The earliest
followers of Jesus were Jews. The church was predominantly Jewish until after
the first major war with Rome (A.D. 66-70), and not until after the
catastrophic Bar Kokhba war (A.D. 132-135) did the
Jewish church of Jerusalem come to an end and a Gentile bishop succeed the
Jewish bishop there. It would be many centuries before the Ebionites Oewish Christians) would finally cease as a distinct and
viable denomination within Christianity. Accordingly, for Jewish and Christian
scholars today, the origins of Judaism and Christianity constitute a complex
and interesting story whose interwoven threads should not be unraveled.
Ironically, the mighty Roman Empire, which smashed the state of Israel in a
series of punishing wars (from A. D. 66-135), was itself overrun by a messianic
faith rooted in Israel's sacred Scriptures and its ancient belief in the God of
Abraham.
Thursday April 6,
2006, the National Geographic Society held a press conference at its
Washington, D.C., headquarters and announced to some 120 news media the
recovery, restoration and translation of the Gospel of Judas. The story
appeared as headline news in dozens of major newspapers around the world and was
the topic of discussion in a variety of news programs on television that
evening and subsequent evenings. A two-hour documentary aired on the National
Geographic Channel on Sunday, April 9, and has aired several times since.
Writing in A.D. 180 Irenaeus wrote:
Others again declare
that Cain derived his being from the Power above, and acknowledge that Esau,
Korah, the Sodomites, and all such persons, are related to themselves. On this
account, they add, they have been assailed by the Creator, yet no one of them
has suffered injury For Sophia was in the habit of carrying off that which
belonged to her from them to herself. They declare that Judas the traitor was
thoroughly acquainted with these things, and that he alone, knowing the truth
as no others did, accomplished the mystery of the betrayal; by him all things,
both earthly and heavenly, were thus thrown into confusion. They produce a
fictitious history of this kind, which they style the Gospel of Judas (Against
Heresies 1.31.1)
James Robinson,
dismisses the Gospel of Judas as having no value for understanding the
historical Judas. (James M. Robinson, From the Nag Hammadi Codices to the
Gospel of Mary and the Gospel of Judas, Institute for Antiquity and
Christianity Occasional Papers 48, Institute for Antiquity and Christianity,
2006).
There are however
other suggestions where Jesus apparently made a private arrangement with a few
disciples that the other disciples know nothing about. We see this in the
securing of the animal for entry into Jerusalem (Mk II) and in the finding of
the upper room (Mk 14). Exegetes and historians may rightly wonder if the
episode in John 13 is a third example; where Jesus says to Judas, "What
you are going to do, do quickly" (13:27). The other disciple don't understand
what Jesus has said. of a private arrangement Jesus had with a disciple that
was not known to the others. It could be that, as the disciples speculated,
Jesus was sending Judas to accomplish some task, perhaps relating to Jesus'
security later that evening. If so, then Judas's appearance in the company of
armed men, who seize Jesus and deliver him to the ruling priests, was a
betrayal.
In any case, the
Gospel of Judas makes a meaningful contribution to our understanding of
second-century Christianity, especially with regard to the question of
diversity We have here have an early exemplar a form of what has been called
“Sethian Gnosticism” or what may have its roots among a small group of Jewish
pessimists that according to Carl Smith emerged in the aftermath of the
disastrous wars in A.D. 66-70 and 115-117. (Carl B. Smith II, No Longer Jews:
The Search For Gnostic Origins, 2004). During our lecture-seminars in 1999 we
suggested, that the term “Gnosticism” could just as well be seen as a synthetic
product that history of religions scholars assembled from widely
disparate materials of among others “Mandaean, Manichaean, Persian, and heresiological sources.”
Writings outside the
New Testament and even later than the New Testament sometimes offer important
assistance in going about the task of New Testament interpretation. The Gospel
of Judas does not provide us with an account of what the historical Judas
really did or what the historical Jesus really taught this disciple, but it may
preserve an element of tradition-that could serve exegetes and historians as we
try to understand better what happened.
Thus sometimes there
is evidence, and that is good. But evidence of what? This is the troubling
question that keeps coming to mind when we consider carefully and critically
the evidence and claims proposed by James Tabor in his book, The Jesus
Dynasty: The Hidden History of Jesus, His Royal Family, and the Birth of
Christianity (New York: Simon &: Schuster, 2006).
