Secret Alias wrote: ↑Fri Apr 24, 2020 4:56 pm
This is insane. What was the attitude of the group which wrote the ur-text to the Clementine literature. Answer: they were unlike the group described by Irenaeus. They had very strange ideas about the Torah. End of story
I disagree with respect to the portion of the Recognitions that is thought to be Ebionite (1.27-71). In this section they believe in one God, and revere the Torah and Jerusalem even though they no longer believed in the Temple or sacrifice, as per 1.38:
... they erected a temple in the place which had been appointed to them for prayer ...
Cf. Irenaeus:
... they even adore Jerusalem as if it were the house of God ...
And they regard circumcision with respect in 1.34:
Others settled in Arabia, of whose posterity some also have spread into Egypt. From them some of the Indians and of the Egyptians have learned to be circumcised, and to be of purer observance than others ...
Cf. Irenaeus:
... they practice circumcision ...
And they believe the world was created by God, as per 1.27:
In the beginning, when God had made the heaven and the earth ...
Cf. Irenaeus:
Those who are called Ebionites agree that the world was made by God ...
And they revere the Torah, again aside from sacrifice in response to the destruction of the Temple, though even in that case they justified its existence prior to the destruction of the Temple, as per 1.34, 35 and 37:
Meantime they came to Mount Sinai, and thence the law was given to them with voices and sights from heaven, written in ten precepts, of which the first and greatest was that they should worship God Himself alone, and not make to themselves any appearance or form to worship.
When meantime Moses, that faithful and wise steward, perceived that the vice of sacrificing to idols had been deeply ingrained into the people from their association with the Egyptians, and that the root of this evil could not be extracted from them, he allowed them indeed to sacrifice, but permitted it to be done only to God, that by any means he might cut off one half of the deeply ingrained evil, leaving the other half to be corrected by another, and at a future time ...
In addition to these things,he also appointed a place in which alone it should be lawful to them to sacrifice to God. And all this was arranged with this view, that when the fitting time should come, and they should learn by means of the Prophet that God desires mercy and not sacrifice ...
This is similar to the understanding of the Torah by non-Orthodox Jewish sects today, which nevertheless use and have reference for and find meaning in all of the Torah. In my view the Ebionite faction of Jewish Christianity (at least after 70 CE) were "Reform" or "Conservative" Jewish Christians and the Nazarenes were "Orthodox" (and whatever their understanding of the Torah, all Jewish sects were in the same boat after 70 CE as far as not being able to offer sacrifices goes, just like today). In other words, the Ebionite attitude towards sacrifice didn't make them any less Jewish or Torah-reverent than the Nazarenes or Rabbinic Jews.
And when Irenaeus says that they "persevere in the observance of those customs which are enjoined by the law," as far as sacrifice goes, not even the Nazarenes (or Rabbinic Jews) were able to "persevere in the observance" of those laws at the time he was writing. So what I gather he means by this then is that they were
Jewish, i.e., they observed Jewish "customs," i.e, the kinds of things that other Jews did after 70 CE.
So yes, I would say that Rec. 1.27-71 reflects Ebionite beliefs in accordance with Irenaeus.