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The utility of adoptionism as a heuristic category: The baptism narrative in the Gospel of the Ebionites as a test case

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2023

Michael Kok Open the ORCID record for Michael Kok [Opens in a new window]
Michael Kok*
Affiliation:
Morling College, Bentley, Western Australia, Australia
*
Email: michaelk@morling.edu.au
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Abstract

Although the Christology of the Ebionites in general, and the so-called Gospel of the Ebionites cited by Epiphanius of Salamis in particular, has been commonly classified as adoptionist, the utility of the term ‘adoptionism’ has been recently called into question. This article will focus on the fragment about Jesus’ baptism in Panarion, 30.13.7–8 to determine whether it depicts Jesus’ adoption to divine sonship. Although the text does not use adoptionist terminology and imagery, Jesus does acquire a new christological identity in the pericope when he is possessed by the spirit and metaphorically begotten by the deity. This should be relabelled as a possessionist Christology. However, Epiphanius wrongly interpreted the text through the lens of Cerinthus’ Christology, in which Jesus is only temporarily inhabited by the Christ aeon between his baptism and his crucifixion.

Keywords

adoptionismbaptismChristologyGospel of the Ebionitespossessionist
Type
Research Article
Information
Scottish Journal of Theology , Volume 76 , Issue 2 , May 2023 , pp. 153 - 163
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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References

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2 For critical analyses of Epiphanius's artificial depiction of the Ebionites, see Klijn, F. J. and Reinink, G. E., Patristic Evidence for Jewish-Christian Sects (Leiden: Brill, 1973), pp. 28–38, 43CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Verheyden, Joseph, ‘Epiphanius on the Ebionites’, in Tomson, P. J. and Lambers-Petry, D. (eds), The Image of the Judaeo-Christians in Ancient Jewish and Christian Literature (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), pp. 185–208Google Scholar; Häkkinen, Sakari, ‘Ebionites’, in Marjanen, Antti and Luomanen, Petri (eds), A Companion to Second-Century Christian ‘Heretics’ (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 256–7, 259–65Google Scholar; Skarsaune, ‘Ebionites’, pp. 423–4, 450–561; Broadhead, Edwin K., Jewish Ways of Following Jesus: Redrawing the Religious Map of Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), pp. 198–206Google Scholar; Paget, James Carleton, Jews, Christians and Jewish Christians in Antiquity (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2010), pp. 329–41Google Scholar.

3 For the Greek text, see Holl, Karl (ed.), Epiphanius, vol. 1, Ancoratus und Panarion haer. 1-33 (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1915), pp. 350–1Google Scholar.

4 Paget (Jews, p. 353) defends the use of this label in his critique of Michael Goulder's reconstruction of the Ebionites’ Christology.

5 See Goulder, Michael, ‘A Poor Man's Christology’, New Testament Studies 45 (1999), pp. 335–6CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Häkkinen, ‘Ebionites’, pp. 268–9; Kinlaw, Pamela, The Christ Is Jesus: Metamorphosis, Possession, and Johannine Christology (Leiden: Brill, 2005), pp. 85–6, 88Google Scholar; Luomanen, Petri, Recovering Jewish Christian Sects and Gospels (Leiden: Brill, 2012), pp. 20–1CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Frey, ‘Die Fragmente’, p. 615; Gregory, The Gospel, p. 233; Bird, Michael F., Jesus the Eternal Son: Answering Adoptionist Christology (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2017), pp. 113, 118–20Google Scholar.

6 Ehrman, Bart D., The Orthodox Corruption of Scripture: The Effect of Early Christological Controversies on the Text of the New Testament, 2nd edn (Oxford: OUP, 2011), pp. 55Google Scholar.

7 Ibid., pp. 15, 55.

8 Ibid.; cf. Dunn, James D. G., 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. 62Google Scholar.

9 See my discussion of ideal-typical comparisons in Kok, Michael J., ‘Classifying Cerinthus's Christology’, Journal of Early Church History 9/1 (2019), pp. 32–3Google Scholar.

