Most scholars conclude that Epiphanius of Salamis misidentified a Greek Gospel that was written to either harmonise or replace the Synoptics with the Gospel According to the Hebrews (cf. Panarion, 30.3.7; 13.2).Footnote 1 He attributed it, and other disparate writings such as the Book of Elchasai, the Circuits of Peter and the Ascent of James, to the Ebionites.Footnote 2 Further, he disparaged it as a ‘corrupted and mutilated’ (νɛνοθɛυμένῳ καὶ ἠκρωτηριασμένῳ) version of Matthew's Gospel (30.13.2), for it had no ‘genealogy’ (γɛνɛαλογία) and commenced Jesus's biography with his baptism (30.13.6; 14.3). Now known as the Gospel of the Ebionites, this text has a distinctive account of the baptism (30.13.7–8).Footnote 3 As Jesus ‘ascended from the water’ (ἀνῆλθɛν ἀπὸ τοῦ ὕδατος), ‘the heavens were opened’ (ἠνοίγησαν οἱ οὐρανοὶ) and ‘the holy spirit’ (τὸ πνɛῦμα τὸ ἅγιον) ‘who had come down and entered into him’ (κατɛλθούσης καὶ ɛἰσɛλθούσης ɛἰς αὐτόν) literally took the ‘form’ (ɛἶδος) of a dove. Then, ‘a voice from heaven’ (φωνὴ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ) declared, ‘you are my beloved son, in you I am well pleased’ (σύ μου ɛἶ ὁ υἱὸς ὁ ἀγαπητός, ἐν σοὶ ηὐδόκησα), and ‘today I have begotten you’ (ἐγὼ σήμɛρον γɛγέννηκά σɛ). After a ‘great light’ (φῶς μέγα) ‘shone around the place’ (πɛριέλαμψɛ τὸν τόπον), the heavenly voice let John the Baptiser know that ‘this is my beloved son’ (οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός). The story closes with John urging Jesus to baptise him, but Jesus declined as it was unnecessary for ‘all things to be fulfilled’ (πληρωθῆναι πάντα).
Epiphanius denounced the supposed Ebionite belief that Jesus was just a ‘human’ (ἄνθρωπος), in contrast to the divine Christ ‘who had descended’ (καταβɛβηκότα) and ‘been united’ (συναφθέντα) with him (30.14.4; cf. 3.6; 18.5–6). The Christology expressed in this pericope, and the christological system of thought commonly imputed to the Ebionites by heresiologists, is usually labelled as adoptionistic.Footnote 4 Other scholars, however, insist that it should be relabelled as a possessionist Christology.Footnote 5 The reason why the latter label may be a more fitting encapsulation of the Christology in this passage is that it does not deploy the metaphor of adoption, but it does imply that Jesus acquired a new status once he was filled with the spirit. Contrary to Epiphanius’ assertions, however, there is no evidence that the Gospel writer shared Cerinthus’ christological viewpoints that the celestial power that indwelt Jesus was the Christ aeon, or that Jesus was only possessed for a limited duration.
Did the Ebionites have an adoptionist Christology?
