Christianity
The Poor Men, Jesus and Christianity—Ebionites, the Essenes who Rejected Paul
Abstract
Christians cannot escape from the fact that, in Jesus’s parable of Dives and Lazarus, we are the rich man, clothed and fed in comfort, and also guilty of appalling negligence concerning the starving and sick man at our gate… We have ignored the insistent theme throughout the scriptures—that God has always been on the side of the poor.Rev David C K Watson
© Dr M D Magee
Contents Wednesday, 06 October 2004
Rich and Poor In the Jewish Scriptures
The Jewish scriptures, which Christians are sure that Jesus believed, have always been an integral part of the Christian bible, and even the Old Testament God identifies with the weak and destitute:
He who oppresses a poor man insults his Maker.Prov 14:31
He that hath pity upon the poor lendeth unto Yehouah and that which he hath given will He pay him again.Prov 19:17
The law of Moses declares that no human being owns anything in perpetuity because everything belongs only to God!
Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the Yehouah Elohim’s, the earth also, with all that therein is.Dt 10:14
The earth is Yehouah’s, and the fulness thereof, the world, and they that dwell therein.Ps 24:1
The land shall not be sold for ever, for the land is mine, for ye are strangers and sojourners with me.Lev 25:23
Ownership was always for a limited period in the Old Testament. Those who had the use of what was properly God’s did so only so long as they were just and charitable to the poor. True enough, neither Jews nor Christians have taken any notice of this, but though they ignore what is inconvenient for them, they are directly opposing their own God’s Word.
The stern message of God’s retribution against the rich was already present in the Jewish scriptures, as exemplified by Isaiah, the greatly respected prophet of the Essenes and the early Christians:
Yehouah standeth up to plead, and standeth to judge the people. Yehouah will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof, for ye have eaten up the vineyard, the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord Yehouah of hosts.Isaiah 3:13
Ebionites
Money has a dangerous way of putting scales on ones eyes, a dangerous way of freezing people’s hands, eyes, lips and hearts.Dom Helder Camara
Judæa had historically been a poor country, but under Greek and Roman influence many Jews discovered a talent for commerce and developed a taste for wealth, especially the ruling class of Sadducees. So even before the “Abomination of Desolation” when the Greeks violated the Jewish temple with a statue of Zeus, Ben Sira could complain that the citizens of Jerusalem thought poverty disgraceful. Evidently the disgust of the Essenes for the Greek way of life included a disgust for the love of money and extortionate exploitation of the poor that was concomitant with it.
The Church Fathers spoke of early Christian sects (Ebionaioi) which still held on to some Jewish beliefs. In Hebrew, “ebyon” means “poor”. Irenaeus (AH 1:26:2), Origen (CC 2:1; DP 4:1:22) and Eusebius (HE 3:27) say Ebionites were called poor because of their “poor and mean opinions concerning Christ”. In fact, the name was used by the Essenes of themselves, as the Scrolls show plainly. Aramaic quite commonly uses as nouns adjectives like “poor”, “pious”, “holy”, “just”, “righteous”, “perfect” and “meek”. The Qumran literature often speaks of the community as “The Poor,” “The Meek” and “The Downtrodden” which, in the scrolls, seem to be used interchangeably. The scrolls have hymns to “The Poor”. This name the Essenes gave to themselves was a reaction to the cultural imperialism of the Greeks—Hellenization—which had led to the displacement of the original Persian Magi (“Hasidim”, The Holy Ones) from the temple, and the substitution of Hellenized priests. The Hasids who remained faithful to the original Persian traditions constantly opposed the new rulers in Jerusalem (the Scoffers), and were persecuted by them. Thus they remained poor but true to their traditional conception of Judaism.
“The Poor” are those who believed in the spiritual virtue of poverty, like Christ himself! That is the meaning of the phrase “poor in spirit”, used both by Christ and the Essene sectaries, and practised by the apostles and the Essenes. Can it be coincidence that “The Poor Ones” was a name of the followers of James in the Jerusalem Church (Gal 2:10 and Jas 2:3-5)? What the Greeks translating the words of the evangelists did not know was that the words they used when they said—“the poor”, “the holy” or “the righteous” meant the Essenes and not the poor, holy or righteous in general. Paul claims the only condition James imposed upon him in his missions to the gentiles was to remember “the poor”. He is reminding him to send money not for any poor but for “The Poor”, the Nazarenes, who, after the defeated uprising, had a lot of widows to support (Acts 6:1-6). Though there must be occasions in the New Testament when these words have been used in a general sense, perhaps by a later editor, in their original use they refer to the Essenes. Plainly, they were the orthodox Jewish Christians of Palestine who continued as Jews to observe the Mosaic Law. Isolated from the bulk of Christians from the time of the Jewish War they continued to practice the apostolic life, like the Essenes and Jesus, unpolluted by gentile adaptations until, the gentile Church Fathers declared them heretical. It was the gentile Church that was.
“The Meek” was also one of the community’s names for itself. Jesus said:
Blessed are the meek for they shall inherit the earth,Mt 5:5
an exact expression of the community’s beliefs about itself for, when God created His kingdom on earth, the elect would inherit it. In one scroll fragment (4Q521), the pious are glorified on the throne of the everlasting kingdom, and the righteous are promised resurrection. Adonai (Lord—God or the messiah?) visits “the meek”, calls the righteous by name, makes the blind see, raises up the downtrodden and resurrects the dead, and his spirit hovers over “the meek” announcing to them glad tidings. This astonishing little fragment alone ought to be sufficent to prove the relationship of early Christianity with the Essenes…
…the heavens and the earth will listen to His messiah, and none therein will stray from the commandments of the holy ones. Seekers of Adonai, strengthen yourselves in His service! All you hopeful in (your) heart, will you not find Adonai in this? For Adonai will seek the pious (hasidim) and call the righteous by name. Over the meek His spirit will hover and will renew the faithful with His power. And He will glorify the pious on the throne of the eternal Kingdom. He who liberates the captives, restores sight to the blind, straightens the bent, and forever I will cleave to the hopeful and in His mercy… And the fruit… will not be delayed for anyone. And Adonai will accomplish glorious things which have never been as… For He will heal the wounded, and revive the dead and bring good news to the poor… He will lead the uprooted and knowledge… and smoke…G Vermes, The Complete Dead Sea Scrolls 4Q521
J D Tabor, on his excellent website comments that this passage contains an exact verbal parallel with the passages in Matthew and Luke for identifying the times of the messiah. It appears in the “Q” source common to Matthew and Luke, thought to have been a pre-gospel collection of worthy sayings. Here we have a precise verbal formula, repeated in this fragment and in the source “Q”, showing some at least of its material was pre-Christian—not merely pre-gospels—because it was Essene. The early Christians, like the Essenes called “elect” or “saints”, were expecting to rule over the gentiles and even judge angels (1 Cor 6:1-4).
Joseph of Arimathea, who was likely to have been an Ebionite, was eventually described by Christians as a rich man to fulfil the “prophecy” of Isaiah 53 that the suffering servant would be buried in a rich man’s tomb! The suffering servant was actually a stage of the annual coronation of the king at Rosh Hashanah, a stage when the king was ritually stripped of all his finery and is struck on the face in a ceremonial demonstration of his humility. A king will normally end up in a rich man’s tomb!
