EBIONITES, elii-on-Its, a sect composed of Jewish believers in Jesus of Nazareth as be ing the Christ or Messiah, who nevertheless re tained many of the practices and beliefs of their ancestral religion. Their name, Ebionites, seems to be formed from the Hebrew word ebionim, poor folk; but some of the ancient writers, un acquainted with the history of the primitive church of Jerusalem and Judea and with the Hebrew language, derive the name from that of a supposititious heresiarch Ebion. If the name was originally ebionim, °the poor? the sect will have chosen for itself in effect the same name as the medimval sect of the Poor Men of Lyons. The Ebionites are by many authors con founded with the Nazarenes or Nazarites, an other body of Christians Jewish by race and in a measure also Jewish in religion. The rise of the Ebionite sect is commonly referred to the time of Trajan, when, the whole Jewish race being excluded from 1Elia Capitolina (as Jeru salem was named anew), these people, despised alike by Jews, Christians and pagan Romans, migrated to Perza, the country beyond the Jor dan, and there freely developed their religious tenets and practices. They were Jewish rigor
ists, zealots, with some tinge of Christian belief, in that they held Jesus to have been the Mes siah; but they held him to be only man and begotten like other men. The Mosaic law they believed to be of everlasting obligation upon all believers in Jesus Christ whether of Jewish or Gentile race. Saint Paul they regarded as a traitor and arch-apostate for his having declared Mosaism superseded by the law of Christ. Of the Christian sacred books they held the Hebrew gospel of Saint Matthew to be the only one given through Divine inspiration.