An examination and evaluation of patristic primary sources is followed by a modest reconstruction and biography of the Ebionites, against which the argumentation of systematic theology can be critically weighed. This thesis, which seeks to independently identify a body of epistemologically ascertainable evidence for Ebionite beliefs and practices, instead seeks a way forward for theological education on the constructs of orthodoxy and heresy. In this way, “Ebionism” can be demonstrated as inadequate when compared to the normative and definitive Christological statements approved at the ecumenical councils. Classical theological heavyweights of the church and modern systematic theology, which combine to influence seminary education on the phenomenon of heresy to a far greater degree than academic appraisals of early Christianities, generally disregard the historical sect of Ebionites in favor of Christological typology and oppositional refutation.
For their beliefs and practices, the Ebionites earned the ire and heresiological attention of proto-orthodox bishops and theologians from Irenaeus to Epiphanius and beyond.
Members of this sect claimed Jesus as the expected Messiah, but maintained their ancestors’ observance of the Mosaic Law and did not attribute their Messiah with any sense of divinity. One major instructive example of this tendency affects modern instruction on the Jewish Christian Ebionites, who believed that Jesus of Nazareth was merely the natural offspring of Mary and Joseph. In spite of recent decades of capable scholarship on so-called heretics of the early Christian period, theological education continues to reproduce the same arguments against insufficient forms of belief as were propounded by patristic heresiographers of the second, third, fourth and fifth centuries CE.
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