A Poor Widow
In Mark 12:38-12:44, “the poor” feature again when Jesus comments on his observation of a poor widow making a contribution to the temple corban. In Mark 12:18 we had an audience of Sadducees but since then it was scribes. If this is a genuine sequence then Sadducees it would have been all along, because they were the caretakers of the temple which Jesus had occupied. Though that is not always obvious, it is here. The characteristics are more applicable to the priests than to the Pharisees. There were local priests in every village and it is they rather than the Pharisees who would behave in the way described. It would be unwise to argue that some Pharisees did not have an exaggerated idea of their own piety but many did not, despite the impression Mark tries to force upon his readers.
The families of priests took it in turns in serving in the temple and would have expected the men of the land to recognize and admire their close practical contact with God. The best clue, though, is the implication that they robbed widows. Pharisees could not be accused of so doing but the priesthood could. The priests were known to have been ready to turn to extortion to add to the temple’s coffers and it must be to this that Mark is alluding, widows then as now being particularly open to emotional pressure, especially religious pressure. As if to prove the point Mark moves on to the next part of the story.
The reference to scribes is shown now to mean Sadducees. The treasury was the temple treasury and because it was the feast of unleavened bread it was obligatory according to Deuteronomy 16:16-17 for everyone to give a sum to the temple. Originally it was only men but the law had been extended to both sexes.
Jesus has just said that those who devour widow’s houses will be damned meaning they will not be admitted into the kingdom of eternal life, God’s kingdom. Mark shows Jesus as demonstrating in reality what he means. They observe people casting their gifts into the temple treasury and it is the poor widow who puts in her entire livelihood. Widows were inclined to make gifts they could ill-afford in memory of their deceased husbands. The extension to women of the ordinance of Moses in Deuteronomy had made it almost an obligation. The beneficiaries were the already wealthy priesthood. The point of the demonstration is twofold:
- a condemnation of the Sadducees who accept the last farthing from a poor woman
- a further condemnation of the rich for whom an abundance meant little.
Jesus was one of the poor, an Essene. Jesus next leaves the temple but it is worth noting that, according to Eiseler, some fragments of an unknown gospel and of Josephus say that Jesus officiated as a priest, entering the holy place, implying both that Jesus had the role of an alternative priest and that he was in a position to play it because the temple had been captured. The only people who maintained a priestly tradition outside the temple priesthood were the community at Qumran, the Essene guardians of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
The Poor Christ
S Paul says of Christ:
Though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor.2 Cor 8:9
In the biblical account, Christ’s parents were too poor to bring to the temple a lamb, the normal offering for purification, bringing instead two pigeons. They were depicted as refugees seeking asylum first in Egypt from a cruel king (Mt 2:13-15), then in Galilee (Mt 2:19:23) from Herod’s son. Jesus had no home of his own, warning an eager recruit:
Foxes have holes, and birds of the air have nests, but the Son of man has nowhere to lay his head.Mt 8:20
John the Baptist sent messengers to ask Jesus if he was the messiah, Jesus answered by pointing out his good works—healing the sick and preaching to the poor (Mt 11:2-6). Jesus preached to all Jews, but preaching to the poor seemed to show he was the messiah. He goes on to tell his audiences that they can only be saved if they are kind to the poor. Speaking of the chosen ones at the Judgement day, he said:
Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was an hungred, and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink: I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison, and ye came unto me… Verily I say unto you, Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me.Mt 25:34-36;40
The so-called Brother of the Lord, James, who led the first church in Jerusalem after the crucifixion, wrote emphasising the proper attitude of Christians to poor and rich, in his neglected epistle:
If there come unto your assembly a man with a gold ring, in goodly apparel, and there come in also a poor man in vile raiment, and ye have respect to him that weareth the gay clothing, and say unto him, Sit thou here in a good place, and say to the poor, Stand thou there, or sit here under my footstool, Are ye not then partial in yourselves, and are become judges? … Hath not God chosen the poor of this world rich in faith, and heirs of the kingdom which he hath promised to them that love him? But ye have despised the poor. Do not rich men oppress you, and draw you before the judgment seats?James 2:2-6
The “poor of this world, rich in faith” were the Ebionites, there being no reason to think that the poor in general were rich in faith. Ebionies were voluntarily poor! They chose to be poor because poverty was a sacred virtue. The poor were blessed, meaning they would enter God’s kingdom—they would be saved! Luke gives the same beatitude as Matthew but phrases it differently:
Blessed be ye poor, for yours is the kingdom of God.Luke 6:20
Not the rich, who had already had their consolation (Lk 6:24), and were not to receive any other! The poor scabby man, Lazarus (“Saved by God”), begging at the door of Dives, the rich man, gets his reward, but the rich man ignores his plight and has to look on him in heaven from the fires of hell. These are written as direct quotations of the words of the incarnated son of God—God Himself, Christians say they believe, yet they will ignore them in favour of various formulae given by such as Paul, a mere mortal man. Jesus said unequivocally:
When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, neither thy kinsmen, nor thy rich neighbours, lest they also bid thee again, and a recompence be made thee. But when thou makest a feast, call the poor, the maimed, the lame, the blind, and thou shalt be blessed, for they cannot recompense thee. For thou shalt be recompensed at the resurrection of the just.Luke 14:12
Even the young and innocent Mary, according to Luke, knows that the rich could not be saved, when she recites her Magnificat:
He hath put down the mighty from their seats, and exalted them of low degree. He hath filled the hungry with good things; and the rich he hath sent empty away.Luke 1:52
The fact that Luke has put these words from an Essenic liturgy into the mouth of Mary ought to emphasise their significance for a Christian.
In an address to a group of Christian ministers, Upton Sinclair, the revolutionary US author, read a contemporary speech by Emma Goldman, the anarchist militant activist:
You rich men, weep and howl for the miseries that are coming upon you. Your riches are corrupted, and your garments are moth-eaten. Your gold and silver is corroded, and the rust of them shall be a testimony against you, and shall eat your flesh as it were fire. You have heaped treasure together for the last days. Look, the wages of the labourers who reaped your fields, which you kept back by fraud, cry out, and the cries of the harvesters have entered the ears of the Lord of Hosts. You have lived in pleasure on the earth, and in luxury. You have fattened your hearts in a day of slaughter.
The ministers were outraged, calling out, “This woman should be deported at once”.
In fact, it is from the New Testament (James 5:1-5). Ronald J Sider (Rich Christian in an Age of Hunger, 1977) explains that this story, exemplifying Christian hypocrisy, was actually preached by Dr Paul E Toms, President of the National Association of Evangelicals, in an unpublished sermon.
A Rich Young Man
The incident of the rich young man in Mark 10:17-25, though quite explicit, has been traditionally totally ignored by the clergy. Jesus has no doubt that wealth corrupts—his view being that of a “Poor One” but quite different from mainstream Jews who took wealth to be a blessing of God.