Adoptionism is an etic term, rather than an emic one, when applied to ante-Nicene Christian literature. Bart Ehrman defines it as the belief that Jesus was ‘a flesh and blood human being without remainder, a man who had been adopted by God to be his Son and to bring about the salvation of the world’.Footnote 6 He admits that the christological beliefs of adoptionist Christians were not monolithic: they generally rejected Jesus's personal pre-existence in heaven, but not all of them denied his virginal conception and some debated exactly when he was adopted to divine sonship.Footnote 7 Yet they commonly narrowed in on Jesus's baptism, Ehrman avers, as the point in time when his adoption took place.Footnote 8 Adoptionism is one of the many ideal types developed by scholars, and its function is to simplify more complex data by isolating and accentuating a particular feature for analytical and comparative purposes.Footnote 9
Timo Eskola and Peter-Ben Smit trace the origins of the idea that the oldest Christology was adoptionist back to David Friedrich Strauss and Johannes Weiss.Footnote 10 Strauss understood Jesus's divine sonship in the Synoptics in light of the ancient Israelite conception of theocratic kingship (cf. 2 Sam 7:14; Ps 2:7).Footnote 11 As for Weiss, he inferred that the early Christ followers held that Jesus was adopted as the royal son of God after his post-mortem exaltation (cf. Acts 2:36; 13:33; Rom 1:3–4), though they subsequently reasoned that he had been anointed for his messianic office when the spirit descended upon him at his baptism (cf. Acts 10:38).Footnote 12 Smit notices that Wilhelm Bousset defined adoptionism differently from Strauss and Weiss inasmuch as he thought that it entailed an ontological change in Jesus's nature when he became infused with the divine essence.Footnote 13 Adolf von Harnack categorised all christological reflection on the person of Jesus in the first few centuries as exemplifying either an ‘adoptianische Christologie’ or a ‘pneumatische Christologie’.Footnote 14
Although they do not all use the term adoptionism, several modern scholars affirm that there are traces of the oldest kerygma that Jesus was elevated to a higher station after his earthly life within the New Testament.Footnote 15 Raymond Brown and James Dunn, though, add the nuance that Jesus's eternal divine sonship had not yet been conceived, but was not explicitly denied, in the earlier christological formulations.Footnote 16 Thus, Dunn is reluctant to call them adoptionist, in contrast to certain Ebionites who overtly rejected any notions of Jesus’ divinity and miraculous conception (e.g. Irenaeus, Adversus haereses 1.26.2; Origen, Contra Celsum 5.61; Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 3.27.3).Footnote 17 Michael Peppard contextualises Mark's allegedly adoptionist Christology against the backdrop of the Roman imperial cult as well, for the adopted son of a Roman emperor could become his imperial successor.Footnote 18 Peppard observes that divinity was ascribed to powerful benefactors in the Roman world, so he considers it inaccurate to characterise the comparison of Jesus to an emperor as expressing a ‘low’ Christology.Footnote 19 Partly based on Peppard's analysis, Ehrman has shifted to the nomenclature ‘exaltation Christology’ because it stresses that Jesus was exalted to the highest imaginable status as the deity's co-regent.Footnote 20 For the opposite take, Richard Bauckham counters that Jesus was included within the divine identity as the creator as well as the ruler of all things even in the earliest extant sources.Footnote 21
Adoptionist language or imagery may have been employed as one way of articulating Jesus's relationship to a deity, or his followers’ relationship to that same deity for that matter (e.g. Rom 8:15, 23; Gal 4:5; Eph 1:5), but Jeremiah T. Coogan is right that not every Christ believer who employed the metaphor of adoption shared the same Christology.Footnote 22 A problem with adoptionism as a heuristic category is that it presupposes that this specific metaphor is the common element uniting the divergent Christologies formulated by the Jerusalem ‘Pillars’, the Ebionites and the Theodotians.Footnote 23 In Smit's and Coogan's surveys of the heresiological reports on the Ebionites, however, the term ‘adoption’ (υἱοθɛσία) does not appear.Footnote 24 Michael F. Bird concurs, noting that the terms ‘election’ (ἐκλογή), ‘promotion’ (προκοπή), ‘elevation’ (ἀναφέρω) and ‘call’ (καλέω) are used by Epiphanius to summarise what the Ebionites taught about how Jesus attained his divine sonship (cf. Pan. 30.16.3; 18.5–6).Footnote 25
There is a further lack of clarity among the scholars utilising the heuristic category of adoptionism regarding whether or not Jesus's adoption to divine sonship amounted to his deification. Psilanthropism may be a more precise description of the stance that Jesus was a ‘mere human’ (ψιλὸς ἄνθρωπος), even after his baptism and post-mortem vindication.Footnote 26 J. R. Daniel Kirk compares the portrayal of Jesus in the Synoptic Gospels to other idealised human agents, or non-pre-existent humans authorised to represent the God of Israel within creation, whose stories are told throughout the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Jewish literature.Footnote 27 Pamela Kinlaw widens the focus to the phenomenon of possession throughout the ancient Mediterranean. Special individuals were believed to be permanently indwelt by divine beings or temporarily under their inspiration, with the latter frequently accompanied by the momentary loss of rational faculties or displays of ecstatic behaviour.Footnote 28 Any notions that Jesus was a non-pre-existent human who came to be either temporarily or permanently indwelled by a non-human entity at some point in time, irrespective of whether or not the scene in which he became possessed is depicted in terms of a legal adoption, could be grouped together under the overarching label of a possessionist Christology.
