Ebionite, member of an early ascetic sect of Jewish Christians. The Ebionites were one of several such sects that originated in and around Palestine in the first centuries ad and included the Nazarenes and Elkasites. The name of the sect is from the Hebrew ebyonim, or ebionim (“the poor”); it was not founded, as later Christian writers stated, by a certain Ebion.
Little information exists on the Ebionites, and the surviving accounts are subject to considerable debate, since they are uniformly derived from the Ebionites’ opponents. The first mention of the sect is in the works of the Christian theologian St. Irenaeus, notably in his Adversus haereses (Against Heresies; c. 180); other sources include the writings of Origen and St. Epiphanius of Constantia. The Ebionite movement may have arisen about the time of the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem (ad 70). Its members evidently left Palestine to avoid persecution and settled in Transjordan (notably at Pella) and Syria and were later known to be in Asia Minor and Egypt. The sect seems to have existed into the 4th century.
Most of the features of Ebionite doctrine were anticipated in the teachings of the earlier Qumrān sect, as revealed in the Dead Sea Scrolls. They believed in one God and taught that Jesus was the Messiah and was the true “prophet” mentioned in Deuteronomy 18:15. They rejected the Virgin Birth of Jesus, instead holding that he was the natural son of Joseph and Mary. The Ebionites believed Jesus became the Messiah because he obeyed the Jewish Law. They themselves faithfully followed the Law, although they removed what they regarded as interpolations in order to uphold their teachings, which included vegetarianism, holy poverty, ritual ablutions, and the rejection of animal sacrifices. The Ebionites also held Jerusalem in great veneration.
The early Ebionite literature is said to have resembled the Gospel According to Matthew, without the birth narrative. Evidently, they later found this unsatisfactory and developed their own literature—the Gospel of the Ebionites—although none of this text has survived.