A man wants to know how to inherit eternal life. He wants to be sure of entering the coming kingdom. Jesus tells him that those who have followed God’s commandments—the law of Moses—will be saved. The man says he has followed them since his youth—if we are to believe Luke 18:18 who calls him a certain ruler, he is a Sadducee—and appears thoroughly complacent. Jesus is about to burst this particular bubble. To become a Nazarene he must give all he had to “the poor” (“The Poor”, the Ebionites, the Essenes) then he would gain treasure in heaven. The man cannot do it—he is rich—proving that he did not believe in the imminence of God’s kingdom as Jesus and the Nazarenes did. For the sake of the story the other requirements which Jesus would have stated, repentance and baptism, are omitted by Mark as irrelevant since the man would not give up his wealth. Mark is also constantly at pains to edit out references to baptism which would make Jesus sound like John the Baptist.
This little nugget shows that the Nazarenes, even when Jesus was alive, had the same requirement of foregoing material possessions as the Essenes. In Acts of the Apostles this rule is explicitly stated. As if to emphasize it—and, since Mark reports this emphasis, it was obviously still held by the early church—Jesus says (in some manuscripts twice):
How hardly shall they that have riches enter the kingdom of God,
adding:
It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God.Mk 10:25
Christian churches are amongst the wealthiest institutions on earth but still gladly accept the mites of widows. Their defence of wealth is that it does not matter as long as you trust in God rather than trust in riches. Well, they should read the story again! Jesus’s parable is unmistakably clear, and he says it is “impossible” for the rich to enter the kingdom of God. Who are the hypocrites now? The only reason Jesus does not say it is easier for a rich man to fly or walk on water is that there is a tiny hole in a needle which offers for the rich sinner the chance of God’s forgiveness once he has given away his wealth, repented sincerely and accepted baptism. The young man’s reaction shows how difficult it is.
Without any evidence at all from early manuscripts, some Christian apologists have argued that “for a rich” in Mark 10:25 is an interpolation. Perhaps that suits them because it then reads that it is impossible for any man to enter the kingdom! Other attempts to discredit the passage persist but there is absolutely no scholarly basis for the eye of a needle being a narrow gate in Jerusalem. Arguably the meaning could be a cable, that is to say a thick rope, the contrast being with the thin strand of cotton that would normally thread a needle.
The word in the Greek New Testament, “kamelos” (Latin, camelus), is undoubtedly a camel, but sometimes kamelos is spelt or misspelt as “kamilos”, which means a rope in Greek, and so the Christians decided that a rope was meant, thus giving the rich man hope, if a big enough needle could be found for the rope. Undoubtedly the story was meant to leave hope for the rich because the needle has a hole through which the camel or rope could notionally pass if it were large enough, but was in practice saying it was impossible.
The alternative to camel seems to have been justified by G M Lamsa, who wrote a version of the New Testament based on a Syriac text near the outbreak of the last world war. Lamsa was an Assyrian who thought the Hebrew scriptures originated with Ezra (who supposedly re-wrote it from memory after it was burned by the Babylonians) but the Israelites captured earlier by the Assyrians had, in the myth, taken their original scriptures to Assyria where they were preserved in the Peshitta. Thus he give priority of the Peshitta over the Masoretic text, taking the Aramaic as superior to the Hebrew.
He also believed the Syrians had preserved the Aramaic text of the New Testament in the Peshitta. He had the novel view that the Aramaic Peshitta was from the original Aramaic of the New Testament and not a translation from Greek. He thought the entire New Testament had been written in Aramaic and not in Greek. The evidence probably is that the Peshitta has a later revision of the Old Syriac New Testament, not the original Aramaic version as Lamsa thought.
From his eastern text, Lamsa reads the Aramaic word, “gamla”, where the Greek has “kamelos”. The equivalent Hebrew word is “gamal”, which means a beast of burden in general. The Arabic, “jamel”, means to carry a burden, and all come from a Semitic root “GML” that means to settle upon or place upon. Lamsa says “kamelos” is a word adopted into Greek from Aramaic, an attempt at expressing “gamla” into Greek.
”Gamla” has several meanings, besides camel, related to the idea of bearing a burden, one of which is a rope and another is a plank, “glmh” being modern Hebrew for a plank, the modern word having been derived from the old Aramaic word, which therefore must also have meant a plank, among other things. The meaning plank was not, it seems adopted into the Greek otherwise we might have had Jesus urging us to take the camel from our own eye before we tried to get the mote from our brother’s (Mt 7:3-5). Or we might have been straining out our gnats and swallowing ropes or planks instead of camels (Mt 23:24).
Doubtless it is possible that Greek, having purloined a word from Aramaic found more than one of its meanings useful but, though rope is far from impossible in the context, it seems more likely that a camel was meant in the original. The rabbis use the same absurd imagery and impossibilities to bring out points. Nor does it really matter which meaning was intended because the point is not altered despite the hypocrisy of rich Christians.
The Western Text manuscripts place Mark 10:24, with “trust in riches” removed, after Mark 10:25 removing the curious repetition and adding to the sense of the passage. The disciples in Mark 10:26 are then responding to Jesus in Mark 10:24 saying, “It’s hard to enter the kingdom of God!”
Jesus’s attitude is not surprising. For Essenes wealth was one of the three snares of Belial—the three major sins. The corresponding passage in Matthew makes the Essene connexion more explicit still. He writes (Mt 18:21):
If thou wouldst be perfect, go, sell that thou hast.
Essenes called themselves “the perfect” so Matthew is precisely saying, “To be an Essene you must sell…” etc.
Abandoning personsl wealth was a requirement rapidly abandoned by all Christians except certain monks and ascetics. Nowadays, if you are wealthy, you are courted by Christian churches or even found your own with an associated TV station! Even in Mark’s time it was being watered for the sake of wealthy Romans. Mark puts “they that trust in riches”, when Luke 18:24 puts the more obvious and certainly original, for it matches Mark 10:23, “they that have riches”. In Luke’s day for some the Essene poverty principle still held as an ideal and, as if to show there is no mistake Luke 16:19-31 gives together the parable of the rich young man and then that of Lazarus the beggar, in which Lazarus goes to heaven and the rich man to hell. Curiously the parable concludes by refuting the basis of Christianity, saying that a man who will not obey the law will not repent even if “one rise from the dead!”
Christians, in particular, might also note that, in Mark 10.18 and in Luke 18:19 but not in Matthew, Jesus denies that he is God, for only God is good—Jesus does not claim to be. Neither Essenes nor Pharisees would have made a claim to perfection, especially Essenes whose goal it was! For an Essene to claim perfection would be so lacking in humility that he would be dropped right to the back of the queue for the kingdom.
The list of commandments (Mk 10:19) must have not been needed by any but the most uncouth Jew. Mark wants to avoid saying the law of Moses and yet provide a basic moral code for Christian converts. Books of the scriptures in Greek would have been rare among gentiles in the earliest days of the gentile church so the list fills a gap.
The expression “treasure in heaven” occurs in the Psalms of Solomon 9:9 which is decidedly Essenic in tone. We observed in a previous passage that to take up the cross looks all the world like a Christian interpolation but could be genuine Essene tradition for, following the example of the first visitation, they were certainly marked with an invisible cross at baptism, just as Christians still are. Thus the reference is really to baptism and not to crucifixion. Matthew and Luke seem to realize that before the crucifixion the reference looks oddly anachronistic and omit it.
