The Gospel of the Ebionites

About this edition

The Gospel of the Ebionites is a conventional designation for a lost Gospel known through quotations and reports in Epiphanius of Salamis’s Panarion, heresy 30. No complete manuscript survives. This edition gathers seven commonly considered passages concerning its contents and an introductory report about its name. The main selection follows M. R. James’s 1924 edition; the testimony about Jesus’ mother and brothers is separately supplied from a historical Russian translation of Epiphanius. The eight sections have ten passage numbers for reading convenience, with some of the transmitting author’s comments separated out. Epiphanius writes as an opponent of the teachings he describes; his judgements are not the editorial voice. “According to Matthew” and “according to the Hebrews” are retained as reported titles, without identifying the text with every other work bearing similar names.

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The eight sections and ten passage numbers are Life for God editorial aids, not chapters and verses of the lost Gospel. Labels beginning “Panarion 30…” locate Epiphanius’s testimony. Angle brackets in James’s excerpts retain his supplements; parentheses retain alternatives and explanations. No lost continuous text is reconstructed. This is a reading edition, not a full modern critical apparatus.

Translation notes

1. 1:1 — This is a report by Epiphanius, writing against teachings he regarded as heretical. His judgement and book titles should not automatically be treated as an independent description of a surviving manuscript.
2. 1:1 — “According to Matthew” and “according to the Hebrews” belong to Epiphanius’s testimony. The title of this collection is a conventional designation. It does not establish identity with other works called the Gospels of the Hebrews or the Nazarenes.
3. 2:1 — The description “falsified and mutilated” is Epiphanius’s judgement. The Gospel quotation begins with the man named Jesus. It retains the disciples’ narrative perspective: “chose us”.
4. 2:1 — James places Philip, Bartholomew, James son of Alphaeus and Thomas in angle brackets as an editorial supplement to the list. The brackets are retained; these names must not be quoted as continuously preserved wording of the fragment.
5. 2:1 — “Chose us” and the address to Matthew are features of the narrative, not proof of authorship by the historical Matthew. The alternative unto (of) Israel is James’s.
6. 3:1 — In the transmitted quotation John’s food is wild honey, whose taste is compared with manna and a cake in oil. It should not be silently replaced with the canonical wording about locusts and wild honey in Matthew 3:4 and Mark 1:6.
7. 3:1 — The manna imagery recalls Exodus 16:31 and Numbers 11:8. James’s commentary compares the Greek words akris (“locust”) and enkris (“cake”). This explains a possible play on words; it is not an independently surviving Gospel manuscript.
8. 3:2 — This separate paragraph is Epiphanius’s polemical objection, not a saying of Jesus or a continuation of the Gospel quotation. James prints “honey” here but “oil” in the preceding passage; the difference and his sic are retained.
9. 4:1 — Epiphanius explicitly calls this the beginning of the book. Our sections follow the historical edition’s sequence of excerpts rather than reconstructing the order of a complete Gospel.
10. 4:1 — The angle brackets around Caiaphas and the introductory words about John are retained from James. They are editorial supplements in the chosen English basis, not markers of damaged pages in a manuscript available to us.
11. 4:1 — The combination of Herod, Caiaphas, descent from Aaron and the baptism of repentance is retained as transmitted. It can be compared with Luke’s opening and Luke 3:1–3; chronological difficulties are not removed by rewriting the text.
12. 5:1 — “After a good deal more” is Epiphanius’s introduction: there is material between the quoted passages that is not transmitted here. It is not permission to supply a connecting narrative.
13. 5:1 — “Descended and entered into him” is retained, rather than merely “descended upon him”. The voice has several formulations, including “This day have I begotten thee” (compare Psalm 2:7), and a great light appears. These differences are not harmonized into one canonical account.
14. 5:1 — Suffer it (or let it go) is James’s alternative. The final phrase concerns “all things” being fulfilled; it is not replaced by “fulfil all righteousness” from Matthew 3:15.
15. 6:1 — This passage is absent from James’s chapter. It is supplied here as a reading adaptation of the historical Moscow Theological Academy Russian translation, published in the collected Works of St Epiphanius of Cyprus (1863–1883), using its online transcription. Life for God translated this passage into English from that Russian basis; it is not James’s translation.
16. 6:1 — The selected Russian basis lists brothers and mother in the final saying; no further members of the list have been supplied. Archaic wording is modernized and quotation marks added for clarity. No full independent collation of this passage against Greek editions was performed.
17. 6:1 — Here Epiphanius cites the Saviour’s words as an argument used by his opponents, without explicitly introducing them as “written in their Gospel”. The passage is therefore labelled testimony. Compare Matthew 12:46–50 and Mark 3:31–35.
18. 7:1 — This is Epiphanius’s account of others’ teaching, not a verbatim Gospel quotation. His reports about Jesus’ human origin, Christ and the Spirit’s descent have not been editorially combined into a consistent system.
19. 7:2 — The discussion of creation and angels belongs to Epiphanius’s report. The direct quotation from the Gospel they used begins “I came to destroy the sacrifices”. The sentence does not give the work’s title.
20. 7:2 — The saying concerns sacrifices. This short quotation cannot by itself establish a complete body of teaching or attribute it to every group ancient authors called Ebionites.
21. 8:1 — The accusation of altering the text is Epiphanius’s. Jesus’ answer is a question expecting denial, materially different from the affirmative statement in Luke 22:15. “Flesh” refers to the Passover meal; the question has not been turned into a direct assertion.