The beliefs of the earliest Christians about Jesus (2021-01-25) #

0:00:00 i just wanted to make a brief video in response to some claims by prominent christian apologists 0:00:07 and polemicists online that the early jewish christian sects the ebionites as they're called uh 0:00:16 did not believe in the virgin birth now why does this matter because 0:00:20 the early the earliest christians were jewish christians and they had beliefs about jesus 0:00:26 and about the jewish law and so on which are quite different from later christian orthodoxy 0:00:32 certainly different from paul's ideas which became dominant in the second century onwards up to today 0:00:39 and the accusation is that the ebionites as they're called these jewish christians did not 0:00:44 believe in the virgin birth so their faith was suspect they were heretics anyway so why are we 0:00:51 putting so much store by what they believe they didn't quite get their beliefs right now this 0:00:56 is a half truth at best and i want to show why uh this is a half-truth uh by referring to the 0:01:03 uh well-known book by eusebius the history of the church who is eusebius on the back cover it says 0:01:11 eusebius's account is the only surviving historical account of the church during 0:01:16 its crucial first 300 years bishop eusebius who was born in ad260 so it's really early 0:01:24 a learned scholar who lived most of his life in caesarea in palestine broke new ground in 0:01:30 writing the history and provided a model for all later ecclesiastical historians church historians 0:01:37 so uh this book by the way is edited by uh andrew luth who's a professor of patristic studies 0:01:44 at the university of durham and at the very back he has a glossary of the who's who of eusebius and 0:01:51 he helpfully tells us about the ebionites the word is derived from a hebrew word meaning the poor 0:01:58 this may indicate that the original ebionites were materially poor or that they thought of themselves 0:02:05 as the poor ones who depend utterly on the grace of god and then he goes on they seem to have been 0:02:12 jewish christians who respected christ but could not conceive of his relationship to 0:02:18 god as anything other than that of a man inspired by god like one of the prophets 0:02:24 eusebius is scornful of jewish christianity this is the original faith of the disciples by the way 0:02:31 and knows little about it anyway obviously it seems to have been much more important in the 0:02:36 early centuries of christianity than appears from the history of the church end quote 0:02:42 now we know there's some for much much scholarship in the last 40 50 years that the original 0:02:47 disciples and followers of those people like james the brother of jesus 0:02:52 were jewish christians who believe very different things than paul believed in the emerging 0:02:56 great church in the second century the catholic church and evangelicals today 0:03:01 so the point is what why is this matter what they believed about the virgin birth because 0:03:06 if it can be shown they didn't believe in the virgin birth that discredits them in the eyes of 0:03:11 many people look muslims believe he he was born of a virgin the gospels say he was born of a virgin 0:03:17 these people were just heretics why should we take what they say seriously so this is i think the 0:03:23 the agenda behind some uh quite well very well known christian apologists who i will not name 0:03:28 because i don't want to get into a tit for tat ad hominem with people so what does eusebius tell us 0:03:36 well he tells us something very interesting uh and on page 90 of this book this is the 0:03:43 uh the third chapter of eusebius he writes this there are two ebionite sects 0:03:51 the first one um says they regard him as him jesus as plain and ordinary a man esteemed as righteous 0:04:01 through growth of character and nothing more the child of a normal union between a man and mary 0:04:08 and they held that that they must observe every detail of the law these are jews basically who 0:04:15 believe in jesus as the messiah as the prophet but they believe that he was not born of a virgin 0:04:21 and then you see this goes on a second group went by the same name ebia ebionites but escapes the 0:04:28 outrageous absurdity of the first they did not deny that the lord was born of a virgin 0:04:35 and the holy spirit but nevertheless shared their refusal to acknowledge his pre-existence 0:04:40 as god the word and wisdom thus the impious doctrine of the others was their undoing also 0:04:47 especially as they placed equal emphasis on the outward observance of the law 0:04:52 they held that the epistles of the apostle that means paul of course ought to be rejected 0:04:57 all together calling him a renegade from the law and using only the gospel of the hebrews 0:05:05 they treated the the rest with scant respect like the others they observe the sabbath and the whole 0:05:12 jewish system so he is very scathing of these people but of course they represent the original 0:05:18 uh faith of the disciples who are torah observant jews we can see this in the 0:05:22 book of acts it's it states they were and we can see uh also that this second group of the 0:05:28 ebonites believed in the virgin birth so there seemed to be split between them and i'm not sure 0:05:34 how they split and did they co-mingle or were they separate denominations but clearly there 0:05:40 was a group of ebionites who did believe in the virgin birth who were jewish christians and some 0:05:46 who didn't believe in the virgin birth so this story that the ebio knights didn't believe in the 0:05:51 virgin mary in the virgin birth is wrong it's a half-truth uh some were quite orthodox by islamic 0:05:58 standards shall we say that they believed that jesus was born of the virgin mary without any 0:06:04 involvement of joseph but also they observe the law uh observe they view jesus as just a man a 0:06:11 great prophet of god a messiah which of course is exactly what the quran teaches as well so that's a 0:06:19 an amazing coincidence you may say so um i just wanted to uh just touch on this point because it's 0:06:26 used against uh to discredit the jewish christians this whole thing of the virgin birth and um it's 0:06:32 a distortion of the facts and i just want to get that on record for what it's worth till next time