Observe Jesus’s mode of address to his adult audience—children!
New Testament Communists
But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue, but in deed and in truth.1 Jn 3:17-18
The author of this epistle denies that those who do not show through their actions that they are helping their poorer brothers can be Christians. Traditionally, the author is the apostle John. As the Reverend Watson, vicar of S Michael-le-Belfry, York, says, most Christians have accepted a middle class culture with its wealthy values and selfish ambitions. Though God’s example was to become poor so that others could become rich, Christians prefer not to follow his example but to remain among the rich. According to S Paul, Christians should be satisfied with “enough” (2 Cor 8:8), and they are to be equal among God’s people (2 Cor 8:14), not above them in wealth. When Christians got more than enough for their needs, it was to “provide… for every good work”.
Jesus said:
There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake, and the gospel’s, But he shall receive an hundredfold now in this time, houses, and brethren, and sisters, and mothers, and children, and lands, with persecutions, and in the world to come eternal life.Mk 10:29
In this otherwise cryptic passage, Jesus is recommending communism. The brothers in the Nazarene fellowship might lose their families but they gained a much bigger one, they might lose a house but gained the use of many of them. Their reward was eternal life, but meanwhile, they would be oppressed for being a member and going against the received wisdom of Hellenized Judæa. Jesus was promising the kingdom of God, but was also offering a security in the Nazarene fellowship that would help bring it about:
Therefore take no thought, saying, What shall we eat? or, What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be clothed? (For after all these things do the Gentiles seek) for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need of all these things. But seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you. Take therefore no thought for the morrow: for the morrow shall take thought for the things of itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof.Mt 6:31
The whole objective was to bring about the kingdom of God, and meanwhile God would provide for the needs of the Nazarenes, a necessary evil. The parenthesis is proof that the Nazarenes excluded gentiles. Jesus was addressing a purely Jewish movement. They were Ebionites. The kingdom never arrived but Christians thought they were carrying on the movement founded by Jesus, though they had been excluded from the original one. Paul was the one who wanted to admit gentiles, contrary to the wishes of the Jerusalem Church, and to do so, he had to abandon the law of God and many of the rules of the Son of God. Paul is the true God of the Christians.
The followers of Jesus shared a common purse (Jn 12:6), a detail much expanded in the recorded lifestyle of the Nazarenes in Acts. Nazarenes indisputably were communists:
And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own, but they had all things common.Acts 4:32
And all that believed were together, and had all things common, And sold their possessions and goods, and parted them to all men, as every man had need.Acts 2:44
Neither was there any among them that lacked, for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, And laid them down at the apostles’ feet, and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.Acts 4:34
Later in Acts, the Nazarenes of Antioch helped the Jerusalem Church by sending them funds:
Then the disciples, every man according to his ability, determined to send relief unto the brethren which dwelt in Judaea.Acts 11:29
The two citations (Acts 11:29; 4:34) combine to give the modern communistic maxim, “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need”. It seems that atheistic communists had read Acts but not Christians.
Christians argue vehemently against these unequivocal understandings of Acts. They desperately claim the early Christians did not share everything, especially private property. Peter murdered Ananias and his wife for not giving all the proceeds of the sale of their house to the Nazarene yahad (community), yet Christians argue that he had no need to!
But Peter said, Ananias, why hath Satan filled thine heart to lie to the Holy Ghost, and to keep back part of the price of the land? While it remained, was it not thine own? and after it was sold, was it not in thine own power? why hast thou conceived this thing in thine heart? thou hast not lied unto men, but unto God.Acts 5:3-4
They interpret this as meaning that the sale was voluntary, and that Ananias was a member of the Nazarene yahad without needing to sell. In fact, Peter is plainly saying that no one forced Ananias to join the group. He could have retained his house, or sold it and kept the proceeds by remaining outside it, but having joined, he was obliged to sell his property and put it into the common purse. Why otherwise was the punishment death? Acts 4:32 clearly states the true situation, so why should it be doubted.
Apologists then tell us that, though the Greek is translated as the simple past tense, really the verbs are in the continuous, showing the Nazarenes were continuously giving their wealth to the Church. They cannot have done it all at once. It is another dishonesty. The Church was rapidly recruiting members, as Acts tells us. So, there were indeed continuous gifts to the Nazarenes because people were continuously joining. So, the literal translation of Acts 4:34 is:
For as many as were owners of lands or houses, selling them, they bore the value of the things being sold.
Those recruits who had sellable possessions sold them and brought them to the apostles. The continuity of the selling, and explicitly distributing too in Acts 4:34, is in the recruiting.
Another argument Christians offer against the communistic interpretation is that John Mark’s mother owned a house:
And when he had considered the thing, he came to the house of Mary the mother of John, whose surname was Mark, where many were gathered together praying.Acts 12:12
Presumably, the assumption is that this Mary is a Christian because she has a congregation meeting in her house. The house might simply have been the house that Mary lived in, not one she owned. She could have been renting the house. Mary might have owned the house, but was not a Nazarene herself. Her son was, and so, like Gorky’s Mother, she let him and his friends use the house out of motherly devotion. Most likely, though, is that Mary was a Nazarene, especially as a title of Nazarene women seems to have been Mary (Lady), misunderstood by gentile Christians as a name. The Essenes held their houses in common, so that any Essene or Nazarene traveller in a different town could find accommodation in a communal house. This was the communal house administered by this Mary. She was called his mother in the same sense that an abbess is called a mother superior. She was John Mark’s mother because he lodged in her house. Or the senior Essene women were called “mothers” because they had the role of ritual mother at the hypothesised Essene born again ceremonies.
Christians say further evidence that the Nazarenes permitted ownership of private peoperty is that Peter owned a house, the place where Jesus healed Peter’s mother (Mt 1:28)—another “mother” in charge of a communal house, perhaps. In fact, Jesus had just begun his mission by recruiting Peter and Andrew. It means that the new recruit, Peter, had not yet had time to sell his house, as he himself required on pain of death (Ananias and Sapphira), in Acts. Moreover, the home might not have been Peter’s to sell, but his mother’s or his father’s. These were young men in their prime, and there is no reason to think that their fathers were already dead. They simply had no part in the story, and might even have disapproved of their sons, good reasons for not introducing them. The mothers also had no part in the story, but the early gentile church had a good reason for introducing spurious women. Most of its members were women.
Another modern justification for Christians being wealthy is that Jesus seemed to tell his followers to lend money with no chance of it being repayed. Christians like to think of themselves as charitable, so it ought to be clear that such a loan is misnamed. It is a gift (Mt 5:42). The gift is to the poor (Mt 6:2-4), and it is just another way of saying the same. Even so, Jesus addressed people other than his followers. He was, after all, trying to recruit people to his cause, that of the Essenes or Ebionites—The Poor. So, he could have been telling sympathisers not willing to join the movement to support them by gifts from their private wealth. The direct evidence of Acts is proof enough that the Nazarenes did not permit private wealth, so it is typically Christian hypocrisy to pretend otherwise from a few ambiguous passages. The undisguised communism of the first Christians is ignored so that the laissez-faire capitalism of Adam Smith can be adopted as the economic outlook of Christianity. If these Christians are genuinely God-fearing, they had better start changing their way back to those Jesus favoured—those of The Poor, the Ebionites.
