Ancient Christian Witness

"1. The Judaizers,

The Judaizing tendency is
the heretical counterpart of Jewish Christianity. It so insists on the unity of
Christianity with Judaism, as to sink the former to the level of the latter, and
to make the gospel no more than an improvement or a perfected law. It regards
Christ as a mere prophet, a second Moses; and denies or at least wholly
overlooks, his divine nature and his priestly and kingly offices.

The
Judaizers were Jews in fact, and Christians only in appearance and in name. They
held circumcision and the whole moral and ceremonial law of Moses to be still
binding, and the observance of them necessary to salvation. Of Christianity as a
new, free, and universal religion, they had no conception. Hence they hated
Paul, the Liberal apostle of the Gentiles, as a dangerous apostate and
revolutionist, impugned his motives, and everywhere, especially in Galatia and
Corinth, labored to undermine his authority in the churches. The epistles of
Paul, especially that to the Galations, can never be properly understood, unless
their opposition to this false Judaizing Christianity be continually kept in
view. The same heresy, more fully developed, appears in the second century under
the name of Ebionism."


Jerusalem Council, AD 49

The problem
of the Judaizers is discussed under the Leadership of the Apostles in Jerusalem,
Acts 15:6,12
James, Simon Peter, Barnabas and Paul all speak and come to
an agreement that Gentiles as well as Jews are free from the Jewish ceremonial
Law.

However they must be sensitive to their Jewish Christians and stop
eating food sacrificed to idols. Leviticus 17:10-14; 19:26; 1 Corinthians 8:7-13

The issue of sexual immorality was also raised because this was a
problem with many greeks. Thus the first Church council set out the practical
outworking of relations between Jewish and Greek Christians. The Jews were
cautioned against legalism while the Gentiles were cautioned against immorality.
Compassion and sensitivity were set over against legalism and hedonism. A letter
and two personal witnesses in the person of Judas and Silas are sent back to
Antioch to calm the Church there. Acts 15:22-29. The Letter sent from the
Jerusalem Council follows:

22Then the apostles and elders, with the
whole church, decided to choose some of their own men and send them to Antioch
with Paul and Barnabas. They chose Judas (called Barsabbas) and Silas, two men
who were leaders among the brothers. 23With them they sent the following letter:
The apostles and elders, your brothers, To the Gentile believers in Antioch,
Syria and Cilicia: Greetings. 24We have heard that some went out from us without
our authorization and disturbed you, troubling your minds by what they said.
25So we all agreed to choose some men and send them to you with our dear friends
Barnabas and Paul— 26men who have risked their lives for the name of our Lord
Jesus Christ. 27Therefore we are sending Judas and Silas to confirm by word of
mouth what we are writing. 28It seemed good to the Holy Spirit and to us not to
burden you with anything beyond the following requirements: 29You are to abstain
from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals
and from sexual immorality. You will do well to avoid these things. Farewell.

Acts 15:22-29 NIV [1]

"(1) Simeon Also having died in the manner shown above,
a certain Jew named Justus succeeded him in the episcopate of Jerusalem. There
were great numbers from the circumcision who came over to the Christian faith at
that time, of whom Justus was one." [1]

"(1) The spirit of wickedness, however, being unable to
shake some in their love of Christ and yet finding them susceptible of his
impressions in other respects, brought them over to his purpose. These were
properly called Ebionites7 by the ancients, as those who cherished low and mean
opinions of Christ.
(2) They considered him a plain and common man and
justified only by his advances in virtue and that he was born of the Virgin Mary
by Natural generation. With them the observance of the law was altogether
necessary, as if they could not be saved only by faith in Christ and a
corresponding life.
(3) Others, however, besides these, but of the same
name avoided the absurdity of the opinions maintained by the former, not denying
that the Lord was born of the Virgin by the Holy Ghost, and yet in like manner
not acknowledging his preexistence, though he was God, the word and wisdom. they
turned aside into the same irreligion, as with the former they evinced great
Zeal to observe the ritual service of the Law.
(4) These, indeed, thought on the one hand that all the
epistles of the apostles ought to be rejected, calling him an apostate from the
law, but on the other, only using the gospel according to the Hebrews, they
esteemed the others as of but little value.
(5) They also observed the Sabbath and other discipline
of the Jews just like them, but on the other hand, they also celebrated the
Lord's days very much like us in commemoration of his resurrection.
(6) Whence, in consequence of such a course, they also
received their epithet, the name of Ebionites, exhibiting the poverty of their
intellect for it is thus that the Hebrews call a poor man."