Bird proposes that ‘one thing that seems to connect the trio of Carpocrates, Cerinthus, and Ebion(ites) together is the belief that a separate power, person, Christ, angel, spirit, or aeon entered the man Jesus’.Footnote 29 Irenaeus surmised that the Ebionites’ opinions were the ‘same’ (ὁμοιώς) as those endorsed by Cerinthus and Carpocrates (cf. Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies, 7.34.1, 10.22.1). Recognising that the Ebionites were not demiurgical theologians, a scribe inserted non before similiter (‘not the same’) in the Latin translation of Adversus haereses 1.26.2.Footnote 30 According to Irenaeus (Adversus haereses 1.25.1, 26.1), Carpocrates and Cerinthus taught that Jesus was possessed by an undefined power or the Christ aeon from the spiritual realm transcending the foolish creator(s) of the cosmos. Cerinthus supposed that the Christ aeon descended on Jesus in the form of a dove at his baptism and departed from him before he died by crucifixion. A straightforward interpretation of the Synoptic baptism narratives is that Jesus received the spirit at that moment (cf. Mark 1:10; Matt 3:16; Luke 3:22). It is not inconceivable that some readers could have rendered the Greek ἀφῆκɛν τὸ πνɛῦμα in Matthew 27:50 as ‘he let the spirit go’.Footnote 31 Cerinthus’ reasoning, in any case, was that a spiritual being is impassible and therefore unable to suffer.
Nevertheless, the Ebionites’ Christology was not identical to Cerinthus’ or Carpocrates’.Footnote 32 If the Ebionites were aware that the noun Χριστός is etymologically related to the verb ‘to anoint’ (χρίɛιν), it is doubtful that they took ‘Christ’ to be the name of the spirit that possessed Jesus. It is more likely that they concluded that Jesus was empowered for his prophetic or messianic task by the spirit of YHWH rather than by an aeon sent from Cerinthus’ previously ‘unknown father’ (ἄγνωστος πατήρ). They also did not share the demiurgical thinkers’ dualistic cosmologies, so they need not have reasoned that the spirit was no longer present when Jesus underwent suffering or construed Jesus's lament from the cross in this manner (cf. Mark 15:34; Matt. 27:46). Irenaeus assumed that those who divided the human Jesus from the divine Christ, like Cerinthus and Carpocrates, preferred Mark's Gospel (Adversus haereses. 3.11.7). Still, he detected an underlying similarity between their christologies insofar as they all denied the virginal conception of Jesus. A separationist Christology, which could be defined as a subtype of a possessionist Christology, could be ascribed to Cerinthus and Carpocrates. In this system of thought, the emphasis falls on the separation of the spirit from Jesus before his death (hence, ‘separationist’) because only a human is capable of succumbing to the forces of change, suffering and decay.Footnote 33