The goods were held in “common”, the Greek word being “koinos”. Several derived words are popular in the epistles particularly, the main one of them being “koinonia” (commonality, commonwealth, brotherhood in the Jerusalem bible), reasonably translated as “fellowship”, though with the loss of its original connexion with “koinos”. Related words that retain the connexion with the original are translated “communicate”, “communication”, “communion”, and “companion” meaning “comrade”. The Harper Collins Encyclopedia of Catholicism clearly states that the word “communion” used as meaning the community of the Church and the communal life of Christians derives from the Greek word “koinonia” used by Paul as “sharing, fellowship or close association”. The word behind it, common(!) in the scrolls, is yahad. Sharing is the defining concept of “koinonia”. When Philo described the Essenes (Quod omnis probus), he wrote of their “koinonia”, rendered in translation as “spirit of sharing”. He described the Essenes thus:
No one’s house is his own in the sense that it is not shared by all, for, besides the fact that they dwell together in communities, the door is open to visitors from elsewhere who share their convictions. Again, they all have a single treasury, and common disbursements, their clothes are held in common, and also their food through their institution of public meals. In no other community can we find the institution of sharing food, life and board…
“Commune” would be the translation of “koinonia” that retains the original intent, especially as the Nazarenes were obviously communists, though “communion”, specifically understood as a confederation of communes might indeed be appropriate. The sharing of food appears in the Christian use of the word, “communion”, the Christian ritual involving the holy meal. It was chosen from the Essene practice of communal meals for the Christian communal act of sharing as a meal the blood and body of the Christian God, as Corinthians shows:
The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not the communion (koinonia) of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not the communion (koinonia) of the body of Christ?1 Cor 10:16
Paul’s collections were “koinonia”. The word is used for “contributing” to the Nazarene commonwealth, as well as “distributing” from it, so it has a distinct economic connotation, as perhaps the word “fellowship” ought properly to have too. The Nazarenes shared in everything, their goods, their beliefs and the blood and body of their God. The aim was economic equality, as even Paul advocated:
For I mean not that other men be eased, and ye burdened, But by an equality, that now at this time your abundance may be a supply for their want, that their abundance also may be a supply for your want: that there may be equality.2 Cor 8:13-14
The New English Bible agrees Paul’s aim was equality, though some translations use other words such as “reciprocity” and “equity”. The Greek is “isotes”, from “isos” meaning “like” or “equal”, so can mean nothing other than “equality”.
Christians repeatedly prove their hypocrisy, especially as Jesus specifically said:
No man can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one, and love the other, or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon.Mt 6:24
“Mammon” is actually an Aramaic word but was left untranslated in the Greek, making it into an unusual name, apparently of an idolatrous god. If so, Mammon was the god of wealth, and therefore plainly meaning wealth itself. Their own God was telling Christians they had to choose between the God of The Poor (the Ebionites) and the god of the rich. The Greek word often translated as “covetousness” in the New Testament is “pleonoxia” which is better translated as “striving for possessions”.
And he said unto them, Take heed, and beware of covetousness, for a man’s life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he possesseth.Lk 12:15
Of course, anyone who covets someone else’s possessions must want them, but the real meaning is that no Christian should strive for possessions whether they are someone else’s or not. This passage makes it clear enough. Accumulating wealth does not give anyone life. The life of real interest to Christians is eternal life—life after death—and the Jesus of Luke pushes it home with the parable of a man who decides to build barns to accumulate his wealth for the future not realising he was about to die that night:
But God said unto him, Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee, then whose shall those things be, which thou hast provided? So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not rich toward God.Lk 12:20-21
The wealthy fool did not benefit in this life or the future one. Christians are very fond of Paul, who let them do many things their own God forbade, but here we have a passage in Paul, the Christian hypocrites again ignore:
But now I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner, with such an one no not to eat… Therefore put away from among yourselves that wicked person.1 Cor 5:11
Paul’s argument is that Christians have no jurisprudence over those outside the church, but God will judge them. The congregation should judge those within the church if they are blatant sinners, and the sins listed include covetousness, meaning striving for possessions. Indeed, their punishment is specific—not to eat with them. In those early days of the Church, following on from the Essene messianic meal, the Eucharist was a proper meal—the communion—not merely a token one, yet those who were refused it were refused eternal life. The Latin translation from the Greek of “koinonia” was “communicatio”. Just as in the Essene practice, the wicked Christians forbidden to share in the Eucharist or communion were “ex communicatio”—they were excommunicated and could not be saved. In case anyone doubts it, Paul repeats it quite specifically more than once:
…no thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.1 Cor 6:10
…no whoremonger, nor unclean person, nor covetous man, who is an idolater, hath any inheritance in the kingdom of Christ and of God.Eph 5:5
The constant message of the New Testament is that God will raise up the poor and will cast down the rich. Only the modern hypocrites who call themselves Christians refuse to see this, because it does not suit them, though they ought to be worried if they truly believe the bible is God’s word. And the reason is there too. God is the God of justice. The Judgement Day is meant to balance out the injustices of life. Yet, in life, the rich get their riches at the expense of the poor, and we can now add, the exploitation of the earth’s resources. That is why the rich have had their consolation, already, in life, and can expect no more after death.
The whole point of God’s love and justice, in the Essenic interpretation, is that He will reward the poor in his kingdom of heaven. That is why the Essenes were the Ebionites, and considered voluntary poverty—those who chose to be “poor in spirit”—a virtue.
Ebionites and the Early Church
“Ebionite” emerges as the name used in the second and third centuries for a sect of Jewish Christians who had not rejected Judaism. If Acts reflects the Jerusalem Church, it shows a zeal for the Law of Moses among the earliest Christians. The first Christians were, do not forget, Jews. After the fall of Jerusalem (70 AD), the church regrouped at Pella under bishop Symeon (d 106 AD). These first Christians had expected a judgement predicted by Christ and had fled. Sixty years on, they refused to take part in the struggle of Bar Kosiba (132 AD) against the Romans because he could not have been the true messiah to a Christian. This is when the sect is said to have started. In 135 AD during the uprising of Bar Kosiba, the Jerusalem Church was dispersed by the Roman emperor Hadrian and fled east across the river Jordan into Peræa. Perhaps so, but it cannot be when the sect began—they already existed before then—but Christians assume them to have been a type of early Christianity. In a sense they were, but the earliest Christianity was Essenism. Cut off by the Romans and later the Moslems from the centre of Christianity in the West, they retained their Essenic beliefs.
