Panarion (Against Heresies) 1 part 11/82

'Passing along by the Lake of Tiberias I chose John and James, sons of Zebedee, and Simon and Andrew and Thaddaeus and Simon the Zealot and Judas Iscariot, and you, Matthew, sitting at the tax office, I called, and you followed me.'

'I want you, then, to be twelve apostles as a testimony to Israel.' And John was baptizing, and Pharisees went out to him and were baptized, and all Jerusalem as well.

And John had a garment of camel's hair, and a leather belt around his waist.

'And his food,' it says, 'was wild honey, the taste of which was like manna, as a cake made with oil.'

so that, in effect, they might turn the word of truth into a lie, and instead of 'locusts' make it 'a cake in honey.'

The beginning of their Gospel runs thus: 'It came to pass in the days of Herod, king of Judea, in the high-priesthood of Caiaphas, that a certain man named John came, baptizing a baptism of repentance in the river Jordan, who was said to be of the family of Aaron the priest, a child of Zacharias and Elizabeth, and all went out to him.'

And after saying many things, it goes on to say that, when the people had been baptized, Jesus also came and was baptized by John.

And as he came up from the water, the heavens were opened, and he saw the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove, descending and entering into him.

And a voice from heaven, saying:

'You are my beloved Son; in you I am well pleased.' And again:

And immediately a great light shone round about the place.

Seeing this, it says, John says to him:

'Who are you, Lord?' And again a voice from heaven to him:

'This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.'

And then, it says, John, falling down before him, said:

'I beseech you, Lord — you baptize me.'

But he prevented him, saying:

'Let it be, for thus it is fitting that all things be fulfilled.'

Observe their teaching, falsified on every side — how everything in it is lame, crooked, and possesses no rectitude whatsoever.

Cerinthus and Carpocrates, though they too make use of the same Gospel current among them, wish, by means of the genealogy at the beginning of the Gospel according to Matthew, to establish that Christ is of the seed of Joseph and Mary.

But these have other notions in mind.

For having cut away the genealogies found in Matthew, they make their beginning as we said before, saying: 'It came to pass in the days of Herod, king of Judea, in the high-priesthood of Caiaphas, that a certain man named John came, baptizing a baptism of repentance in the river Jordan,' and so on.

For since they wish Jesus to be truly a man, as I said before, but that Christ — the one who descended in the form of a dove, just as we have already found also among other heresies — came to be in him, joined to him, while at the same time holding that this Christ was begotten of the seed of a man and a woman,

yet again they deny that he is man, appealing forsooth to the saying which the Savior spoke when it was reported to him, 'Behold, your mother and your brothers are standing outside' — namely, 'Who is my mother and my brothers?' And stretching out his hand toward the disciples he said:

'These are my brothers and mother and sisters, those who do the will of my Father.'

From this, then, as I said, Ebion, being full of every trickery, shows himself forth in many shapes, so as to be a very monster, according to what I have already indicated above.

They also make use of certain other books, namely the so-called Circuits of Peter said to have been written through Clement, having falsified what is in them but leaving a few true things — as Clement himself refutes them in every respect, from the encyclical letters he wrote which are read in the holy churches, since his own faith and teaching bear a different character from what has been falsified by these men in his name in the Circuits.

For he himself teaches virginity, and they do not accept it.

In the Circuits, then, they have carried everything over to themselves, falsely attributing to Peter in many ways things they themselves do — such as that he was baptized every day for the sake of purification, just as they also are.

And they say that he likewise abstained from things with life and from meat, as they themselves do, and from every other food made from flesh, since Ebion himself and the Ebionites abstain from these things altogether.

But when you ask one of them why they do not partake of things with life, having nothing sensible to explain, they answer senselessly and say:

'Because they come into being from intercourse and the mingling of bodies, we do not partake of them' — so that, by their own nonsense vomited from their own mouths, all who come from the mingling of man and woman would themselves be abominable.

They also receive baptism themselves, apart from the washings by which they are baptized every day.

And they perform mysteries, supposedly in imitation of the saints in the Church, year by year — one part of the mystery with unleavened bread, and the other part of the mystery with water alone.

And they posit, as I said, two beings appointed by God: one Christ, and the other the devil.

And they say that Christ has received the inheritance of the age to come, while the devil has been entrusted with this present age, supposedly by the command of the Almighty, in accordance with the request of each of them,

Christ having come upon him from above in the form of a dove.

