E'BIONITES (Heb. Won, poor), a name probably given originally by the hierarchical or influential party among the Jews, to those of their countrymen who professed the Christian faith, and who generally belonged to the poorer and more ignorant class (John, chap. vii., verses 48, 49). Subsequently, it would seem, the Gentile Christians, who were ignorant of Hebrew, employed it in a distinctive sense to designate their Jew ish co-religionists, who, in addition to their belief of Christianity, observed the Mosaic law. Irenmus is the first writer who makes use of the name. It is highly probable that the E. first became an organized body or sect at Pella, a city in Persia, on the eastern side of the Jordan, whither they had betaken themselves on the breaking out of the Roman-Jewish war in the time of Hadrian. Here, indeed, a strictly Jewish-Christian church continued to exist down to the 5th century. Among the E., however, there was by no means a unanimity of religious feeling, or uniformity of opinion. Two great divergent parties are clearly recognizable—time E. proper, and the Ebionitic Nazarenes. The former were little different from Jews: their conceptions of the Saviour were meager and unspiritual. They believed that Jesus was simply a man distinguished above all others for legal piety—pre-eminently a Jew, and selected as the Messiah because of his superior Judaism. Of course they denied his supernatural birth, yet not his resurrection, for " they lived in expectation of his speedy return to restore this city of God (Jerusalem), and to re-establish the theocracy there in surpassing splendor."—Neander. They were
the genuine descendants of those Judaizers who plagued the church in the time of the apostle Paul. The Ebionitic Nazarenes, on the other hand (who at the close of the 4th c. seem to have dwelt chiefly about Bercea in Lower Syria, but at an earlier period may have been more widely diffused), were Jewish Christians, in the better sense of the term. They conceived it to be their own duty still to circumcise, keep the Sabbath, etc., but they had no wish to impose the peculiarities of Judaism on the Gentile Christians. They did not believe that Christianity was merely a glorification of Judaism, but a new life come into the world, in which the Gentile might at once participate, without under going a Mosaic ordeal. Like the stricter E., they used a Gospel of Matthew; but it con taineql what the other did not—an account of the supernatural conception and birth of the Saviour. According to Neander, who has very thoroughly investigated this ques tion, there were a great many varieties of opinion among the E., springing out of the differences above spoken of, which it would be tedious to record. It is sufficient to say that Essenism (q.v.) modified Ebionism greatly, through the introduction of a Jewish mysticism, which recognized in Moses and Christ an inward identity of doctrine, and regarded them as revealers of the " primal religion," whose teaching, however, had been sadly corrupted. It is extremely probable that an Essenic Ebionite wrote the Clementine Homilies. See CLEMENS.