Ebionite / Nazoraean Current

The first Christians were Jews, and in Palestine and Syria some communities of Jewish believers in Jesus went on keeping Torah, circumcision and the Sabbath long after the wider church had moved away from them. Later heresy-hunting writers — Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, Epiphanius, Jerome — describe them under two names, 'Ebionites', from the Hebrew for the poor, and 'Nazoraeans', reporting that they used their own Hebrew or Aramaic gospel, honoured James the brother of Jesus, and regarded Paul as an apostate from the Law. But those writers disagree with one another, wrote from outside and often centuries later, and had every reason to sharpen the picture. The fullest account of all, Epiphanius's Panarion, is now widely judged unreliable in its details. Not one text these communities wrote about themselves survives intact — only fragments quoted by the people refuting them. And modern scholars genuinely disagree about whether 'Ebionite' and 'Nazoraean' name two distinct groups, one group under two labels, or largely a category the heresy-hunters assembled.