Even so, Epiphanius claimed that the Ebionites identified the spirit as the Christ and envisaged it as an enormous archangel (Pan. 30.3.4–6, 16.4, 17.6–7). He reached the latter conclusion by attributing material from the Pseudo-Clementines and the Elchasaites to the Ebionites.Footnote 34 He was the first heresiologist to ascribe these sources to the Ebionites, whom he pictured as one homogeneous sect, and his assertion that the disciples of Ebion came under the influence of Elxai/Elxaios at a secondary stage was likely his own invention (30.3.2, 17.5). The Elchasaites, for instance, had a book that described the angelic Christ's gigantic size (19.4.1–2, 30.3.2, 17.6–7; 53.1.9; cf. Refutation of All Heresies 9.13.2–3). By amalgamating the dissimilar Christologies that he found in his mix of sources, he polemically presented the theological worldview of the Ebionites as syncretistic and incoherent and their imaginary founder Ebion as ‘a many-headed hydra’ (πολυκɛφάλου ὕδρας; 30.1.1).Footnote 35 Tertullian may also be an earlier source on Ebion's alleged supposition that Jesus was no more than the human heir of King David and was indwelt by an angel (cf. De carne Christi 14.32–8).Footnote 36 He may have thought that Zechariah 1:14 LXX could be recited as a proof-text for a prophetic Christology,Footnote 37 unless he came across a written text circulating in Ebionite circles that had an angel speak through Jesus just like Zechariah before him.Footnote 38 ‘Ebionite’ may have been a popular self-designation for a variety of Jewish followers of Jesus who entertained a range of ideas about him.Footnote 39
Additionally, Epiphanius built on the link that Irenaeus made between Cerinthus and the Ebionites.Footnote 40 Hippolytus’ lost Syntagma was possibly the source of his assumption that Cerinthus was the Ebionites’ forerunner (cf. Pseudo-Tertullian, Adversus omnes haereses. 3.2).Footnote 41 The depiction of Cerinthus as Peter's and Paul's chief adversary in the debates over circumcision and Torah-observance in ethnically diverse Christ congregations, though, can be credited to Epiphanius (Pan. 28.2.3–5.3), which then influenced subsequent heresiologists (e.g. Filaster, Diversarum hereseon liber 36).Footnote 42 Epiphanius mixed up the stories about Cerinthus and Ebion when relating that John fled from Ebion when he saw him in a public bathhouse (30.24.1–7; contra Irenaeus, Adversus haereses. 3.3.4). It is not surprising that he missed the fine distinctions between the Ebionites’ and Cerinthus’ Christologies (cf. 28.1.5–7, 30.3.6, 14.4). He speculated that Carpocrates and Cerinthus appealed to Matthew's genealogy to prove that Jesus was the biological son of Joseph (28.5.1, 30.14.2), but the Greek Gospel that he ascribed to the Ebionites lacked a genealogy (30.3.7, 14.2). This forced him to revise his preconceptions about how the Ebionites arrived at their christological convictions and investigate the Gospel that he had found, which may or may not have been Ebionite in origin.Footnote 43
The baptism of Jesus in the Gospel of the Ebionites
Interestingly, Peppard, Bird and Smit agree that there is no adoptionist imagery in the Gospel of the Ebionites.Footnote 44 Justin Martyr embellished the Synoptic accounts of Jesus’ baptism in a similar way in imagining that a ‘fire’ (πῦρ) ‘was kindled’ (ἀνήφθη) ‘in the Jordan’ (ἐν τῷ Ἰορδάνῃ) and recited the entirety of Psalm 2:7 LXX as a messianic proof-text (Dialogue with Trypho 88.3, 8), but he firmly upheld the doctrine of Jesus’ pre-existence as the λόγος (‘word’).Footnote 45 Ehrman enlists Justin as the earliest witness to the western reading of Luke 3:22 since his statement that the spirit took the ‘form’ (ɛἶδος) of a dove may echo Luke 3:21,Footnote 46 but Justin drew on a number of sources on Jesus's baptism and may have directly quoted the words of ‘David’ from the Septuagint (cf. Dial. 103.6, 122.6).Footnote 47 He may have created the detail about the fire to corroborate the Baptiser's prediction of a coming baptism in fire (Matt 3:11/Luke 3:16), which his student Tatian reimagined as a light shining from the water (cf. Ephrem, Commentary on the Diatesseron. 