Early Christian Ebionaen Canon

[Steven Avery]

In the church you will have repented by doing penace, whereas in a Tyndale congregation you would have to be moved with repentance. I rephrased what I wrote to make it more "accessible" for an american audience.

So you agree that there is nothing about doing penance in the Authorized Version, but you do not want to simply accept the correction.

Since both Tyndale and the AV refer to repentance, not penance, which one is a better English translation of the Greek text?

Matthew 21:32 (AV)
For John came unto you in the way of righteousness,
and ye believed him not:
but the publicans and the harlots believed him:
and ye, when ye had seen it,
repented not afterward,
that ye might believe him.

[ebion]

There have been a lot of people who have drawn out the paralells in the Gospel of Thomas to the synoptics:

• https://sacred-texts.com/chr/thomas.htm
• https://www.angelfire.com/dc/universali ... llels.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20010828035 ... to_31.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20071021034 ... to_66.html
• https://web.archive.org/web/20071021034 ... o_113.html

The thing I notice in looking at the paralells is that they are almost all to Matthew and Luke; a few to John and Revelations, and almost none to the Faulines! either Thomas has good taste, or they were not in the canon when it was weitten. We could cross-refererence the verses most strongly showing parallels and put them into our Ebionaen Bible Commentary.

Threads on the Gospel of Thomas (chronological):

• viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10769[/url]
• viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10612[/url]
• viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10279[/url]
• viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10161[/url]
• viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10143[/url]
• viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9714[/url]
• viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9685[/url]
• viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9400[/url]
• viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9226[/url]
• viewtopic.php?f=3&t=8930[/url]
• a new Gospel of Thomas book excerpt
• THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS (50-140) Questions
• Was the Gospel of Thomas Manichaean?
• The gospel of Thomas by Ben C. Smith

From Martin's Gospel soup: ingredients reused and added from Thomas through Matthew

These are the themes in the Gospel of Thomas (in the Ebionaen Canon), hyperlinked to ECW:

• Anti-Judaic
  • Directed against the Pharisees as an institute or group
    • Pharisees are hiding the real knowledge (39, 34, 50, 66, 74, 102)
    • Pharisees don't live according to their rules (43, 53, 65, 85, 102)
• Directed against Judaic customs
  • The concept of heaven in heaven is nonsense, it's right here on earth and everywhere, and anyone can attain it (3, 11, 12, 111)
  • Typical Judaic customs such as fasting and praying are nonsense and even harmful (6, 14, 88, 93, 104)
• Self-critical
  • Relentlessly seek and question everything in sight
    • Look at everyone and everything around you with fully objective eyes (5, 8, 10, 16, 40, 55, 68, 78, 99)
    • Observe and recognise how your life unfolds (11, 17, 26, 36, 37, 47, 57, 87, 89, 97, 98, 101, 113)
  • Make the two one again
    • Provide yourself with the proper environment (2, 9, 15, 20, 21, 24, 27, 31, 45, 49, 50, 60, 69, 75, 94)
    • Become like a child (4, 13, 18, 19, 22, 29, 37, 46, 48, 79, 80, 86, 106)

[ebion]

II's new to me and I'd like to put it in as a tentative: I've recently started looking at the Gospel of Truth from the Nag Hammadi library, in the translation directly is from the Coptic by Patterson Brown, at:

• http://www.metalog.org/files/valent.html
• https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/3426288/metalogos-the-gospels-of-thomas-philip-truth
• http://web.archive.org/web/20050208003646/http://www.metalog.org/files/valent.html
• All of his work is downloadable from https://archive.org/details/Metagosp

He does a lot of commentary to show the links back to the gospel passages, and it sufficiently links to Matthew Philip and Thomas for us to include it in the canon. It made the Nag Hammadi cutoff for age, so I'll say it meets the criteria. So I'd like to put that in as a 11*, the star meaning tentative, and have some time to go through it.

I also like the idea of Truth Thomas and Philip in a grouping, or maybe John+Thomas and Philip+Truth fits nicely.

The heresy-hunters sometimes accuse it of being Valentinian, but Patterson Brown points out in his footnotes that if anything they are anti-(bad)Gnostic.

And Peter Kirby points out:

Often it is said that the Gospel of Truth represents an early stage in the development of "Valentinian" thought precisely because it does not contain the elaborate speculation believed to characterize later Valentinian texts. This idea is overturned if the Gospel of Truth is aware of such elaborate speculation and disagrees with it. ...