But they do not say that he was begotten of God the Father; rather, that he was created as one of the archangels, yet greater still, and that he rules over both the angels and all things made by the Almighty, and that he came and taught, as their so-called Gospel contains: 'I have come to abolish the sacrifices, and if you do not cease from sacrificing, the wrath will not cease from you.'

These, and other such things, are their deceitful inventions.

And they call other writings 'Acts of the Apostles,' in which there is much full of impiety, whereby they have armed themselves against the truth in no casual way.

And they set forth certain 'Ascents,' supposedly teachings found in the 'Ascents of James,' as though he were expounding against the temple and the sacrifices, against the fire on the altar, and many other things full of empty talk;

so that here too they are not ashamed to accuse Paul, with certain fabricated words concocted out of the villainy and deceit of their pseudo-apostles — calling him a Tarsian, as he himself confesses and does not deny, but supposing him to be of Greek descent, taking their pretext from the place, because of what he truthfully said, 'I am a Tarsian, a citizen of no obscure city.'

Then they claim that he was a Greek, the child of a Greek mother and a Greek father, and that he had gone up to Jerusalem and remained there for a time, and had desired to take the daughter of the priest in marriage, and for this reason became a proselyte and was circumcised; and then, not obtaining that girl, he became angry and wrote against circumcision and against the sabbath and the [Mosaic] legislation.

But in every way this dread serpent, poor in understanding, slanders him.

For 'Ebion,' translated from the Hebrew into the Greek tongue, means 'poor.'

For truly poor — in understanding, in hope, and in deed — is he who has thought Christ to be a mere man, and thus, in the poverty of his faith, holds his hope concerning him.

But they themselves suppose they glorify themselves by claiming to be 'poor,' because, they say, in the times of the apostles their forebears sold their possessions and laid them at the feet of the apostles, and passed over into poverty and renunciation;

'and for this reason,' he says, 'they are called by everyone poor.'

But not even this is true among them; rather, in reality he was by nature called Ebion, having, I suppose in a kind of prophecy, inherited from his father and mother the name of 'the poor and wretched one.'

And how many other terrible things, falsified and full of wickedness, are kept up among them! For whenever one of them falls into sickness, or is bitten by a reptile, he goes down into the water and invokes the names found in Elchasai — of heaven and earth, of salt and water, of the winds and, as they say, of the angels of righteousness, and of bread and oil, and begins to say: 'Help me, and rid me of this pain.'

I have already indicated above that Ebion himself did not know these things, but that after some time those descended from him, having joined themselves to Elchasai, retained from Ebion circumcision, the sabbath, and the customs, but from Elchasai the fantastic notion — so that they suppose Christ to be a kind of man-shaped image, invisible to men, ninety-six miles in length, that is, twenty-four schoinoi, and six schoinoi — twenty-four miles — in breadth, and of some other measure in thickness.

And directly opposite him stands also the Holy Spirit, in female form, invisibly, and of the same measure as he.

'And whence,' he says, 'did I learn the measurements? Because,' he says, 'I saw from the mountains that their heads reached up to a certain point, and having measured the mountain, I learned the measurements of Christ and of the Holy Spirit.' But I have already spoken of these things in the section on the heresy of the Ossaeans.

And lest what is also found among others be supposed by anyone to have gone unmentioned by us through forgetfulness, [I note it here as well].

This Ebion, then, had his preaching also in Asia and at Rome, but the roots of his thorny offshoots are found for the most part from Nabataea and Panias, and from Moabitis and Kokaba in the land of Batanaea beyond Adraa — but also in Cyprus.

They also compel, and marry off the young before their proper age, supposedly by the sanction of their teachers — for these have elders and heads of synagogue, and they call their own assembly a 'synagogue,' and not a church, while glorying only in the name of Christ; and they permit unions to be formed not only in a single marriage, but even if someone should wish to be separated from a first marriage and joined to another, they permit it — for among them everything is granted without restraint — up to a second, a third, and even a seventh marriage.

They confess Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and Moses and Aaron, and Joshua the son of Nun, simply as the one who succeeded Moses, being nothing more.

For they do not agree with them, blaspheming their prophecies, but accept only the Gospel.

But they call Christ the prophet of truth, and Christ, but Son of God by advancement, and by the union of an elevation that came to him from above;

but the prophets, they say, are prophets of understanding, and not of truth.

And they wish him alone to be both prophet and man and Son of God and Christ, and a mere man, as we said before, but arriving, through virtue of life, at the point of being called Son of God.

