By Dr. James D. Tabor
Ebionites & Nazarenes: Tracking the Original Followers of Jesus – Extracts below.
The issue of the relationship of Jesus to the “Essenes,” as well as to the Dead Sea Scrolls, whether Essene or otherwise, is central to our attempts to view Jesus in his historical contexts. In other words, we are essentially asking, in our historical Quest–“what kind of a Jew was Jesus?”
I [JDT] think it best today to use the collective term Ebionite/Nazarene in an attempt to capture the whole of this earliest movement, and it would be useful to revive the term Yachad as a collective designation for the community of the Hasidim/Saints. Ebionite/Nazarene is a good historical designation to refer to those original, 1st century, mostly Jewish, followers of Jesus, gathered around James the brother of Jesus in Jerusalem, who were zealous for the Torah, but saw themselves as part of the New Covenant Way inaugurated by their “True Teacher” Jesus. James is a key and neglected figure in this whole picture (see essays here on James).
Tabor distributed to his Patreon group in August 2024 the following files which are in his folder in DropBox.
- Nazarenes and Ebionites Overview.pdf – His overview
- Eusebius James & Ebionites.pdf – Eusebius on James and the Ebionites
- Epiphanius on both the Nazoraeans and the Ebionites
- Williams Epiphanius Panarion Book 1 18 Nazoreans and 19 Ebionites.pdf *
- Williams Epiphanius Panarion Chapter 18-Nasareans.pdf *
.* Tabor’s extracted chapters appear to be from The Panarion of Epiphanius of Salamis: Book I (Sects 146) (Nag Hammadi and Manichaean Studies) Paperback – January 25, 2016, by Frank Williams
The following two videos are the same but posted with different names on different channels.
- Forgotten Christians: Who Were The Ebionites? – James Tabor on the MythVision channel
- Were the Ebionites Heretics? Or Our Best Witness to the Jesus Movement? – On Tabor’s channel.
How Does Hebrew Matthew Compare with Greek Matthew in the New Testament? Video – See 44:33. See also The Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. This is Tabor’s handout cited in the above video on Shem Tov’s Hebrew Matthew.
In the above video, Tabor asks and provides clues that Paul could be an Ebionite. Go to 23:50.
By Dr. Bart Ehrman
Ebionites,” Ancient Unitarian Christians – Bart D. Ehrman, Jeff Fletcher.