It is notable here to remark that we need only look to Tertullian (Against the Valentinians 4) to find Irenaeus contradicted about "Valentinianism" because Tertullian claimed that Ptolemy, not Valentinus, introduced this speculation on the Aeons:
...

The position that Tertullian here attributes to Valentinus is closer to what we find in the Gospel of Truth. Yet we can also perceive that the author of the Gospel of Truth seems to be aware of speculation on the Aeons (apart from God) and the concept of Syzygy, rejecting them both. While the text as a whole speaks frequently on the topic of that which is illusory and non-existent, there is a particular passage of interest here with respect to speculation on Aeons.
...
This part makes me think the author is aware of speculation about named aeons and of syzygy:
...
So the Gospel of Truth already is engaged in its own subtle effort to undermine the "Valentinian" system.

[ebion]

We have the Gospel of Philip tentatively in our canon.

It was known to the Early writers and has a beautiful translation by the late Patterson Brown, now at http://www.metalog.org/files/thomas.html with Coptic images; you can also find it at:

• https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/view/ ... ilip-truth and
• http://web.archive.org/web/200502080036 ... homas.html
• All of his work is downloadable from https://archive.org/details/Metagosp

He does a lot of commentary to show the links back to the gospel passages, and also has footnotes that highlight the wordplays and asyncdetons in Coptic. And it's a lovely translation - not at all ecclesiastical.

Threads on the Gospel of Philip:

• viewtopic.php?f=3&t=10143
• viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9722
• the Gospel of Philip says 'Chrestian' most of the time, whereas every translation says 'Christian'
• Gospel of Philip allegories and a few other things
• viewtopic.php?f=3&t=4311
• Gospel of Philip Weirdness
• The gospel of Philip by Ben C. Smith

[ebion]

I know you believe that the Clementia is 'real' and that the reason it knows the 'historical details' of a the canonical letters and Acts.

Only what Luomanen calls the Basic Writing (which he notes "can be deduced from parallel passages contained in the Recognitions and Homilies") and a section in the Recognitions (1.27-71) that some suppose (including me but not Luomanen, though he does think it is Jewish Christian) to be from the Ebionite writing that Epiphanius calls the Ascents of James. I think these passages are "real" in the sense that they were really used by Jewish Christians, and while I agree with Epiphanius that the latter is "full of nonsense," it is nevertheless in keeping with his description of it.

In this thread, we only want content that is germane to defining Early Christian Ebionaens.

In the ccel library the Introductory Notice to the Pseudo-Clementine Literature by Professor M. B. Riddle, D.D. has:

The name “Pseudo-Clementine Literature” (or, more briefly, “Clementina”) is applied to a series of writings, closely resembling each other, purporting to emanate from the great Roman Father. But, as Dr. Schaff remarks, in this literature he is evidently confounded with “Flavius Clement, kinsman of the Emperor Domitian.”504 These writings are three in number: (1) the Recognitions, of which only the Latin translation of Rufinus has been preserved;505 (2) the Homilies, twenty in number, of which a complete collection has been known since 1853; (3) the Epitome, “an uninteresting extract from the Homilies, to which are added extracts from the letter of Clement to James, from the Martyrium of Clement by Simeon Metaphrastes, etc.”506 Other writings may be classed with these; but they are of the same general character, except that most of them show the influence of a later age, adapting the material more closely to the orthodox doctrine.

The Recognitions and the Homilies appear in the pages which follow. The former are given a prior position, as in the Edinburgh series. It probably cannot be proven that these represent the earlier form of this theological romance; but the Homilies, “in any case, present the more doctrinally developed and historically important form of the other treatises, which are essentially similar.”507 They are therefore with propriety placed after the Recognitions, which do not seem to have been based upon them, but upon some earlier document.508

If I want a basis set to explore the Clementines, and I don't want anything that's been Rufinized, are we right to take the advice above and just use the Homilies they have in the CCE library?

From Wickedpaedia:

The Ascents of James (Greek: Anabathmoi Iacobou) is the title of a lost work briefly described in a heresiology known as the Panarion (30.16.6–9),[n 1] by Epiphanius of Salamis; it was used as a source for a polemic against a Jewish Christian sect known as the Ebionites.[1] The document advocated the abolition of the Jewish sacrifices, esteemed James, the brother of Jesus as the leader of the Jerusalem church, and denigrated Paul of Tarsus as a Gentile and an opponent of Jewish Law.[2]

What about the Ascent of James? Should I just focus on it leave the broader Recognitions and the Homilies as a later acretion?

