gospels of St Matthew, otherwise called the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles; but they had corrupted their copy in abundance of 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 Corinthians.
Some, however, have made this gospel canonical, and of greater value than our present Greek gospel of St Matthew: See Nazarenes. These last, whose sentiments, as to the birth of our Saviour, were the same with those of the Ebionites, built their error on this very genealogy.
Beside the Hebrew gospel of St Matthew, the Ebionites had adopted several other books, under the names of St James, 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 had altered them so, that there was scarce any thing of truth left in them. They even made that saint tell a number of falsehoods, the better to authorize their own practices. See St Epiphanius, who is very diffuse on the ancient heresy of the Ebionites, Hist. 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.