After another messianic rebellion and bloody defeat, Jews were forbidden to enter Jerusalem, and Hadrian forbade traditional Jewish rites. Gentile Christianity in the second century was busy casting off as much Judaism as it could while retaining the Jewish scriptures. So the Christians assented to Hadrian’s new rules to distinguish themselves from the Jews in the eyes of the Romans, and showed they meant it by electing an uncircumcised gentile as their bishop (Eusebius, HE 4:6). The outcome was that Jewish Christians of the Jerusalem Church split. Some Ebionites left Christianity to return to Judaism, some tried to remain as both Jews and as Christians, getting no support from either, but perhaps some respect as a devout minority. Later bent scholars called them Pharisaic Ebionites, after their adherence to Judaism and to make them clear enemies of Christ, though they had nothing to do with the Pharisees. Jesus shows from his speech that he was an Ebionite himself, but he disparaged the Pharisees.
Tertullian (DPr 33; DCC 14:18), Hippolytus and Epiphanius (H 30) propagated the falsehood that a man called Ebion, supposedly a pupil of Cerinthus, founded the sect, and the gospel John was directed against them both. Ebionism had no founder by that name, unless it was used as an honorary title of Jesus Christ or an earlier Righteous Teacher, but it was undoubtedly founded in Palestine, and existed at the beginning of the Christian Church.
Justin Martyr in his Dialogue with Trypho the Jew (ch 47), about 140 AD, speaks of two sects of Jewish Christians estranged from the Church. One observed the Mosaic Law for themselves, but did not require others to observe it, while the others held the Mosaic law to be universally necessary. But Justin did not name them. Hippolytus (c 225-235 AD) and Tertullian described them similarly. According to the second century Christian, Irenaeus (c 180-190 AD—AH 1:24:2; 3:21:2; 4:33:4; 5:1:3), Ebionites:
- denied the divinity and the virginal birth of Christ
- clung to the observance of the Jewish Law
- regarded S Paul as an apostate
- used only a gospel according to Matthew
Like Cerinthus and Carpocrates, the Ebionites differed from gentile Christians in accepting Jesus Christ as the messiah and the greatest of the prophets, but not as the “virgin born” Son of God. Christ was “the Son of Joseph and Mary according to the ordinary course of human generation”. He became one with God in the baptism and remained so until his crucifixion. They did not view Jesus’s death as a bloody act of atonement. They interpreted the Eucharist as a memorial of Jesus, using a chalice of water for the chalice of blood, and were vegetarians, rejecting temple sacrifices. They practised a rigorous asceticism and stressed the binding character of the Mosaic Law, and considered Paul an apostate for having declared the supremacy of Christian teaching over it.
Tertullian said, to them, Christ was “a mere man, nothing more than a descendant of David, and not also the Son of God”. He had not been born of a virgin, a gentile invention, but his baptism changed him. In the Gospel according to the Hebrews a voice from heaven said, besides the words recorded by Matthew, “This day have I begotten thee” (Ps 2:7). According to Epiphanius (H 30:13), a bright light filled the place and John the Baptist asked, “Who art Thou, Lord?”. The voice gave the same reply. Then it was that John prostrated himself at the feet of Jesus asking him to baptize the baptizer, as in the canonical gospel. He did not become Christ until his baptism (Justin Martyr, Tryph 49). He had the power needed to fulfil His mission as messiah, but remained a man nonetheless.
The third century Christian apologist, Origen, classified the Ebionites in two groups, those who believed in the virgin birth and those who rejected it. Both the Jewish sabbath and the Christian Lord’s Day were holy to them, and they expected the establishment of a messianic kingdom in Jerusalem. In his Ecclesiastical History written in the fourth century, Eusebius also describes the Ebionites who held the brother of Jesus, James the Just, in special regard. They held Christ not to be divine but a plain and ordinary man, naturally conceived and notable for achieving righteousness through his character. They did not accept that faith was sufficient to save and were therefore careful to observe the law in addition—they evinced great zeal to observe the literal sense of the law. They had no regard at all for Paul. Until the fifth century, remnants of the sect still existed in Palestine and Syria, and it seems certain that the Christians who influenced Mohammed in the seventh century were Ebionites. They were the remnants of the Jerusalem Church of James the Just perpetuating the name used by the Nazarenes, the Essenes and James himself.
Ebionites were known by several names. Because they rejected the divinity of Christ, Ebionites were called “Homuncionites” (Gk Anthropians, Anthropolatrians). Because they settled across the Jordan in Peræa, they were called “Peratici” (reminiscent of the name of the medieval heretical sect of “Patarenes”). And because they had a prominent leader called Symmachus who made his own translation of the Hebrew bible to avoid the Septuagint used by the gentiles, they were called Symmachians.
The strict Ebionites remembered the tradition passed down to them that Jesus was not a god, but was nevertheless a great and brave Jew. They recognized, what gentile Christians refused to recognize, that Jesus had tried but failed to anticipate the Day of God’s Vengeance. It showed he was human. As Tertullian put it, Jesus was a great man but “nothing more than a Solomon or a Jonas”(DCC 18). Ebionites were Essenes and had to return to their arcane studies to try to anticipate when God would come with His army of angels. They had to continue trying to be righteous under the law, something that Christians did not have to be, and soon lost, having no proper criterion of righteousness. They continued to expect that God would visit Jerusalem to cleanse it, in preparation for cleansing the world, and, of course, now a gentile city, it needed it. It would be restored in the millennial kingdom of messiah, and Jews would reign there as the chosen people of God, visited by all the nations of earth in submission.
The failure of Jesus in Gethsemane and his subsequent crucifixion, then another failure to arrive at the time of the Jewish War, meant the coming of the messiah had to be deferred until the millennium. Ebionites pointed to Christ’s regard for the law (Mt 5:17; 26:55; John 7:14), to show he never abrogated it as gentile Christians claimed. Eusebius (HE 6:17) probably made his description far closer to the Pharisaic view than the true Ebionite one to emphasise the Judaizing he claimed had happened. But Justin Martyr (Tryph 47) said they continued to refuse hospitality with gentiles, as one would expect of Essenes. They cited Matthew 10:24-25 in criticism of the gentile church for ignoring what Jesus had said, and said they “would be imitators of Christ”. Their mark of Christ was fulfilment of the law. Fascinatingly, in the light of the beliefs of the Cathars, they argued that men were generally not perfect enough to obey the law properly, but “had any one else fulfilled the commandments of the Law, he would have been the Christ”. Hippolytus (ROH 7:34) adds “when Ebionites thus fulfil the law, they are able to become Christs”.
Origen (c 254 AD) notes the difference between the two types of Ebionites (CC 5:61), as does Eusebius (c 340 AD—HE 3:27)—the more westernized type accepted the virginal birth of Christ, while rejecting his pre-existence and divinity, but reserved sunday as a Christian memorial of Christ’s resurrection while still observing the Jewish sabbath. Mostly, though, Ebionites were associated with denying the virgin birth so scholars have concluded that the westernized branch were a minority. Epiphanius calls the more heretical sect Ebionites, and the more gentile, Nazarenes. The Apostolical Constitutions (6:2) traced them back to apostolic times, and Theodoret (HF 2:2) put them in the reign of Domitian (81-96 AD), so some accept the distinction between Nazarenes and Ebionites goes back to the earliest days of Christianity.