PS: It could be my question is naive; see the thread
viewtopic.php?f=3&t=9989 and in particular
viewtopic.php?p=144324#p144324

[ebion]

The links to http://kapyong.info/ChristianTable.html are dead, and there's a good analysis in there, one I had not seen before, so I've dug it out of archive.org and will post it here. Here's the url:
https://web.archive.org/web/20161103071 ... Table.html

Citations_in Early Christian Writings

A chronological table of written citations in the early Christian writings to the names & terms associated with Jesus Christ, and to the Gospels, and also Paul.

The electronic text versions of the early writings of the Christians_were collected and searched for certain names and key-words and phrases associated with Jesus and the Gospels (and
allowing for varying words forms where possible).

• Size of document :_small, medium, large.
• Type of reference: lower case = informal, general principle,or uncertain; Upper Case = specific, formal, certain.

At the top and bottom of each column is its key.

AD	_ Writings	Savior Messiah sonGod sonMan KingJews	Word Logos lamb God Seed david	Suffered Pierced Died Crucified Resurrected Ascended	Miracles Saying Lazarus Healings Galilee Cana transFigured	Virginbirth bEthlehem Nazareth virginMary Herod Baptism John River jordan	Last Supper Eucharist pAssion Betrayed jUdas Pilate the Tomb	Gospels Quotes Paul Epistles
_	_	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
50	1 Thess.	_	_	d r	_	_	_	_
_	1 Cor.	_	_	d c r	_	_	l b	_
_	2 Cor.	sG	_	s d c r	_	_	_	_
_	Galatians	sG	_	d c	_	_	_	_
_	Romans	sG	Sd	d c r	_	_	_	_
_	Phillipians	S	_	s r	_	_	_	_
_	Philemon	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
60	Hebrews	sG sM	_	s r	_	_	_	_
70	Jerusalem razed	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
80	Colossians	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
_	1 John	sG S	w	_	_	_	_	_
_	James	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
81	Domitian	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
90	Ephesians	sG S	_	a	_	_	_	_
_	2 Thess.	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
_	1 Peter	_	W	s r	_	_	_	_
_	1 Clement	S	_	s r	S	_	_	P E
_	pEgerton	_	_	_	M S	_	_	_
_	Revelation	sG sM	W lG	p c r	_	_	_	_
98	Trajan	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
100	Didakhe	_	_	r	_	_	E	_
_	Oxy1224	_	_	_	S	_	_	_
_	Jude	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
110	Barnabas	sG	_	S P C R A	M	_	_	_
117	Hadrian	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
120	2,3 John	G S	_	_	_	_	_	_
_	apoc.Peter	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
_	Secret James	sM S	W	C	S H	_	_	_
_	gThomas	_	_	_	S H	B	_	_
_	Preach Peter	_	W	s r	_	_	_	_
_	Quadratus	s	_	_	H	_	_	_
130	Papias	S	_	r	S	_	U	mk mt
_	2 Peter	S	_	_	_	_	_	P E
_	Pastorals	S	Sd	r	_	_	P	_
_	Hermas	sG	_	_	_	_	_	_
132	Bar Kochba	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
_	Oxy840	s	_	_	s	_	_	_
_	Ignatius	sG sM S	Sd	s d c r	_	M H	E A P	P E
_	Poly.Phil.	sG S	_	S D R	s	_	_	P E
138	Antoninus Pius	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
140	Diognetus	sG S	W	_	_	_	_	g
_	epis.Apostles	sG S	_	L C R A	M S L H G C	V E M B	U P	l mt j P
_	2 Clement	S	_	S r	S	_	_	G
_	Aristides	sG M	_	P D R A	_	v	_	g l
150	Ptolemy	S	W L	_	_	_	_	J P E
_	dial.Savior	sM S	_	_	S	_	U	_
_	g.Mary	sM S	_	_	h	_	_	_
_	Justin	SG sM S	W L lG	S P D C R A	M S H	V E N M H B J R	L E A P T	l mt G
_	Min.Felix	_	_	I C	_	_	_	_
_	i.g.James	sg KJ	_	_	_	V E M H	_	_
_	i.gThomas	_	_	_	M S	M	_	_
_	Poly.Mart.	S	_	S C r	s	_	B U	_
160	Tatian.Ad.	_	L	r	_	_	_	_
161	Marcus Aurelius	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
_	g.Truth	_	L	s	_	_	_	_
_	g.Ebionites	sG	_	_	_	H B J R	b U	G
_	Heracleon	sM S M	W lG	_	S H G C	B J	A	J
170	a.Peter	sG	W	D C R	_	V N M H	E U P	P
_	Apollonaris	sG	lG	P C S	_	_	t	_
_	a.Paul	sG	Sd	r C	L	V M	_	P
_	a.Andrew	sG	lG	S C	_	H	_	_
_	Athenagoras	sG	L	r	_	_	_	_
180	Commodus	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
_	ScillitanM	_	_	_	_	_	_	P E
_	Theophilus	_	W	r	_	_	_	G
_	Irenaeus	sG sM S	L W lG Sd	S P D C R A	M S L H G C F	V E N M H B J R	l E A B U P t	Mk Mt L J P E
190	ClementA	sG sM kJ S	L W lG	c D R S	L H	_	L E A B U t	Mk Mt L J P E
210	Tertullian	sG sM kJ S	L W lG Sd	S P D C R A	M S L H G C F	V E N M H B J R	L E A B U P T	Mk Mt L J P E
220	Origen	sG sM kJ S M	L W lG Sd	S P D C R A	M S H G C F	V E N M H B J R	E A B U P T	Mk Mt L J P E
_	Hippolytus	sG sM M S	L W lG	S P D C R A	M S H G C	V E N M H B J R	E A B U P T	Mk Mt L J P E
_	_	_	_	_	_	_	_	_
_	_	Savior Messiah sonGod sonMan KingJews	Word Logos lamb God Seed david	Suffered Pierced Died Crucified Resurrected Ascended	Miracles Saying Lazarus Healings Galilee Cana transFigured	Virginbirth bEthlehem Nazareth virginMary Herod Baptism John River jordan	Last Supper Eucharist pAssion Betrayed jUdas Pilate the Tomb	Gospels Quotes Paul Epistles

