Ebionites

The Ebionites (from Hebrew; Ebionim, "the poor ones") were a sect of Judean followers of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth who existed in Iudaea Province (later Syria-Palestine) during the early centuries of the Common Era. The "Pauline Christians", those who were the spiritual antecedents of those who were ultimately successful in establishing a state-sanctioned church, did not consider Ebionites "real" Christians: the terms "Pauline Christians" and "Ebionites" are used in this article to distinguish these two threads in early Christianity. "Pauline Christians" not only included the orthodox, but also heretical gnostics such as Marcion, who considered Paul to be the true apostle and Peter to be a false apostle (Tertullian, "Against Marcion" 1.20, 4.3, 5.3). While the Ebionites undoubtedly drew their doctrines from ideas circulating in the first century, Robert Eisenman (Eisenman 1996) argues in great detail the extent to which they existed as a distinct group from the rest of "gentile" Christianity before the destruction of Jerusalem.

Further reading

• Akers, Keith. The Lost Religion of Jesus : Simple Living and Nonviolence in Early Christianity. New York: Lantern Books, 2000.
• Danielou, Jean. The Theology of Jewish Christianity. Chicago: The Henry Regnery Company, 1964.
• Eisenman, Robert. James the Brother of Jesus: The Key to Unlocking the Secrets of Early Christianity and the Dead Sea Scrolls. New York: Viking, 1996.
• Lüdemann, Gerd. Opposition to Paul in Jewish Christianity. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1989.
• Schoeps, Hans-Joachim. Jewish Christianity: Factional Disputes in the Early Church. Trans. Douglas R. A. Hare. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969.
• Skriver, Carl Anders. The Forgotten Beginnings of Creation and Christianity. Denver: Vegetarian Press, 1990.
• Vaclavik, Charles. The Origin of Christianity: The Pacifism, Communalism, and Vegetrianism of Primitive Christianity. Platteville, Wisconsin: Kaweah Publishing Company, 2004.