[1]


I posted this because I was in a conversation with someone who is in a movement that looks very similar to the ancient Ebionites. Just like the Ebionites, they reject the letters of Paul. It's unclear at this time if the people of this movement rejects the New Testament as a whole. I will have to ask them, but there is nothing new under the sun. This new group was formed in recent times by a former Baptist minister. He seems to have an international following. They call themselves "netzarim". They look like a modern version of Ebionitism. So I will call them "neoEbionites".

Their website claims the New Testament was written four hundred years after the death of Christ. Now this is just pure nonsense, yet, you have some people all over the globe believing the false claims of this man. But their website makes alot of false claims like this, and it seems that some people are just eager to eat it up......without double checking the actual facts.




JNORM888


Ebionites 7 "The word ebion, in Hebrew, signifying "poor," seems to allude either to the opinions or the condition of this sect."


This is found in "book 3"

[1] page 93 by Eusebius in the book "Eusebius Ecclesiastical Historical: complete and Unabridged. New updated edition", translated by by C.F. Cruse, reprinted 1998 & published by Hendrickson Publishers.

"He has, however, no objection to the private reading of the
Apocrypha, as is evident from the fact that he himself makes frequent use of
Ecclesiasticus (W. Bacher, Ag. Tan. i. 277; H. Grätz, Gnosticismus, p. 120).
Akiba stoutly defended, however, the canonicity of the Song of Songs, and Esther
(Yad. iii.5, Meg. 7a). Grätz's statements (Shir ha-Shirim, p. 115, and Kohelet,
p. 169) respecting Akiba's attitude toward the canonicity of the Song of Songs
are misconceptions, as I.H. Weiss (Dor, ii. 97) has to some extent shown. To the
same motive underlying his antagonism to the Apocrypha, namely, the desire to
disarm Christians—especially Jewish Christians—who drew their "proofs" from the
Apocrypha, must also be attributed his wish to emancipate the Jews of the
Dispersion from the domination of the Septuagint, the errors and inaccuracies in
which frequently distorted the true meaning of Scripture, and were even used as
arguments against the Jews by the Christians."

"The first revolt(of 70 A.D.) was a national uprising; this
second Revolt(around 135 A.D. or maybe 150 A.D.) would be a messianic movement.
By means of Akiba's work, a large number of jews joined in the rebellion. Even
Samaritans and pagans joined Bar Cochba in his revolt. However, there was one
Jewish sect which refused to join: that obstinate tribe known as christians. The
Christians, a majority of whom were still ethnically jewish, were pressed to
join in this life and death struggle with Rome, but they refused. To accept bar
Cochba as Messiah, as Akiba insisted, would have been nothing short of Apostasy;
and because of their refusal to do so, Christians were treated by the Jews as
heretics and traitors. It is this same Rabbi Akiba who is the very first writer
to explicity and forthrightly reject the inspiration of both the christian New
Testament and the books of the Deuterocanon. Akiba's declaration is found in
Tosefta Yahayim 2:13 which reads;

"The Gospel and heretical books do not
defile the hands. The books of Ben Sira and all other books written from then
on, do not defile the hands."

Two outstanding points must be drawn from
this impious declaration: first, it must have been common knowledge even at this
early date that the christians accepted the Deutercanon and used it as Scripture
(along with the Gospels), otherwise, there would have been no need to rule
against them; secondly that at least some jews must also have shared that
acceptance, otherwise Akiba's decree would have been superfluous."
Here we
have a hostile witness confirming through his actions that the earliest
christians accepted both the Gospels and the Deuterocanon as inspired and sacred
Scripture. It was in this watershed event- the naming of the false Messiah Bar
Cochba and the Anathematizing of those who rejected him- which occasioned the
very first unquestionable rejection of the Deuteros by a single, widely
recognized Jewish authority. It was under Akiba's tenure that a single textual
tradition of the Old Testament was first adopted; before this time (as we have
shown) a variety of different texts were in use among the jews. It was here,
sometime in the middle of the second Christian century, that Judaism first
adopted an official normative text(i.e. the Masoretic Text or the MT).