This table helps to classify broad periods of Gospel development -

1st century – Gospels and life of Jesus of Nazareth unknown,

early 2nd century – sayings of Jesus becoming known, a few details of life of Jesus known,
early-mid 2nd century – early writings mentioned, proto-Gospels appear,
mid 2nd century – 'memoirs of the Apostles' appear, life of Jesus much better known,
late-mid 2nd century – Gospels numbered Four with DiaTessaron,
late 2nd century – Gospels named and become well known.
_

by Kapyong - Legal: The author Kapyong asserts all rights under all_applicable laws. Readers MAY reproduce parts of this work PROVIDED attribution is given to Kapyong AND a link to this page is given.
https://web.archive.org/web/20161103071 ... Table.html
https://web.archive.org/web/20161103071 ... anity.html

[ebion]

We feel that we've made the case for Peshitta Primacy:

• Major KJV Tampering
• Tampering in both Tyndale and KJV (Acts 16:16 )
• Mid-sized TR Tampering but hugely famous: Joahannine Comma
• KJV Howler? the bowels of the saints (Philemon 1:7 [KJV])
• KJV Howler? mine own bowels: (Philemon 1:12 [KJV])
• KJV Howler? refresh my bowels in the Lord. (Philemon 1:20 [KJV])
• KJV Howler? I long after you all in the bowels of Jesus Christ. (Philippians 1:8 [KJV])
• KJV Howler? if any fellowship of the Spirit, if any bowels and mercies, (Philippians 2:1 [KJV])
• KJV Howler? holy and beloved, bowels of mercies (Colossians 3:12 [KJV])
• KJV Howler? his bowels of compassion from him (I John 3:17 [KJV])
• KJV Howler? ye are straitened in your own bowels. (II Corinthians 6:12 [KJV])
• KJV Howler? the bowels of the saints (Philemon 1:7 [KJV])
• KJV Howler? have made themselves eunuchs (Matthew 19:12 [KJV])
• KJV Blooper: Their feet are swift to shed blood: (Romans 3:15 [KJV])
• KJV Blooper: having loosed the pains of death Acts 2:24 KJV

So we'll adopt the Peshitta for the Early Christian Ebionaen Canon. But there are nuances: this only applies to the books of the Church of the East canon, because we don't have reliable texts for any of the western 5 books (except perhaps Revelations).

And we have the Gospels of Thomas and tentatively Philip and Truth in our canon, which show signs of a Semetic origin, but we have no early Aramaic texts of these, only Coptic.

Similarly the Clementines may be best in Syriac, but that will take a lot of careful study; as long as we don't use anything by Rufinus!

And we have no Aramaic copy of the Didache, and are deeply suspicious of the Greek one from the Patriarch of Jerusalem in Constantinople, because of Tischenduper's visit.

So this is a flexible situation that will evolve with scholarship.

[ebion]

Now that we've got the canon pretty well worked out, I've started a new thread on What were the beliefs of Early Ebionaen Christianity?.

This thread will continue for canon questions.

[ebion]

Our coherent answer, with some of your list, in the Early Christian Ebionaen Canon. Our answer is a little more rigourous in having criteria for inclusion.