4.5), influencing subsequent sources including the Gospel of the Ebionites.Footnote 48 Epiphanius construed the baptism narrative in the Gospel of the Ebionites through the lens of Cerinthus’ separationist Christology. Yet the spirit is not called Christ in this baptism excerpt, and none of the other fragments that are generally assigned to this Gospel has the spirit leave Jesus before his demise (Pan. 30.13.1–3, 4–5, 6 (cf. 14:3), 7–8, 14.5, 16.4–5, 22:4).Footnote 49
Nevertheless, it is more likely for four reasons that the Gospel of the Ebionites depicted Jesus as a non-pre-existent human who inherited a new status when he was possessed by the spirit at his baptism. First, while the general academic consensus is that this Gospel conflated Synoptic passages at various points, an intertextual relationship with John's Gospel is not demonstrable.Footnote 50 There may be two explanations for why there is no discernible trace of the Gospel of John in the surviving fragments of the Gospel of the Ebionites. It may have been an earlier exemplar of the Gospel harmony genre before the Diatessaron was composed, which may entail that it was written at an early enough date before the fourth canonical Gospel was widely regarded as an authoritative text.Footnote 51 This option seems less likely if the Gospel of the Ebionites was influenced by Tatian's Diatessaron. The second option is that John's Gospel was intentionally excluded from the Gospel of the Ebionites.Footnote 52 At the very least, there is no evidence that this Gospel writer drew on the incarnational Christology of the Johannine prologue or the other statements about Jesus's heavenly origins before he came into the world (cf. John 1:1–18, 3:13, 31, 6:38, 62, 8:23, 58, 9:39, 12:46, 16:28, 17:5, 18:37).
Second, Epiphanius twice stated that the Baptiser's first appearance was right at the ‘beginning’ (ἀρχή) of the Gospel of the Ebionites (30.13.6, 14.3). This may not be its actual starting point, for it may have begun with an incipit disclosing its pseudonymous apostolic author(s) (30.12.2–3).Footnote 53 Epiphanius’ main concern was to stress its lack of an infancy narrative.Footnote 54 The narrative proper may have begun with the line that ‘it happened in the days of Herod king of Judaea John came baptizing a baptism of repentance in the Jordan River, who was said to be of the family of Aaron the priest, son of Zechariah and Elizabeth, and all went out to him’ (ἐγένɛτο ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις Ἡρῴδου βασιλέως τῆς Ἰουδαίας, ἦλθέν Ἰωάννης βαπτίζων βάπτισμα μɛτανοίας ἐν τῷ Ἰορδάνῃ ποταμῷ, ὃς ἐλέγɛτο ɛἶναι ἐκ γένους Ἀρὼν τοῦ ἱɛρέως, παῖς Ζαχαρίου καὶ Ἐλισάβɛτ, καὶ ἐξήρχοντο πρὸς αὐτὸν πάντɛς; 30.13.6).Footnote 55 When Epiphanius repeated this line (30.14.3), he cited it as saying that ‘it happened … in the