Nor do they accept the whole Pentateuch of Moses, but reject certain sayings.

But whenever you speak to them about the eating of living creatures—

—how then did Abraham set the calf and the milk before the angels? Or how did Noah eat, when he heard from God saying, 'Sacrifice and eat'? And how did Isaac and Jacob sacrifice to God, and likewise Moses in the wilderness? Yet he disbelieves these things and says, 'What need have I to read what is in the Law, now that the Gospel has come?'

Whence then do you know the things concerning Moses and Abraham? For I know that you confess them to be righteous, and you claim them as your own fathers.

This charlatan is refuted from every side by the Savior, who plainly, and as it were in brief, with a single saying refutes the whole of his deceitful teaching, saying: 'John came in the way of righteousness, neither eating nor drinking, and they say, He has a demon;'

'the Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, Behold, a man who is a glutton and a wine-drinker.'

And it is by no means the case that John ate nothing whatever, or that the Savior ate absolutely everything without exception, such that one might suppose he even ate the things forbidden;

Rather, Scripture shows the emphasis of the truth: that his being a 'glutton and a wine-drinker' is nothing other than his eating meat and drinking wine, and that 'neither eating nor drinking' means John partook of neither meat nor wine, but only of locusts and wild honey, and clearly also of water.

Who does not know that the Savior, having risen from the dead, ate—just as the holy Gospels of truth record, that a loaf of bread and part of a broiled fish were given to him, and he took and ate, and gave to the disciples;

just as he also did at the Sea of Tiberias, both eating and giving.

And much could be said concerning this.

But I must proceed with precision to the refutation of these stale and rotten sayings proclaimed among them, and bring about their overthrow.

And first it must be said concerning Christ, that he is not a mere man.

For one born in every respect merely as a man could not have been given to the world as a sign, as the Holy Spirit foretold concerning him, when it said to Ahaz, 'Ask for yourself a sign;'

and when he did not ask, then the prophet said, 'The Lord himself will give you a sign;'

'Behold, the virgin shall conceive.'

Now a woman who has been joined to a man and married is not called a virgin; but she alone could properly be called a virgin who, without a man, truly conceived God the Word, as Isaiah himself also says elsewhere: 'A voice of crying from the city, a voice from the temple, a voice of the Lord rendering recompense, repaying his adversaries;'

'Before she who travailed brought forth, before the pain of her travail came, she escaped it and brought forth a male child.'

Who has heard such a thing, or who has seen the like? Did the earth travail in one day, and a nation be born at once? For Zion travailed and brought forth her children;

'But I gave this expectation, and they were not mindful of it, says the Lord.'

But what expectation, and what children, other than that a virgin should bring forth without travail—which has happened nowhere else—and that John, the child born to Elizabeth by promise for his sake, though John himself was born through travail? How then do these men define the Savior as a mere man from the seed of a man? And how will he not go unrecognized, as Jeremiah also says of him, that he is a man, and 'who shall know him?' For the prophet, speaking of him, said, 'Who shall know him?'

For if he spoke of a mere man, then certainly his father would have known him, and his mother, and his relatives and neighbors, his housemates and fellow citizens;

But since the offspring is indeed from Mary, while God the Word came from above—not from the seed of a man, but truly begotten from the Father from above, timelessly and without beginning—and in the last days was pleased to come to be in the womb of the virgin and from her to fashion the flesh unto himself, for this reason it says both that he is a man, and yet 'who shall know him?'—because he, God, came from above, the only-begotten God the Word.

Great is the wretchedness of those who have gone astray, who have abandoned the testimonies of the prophets and of the angel, and have taken up with Ebion, that deceived man, who wished to satisfy his own pleasure, and who adopts Jewish practices while yet being estranged from the Jews.

For Gabriel, straightway announcing good news to the virgin, when she said, 'How shall this be, since I know not a man?', laying down the sure ground, said, 'The Spirit of the Lord shall come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you;'

'therefore also the holy thing that is born of you shall be called the Son of God.'

For in saying 'that which is born,' he showed that the flesh, and the rest of the incarnation, is from her, but that the power of the Most High and the Holy Spirit came from above, from heaven, and overshadowed the holy virgin, and that the only-begotten Son, God the Word, had come down from above—both how he became man, and how he was truly born of her.

How many other such things are there? But as I promised, I am accustomed not to proceed at length, lest I bring the treatise to great bulk.

