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Hebrews and the Ebionites

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 November 2003

MICHAEL GOULDER
MICHAEL GOULDER
Affiliation:
51 Valentine Road, Birmingham B14 7AJ, England
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Abstract

Hebrews was written to dissuade certain Jewish-Christian members of the community from lapsing; it proclaims a Pauline-type faith, the incarnation and the atonement. Our earliest account of Jewish Christians is of Irenaeus's Ebionites: they thought Christ to be an angelic power who possessed the human Jesus from his baptism to before his passion. Such a creed would explain Hebrews' deprecation of angels and insistence on Christ's humanity through his passion. This then gives sense to the widely mistranslated 6.1, and gives context and force to the paraenesis in chapter 13: Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, before his incarnation, and today – not as the Jewish Christians claim, in a temporary possession by an angel.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Testament Studies , Volume 49 , Issue 3 , July 2003 , pp. 393 - 406
Copyright
2003 Cambridge University Press

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