In p.1 we mentioned
Tabor's suggestion that Jesus' human father was a soldier, and Tabor
indeed thinks he may have located this soldier's tomb in Germany. He speculates
that Jesus may have visited this man, in the region of Sidon (on the north
coast of the Mediterranean), as may be hinted in Mark 7:24: "And from
there he arose and went away to the region of Tyre
and Sidon. And he entered a house, and would not have anyone know it."
What evidence does Tabor have for any of this?
We suggested
that Celsus whose work largely survives
in quotations in for example the rebuttal (Contra Celsum) written by Origen in the middle of the third
century A.D. Celsus as far is known was the
first who made the claim of a Roman soldier named Pantera
(or Panthera), and next it shows up in the rabbinic Tosefta,
which dates no earlier than A.D. 300 (Tosefta -Hullin
, 2.22-24). Thus Tabor rightly notes that Pantera was
a real name used by real Roman soldiers in the time of Jesus. He believes that
a tombstone, bearing an inscription of one Pantera,
discovered in 1859 in Bingerbruck, Germany, may
actually be in reference to Jesus' father. The inscription reads:
Tiberius Julius Abdes Pantera of Sidon, aged 62 a
soldier of 40 years service, of the 1st cohort of
archers, lies here.
Tabor plausibly
suggests that the name Abdes is a Latin
transliteration of the Hebrew (or Aramaic) Ebed,
which means "servant." This possibility, plus the fact that the
soldier of this inscription was from Sidon , which is not too far from Galilee
, could well mean that this man was Jewish and could have come into contact
with Mary. Accordingly, Tabor declares, "The mystery of Pantera [is] solved." Is it' Before anyone can declare
anything solved, we must ask if the Pantera of the
inscription was of the right age, in the vicinity of the village where Mary
lived and in the year 5 or 6 B.C. if he has any chance to have impregnated
Mary. Tabor is unable to show this, and other scholars who have discussed this
inscription have expressed serious doubts that Pantera
was old enough to have impregnated Mary or anyone else in 5 or 6 B.C.
There is no actual archaeological evidence that can be linked to Jesus
and it thus just seems to be another myth.
Tabor points out that
some church fathers took the Pantera allegation
seriously. For example, in Against Heresies (787.5) Epiphanius (A.D 315-403)
suggests that Joseph's father was Jacob Panthera. Tabor thinks this supports
the historicity of the tradition. Otherwise, why would church fathers such as
Epiphanius take it so seriously' But Epiphanius and later Christian writers are
simply trying to fend off the slur, and to do so they throw out various
proposals, some having no more merit than the allegations themselves.
Accordingly, their fourth-century (and later) rebuttals provide no actual
evidence that the Pantera proposal by Celsus actually has any history earlier than the time of Celsus himself.
Tabor is also pretty
sure that jesus' body was removed, and Tabor has an
idea where the remains are buried to this day. The grave of Jesus is a little
bit north of Tsfat (Safed) in Galilee . How does
Tabor know this? It is a tradition passed on by a revered sixteenth-century
mystic named Rabbi Isaac ben Luria. As a devotee of the kabbalah, ben Luria
evidently had a vision, which revealed to him the locations of the tombs of
various Jewish sages and saints, including the tomb of Jesus of Nazareth. I
doubt any scholar will take this proposal seriously.
But as we have
suggested in P.1, there is worse hokum history then Tabor, and trained
historians find utterly implausible. Legends, rumors, forged documents, hoaxes
and psychic intuition hardly constitute the stuff from which sober historical
truth will be found.