10 Eskola, Timo, Messiah and the Throne: Jewish Merkabah Mysticism and Early Christian Exaltation Discourse (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), p. 299Google Scholar; Smit, Peter-Ben, ‘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. 178–9CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 Strauss, David Friedrich, Das Leben Jesu, kritisch bearbeitet, 2 vols (Tübingen: C. F. Osiander, 1835), vol. 1, pp. 479–82Google Scholar.

12 Weiss, Johannes, Das Urchristentum (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1917), pp. 85–6, 88Google Scholar.

13 Smit, ‘The End’, p. 179. See Bousset, Wilhelm, Kyrios Christos: Geschichte des Christusglaubens von den Anfängen des Christentums bis Irenaeus (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1913), pp. 260–1Google Scholar.

14 Adolf von Harnack, Dogmengeschichte, 7 vols (Tübingen: Mohr, 1905), vol. 1, pp. 211–12.

15 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.

16 Brown, An Introduction, pp. 143–5; Dunn, Christology, pp. 62–3.

17 Dunn, Christology, p. 62.

18 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).

19 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.

20 Ehrman, How Jesus Became God, pp. 231–2.

21 Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the God of Israel: God Crucified and Other Studies on the New Testament's Christology of Divine Identity (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 2008), pp. 5–57, 152–81, 192–232. For New Testament passages assigning demiurgic functions to Jesus, see John 1:1–3; 1 Cor 8:6; Col 1:15–17; Heb 1:2.

22 Jeremiah T. Coogan, ‘Rethinking Adoptionism: An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category’, Scottish Journal of Theology 76/1 (2023), pp. 8, 20.

23 Ibid., pp. 3, 4, 7, 19, 20.

24 Smit, ‘The End’, pp. 181–4; Coogan, ‘Rethinking Adoptionism’, pp. 10–13.

25 Bird, Jesus, p. 118; cf. Coogan, ‘Rethinking Adoptionism’, pp. 12–13.

26 Smit, ‘The End’, p. 183; cf. Coogan, ‘Rethinking Adoptionism’, p. 17.

27 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.

28 Kinlaw, The Christ, pp. 41–67.

29 Bird, Jesus, p. 119.

30 Contra Klijn and Reinink (Patristic Evidence, p. 20), who defend the originality of the Latin reading.

31 Michael Goulder, St. Paul versus St. Peter: A Tale of Two Missions (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 1994), p. 112.

32 For the following points, 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.

33 Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption, p. 119; Kok, ‘Classifying’, p. 36.

34 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), who allows that Epiphanius may have encountered a syncretistic branch of the Ebionites.

35 Verheyden, ‘Epiphanius’, p. 182.

36 Bird, The Eternal Son, p. 116. For a careful study on the meaning of Tertullian's Latin passage, see Claire Clivaz, ‘Except that Christ Never Said: “And the Angel that Spoke in Me Said to Me” (De carne Christi, 14.30–41): Tertullian, Ebionism, and an Ancient Perception of Jesus’, Revue des Études Juives 169/3–4 (2010), pp. 291–5.

37 Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, p. 21; Häkkinen, ‘Ebionites’, pp. 252–3; Skarsaune, ‘The Ebionites’, pp. 431–2.

38 Clivaz, ‘Except that Christ Never Said’, pp. 302–9.

39 Skarsaune, ‘The Ebionites’, pp. 421–4.

40 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.

41 Myllykowski, ‘Cerinthus’, p. 216.

42 Klijn and Reinink, Patristic Evidence, pp. 14–15.

43 Verheyden, ‘Epiphanius’, p. 194; Skarsaune, ‘The Ebionites’, p. 458.

44 Peppard, Son of God, p. 147; Smit, ‘The End’, p. 183; Bird, The Eternal Son, p. 118.

45 Bird, The Eternal Son, p. 118.

46 Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption, p. 106, n. 87.

