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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) (See Hans Waitz, ‘Das Evangelium der zwölf Apostel: (Ebioniteevangelium)’, Zeitschrift für die Neutestamentliche Wissenschaft 13/4, 14/1, 14/2 (1912–13), pp. 338–48, 38–64, 117–32; Philip Vielhauer and Georg Strecker, ‘Jewish-Christian Gospels’, in Gospels and Related Writings, vol. 1 of New Testament Apocrypha, ed. Edgar Hennecke and Wilhelm Schneemelcher, trans. R. McL. Wilson, rev. edn. (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co, 1991), pp. 166–71; Daniel A. Bertrand, ‘L’Évangile des Ebionites: une harmonie évangelique antérieur au Diatessaron’, New Testament Studies 26 (1980), pp. 550–63; G. Howard, ‘The Gospel of the Ebionites’, Aufstieg und Niedergang der römischen Welt 2/25/5 (1988), pp. 4034–53; A. F. J. Klijn, Jewish Christian Gospel Tradition (Leiden: Brill, 1992), pp. 27–30, 32, 38–9, 41–2, 65–77; Oscar Skarsaune, ‘The Ebionites’, in Oskar Skarsaune and Reidar Hvalvik (eds), Jewish Believers in Jesus: The Early Centuries (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), pp. 457–61; Jörg Frey, ‘Die Fragmente des Ebionäerevangeliums’, in Christoph Markschies and Jens Schröter (eds), Antike christliche Apokryphen in deutscher Übersetzung, 2 vols (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2012), vol. 2, pp. 607–22; Simon Claude Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Christianity: Historical Essays, trans. Robyn Fréchet (Leuven: Peeters, 2012), pp. 221–33; Andrew F. Gregory, The Gospel According to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Ebionites (Oxford: OUP, 2017), pp. 171–261).

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. For critical analyses of Epiphanius’s artificial depiction of the Ebionites, see: F. J. Klijn and G. E. Reinink, Patristic Evidence for Jewish-Christian Sects (Leiden: Brill, 1973), pp. 28–38, 43; Joseph Verheyden, ‘Epiphanius on the Ebionites’, in P. J. Tomson and D. Lambers-Petry (eds), The Image of the Judaeo-Christians in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), pp. 185– 208; Sakari Häkkinen, ‘Ebionites’, in Antti Marjanen and Petri Luomanen (eds), A Companion to Second-Century Christian ‘Heretics’ (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 256–7, 259–65; Skarsaune, ‘Ebionites’, pp. 423–4, 450–561; Edwin K. Broadhead, Jewish Ways of Following Jesus: Redrawing the Religious Map of Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), pp. 198–206; James Carleton Paget, Jews, Christians and Jewish Christians in Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), pp. 329–41.
2. Further, he disparaged it as a ‘corrupted and mutilated’ (νενοθευμένῳ καὶ ἠκρωτηριασμένῳ) version of Matthew’s Gospel (30.13.2), for it had no ‘genealogy’ (γενεαλογία) 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) (see Karl Holl (ed.), Epiphanius, vol. 1, Ancoratus und Panarion haer. 1-33 (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1915), pp. 350–1). As Jesus ‘ascended from the water’ (ἀνῆλθεν ἀπὸ τοῦ ὕδατος), ‘the heavens were opened’ (ἠνοίγησαν οἱ οὐρανοὶ) and ‘the holy spirit’ (τὸ πνεῦμα τὸ ἅγιον) ‘who had come down and entered into him’ (κατελθούσης καὶ εἰσελθούσης εἰς αὐτόν) literally took the ‘form’ (εἶδος) of a dove. Then, ‘a voice from heaven’ (wωνὴ ἐκ τοῦ οὐρανοῦ) declared, ‘you are my beloved son, in you I am well pleased’ (σύ μου εἶ ὁ υἱὸς ὁ ἀγαπητός, ἐν σοὶ ηὐδόκησα), and ‘today I have begotten you’ (ἐγὼ σήμερον γεγέννηκά σε). After a ‘great light’ (wῶς μέγα) ‘shone around the place’ (περιέλαμψε 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’ (καταβεβηκότα) and ‘been united’ (συναwθέντα) with him (30.14.4; cf. 3.6; 18.5–6).

1. The christology expressed in this pericope, and the christological system of thought commonly imputed to the Ebionites by heresiologists, is usually labelled as adoptionistic (Paget (Jews, p. 353)). Other scholars, however, insist that it should be relabelled as a possessionist christology (See Michael Goulder, ‘A Poor Man’s Christology’, New Testament Studies 45 (1999), pp. 335–6; Häkkinen, ‘Ebionites’, pp. 268–9; Pamela Kinlaw, The Christ is Jesus: Metamorphosis, Possession, and Johannine Christology (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 85–6, 88; Petri Luomanen, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects and Gospels (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 20–1; Frey, ‘Die Fragmente’, p. 615; Gregory, The Gospel, p. 233; Michael F. Bird, Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2017), pp. 113, 118–20).
2. 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.
3. [9:09 AM]Did the Ebionites have an adoptionist christology?