Let us illustrate
this point with the conclusions reached by retired Australian lecturer
and writer Barbara Thiering in her books The Qumran
Origins of the Christian Church (1983), Jesus the Man: A New Interpretation
from the Dead Sea Scrolls (1992; US edition: The Riddle of the Dead Sea
Scrolls), Jesus of the Apocalypse: The Life of Jesus After the Crucifixion
(1995), and The Book That Jesus Wrote: John's Gospel (1998). Here are some of
her findings:
Sunday March 1 , 7
B.C., Jesus was born near the Dead Sea, not far from Qumran. / At age
twelve Jesus was separated from his mother. / As a teen Jesus may have traveled
to Alexandria, Egypt, where he was influenced by Buddhism. / On Monday March
25, A.D. 15, at the age of twenty-one, Jesus was baptized in Jerusalem. / In
A.D. 20 Joseph, the father of Jesus died. / On March 1, A.D. 29, on his
thirty-fifth birthday, Jesus begins preparation for ministry; John the Baptist
revokes Jesus' authority to baptize. / Jesus and Mary Magdalene marry on
Saturday, September 23, A.D. 30. Simon Magus officiates This is a trial
marriage. A second, binding marriage takes place March 1 A.D. 33. / On
Friday, March 20, A.D. 33, Jesus is crucified, however, Jesus was drugged,
swooned, fooled the Romans, and was taken down from the cross still alive
(though badly injured). His life is saved by special medicines smuggled into
the tomb with him. Jesus recovers. / On Saturday, September 15, A.D. 36, Jesus
returns on the scene. / On Monday, February 29, A.D. 40, Saul (Paul) meets
Jesus, to decide when to do about the Roman emperor Gaius Caligula. / On
September 3, A.D. 45, Jesus teaches in Antioch. / On Tuesday, March 17, A.D.
50, at Philippi, Jesus marries again, this time with Lydia. / On Tuesday, March
7, A.D. 58, Jesus, Luke and Paul assemble in Thessalonica to celebrate the
twenty-fifth anniversary of the Last Supper and the crucifixion.
This is only part of Thiering's findings The former lecturer of the University
of Sydney School of Divinity has uncovered a great deal more. And yes, Jesus
has children by his wives Mary and Lydia How are these "facts"
discovered, you ask? According to Thiering:
By reading the Dead Sea Scrolls and the writings of the New Testament,
and suming that they are all in code and that they
therefore need to be decodec. Thiering
finds in this code some amazing things. The raising of Lazarus (in Jn 11), who
is really Simon Magus, turns out to be code for being excommunicated from the
Qumran community. Turning the water into wine (in Jn 2) means that Gentiles,
previously only permitted water baptism, may now become full members in the
community and may partake of bread and wine. We even hear of "popes"
and "cardinals," and so on. One can read every line in the New
Testament, the Dead Sea Scrolls and any other literature from this period of
time and not find any of the things that Thiering
thinks she has found. Why not? Because none of it is there. Not surprising most
scholars have ignored Barbara Thiering's work because
it is so subjective and idiosyncratic. One scholar however has given her work
the criticism it deserves; N. T Wright, Who Was jesus7 (1992), pp. 19-36
At this point brief mention needs to be made of Robert Eisenman, who in james the just in the Habakkuk Pesher (1986) and other
writings, has argued that James the brother of Jesus is Qumran's Teacher of
Righteousness. So here we have another theory that argues that the Dead Sea
Scrolls are either Christian writings, or refer to Christians. Virtually no one
has followed Eisenman, but compared to Thiering's
views, Eisenman's are pretty tame.
Of course, we need
not be limited to texts, whether in code or not. Hypnosis, says Dolores Cannon,
can lead to new discoveries about Jesus too. In Jesus and the Essenes: Fresh
Insights into Christ's Ministry and the Dead Sea Scrolls (1992) Cannon, a
psychic and past-life hypnotist, describes for readers how through regressive
hypnosis she was able to recover one of her subject's previous lives. In this
particular life the person had been an Essene and had known Jesus. Well, why
bother with Hebrew and the study of the Scrolls, when a long-lost spirit can
tell you all you want to know? Through this procedure, it might be added,
Cannon claims that she has learned a lot about the prophecies of Nostradamus,
UFOs and Wicca.
Of course, many
readers will readily agree. They want history based more on historical
investigation and less on seance. But let readers beware; there are some books
that have been published that pretend to engage in research and investigation,
but all they offer is another approach to hokum history and bogus findings.
In recent years the
public has been bombed with theories regarding the Holy Grail, that is, the cup
from which Jesus and his disciples drank at the Last Supper. For more than one
thousand years the church took no interest in this cup. Then in the late
twelfth century a poet named Chretien de Troyes (died c. 1185) wrote a poem, Le
Roman de Perceval ou Ie
Conte du Graal (c. 1175), for Philip the Count of
Flanders. He died before the poem was finished, leaving behind more than 9,000
lines. Other poets stepped in to complete it, such as Robert de Boron and
Wolfram von Eschenbach. Out of these literary efforts arose the legend of the
Holy Grail The Anglo world knows the legend well, in the version of King Arthur
and the Knights of the Round Table. Germans and French have their own versions
of it also.This is, of course, the stuff of myth and
legend. There is no historical evidence of the existence or knowledge of the
existence of the cup Jesus--apart from its mention in the New Testament, there
is none whatever. Nor is there any evidence that the Knights Templar, who
served as armed escorts to and from Europe and the Holy Land , ever had a
connection to the Holy Grail or found hidden documents or lost treasures or
whatever. But lack of evidence is no problem-if you have imaginative and
interpret legends as historical fact. Throw in an anti -Christian agents
complete with an imagined truth-suppressing Vatican , and you are ready to
write some hokum history.
