In The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, Bart Ehrman writes:

According to orthodox sources, the Ebionites self-consciously traced their lineage back to the apostolic times, and like the earliest followers of Jesus worked to preserve their Jewish identity and customs, including the practices of circumcision and kashrut.

They are most commonly portrayed as adoptionists who reject both the notion of Jesus’ pre-existence and the doctrine of his virgin birth, maintaining instead that Jesus was a “normal” human being, born of natural generation. God chose him to be his Son at his baptism and gave him his messianic mission.

This he fulfilled by dying on the cross, after which God raised him from the dead and exalted him to heaven.

Sources agree that the Ebionites accepted the binding authority of the Old Testament (and therefore the continuing validity of the Law) but rejected the authority of the apostate apostle, Paul.

The sources do not agree about the character and contours of the gospel used by the Ebionites. Most of the fathers from the early second century (Papias) to the late fourth (Jerome) claim that it comprised a truncated form of Matthew (outwardly the most Jewish of the four) written in Hebrew, one that lacked it’s opening chapters, that is, the narrative of Jesus’ miraculous birth.

 

 

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