But concerning the other matters I shall relate next, in which they falsely accuse Peter and the other apostles;

namely, that, as they say, Peter used baptisms every single day, before he even partook of bread.

And observe the whole of their slander, and the deceitfulness of their charlatan teaching.

For since they themselves are defiled and often commit many lustful acts upon the earth, to satisfy their own conviction they make lavish use of water, in order, as it were, to deceive themselves, supposing that through baptisms they have purification.

'...forever'; and that the objection raised by the Savior was, 'If I do not wash your feet, you have no part with me,' to which he replied in turn, 'Not my feet only, but also my head,' and the Lord again said that he who has bathed once has no need to wash his head, but only his feet;

He showed, therefore, that one need not make use of baptisms and useless customs and the commandments and teachings of men, just as also in the Gospel, in harmony with the prophet, he says: 'This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me;'

'and in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.'

Otherwise, for what reason did he reproach the Pharisees and Scribes, who practiced washings with the fist of their own hands, and of pitchers and cups and other things? And he declares outright that eating with unwashed hands does not defile a man; so that he not only overturned their practice of these washings, but also showed that the washing of hands is superfluous, and that there is no harm to one who does not wish to wash his hands.

And how shall their folly concerning the eating of meat not immediately be refuted? First of all, from the Lord's eating the Passover of the Jews.

Now the Passover of the Jews was a sheep and unleavened bread, the flesh of the sheep being eaten roasted with fire;

as also the disciples say to him, 'Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?' And the Lord himself says, 'Go into the city, and you will find a man carrying a pitcher of water; follow him wherever he goes, and say to the master of the house, Where is the guest-room where I may eat the Passover with my disciples? And he will show you a large upper room, furnished;'

And again the Lord himself says, 'With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you;'

and he did not simply say 'Passover,' but 'this Passover,' so that no one might twist it to fit his own suspicion.

Now the Passover was, as I said, meat roasted with fire, and the rest.

But they, having done away with the coherent sequence of the truth for themselves, altered the text—which is evident to all from the connected wording—and made the disciples say, 'Where do you want us to prepare for you to eat the Passover?', while making him say, supposedly, 'I have not desired with desire to eat this Passover of meat with you.'

And how shall their trickery not be exposed, when the context itself cries out that the mu and the eta are additions? For instead of saying, 'With desire I have desired,' they added the adverb 'not.'

But he truly said, 'With desire I have desired to eat this Passover with you;'

But they, by inserting the word 'meat,' deceived themselves, tampering with the text and saying, 'I have not desired with desire to eat this Passover of meat with you;'

But it is clearly shown that he both kept the Passover and ate meat, as I have said before.

But they will also be refuted by the vision revealed to holy Peter through the sheet that contained in it all wild beasts and cattle and creeping things and birds, and the voice of the Lord saying, 'Rise, kill and eat;'

and Peter saying, 'By no means, Lord;'

'nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth;' the Lord says, 'What God has cleansed, do not you call common.'

For the establishment of the truth will be found in two ways.

For if they should say that the saying of holy Peter, 'Nothing common or unclean has ever entered my mouth,' applied to all foods without exception, such that oxen and goats and sheep and birds are called common by him, they will immediately be refuted from his former manner of life.

For after marrying and acquiring children and having a mother-in-law, he met with the Savior, coming as he did from among the Jews.

Now the Jews also eat meat, and the eating of meat is neither abhorred nor forbidden among them.

He considered nothing common among those things that are not called common.

For indeed he did not apply the terms common and unclean to all things, but concerning those which the Law called common and unclean.

And again, since it has been shown that his statement did not concern all meats as though all were common, but concerned those things called common and unclean in the Law, God, delivering to him the pattern of the holy Church of Christ, said to him that he should regard nothing as common;

for all things are clean when received with thanksgiving and the blessing of God. But even though the mystery also concerned the calling of the Gentiles—that he should not regard those in uncircumcision as common or unclean—nevertheless Peter's own emphasis had its meaning not concerning men, but concerning the things forbidden in the Law, as would be clear to anyone;

And so their nonsensical argument has failed from every side.

But they hypocritically accept the names of the apostles in order to persuade those deceived by them, and they have fabricated and written books in their names, allegedly in the person of James and Matthew and other disciples.

Among these names they also include the name of John the apostle, so that their folly might be exposed from every side.

For he refutes them not only in every way, saying, 'In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God,' but also, moved as he was by the Holy Spirit, he set forth the testimonies of the holy prophets, and having carefully examined the things spoken by the Savior concerning each matter fulfilled in Christ, as I have said, he set forth these testimonies—prophets from whom these men have estranged themselves.