Michael Baigent,
coauthor of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail more recently then up with
another amazing taletitled-- The Jesus Papers:
Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History (2006). In the Grail books Baigent
believed he had proven that Jesus had a child through Mary Magdalene. In The
Jesus Papers Baigent, who holds a graduate degree in mysticism and describes
himself as an expert in the field of arcane knowledge, thinks he has proven
that Jesus survived his crucifixion and wrote letters in which he denies his
divinity. Well, if that doesn't beat all.
There are three major
elements to Baigent's latest theory. First, he says that he, Richard Leigh and
Henry Lincoln received a letter from an Anglican vicar, the Reverend Douglas
Bartlett, in which he says he knows of "a document containing incontrovertible
evidence that Jesus was alive in the year A.D. 45." The letter goes on to
say that this is the real treasure of Rennes Ie
Chateau, whose discovery had resulted in the sudden wealth of the Abbe Beranger
Sauniere at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Eventually our intrepid authors visited the old vicar, who told them that in
the 1930s, while living in Oxford, he learned from Canon Alfred Lilley
0860-1948) of the existence of a manuscript that proves that Jesus was indeed
still living in A.D. 45 Lilley saw this manuscript in France in the 1890s. The
old vicar couldn't remember what the document said exactly. The document is
gone; no one has seen it since. And so there is no opportunity to examine it.
Baigent suspects that the Vatican (of course) bribed the Abbe of Rennes le
Chateau, which would account for the Abbe's wealth, and then either hid the
document or destroyed it.
Let us get this
straight. Baigent is asking us to believe a story he says he heard from an
elderly man in the 1980s, about a conversation this elderly man had with
another elderly man in the 1930s, about a document the older elderly man says
he saw in the 1890s, but which no one today can produce. And this is evidence
of what? Quite apart from the utter flimsiness of this whole chain of hearsay,
we have already seen that the legend of the treasure of Rennes Ie Chateau is a 1950s-era hoax and has been laid to rest.
The good Abbe earned some extra money through the sale of masses, got caught
and was disciplined. His journals and ledgers (unlike Baigent's mysterious
document) still exist and list the names of those who paid the Abbe money and
how much they paid. No treasure, no mystery; no mysterious lost document
either.
The second major
element put forward by Baigent is no better Based on his interpretation of the
image that depicts the body of Jesus at the tomb, which serves as station 14 of
the "Stations of the Cross,,6 in the church at Rennes Ie
Chateau, Baigent has concluded thatjesus did not die
on the cross but was drugged, with the help of Pontius Pilate, quickly placed
in a tomb and then at night, with no one about, Jesus' friends removed him from
the tomb, nursed him back to health, and then Jesus departed from Judea and
headed [or Egypt. 7 And just how does the image o[ station 14 in the church at
Rennes Ie Chateau reveal this startling truth? The
moon is up. Yes, that's right-the moon is up You see, according to Jewish
burial traditions, bodies are supposed to be in the tomb before nightfall,
before the moon comes up. Yet, in the painting that depicts station 14, a full
moon is seen high in the night sky. Baigent deduces from this anomaly that in
the painting Jesus is not being placed in the tomb dead; he is being takenJrom the tomb alive.