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’ (Bart D. Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, 2nd edn (Oxford: OUP, 2011), pp. 55). 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. Yet they commonly narrowed in on Jesus’s baptism, Ehrman avers, as the point in time when his adoption took place (James D. G. Dunn, Christology in the Making: A New Testament Inquiry into the Origins of the Doctrine of the Incarnation, 2nd edn (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1996), p. 62). 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 (0Timo Eskola, Messiah and the Throne: Jewish Merkabah Mysticism and Early Christian Exaltation Discourse (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), p. 299; Peter-Ben Smit, ‘The End of Early Christian Adoptionism? A Note on the Invention of Adoptionism, its Sources, and its Demise’, International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 76/3 (2015), pp. 178–9). 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) (David Friedrich Strauss, Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet, 2 vols (Tübingen: C. F. Osiander, 1835), vol. 1, pp. 479–82).

1. 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) (Johannes Weiss, Das Urchristentum (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1917), pp. 85–6, 88). Adolf von Harnack categorized all christological reflection on the person of Jesus in the first few centuries as exemplifying either an ‘adoptianische Christologie’ or a ‘pneumatische Christologie’ (Adolf von Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, 7 vols (Tübingen: Mohr, 1905), vol. 1, pp. 211–12).(edited)
2. 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 (See e.g. Maurice Casey, From Jewish Prophet to Gentile God: The Origins and Development of New Testament Christology (Cambridge: James Clarke & Co., 1991), pp. 105, 111; Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to New Testament Christology (New York: Paulist, 1994), pp. 110–15; Dunn, Christology, pp. 33–6; Paula Fredriksen, From Jesus to Christ: The Origins of the New Testament Images of Christ, 2nd edn (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), pp. 141–2; Geza Vermes, The Changing Faces of Jesus (London: Penguin, 2000), pp. 125–6, 129–30, 139, 155–6). 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 (Brown, An Introduction, pp. 143–5; Dunn, Christology, pp. 62–3). 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, Haer. 1.26.2; Origen, Contra Celsum 5.61, 65.5; Eusebius, Historia ecclesiastica 3.37.3) (Dunn, Christology, p. 62). 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 (Michael Peppard, The Son of God in the Roman World: Divine Sonship in its Social and Political Context (Oxford: OUP, 2011), pp. 67–85. As for whether Mark has an adoptionist christology, compare the contrasting conclusions of Peppard (The Son of God, pp. 86–131) and Bird (Jesus, pp. 64–106)).

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 (Peppard, The Son of God, p. 95; cf. Bart D. Ehrman, How Jesus Became God: The Exaltation of a Jewish Preacher from Galilee (San Francisco, CA: HarperCollins, 2014), pp. 232–5).

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 (Jeremiah T. Coogan, ‘Rethinking Adoptionism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category’, Scottish Journal of Theology 76/1 (2023), pp. 8, 20). In Smit’s and Coogan’s surveys of the heresiological reports on the Ebionites, however, the term ‘adoption’ (υἱοθεσία) does not appear (Smit, ‘The End’, pp. 181–4; Coogan, ‘Rethinking Adoptionism’, pp. 10–13). Michael F. Bird concurs, noting that the terms ‘election’ (ἐγλογή), ‘promotion’ (προκοπή), ‘elevation’ (ἀναwέρω) 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). 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. 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 (J. R. Daniel Kirk, A Man Attested by God: The Human Jesus of the Synoptic Gospels (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2016), p. 3). 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 (Kinlaw, The Christ, pp. 41–67).

1. 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.
2. 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’ (Bird, Jesus, p. 119). According to Irenaeus (Haer. 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 ἀwῆκεν τὸ πνεῦμα in Matthew 27:50 as ‘he let the spirit go’ (Michael Goulder, St. Paul versus St. Peter: A Tale of Two Missions (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1994), p. 112). Nevertheless, the Ebionites’ christology was not identical to Cerinthus’ or Carpocrates’ (see Charles E. Hill, ‘Cerinthus, Gnostic or Chiliast? A New Solution to an Old Problem’, Journal of Early Christian Studies 8/2 (2000), pp. 152–3; Eskola, Messiah, pp. 301–4; Gunnar af Hällström and Oskar Skarsaune, ‘Cerinthus, Elxai, and Other Alleged Jewish Christian Teachers and Groups’, in Jewish Believers in Jesus, p. 491; Kok, ‘Classifying’, pp. 38–9; Paget, Jews, pp. 351–3).

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 (Haer. 3.11.7). Still, he detected an underlying similarity between their christologies insofar as they all denied the virginal conception of Jesus. 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 (Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, pp. 29, 33–4; Verheyden, ‘Epiphanius’, pp. 186–7; Häkkinen, ‘Ebionites’, pp. 269–70; Skarsaune, ‘The Ebionites’, pp. 452–3; Broadhead, Jewish Ways, pp. 203–6; Paget, Jews, pp. 331–7, 342; contra Eskola (Messiah and the Throne, pp. 305–8)). ‘Ebionite’ may have been a popular self-designation for a variety of Jewish followers of Jesus who entertained a range of ideas about him (Skarsaune, ‘The Ebionites’, pp. 421–4).