days of Herod king of Judea in the time of the high-priesthood of Caiaphas someone John by name came baptizing a baptism of repentance in the Jordan River’ (ἐγένɛτο… ἐν ταῖς ἡμέραις Ἡρῴδου βασιλέως τῆς Ἰουδαίας ἐπὶ ἀρχιɛρέως Καϊάφα, ἦλθέν τις Ἰωάννης ὀνόματι βαπτίζων βάπτισμα μɛτανοίας ἐν τῷ Ἰορδάνῃ ποταμῷ).Footnote 56 Marie-Émile Boismard deduces that there were varying recensions of the text known to Epiphanius,Footnote 57 but it is more probable that he just paraphrased the same passage twice.Footnote 58 A. F. J. Klijn suggests that Epiphanius may have had the text before his eyes when reciting this passage the second time because of his use of ‘and so on’ (καὶ τὰ ἑξῆς), but he concedes that this may not be a strong argument.Footnote 59
The parallels with the Lukan material are unmistakable, but James Edwards challenges the majority view that the Gospel of the Ebionites was dependent on Luke's Gospel, arguing that the reverse is more likely.Footnote 60 Boismard narrows in on the points where its wording may be more primitive than Luke's wording. In his judgement, Luke omitted the Hebraism where ἐγένɛτο (‘it happened’) is followed by the finite verb ἦλθέν (‘he came’), inserted Annas alongside Caiaphas despite referring to the high priestly office in the singular in 3:2a, employed the aorist verb ἦλθέν in the unusual sense of ‘he appeared’ in 3:3a, and reworded the Semitic phrase ‘baptizing a baptism of repentance’ (βαπτίζων βάπτισμα μɛτανοίας) to ‘preaching a baptism of repentance’ (κηρύσσων βάπτισμα μɛτανοίας) in 3:3 (cf. Mark 1:4).Footnote 61 The Gospel of the Ebionites may have also followed a standard prophetic formula in dating John's baptism ministry in relation to the rule of a specific king (cf. Isa 1:1; Jer 1:2-3; Amos 1:1; Mic 1:1).Footnote 62
On the other hand, if the Gospel of the Ebionites was dependent on the Synoptic Gospels, it may have combined ἐγένɛτο in Luke 1:5 with ἦλθέν in Luke 3:3 and βαπτίζων in Mark 1:4 with βάπτισμα μɛτανοίας in Mark 1:5.Footnote 63 Both Semitic expressions occur at other points in Luke's two-volume work (cf. Luke 1:23, 59, 2:1, 7:29; Acts 19:4).Footnote 64 Luke 1:80 foreshadowed John's ‘manifestation’ (ἀνάδɛιξις) to Israel.Footnote 65 Luke's interest in Annas can be seen in the second reference to him in Acts 4:6, but his name may have been dropped from the Gospel of the Ebionites because Caiaphas looms larger in Matthew's account of Jesus’ trial before the Sanhedrin (cf. Matt 26:3, 57).Footnote 66 Luke could have corrected Herod Antipas’ title from king to tetrarch (Luke 3:1; cf. Matt 14:1/Luke 9:7; contra Mark 6:14), but the author of the Gospel of the Ebionites could have jumped from Luke 1:5 to 3:2, without recognising that the verses were referring to two different figures named Herod, and that only the first one was the ‘king’ (βασιλɛύς) ‘of Judea’ (τῆς Ἰουδαίας).Footnote 67 This seems more likely than the alternative that Luke relocated the line ‘it happened in the days of Herod king of Judea’ to the start of his infancy narrative in 1:4. If this is the case, then the omission of Luke's entire infancy narrative in the Gospel of the Ebionites was surely deliberate. The author's rationale for omitting it may have been that he or she rejected the doctrine of the virgin birth.