They reviled Paul, and Paul knew it, as his references to the words of the Judaizers in Corinthians and Galatians show. They said he taught directly against Peter, James, and John, and a careful reading of the Epistles and Acts confirms a disagreement. Jesus Christ had not called Paul himself, and so he was a false apostle, his supposed encounter with the spirit of Christ being a ploy to give himself some apostolic authority. They said he was neither “called of Jesus Christ Himself”, nor trained in the Church of Jerusalem. He had misapplied their own word, “deceiver”, or more bluntly, “liar”, twisting it against them when it properly applied to himself (2 Cor 6:8). He it was who offered God’s word for sale. He proclaimed deliverance from the Law to please men, and commended himself. He walked according to the flesh, puffed up with pride and constantly pleading for his honesty. His constant pleas actually suggest a basis for the unseen accusations they presume. He was an “apostate from the Law”, and was not even a Jew by birth.
Irenaeus says they used Matthew as a gospel. Eusebius says they used the Gospel according to the Hebrews written in Hebrew letters, known also by Hegesippus, Origen and Clement of Alexandria. It seems the two were the same. Epiphanius says the Nazarenes used the Gospel according to the Hebrews, and the strict Ebionites had an “incomplete, falsified, and truncated copy” of it. This incomplete Gospel according to the Hebrews was surely the Aramaic original of Matthew consisting of what the scholars call “Q”, a collection of sayings like the gospel of Thomas. Jerome translated the Ebionite gospel into Greek and Latin and declared it the same as the Gospel of the Twelve Apostles and the Gospel of the Nazarenes. Of course, it did not have the first two chapters describing the supernatural birth of Jesus, but does that mean they had omitted it on purpose, or that the gentile Church had added it? The latter is certain. They also revered the Protevangelium Jacobi and the Periodoi tou Petrou, so obviously respected James and Peter.
Gnostic Ebionites
When it comes to the gnostic Ebionites, Christian apologists always claim the sect had come about from external influences, rather than that it was the source of much gnostic thought. J P Arendzen, in the CE, notes that a gnostic development of the heresy later came from the Judaistic Ebionites. They differed from most gnostics in maintaining Yehouah the Demiurge as the Supreme Good God. On this ground, some refuse to consider the Ebionites as having been gnostic, though their general teaching (as expressed in the pseudo-Clementine works) is gnostic.
The unreliable Epiphanius (AH 30) is the chief authority on the gnostic Ebionites. Having met them in Cyprus, he knew about them personally. They considered their own brand of Christianity to the original primitive Judaism of Moses, free of later accretions and the additions of the the later books of the Jewish scriptures. Prophets were distinguished as true ones or those who were not true but commendable. Adam, Noah, Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Aaron, Moses, and Jesus were true ones, while David, Solomon, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and so on were of a lesser quality. Like the Samaritans, they accepted the Pentateuch alone among the Jewish scriptures. They identified Jesus as “That Prophet” spoken of by Moses, saying their gospel said, “I am He concerning Whom Moses prophesied, saying, A prophet shall the Lord God raise unto you like unto me” (Clem Hom 3:53), and this showed his teaching was that of the original Moses. There is much of Persian Dualism in this gnostic system, and it has come into Christianity. It is difficult indeed to imagine that the dualism was not original, but has been expunged from Judaism since. They believed that:
- Matter is eternal, an emanation of God, constituting His body.
- Creation is transformation of the eternal matter by God’s wisdom, Logos or Sophia, but this is not different from God as the Christian Son is somehow considered to be. Sophia produces the world by emanations of syzygies, the female emerging before the male but overcome by him.
- God had appointed two antagonists, Christ and Satan, and so the world was divided into Good and Evil. Christ, the Son of God ruled the good, and the world to come, but Satan was the prince of this world—the Prince of Evil (John 14:30; Eph 1:21; 6:12). Neither is a god.
- Adam was the bearer of the first revelation, Moses of the second, Christ of the third and perfect one. How Christ relates to Jesus is not clear.
- Salvation is by Knowledge, Gnosis, by believing in God the Teacher enabling the precepts of the law to be obeyed, and by being baptized unto remission of sins.
- Christ shall come again to triumph over Antichrist as light dispels darkness.
Some said Christ was a creature, not a son of God, a Spirit higher than the angels. Like an Indian Avatar, he came to earth when he wished and in different forms. He had appeared as Adam, to the patriarchs in bodily shape. Others equated Adam and Christ. He had come as Jesus, who was, to the Ebionites a successor of Moses, and not divine. But they had no moment of union of Christ with Jesus, thus leaving it open that he was divine or at least miraculous.
They were strictly ascetic, and vegetarian, rejecting scriptural passages like Genesis 18:8 that speak of flesh eating. They also refused wine, using unleavened bread and water for their sacred meal. They revered water as being “in the place of a god”. Bathing was essential and often, a clear enough link with the Essenes, or one of their lustrating offshoots. They also disdained the Jewish temple, just like the Essenes. However, the fact that they honoured marriage and preferred early marriages, suggests either that they sprouted from the village Essenes or had began themselves, like the Christians to adapt to western imperatives. They observed both sunday as the Lord’s Day and saturday as the sabbath. They retained the covenant of Abraham and of Jesus Christ of circumcision, eschewing fellowship with the uncircumcised. Like the original Ebionites, they abhorred and discredited Paul and his epistles.
The gnostic Ebionites, like the Christians, were zealous missionaries and writers of books. The Book of Elchasai and the Clementine Books came out of the Ebionites. In them Jesus and his apostles appear as much more Essenic in character than they do in the gospels and letters that have come to us in the Christian New Testament. Plainly one or the other has been altered, and there seems little doubt which it is. Jesus, Peter, Matthew, and James the Just were Essenes. The Clementine Homilies and Recognitions incorporate additional works of the Ebionites under the sections called Peter’s Peripatetic Sermons. They propagate the Ebionite view of the supremacy of James, gnosis, and their antagonism to Simon Magus. The Clementine Recognitions, in Rufinus’s translation, according to Arendzen (CE sv “Ebionites”), are more Catholic than the Homilies.
The book of Elchesai—who is said to have “preached unto men a new remission of sins, in the third year (101 AD) of Trajan’s reign”—or The Hidden power was written about 100 AD and brought to Rome about 217 AD by Alcibiades of Apamea (Syria). Hippolytus (H 9:8,12) denounced his teaching of Elchasai, from the book, as that of “a wolf risen up in our own day against many wandering sheep, whom Callistus had scattered abroad”, and said many “became victims of the delusion”. Less than two centuries after Jesus, Roman Christians had forgotten their origins, or pretended to do so, as too embarrassing. The book was said to have been in imitation of Callistus. It was the book of the Elchesaites, or Symmachiani in the west, those who accepted a new baptism. Little is known about them. Their influence might be traceable amongst the Mandeans.
A few Ebionites were left in the time of Theodoret, about the middle of the fifth century, the rest having died out, returned to Judaism and, perhaps, a few became Catholic Christians, though it does not seem likely to be many. Ebionite Christianity in the east seems likely to have lasted until the arrival of the Moslems, and indeed, is likely to have influenced Mohammed, though for centuries it had disappeared from western view. So, it was far from unimportant as modern Christians are at pains to make out in their effort to suggest that a short lived version of Christianity, like Judaism, could not have had God’s imprimatur.