Additionally, Epiphanius built on the link that Irenaeus made between Cerinthus and the Ebionites (Hill, ‘Cerinthus’, pp. 147–8; Matti Myllykowski, ‘Cerinthus’, in Antti Maijanen and Petri Luomanen (eds), Companion to Second-Century ‘Heretics’ (Leiden: Brill, 2005), p. 219; Kok, ‘Classifying’, p. 44). 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 (Verheyden, ‘Epiphanius’, p. 194; Skarsaune, ‘The Ebionites’, p. 458).

1. The baptism of Jesus in the Gospel of the Ebionites
2. Interestingly, Peppard, Bird and Smit agree that there is no adoptionist imagery in the Gospel of the Ebionites (Peppard, Son of God, p. 147; Smit, ‘The End’, p. 183; Bird, The Eternal Son, p. 118). Ehrman enlists Justin as the earliest witness to the Western reading of Luke 3:22 since his statement that the Spirit took the ‘form’ (εἶδος) of a dove may echo Luke 3:21, 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) (Tommy Wasserman ‘Misquoting Manuscripts? The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture Revisited’, in M. Zetterholm and S. Byrskog (eds), The Making of Christianity: Conflicts, Contacts, and Constructions: Essays in Honor of Bengt Holberg (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2012), p. 336; Peter E. Lorenz, A History of Codex Bezae’s Text of Mark (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2022), p. 92). This also influenced possibly the gospel of the Ebionites (H. J. W. Drijvers and G. J. Reinink, ‘Taufe und Licht: Tatian, Ebionäerevangelium und Thomasakten’, in T. Baarda, A. Hilhorst, G. P. Lutikhuizen and S. J. van der Woude (eds), Text and Testimony: Essays on New Testament and Apocryphal Literature in Honour of A. F. J. Klijn (Kampen: J. H. Kok, 1988), pp. 91–110).

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.

(1) 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 (See Waitz, ‘Das Evangelium’, p. 346; Vielhauer and Strecker, ‘Jewish Christian Gospels’, p. 168; Bertrand, ‘L’Évangile’, p. 551; Klijn, Jewish-Christian Gospel Tradition, pp. 29, 38; Frey, ‘Die Fragmente’, p. 612; Gregory, The Gospel, pp. 181-2. Gregory (The Gospel, p. 217)). 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 (Contra Bertrand, ‘L’Évangile’, p. 551; Klijn, Jewish Christian Gospel Tradition, p. 29; Frey, ‘Die Fragmente’, p. 614). 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 (Drijvers and Reinink, ‘Taufe und Licht’, p. 104; Gregory, The Gospel, p. 182). 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).

(2) Second, Epiphanius twice stated that the Baptiser’s first appearance was right at the ‘beginning’ (ἀρχὴ) 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) (Frey, ‘Die Fragmente’, p. 611; Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Christianity, p. 225; Gregory, The Gospel, pp. 189, 195–6, 202, 211). Epiphanius’ main concern was to stress its lack of an infancy narrative (Klijn, Jewish Christian Gospel Tradition, p. 69). 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 (Klijn, Jewish Christian Gospel Tradition, p. 69).

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 (Edwards, The Hebrew Gospel, p. 69). 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 ἐγένετο (‘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 μετανοίας) to ‘preaching a baptism of repentance’ (κηρύσσων βάπτισμα μετανοίας) in 3:3 (cf. Mark 1:4) (Boismard, ‘‘Evangile des Ebionites’, pp. 329–31). 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). On the other hand, if the Gospel of the Ebionites was dependent on the Synoptic Gospels, it may have combined ἐγένετο in Luke 1:5 with ἦλθέν in Luke 3:3 and βαπτίζων in Mark 1:4 with βάπτισμα μετανοίας in Mark 1:5 (Frans Neirynck, ‘Une nouvelle théorie synoptique (à propos de Mc. 1:2–6)’, Ephemeridae Theologiae Lovaniensis 44 (1968), p. 147). 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) (Verheyden, ‘Epiphanius’, p. 192, n. 48). 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.

(3) 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’ (εἰς) 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 εἰσέρχομαι (‘enter’) (Philip Henne, ‘L’Évangile des Ebionites: une fausse harmonie: une vraie supercherie’, in Andreas Kessler, Thomas Ricklin, and Gregor Wurst (eds), Peregrina curiositas: Eine Reise durch den orbis antiquus: Zu Ehren von Dirk van Damme (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), p. 61; Gregory, The Gospel, p. 231). Its choice of Mark’s εἰς 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 (Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption, p. 166). 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. 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; 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). 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).

(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 (Henne, ‘L’Évangile des Ebionites’, p. 60). 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’ (κύριε) and inquired about his identity (Henne, ‘L’Évangile’, pp. 68–9). 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.

Conclusion

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.