Jesus: Man, Messenger, Messiah · 6. Theological Alterations
Adoptionism and the Ebionites: an early Christology the Church erased
Handle with care. Do not say the Ebionites were Muslims or that Islam descends from them. They are a parallel worth noting, reconstructed largely from their opponents' writings.
In short
- 1.Adoptionists held Jesus to be fully and only human, adopted by God as his Son.
- 2.The **Ebionites** kept the Torah, circumcision and Sabbath, and rejected Paul as an apostate from the Law.
- 3.They used a version of Matthew and denied the virgin birth in the form the later Church taught it.
- 4.None of their writings survive — we know them only through opponents who quote to refute.
The claim being examined
Christians usually assume that belief in Jesus's divinity was universal from the beginning and that alternatives were late heresies.
The Islamic position
The Ebionites — Law-observant Jewish followers of Jesus who held him to be a human prophet and messiah — stand remarkably close to the Qur'anic portrait.
Analysis
Ehrman devotes chapter 6 to showing that proto-orthodox scribes altered texts to close off adoptionist readings, which presupposes that adoptionist Christians were reading those texts and finding support in them. The loss of the Ebionite literature is itself part of the argument: the surviving record is the record kept by the victors. For dawah this is a substantive parallel, but it must be stated carefully — the Ebionites were not Muslims and their beliefs are reconstructed from hostile sources.
From the Qur'an
Q 43:59
إِنْ هُوَ إِلَّا عَبْدٌ أَنْعَمْنَا عَلَيْهِ
He was not but a servant upon whom We bestowed favour.
From the Bible
Acts 2:22
Greek: andra apodedeigmenon apo tou theou
Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with deeds of power…
Read it in their BibleSources
Bart D. Ehrman · Bart D. Ehrman, *Misquoting Jesus: The Story Behind Who Changed the Bible and Why* (HarperSanFrancisco, 2005), ch. 6 'Theologically Motivated Alterations of the Text', pp. 153-161
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