That is quite a lot
to deduce from a moon in a painted depiction of station 14. Is it likely,
moreover, that Pilate would take part in a plot to assist Jesus in escaping his
fate, since, after all, the governor had ordered Jesus' execution in the first
place? Perhaps there is a simpler explanation. I wonder if the artist who
painted station 14 was influenced by the Gospel story? It reads:
"When it was
evening, there came a rich man from Arimathea, named Joseph, who also was a
disciple of Jesus" (Mt 2757; Mk 1542-43) Joseph requested the body ofJesus, hastily prepared it for burial and then placed it
in a tomb. Notice that the story begins with the words, "When it was
evening" (emphasis added) Not knowing Jewish burial traditions, the artist
of station 14 in the church in Rennes Ie Chateau
misunderstood what was meant by "evening" (which in the Gospels means
end oj day, not night Jail) and so exercised artistic
license and depicted the burial as taking place at night, with a full moon in
the sky. And there is one other thing: Jesus' friends in the painting of
station 14 are depicted as gJieving, which is what
you would expect them to do if their friend and teacher is being placed in the
tomb dead, not if their friend and teacher is being taken from the tomb alive.
Baigent's third major
element is the weakest of all and proves that Baigent needs no evidence
whatsoever to cook up a good cover-up. He tells us that he was able to track
the source of rumors in the Holy land of the existence of documents that would
be dangerous to the Vatican . His investigation led him to a collector of
biblical antiquities who lives in a "large European city" (Baigent
will not name this city or this collector) The collector told Baigent that in
1961, while excavating in the cellar of an old house in Jerusalem , he found
two papyrus documents bearing Aramaic text. Items found with these documents
led the collector to date the documents to A.D 34. The documents are letters,
and the writer identifies himself as "the Messiah of the children of
Israel ." This must be Jesus, he reasoned. Who else could it be? The
letters, which are addressed to the Jewish Sanhedrin, explain that the writer
did not intend to claim divine status in saying that he possessed the Spirit of
God. Initially unwilling to unveil these letters, eventually the collector
showed them to Baigent.
Although Baigent
cannot read Aramaic, and so does not personally kE
what these documents actually say (or even if the text is Aramaic), he believes
what the collector told him. He tells us that the collector showed the letters
to Yigael Yadin and Nahman Avigad, two respected
Israeli archaeologists and biblical scholars, and they confirmed the antiquity
and authenticity of the texts. Unfortunately, one of them must have leaked the
existence of the letters to Catholic authorities, the collector surmises, for
it wasn't long before pressure was applied to the collector. To get the
authorities to back off he promised to keep the documents under wraps. Baigent
also promised not to say anything about them, at least not right away.
Baigent asks us to
believe that Jesus of Nazareth. having faked his death on the cross and having
fled to Egypt, wrote two letters in Aramaic to the Sanhedrin in Jerusalem, in
which he explains that he is not divine, at least not any more divine than
anyone else who has been touched by God's Spirit. We are to trust Baigent, even
though he cannot read Aramaic, cannot name the collector who possesses the
alleged Aramaic letters, and cannot even name the city in which the collector
resides. We are to trust Baigent and the anonymous collector when we are
assured that the Aramaic letters were authenticated by two prominent archaeologists,
who just happen to be unavailable for comment. (Yadin
died in 1984; Avigad, in 1992.) We are to believe all
this, even though no living, qualified expert has seen these documents, and the
two who say they have seen them-and are still living-cannot read them.
Baigent further
neglects to mention that archaeologists and papyrologists will tell you that no
papyrus (plural: papyri) can survive buried in the ground, in Jerusalem , for
two thousand years. The only papyrus documents that have survived from
antiquity have been found in arid climates, such as the area surrounding the
Dead Sea and the sands of Egypt . No ancient papyri have been found in
Jerusalem itself. Jerusalem receives rainfall every year; papyri buried in the
ground, beneath houses or wherever. decompose quickly So whatever Baigent saw,
they were not ancient papyr: found beneath somebody's
house in Jerusalem , and they were not letters Jesus wrote.
But where in p.1, we analysed what is known of the birth of Jesus, so let us in
p.2 next compile what is known about the birth of the Christian Church. It is
clear that following its echatological Jewish
beginnings (Christ the promished Mesisas/King
of the Jews). The church next began because of its belief now that jesus had been resurrected and had appeared to dozens, of
his followers. Thus it was next the conviction that God had raised Jesus,
who had in turn commanded his followers to continue to preach his vision of the
kingdom, which led to the emergence of the church. The church believed
furthermore that Christ would return.
