Wednesday, November 01, 2006
EBIONITES IN THE BIBLE ENCYCLOPEDIA
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia gives an overview of Ebionites and refers to the religion as "Ebionism". What struck me in reading through it is that according to the website:
Dr. Campbell of Dundee, finds a strong Ebionite bias in the Gospel of Luke, in which certainly there is no lessening of our Lord's supreme Divinity. All that it amounts to is a prominence given to the poor. The identification of the poor with the righteous has not come down to us as a tenet of the Ebionites; it has been ascribed to them from their name. As already stated in the Ascension of Isaiah, the Divinity of the Messiah is strongly asserted. The farther down the stream of history we go more and more clearly do the Ebionite features appear, till by the time when Alcibiades, the follower of Elkasai, appeared in Rome, we have something widely removed from the Ebionism of the Clementines, far as that is from the simple position occupied by the Nazareans.
How closely associated is this with the social gospel that has been so prominent in Roman Catholicism since Vatican II? Most of our liberals are heavily into the social gospel and are light on Christ. Does that reflect the liberals' embrace of Ebionism? Are the "womenpriests" who claim to be Roman Catholic and who practice rituals in imitation of the Catholic Mass in various home settings really practicing Ebionism?