47 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.

48 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.

49 Note, however, that Skarsaune (‘The Ebionites’, pp. 457–60) argues that Epiphanius’ Gospel was a synoptically harmonised version of Mark's text that he discovered at a late stage of editing his Panarion, leading him to interpolate a new section devoted to his commentary on it only in Panarion 30.13–14. Skarsaune reasons that, if this section as well as the other lengthy digression of Joseph of Tiberius were removed from the Panarion, then there would be no interruption to the flow of thought from 13.3.7 to 30.15.1. However, his argument that Epiphanius was citing the pseudo-Clementine Circuits of Peter in the fragments outside of this section overlooks the reference to the ɛὐαγγέλιον in 30.16.5.

50 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) notes that the words ‘and they all went out to him’ (καὶ ἐξήρχοντο πρὸς αὐτὸν πάντɛς) in the Gospel of the Ebionites (cf. Epiphanius, Pan. 30.13.6) is paralleled in John 3:26, which reads καὶ πάντɛς ἔρχονται πρὸς αὐτόν, but also that this is the only parallel between the two texts and does not require an intertextual relationship between them.

51 Contra Bertrand, ‘L’Évangile’, p. 551; Klijn, Jewish Christian Gospel Tradition, p. 29; Frey, ‘Die Fragmente’, p. 614.

52 Drijvers and Reinink, ‘Taufe und Licht’, p. 104; Gregory, The Gospel, p. 182.

53 Frey, ‘Die Fragmente’, p. 611; Mimouni, Early Judaeo-Christianity, p. 225; Gregory, The Gospel, pp. 189, 195–6, 202, 211.

54 Klijn, Jewish Christian Gospel Tradition, p. 69.

55 Holl, Epiphanius, vol. 1, p. 350.

56 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 351.

57 Contra Boismard, M.-É., ‘Evangile des Ebionites et problème synoptique (Mc 1, 2–6 et par.)’, Revue biblique 73 (1966), p. 329Google Scholar.

58 Gregory, The Gospel, p. 208.

59 Klijn, Jewish Christian Gospel Tradition, p. 69.

60 Edwards, The Hebrew Gospel, p. 69.

61 Boismard, ‘Evangile des Ebionites’, pp. 329–31.

62 Ibid., p. 333.

63 Neirynck, Frans, ‘Une nouvelle théorie synoptique (à propos de Mc. 1:2–6)’, Ephemeridae Theologiae Lovaniensis 44 (1968), p. 147Google Scholar.

64 Ibid.; cf. Verheyden, ‘Epiphanius’, p. 192, n. 48.

65 Neirynck, ‘Une nouvelle théorie synoptique’, p. 147.

66 Ibid.

67 Gregory, The Gospel, pp. 213–4.

68 Henne, Philip, ‘L’Évangile des Ebionites: une fausse harmonie: une vraie supercherie’, in Kessler, Andreas, Ricklin, Thomas, and Wurst, Gregor (eds), Peregrina curiositas: Eine Reise durch den orbis antiquus: Zu Ehren von Dirk van Damme (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1994), p. 61Google Scholar; Gregory, The Gospel, p. 231.

69 Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption, p. 166

70 Ibid., pp. 62–7.

71 Ibid., p. 108, n. 5.

72 Wasserman, ‘Misquoting Manuscripts’, p. 337.

73 Henne, ‘L’Évangile des Ebionites’, pp. 66–7.

74 Ehrman, The Orthodox Corruption, pp. 64–7.

75 Henne, ‘L’Évangile des Ebionites’, p. 60.

76 Gregory, The Gospel, p. 231

77 Henne, ‘L’Évangile’, pp. 68–9.

78 Ibid. pp. 71–2; Gregory, The Gospel, p. 240.

79 Smit, ‘The End’, p. 192.