But although Luke the
Evangelist labors hard to portray Christian unity, the disagreements in the
first generation of the church are plain to see in the book of Acts. The
disagreements do not focus on Jesus himself. He is universally regarded among
his followers as Israel 's Messiah, God's Son and the world's Savior. The point
of disagreement concerns whether non-Jews (or Gentiles) must become Jewish
proselytes (or converts) in order to be saved by Jesus Messiah. Some said yes;
others said no.This debate unfolds in the book of
Acts and is alluded to in several places in Paul's writings. In Acts the first
indication of the coming debate is seen in the mention of the spread of the
Christian movement to Samaria . We are told that Philip-a deacon, not an
apostle-began preaching Messiah Jesus to Samaritans. Many believed and were
baptized (Acts 8:1-13). Next we are told: "Now when the apostles at
Jerusalem heard that Samaria had received the word of God, they sent to them Peter
and John, who came down and prayed for them that they might receive the Holy
Spirit" (Acts 8:14-15). For Luke, the reception of the Holy Spirit offers
tangible proof of genuine conversion.
What we now have in
Acts then is the spread of the Christian message to Samaritans (who were
regarded by Jews, more or less, as half Jewish, half Ger:tile)
and to Gentiles. Each time representatives from Jerusalem observed anc.
confirmed the reality of the conversions. Why' Observation and confirmation are
needed because many Jewish believers did not think Gentiles couIC
become believers unless their conversion included full adoption of Judaism
(that is, becoming proselytes). Of course, in telling the story the way he did
Luke prepared for the ministry of Paul in order to show that Paul's
evangelizing of Gentiles was not only legitimate, it actually followed the
example of Peter himself, the leader of the church.
The church convened a
council in Jerusalem to deal with this disturbing development. Peter and others
were accused by some, who asked: "Why did you go to [the Gentiles] and eat
with them?" (Acts 11:3). This may sound odd to us moderns, but for
first-century Jews who took the law of Moses seriously this was an important
question. In recent times the Jewish people had faced deadly oppression,
designed to force them to eat and live as Gentiles. In the second century B.C.
devout Jews (the "Maccabean martyrs") suffered torture and execution
for refusing to eat pork (2 Maccabees 6-7). To eat pork and adopt other Gentile
customs was understood as abandoning Jewish law and faith.
Not much later in the
Acts narrative Paul was commissioned to take the Christian message abroad. In
Acts 13-14 we have a recounting of his wellknown
first missionary journey Although he first entered synagogues in every city
that he and his companions visited ("to the Jew first"), when
rejected he turned to the Gentiles ("then to the Greek") Paul did not
require his Gentile converts to adopt Jewish practices, much less become
full-fledged Jewish proselytes.
Pharisees were
critical because from their perspective Jesus did not seem to take the Jewish
laws of purity. Yet there where also Pharisees, who
in time joined the Christian movement. This is not too surprising, since they
were known for their belief in resurrection (Acts 23:6-8; Josephus,]ewish Wars 2.163). A resurrected Messiah was something that
many of them may well have found compelling. But they were still Pharisees, and
by definition that meant they took the law of Moses seriously.
The controversy
addressed by the Jerusalem Council, described in Acts, was the issue that
divided the early church. Although the decision reached gives the impression
that Paul and supporters of the mission to the Gentiles were vindicated, the
problem was not fully resolved and simply never went away. In Acts II Peter had
spoken and seemed to have settled the matter. Yes, even Gentiles can be saved
by Messiah Jesus. Now, here in Acts, James the brother of Jesus spoke. No,
Gentiles do not have to become Jewish proselytes. As believers in God and his
holy Son, however, Gentiles must abandon pagan practices. The advice of James
was accepted and the problem, at least for the time, seemed to be settled. So
the principal disagreement within the early church concerned the question of
Gentiles and the Jewish law.
What Paul challenges
in his letters, written shortly after the letter of James, is the idea that
Gentiles must adhere to the law of Moses if their Christian walk is to mature.
The idea that Paul attacks is not the teaching of James. The differences that
we see in the respective writings of these men are due to different sets of
problems that each one in his own way had to address.
Bart Ehrman in Lost Christianities
(2005) then discusses second century persons and movements. He discusses
Ebionites, Marcion and his following, and Gnosticism.
Ebionites were Jews who believed inJesus but rejected
some of the claims about Jesus and the Jewish law The Ebionite Gospels were
apparently revisions of Matthew, thus bringing the Gospel story in line with
Ebionite theology. No Ebionite writing or fragment dates before A.D. 120. Marcion was a second-century extremist who wished to delete
the Old Testament and most of the overtly Jewish writings from the New
Testament. He was happy with Paul's letters, but with little else.
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