And immediately he showed how John himself answered those sent to John the Baptist by the Pharisees, saying, 'I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Make straight the way of the Lord, as the prophet Isaiah said.'

'Do not make my Father's house a house of merchandise'; they remembered that it was written, 'The zeal of your house has consumed me.'

And again John himself said that Isaiah saw this, being in the Holy Spirit.

Again, this same holy John, while preaching in Asia, is recorded to have done a certain remarkable deed as an example of the truth.

For, leading a most admirable manner of life befitting the dignity of his apostleship, and never bathing at all, he was compelled by the Holy Spirit to go forth as far as the bathhouse, saying, 'Get me the things needed for the bath.'

And while those accompanying him marveled, he came to the bath itself, and, approaching the man who was accustomed to receive the garments of those bathing, he asked who was inside the bathhouse;

and the bath-attendant, who was engaged in guarding the garments—for in the gymnasia this is an occupation for some, undertaken for the sake of earning their daily bread—said to holy John that Ebion was inside.

And John, immediately understanding the guidance of the Holy Spirit—for what reason it had urged him to come as far as the bathhouse, as I have said, for the sake of leaving us a memorial of the case for the truth, namely, who are the servants of Christ and apostles and sons of that same truth, and what are the vessels of the evil one and the gates of Hades, which do not prevail against the rock and the holy Church of God built upon it—was immediately troubled within himself, and groaning, said, quietly enough for all to hear as a testimony to the demonstration of undefiled teaching, 'Hurry, brothers,' he said, 'let us leave this place, lest the bathhouse fall and bury us together with Ebion who is inside the bathhouse, on account of his impiety.'

And let no one be amazed to hear that Ebion had an encounter with John.

For the blessed John, having remained long in this life, continued on until the reign of Trajan.

It is clear to everyone that all the apostles disowned the faith of Ebion and regarded it as alien to the character of their own preaching.

But concerning the holy Paul, how much have I to say about the things they say in blaspheming him? For first they say that he was a Greek and of gentile origin, and that he later became a proselyte.

How then does he himself say concerning himself, 'a Hebrew of the Hebrews, of the seed of Abraham, of the tribe of Benjamin, a Pharisee according to the law, being exceedingly zealous for the traditions of my fathers'?

And in another place he says, 'They are Israelites, so am I.'

'They are the seed of Abraham, so am I,' and he says he was circumcised on the eighth day, brought up at the feet of Gamaliel, and a Hebrew of the Hebrews.

O the dreadful howlings of these dreadful reptiles, and their serpent-like hissings, and the poisonous venom of their empty talk!

But whose testimony shall I accept? That of Ebion and his followers, or that of the holy Peter, who says, 'as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you, things which are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable distort through their own ignorance'? And again the holy Paul himself testifies concerning those with Peter, saying, 'James and John and Cephas, who seemed to be pillars, gave to me and Barnabas the right hand of fellowship.'

For even if he calls himself a man of Tarsus, this by no means furnishes an occasion for those who hunt after words, to their own ruin and to that of those who are persuaded to think it so.

For indeed he also speaks of Barnabas, once called Joseph but renamed Barnabas — which is interpreted 'son of encouragement' — a Levite, Cypriot by race.

And it is by no means the case that, because he was a Cypriot, he was not of Levi; just as the holy Paul, even though he came from Tarsus, was not a stranger to Israel.

For since many were scattered abroad in the times of Antiochus Epiphanes, and at other times as well, whenever war occurred, and were taken captive and †given over to siege†, some of those carried off as captives remained settled in certain places, while others, having withdrawn for this same reason, dwelt each wherever he had found a place.

As the holy Jeremiah also said concerning Israel — since this very thing, fleeing from before their enemies, has happened many times — that even if you go away to the Kittim, you will have no rest there either.

And it is clear to everyone that the island of the Cypriots is called Kition.

For the Kittim are the Cypriots and the Rhodians.

But also in Macedonia the race of Cypriots and Rhodians settled.

From whence indeed Alexander the Macedonian also came.

And for this reason it is recorded in the books of the Maccabees that 'seed went forth from the land of the Kittim.'

For indeed Alexander the Macedonian was of the seed of the Kittim.

But returning again to the point, having gone through this history on account of the argument that arose, I say that, from the deportation onward, many who came to dwell in other lands were, by succession, of the seed of Israel.