i just wanted to make a brief video in response to some claims by prominent christian apologists
and polemicists online that the early jewish christian sects the ebionites as they're called uh
did not believe in the virgin birth now why does this matter because
the early the earliest christians were jewish christians and they had beliefs about jesus
and about the jewish law and so on which are quite different from later christian orthodoxy
certainly different from paul's ideas which became dominant in the second century onwards up to today
and the accusation is that the ebionites as they're called these jewish christians did not
believe in the virgin birth so their faith was suspect they were heretics anyway so why are we
putting so much store by what they believe they didn't quite get their beliefs right now this
is a half truth at best and i want to show why uh this is a half-truth uh by referring to the
uh well-known book by eusebius the history of the church who is eusebius on the back cover it says
eusebius's account is the only surviving historical account of the church during
its crucial first 300 years bishop eusebius who was born in ad260 so it's really early
a learned scholar who lived most of his life in caesarea in palestine broke new ground in
writing the history and provided a model for all later ecclesiastical historians church historians
so uh this book by the way is edited by uh andrew luth who's a professor of patristic studies
at the university of durham and at the very back he has a glossary of the who's who of eusebius and
he helpfully tells us about the ebionites the word is derived from a hebrew word meaning the poor
this may indicate that the original ebionites were materially poor or that they thought of themselves
as the poor ones who depend utterly on the grace of god and then he goes on they seem to have been
jewish christians who respected christ but could not conceive of his relationship to
god as anything other than that of a man inspired by god like one of the prophets
eusebius is scornful of jewish christianity this is the original faith of the disciples by the way
and knows little about it anyway obviously it seems to have been much more important in the
early centuries of christianity than appears from the history of the church end quote
now we know there's some for much much scholarship in the last 40 50 years that the original
disciples and followers of those people like james the brother of jesus
were jewish christians who believe very different things than paul believed in the emerging
great church in the second century the catholic church and evangelicals today
so the point is what why is this matter what they believed about the virgin birth because
if it can be shown they didn't believe in the virgin birth that discredits them in the eyes of
many people look muslims believe he he was born of a virgin the gospels say he was born of a virgin
these people were just heretics why should we take what they say seriously so this is i think the
the agenda behind some uh quite well very well known christian apologists who i will not name
because i don't want to get into a tit for tat ad hominem with people so what does eusebius tell us
well he tells us something very interesting uh and on page 90 of this book this is the
uh the third chapter of eusebius he writes this there are two ebionite sects
the first one um says they regard him as him jesus as plain and ordinary a man esteemed as righteous
through growth of character and nothing more the child of a normal union between a man and mary
and they held that that they must observe every detail of the law these are jews basically who
believe in jesus as the messiah as the prophet but they believe that he was not born of a virgin
and then you see this goes on a second group went by the same name ebia ebionites but escapes the
outrageous absurdity of the first they did not deny that the lord was born of a virgin
and the holy spirit but nevertheless shared their refusal to acknowledge his pre-existence
as god the word and wisdom thus the impious doctrine of the others was their undoing also
especially as they placed equal emphasis on the outward observance of the law
they held that the epistles of the apostle that means paul of course ought to be rejected
all together calling him a renegade from the law and using only the gospel of the hebrews
they treated the the rest with scant respect like the others they observe the sabbath and the whole
jewish system so he is very scathing of these people but of course they represent the original
uh faith of the disciples who are torah observant jews we can see this in the
book of acts it's it states they were and we can see uh also that this second group of the
ebonites believed in the virgin birth so there seemed to be split between them and i'm not sure
how they split and did they co-mingle or were they separate denominations but clearly there
was a group of ebionites who did believe in the virgin birth who were jewish christians and some
who didn't believe in the virgin birth so this story that the ebio knights didn't believe in the
virgin mary in the virgin birth is wrong it's a half-truth uh some were quite orthodox by islamic
standards shall we say that they believed that jesus was born of the virgin mary without any
involvement of joseph but also they observe the law uh observe they view jesus as just a man a
great prophet of god a messiah which of course is exactly what the quran teaches as well so that's a
an amazing coincidence you may say so um i just wanted to uh just touch on this point because it's
used against uh to discredit the jewish christians this whole thing of the virgin birth and um it's
a distortion of the facts and i just want to get that on record for what it's worth till next time