It is also a graded canon, not a simple in/out.

Follow the thread and see what you think.

The other question is regarding the Pauline letters - I don't understand why everything except Acts has been immediately axed. I understand that the authorship of some letters is under dispute, but Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon are all considered solidified as legitimately written by Paul, no?
Is the argument for their removal that the Ebionites rejected Paul and would thus reject all letters believed to be written by him, aside from Acts purely as a historical source? And if so, then wouldn't the inverse be true, where the above-mentioned books would be excluded and the "under dispute" books would then be potential for inclusion in the canon?

The reason I came to this forum is that I wanted to answer the question: Is there any trace of "Paul's" letters before Marcion? The question grew out of reading Detering et.al. As you may know, Marcion was the one who said he "found" Romans, and then put out his collection of the letters, with a version of Luke. But there is no trace of Paul's letters before Marcion, so after a lot of debate called MarcionOrLater, I concluded that the Paulines were written by Marcion, by which I mean either Marcion or his followers or even his mentors.

Marcion was a huge thing in his day: he rated 5 books by Tertullian. And to me, most western evangelical christianity today is pure Marcionism: washing their hands in the blood of a dead God. That link above will take you to the trail of discussions in the forum so you can followup there for yourself. In a nutshell: there;s no trace so the Paulines were not wriiten by Paul, and hence we refer to them as the Faulines.

This explains the fact that Paul's theology is decidedly anti-Christian, so it feels good to throw them out of our canon, and some churches who have them in their canon, downplay him. This does not mean he didn't exist, so we distinguish between "Paul in Acts", and the false Faul of the Fauline letters. We see Acts as a trial brief to a Roman (pagan) procecutor. trying to get him off, because of the disasterous consequences for the Christians if he was convicted )religio Illicita_. But the Ebionaens were right in viewing him as an apostate not an apostle, as Acts clearly shows.

Paul's/Shaul's/Faul's theology came in handy at Nicea for Constantine, because it supported his agenda. Constantine was a pagan and turned the Churchians into minions of his Mithras/Molech cult:

• Saturday into Sunday
• Passover into OEaster
• Hebrews into Heathens
• The patriarch of the Romans into the Pontifex Maximus
• And then the Churchunists turned Paul from an apostate into an Apostle

The bishops at the Council of Nicaea didn't have much choice: Constantine drafted the resolutions - nobody voted against him, and the 5 bishops that abstained were banished from the Empire. He built his new city of Constantinople around a pagan monument to Sol Invictus with his face on it after the Council of Nicaea.

Douglas del Tondo, writes well on this. He is the author of the videos I posted links to. He asks the question Was Paul the Apostle Jesus Condemns in Revelation 22:

I know thy works, and thy labour, and thy patience, and how thou canst not bear them which are evil: and thou hast tried them which say they are apostles, and are not, and hast found them liars: (Rev. 2:2 [KJV])

which we answer affirmatively. His research is excellent, and I find a wealth of good new information engagingly presented in his videos. He is amongst the best at deliniating how Constantine made the Churchunists what they are today. Acts is history as shown by Mauck in his book "Paul on Trial".

I build on del Tondo's work to go further and show that the Faulines are MarcionOrLater, not the Paul in Acts.

Either way, the canon I'm attempting to put together is a bit later in history - if the Apostolic Fathers and their contemporaries were creating a canon with the info we have now, which books would they consider necessary for inclusion into the canon?

There are a number of reasons we don't go later than Nicaea/Nag Hammadi:

1. Anything after Nicaea is contaminated by the fear of what will happen to you if you go against the Emperor (a slow and painful death.)
2. The rewriters like Rufinus started soon after Nicaea, rewriting whatever they could lay their hands on by 'translating" the Greek into Latin and destroying the originals.
3. The rewriters like Rufinus also rewrote the Apostolic Fathers like Origen, and censored or burned the books or people like Vigilantius.
4. The non-canonical Trinity and the non-Ebionaen Virgin Birth got deeply entrenched.
5. The Church of the East split off from the West about that time (2nd Council of Ephesus, 431 AD), and as it looks like the New Testatment was originally written in Aramaic, it may better to avoid anything Western after that.
6. There are enough gems in Nag Hammadi to keep us busy for a while.
7. Throwing the Faulines out, as the Ebionaens did, creates a lot of room for Early Ebionaen Christianity to come through.

We're following up The Problem of Paul and Marcionism in a new thread to pull together the many people over the centuries that have concluded that the Faulines are anti-Christian and belong only in Marcion's canon.

[ebion]

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