Paul and Jesus

Despite their diversity there seem to be four general ideas that Jewish-Christian groups agreed upon: the eternal validity of the Torah of Moses, the acceptance of only the gospel of Matthew in Hebrew, the complete rejection of Paul as a heretic and apostate from the Torah, and the belief that Jesus was a human being, born of a mother and a father, chosen by God but not divine.¹⁰ The best-known group, and the one that drew the most fire from orthodox Pauline circles, were the Ebionites. They most likely got their name from the Q teaching of Jesus: “Blessed are you poor ones [Hebrew: ‘evyonim],” a designation that appears dozens of times in the Psalms and Prophets as a description of God’s true people in the last days. Irenaeus, one of our earliest sources on the Ebionites, describes them as follows:

They use the gospel according to Matthew only, and repudiate the apostle Paul, maintaining that he was an apostate from the Torah . . . they practice circumcision, persevere in those customs which are enjoined by the Law, and are so Judaic in their style of life that they even adore Jerusalem as if it were the house of God. (Against Heresies 1.26.2)

The main issue that arises with regard to the Ebionites is whether their ideas represent a largely unbroken perspective and orientation stemming back to Jesus, James, and the original Jerusalem apostles, or whether they are a later sect of Jewish Christianity that radicalized itself in the second and third centuries. Given what we have seen in Paul’s own letters, including his charge that the apostles who oppose him are “servants of Satan,” it is certainly plausible to assume that the Ebionites represent a link to the Jerusalem apostles, at least in their main ideas. Their ideas also seem to fit well with our other earlier Jewish-Christian sources such as Q, the letter of James, and the Didache. Theirs was a thoroughly Jewish stance with a belief that Jesus was either a prophet or the Messiah, heralding the imminent arrival of the kingdom of God on earth.

A much more positive view of the Ebionite “gospel” is now embedded in the fourth-century documents we call the Pseudo-Clementines, which are made up of two major parts, the Homilies and the Recognitions. A document embedded in the whole called the Kerygmata Petrou, or the Preaching of Peter, is particularly valuable in this regard. This document claims to be a letter written by Peter to James the brother of Jesus. Peter complains that his letters have been interpolated and corrupted by those influenced by Paul so that they have become worthless. He urges James not to pass along any of his teachings to the Gentiles, but only to those members of the council of the Seventy whom Jesus had appointed. Paul is sharply censored as one who put his own testimony based on visions over the certainty of the direct teachings that the original apostles had from Jesus. The argument Peter makes is quite telling. He suggests that if people follow someone like Paul, who claims to have had visions of Jesus, how might one know he was not actually communicating with a demonic spirit impersonating Jesus? In contrast, if one goes by what Jesus actually taught to the original apostles, there is no possibility of such deception.

Scholars do not consider these materials to be authentic first-century documents, but they do appear to reflect later legendary versions of the very disputes that did occur during the lifetime of Paul, Peter, and James. They preserve for us some memory of the conflicts of which Paul’s letters provide only dim and one-sided glimpses. What is particularly striking about the Pseudo-Clementines is the strong emphasis on testing everything by James: “Believe no teacher unless he brings from Jerusalem the testimonial of James the Lord’s brother” (Recognitions 4:35).

Although the voices of these Jewish-Christians were gradually muted over the centuries as they largely disappeared from view, their perspectives, still embedded behind and between the lines of Paul’s authentic letters, as well as in these scattered ancient sources, can still be heard.