Third, the Gospel of the Ebionites duplicates particular readings from the manuscripts of the Synoptics. When Jesus was baptised (30.13.7), it has the spirit come ‘into’ (ɛἰς) him rather than ‘upon’ (ἐπί) him in agreement with Mark 1:10 (contra Matt 3:16; Luke 3:22). Some of its terminology may have been picked for stylistic reasons such as to accentuate the verbal parallelism between ἀνέρχομαι (‘come up’), κατέρχομαι (‘come down’) and ɛἰσέρχομαι (‘enter’).Footnote 68 Its choice of Mark's ɛἰς could just be chalked up to a stylistic decision, though there is textual evidence that scribes altered Mark's preposition to conform his wording to the other two Synoptic texts and avoid troubling theological implications.Footnote 69
More importantly, the Gospel of the Ebionites reproduces the longer citation of Psalm 2:7 (LXX) in Luke 3:22. Ehrman defends the authenticity of this reading as the lectio difficilior, for scribes may have been inclined to harmonise the Synoptics and ward off misreadings of the baptism as the moment when Jesus was divinely begotten.Footnote 70 Yet it seems implausible that they would have assimilated the reading in Luke's Gospel to the one in Mark's Gospel rather than Matthew's, though this could be explained by the use of the second person pronoun in Luke 3:22 and Mark 1:11;Footnote 71 and the earliest Greek manuscript witness to the textual variant in Luke 3:22 is Codex Bezae, which also assimilates the reading in Acts 13:33 to the wording of Psalm 2:7–8 (LXX).Footnote 72 Regardless, the longer citation of Psalm 2:7 (LXX) was selected in the Gospel of the Ebionites to put the emphasis on the begetting of Jesus ‘today’ (σήμɛρον).Footnote 73 Neither Luke nor Justin would have taken this messianic proof-text in the same way. Luke 1:35 proclaims Jesus's divine sonship from his conception, though Ehrman is adamant that Luke is inconsistent on the question of when Jesus became the deity's son (cf. Luke 1:35, 3:22; Acts 13:33).Footnote 74 Justin shows how the Matthean and Lukan accounts of the virgin birth could be combined with a Johannine theology of the incarnation (cf. Dial. 100.4).
Fourth, the fragment does not set Jesus apart in any way from the rest of the ‘people’ (λαός) he ‘had been baptised’ (βαπτισθέντος) with in the Jordan River.Footnote 75 Although the phrasing seems to mirror Luke 3:21, Luke alone disguises the fact that John was the one who had baptised Jesus by using the passive voice and communicating that John had been arrested in 3:20.Footnote 76 The Gospel of the Ebionites does not replicate Luke's efforts to protect Jesus’ reputation by downplaying that he was a recipient of John's baptism.
When Jesus emerged from the water in the Gospel of the Ebionites, the heavenly voice addressed him alone, informing him that he had been begotten today. It was only after John beheld the light from heaven that he respectfully addressed Jesus as ‘lord’ (κύριɛ) and inquired about his identity.Footnote 77 The heavenly voice then addressed John, confirming that ‘this is my son the beloved’ (οὗτός ἐστιν ὁ υἱός μου ὁ ἀγαπητός) in the words of Matthew 3:17. Mark 1:10 implies that Jesus alone heard the voice, just as he alone ‘saw’ (ɛἶδɛν) the vision of the heavens splitting open, but Matthew's redactional wording in 3:17 suggests that this was a public announcement. In the Gospel of the Ebionites, John responded to this revelation by requesting to be baptised by Jesus, but Jesus refused to grant his request. The difference from Matthew 3:14, besides the reversal of who was trying to ‘prevent’ (διακωλύω) whom from getting baptised, is that Matthew recounted this conversation before the heavenly voice spoke. Even the two Old Latin witnesses that interpolate the light into Matthew's text (codices Vercellensis and Sangermanensis) do so after Jesus's conversation with John. Matthew's intention was to reassure the readers that John confessed Jesus’ superiority before Jesus consented to be baptised by him.Footnote 78 In the Gospel of Ebionites, Jesus did not acquire his superior status until after he was baptised, and this had to be divinely revealed to John.
In conclusion, the word ‘adoption’ is not present in the seven fragments from Epiphanius’ Panarion that scholars usually assign to the Gospel of the Ebionites. The term adoptionism should be retired due to the conceptual confusion about what it denotes.Footnote 79 Even so, there is no hint in the fragments that Jesus was pre-existent or miraculously conceived; he did not stand out at all from his fellow human beings until he was endowed with the spirit at his baptism. This can be summed up as a possessionist Christology. The citation of a royal psalm may indicate that Jesus was a Davidic messianic figure. If the other fragments are taken into account, Jesus was also commissioned to be a prophet like Moses, and the abolition of the sacrificial cult was a central aspect of his message (e.g. Pan. 30.16.5). The distinctive elements of Cerinthus’ separationist Christology, however, should not be imputed into the fragments themselves, but reflect Epiphanius’ typical misunderstanding of his sources.