Outside of Palestine, the writings of Paul and, supposedly, John excluded Ebionism from Asia Minor, but eventually it got there. Centuries later, much of gnostic Ebionism arrived in Europe from Armenia and Asia Minor as the Paulicians and Bogomils.
Early Church
We have seen that Paul had the same communistic ideas as the Nazarenes. He was explicitly described as a “ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes” in Acts by an advocate trying him before the governor, Felix. Other early Christian works have the same principles encoded in them, and plainly they must have been a strong reason why the Church recruited successfully among the lower classes. The Didache, assumed to be a Christian composition, but most likely based on an Essene original, advocates the holding of goods in common, just as Acts does:
Thou shalt not turn away from him that is in want, but thou shalt share all things with thy brother, and shalt not say that they are thine own, for if ye are partakers in that which is immortal, how much more in things which are mortal.Didache 4:8
Another work found bound with the Didache in 1875, but also found by Tischendorf as part of the Codex Sinaiticus in 1859, is the Epistle of Barnabas which partly overlaps with the Didache, probably having drawn on it or a common source. Not surprisingly, it expresses similar sentiments:
Thou shalt communicate in all things with thy neighbour. Thou shalt not call things thine own, for if ye are partakers in common of things that are incorruptible, how much more of those which are corruptible.
Here the word “communicate” is one of those Greek words derived from “koinos”. In Didache 2:6, 3:5 and 5:1, we again meet the word “covetouness”, striving for riches, as one of a string of awful crimes that lead to the way of death.
Thou shalt not be covetous, or rapacious, or hypocritical, or malicious, or proud; thou shalt not take up an evil design against thy neighbour.Didache 2:6
Here we are right back with the founding principles of the Essenes. They considered that they had to practice being perfect even while in the imperfect world. They could not conceive of a just God having the injustices of this world, and saw the kingdom of God as the reward for those who suffered injustice on earth. So, in heaven, all saved people must be equal. All saved people must share what they had. They had become perfect, and had no desire, and no need therefore for riches. But that meant they had to begin practicing this sharing and equality here on earth, otherwise they were not sincere in their faith. The rich who would not, like the rich young man, give up their wealth were not sincere believers and so could not be saved. They worshipped Mammon, not Yehouah.
The Shepherd of Hermas, written in Rome in the second century, though distinct from the style of Clement and Paul, is not as Ebionite in style as the pseudo-Clementine books, though they too were written in Rome and were Ebionite. In the middle of the second century AD, the Christians were getting concerned about how their wealthy members would be saved, and the Shepherd of Hermas addresses this problem. Hermas explains several reasons why riches are a hindrance to salvation but the main one is that it obliges the rich person to follow laws that are not acceptably Christian to keep their wealth. He considered rich Christians “did not depart from God but remained in the faith, although not working the works of faith”. So, the author saw riches as a severe hindrance to salvation, but looked for some way in which they could be confirmed in a second repentance for their desire for wealth. Only 100 years after the start of Christianity, Christians were seeking how to circumvent its most fundamental principle and characteristic, expressed by the Christian God himself, that the rich could no more be saved than that a camel could go through the eye of a needle. For there to be rich Christians at all meant it had already been circumvented, but the aim was to stop them feeling guilty about it. The answer was to be charitable to the poor.
The poor man is rich in intercession and confession, and his intercession has great power with God.Shepherd of Hermas
By giving alms, the poor would pray for the rich who could then succeed in being saved! So, there was no longer the desire for equality expressed by Paul, nor the actual communism of the post-crucifixion Nazarenes, but the poor were closer to God and worth a few denarii of anybody’s money for an eternal life! The presence of the idea of a “koinonia” continues in early Christian writings through the apologies of Justin Martyr and the pseudo-Clementine works. Increasingly the notion was watered down until Christians now consider an occasional charitable deed is quite sufficient, though even until recently excessively wealthy men have felt, late in life, the need to give a great deal of money to charitable purposes to buy themselves a place in heaven after a lifetime of greedy “striving for possessions”.
Summary
Justo L Gonzales of Columbia Theological Seminary has summed up early Christian ideas on the relation of wealth and belief (Faith and Wealth, 1990). Not one Christian writer in almost the first 400 years of Christianity thought, like modern Christians and their apologists, that wealth was irrelevant or marginal to faith. Faith and wealth were incompatible. Striving after riches, “covetousness”, as it is translated in the English bible, is incompatible with Christian faith.
It was not that the material possessions that constituted wealth were evil—all were God’s own creation and so were “good”—but that desiring them, striving for them and accumulating them were evil human acts:
Greed is not a fault inherent in gold, but in the man who inherently loves gold to the detriment of justice, which ought to be held in imcomparably higher regard than gold.S Augustine
The Christian God unequivocally declared that the rich could not enter the kingdom of God, but this was ameliorated as more and more rich people entered the gentile Church, but even so, stringent conditions were placed on how these rich converts should use their wealth. God meant material goods to meet human needs, not to demonstrate human greed, and so had to be shared. Failure to do so while the poor suffered and died was theft and even murder when the death was caused by poverty, according to Christian saints like S Basil and S Chrysostom.
The attitude of the early Christians was that wealth should be shared to mutual advantage. The original communality of goods described so explicitly in Acts, became an obligation to all Christians to share their surplus wealth. Rich Christians were encouraged to give generously to the poor. Then the latter would intercede on behalf of their rich benefactors, giving rich camel-sized people the chance of getting through the eye of the needle and into heaven. Christians universally condemned usury throughout this period.
Gentile Christians, who were not necessarily expected to live communally, like the first Christians of Acts, were expected to give to the poor all of their surplus wealth. Augustine said what was superfluous to some is necessary for the poor. They were meant to keep only what was necessary for their own lives and to give away everything superfluous to that purpose. But the dividing line between superfluity and necessity was not defined and when the Church became wealthy and influential in the last two centuries of the Roman empire, wealthy Christians were able to retain as their necessities more and more of their riches while giving such as they chose to give to the already wealthy Church, and not to the poor! Today we can see very rich men flaunting their Christianity quite contrary to the dictums of their own God, and apparently unconcerned about what the eternal consequences might be, even though they can read God’s own words in the Christian Holy Bible.
Catholic Christians, from the Jewish scriptures, understood that everything in the world belonged to God, and argued with the gnostics about this. The myth of the Garden of Eden showed that God had created humanity in a state of equality and plenty, with no one owning any of the original world other than God Himself. God meant human beings to share in what He had provided. Catholics believed private wealth in our world was purely symptomatic of humanity’s fallen state. Adam sinned and God cast him out for it. Private ownership is the visible sign of human sin. By private ownership, some human beings keep produce from others. S Ambrose called it usurpation. He might as well have said, “Property is theft”!
Yet Christians take property as acceptable to God on the grounds that Christ could not have advocated giving to the poor unless his followers had possessions to give. It has already been noted that this view gives no consideration to the audiences Jesus addressed. He was not always speaking exclusively to his own converts, but is often described as addressing a multitude intent on converting some and persuading sympathisers, not ready to commit themselves fully, to support “The Poor”, the Ebionites whose cause he espoused.
