Ebionite

plural Ebionites

1. historicalA member of an early Jewish Christian sect that lived in and around Judea and Palestine from the 1st to the 4th century.

   EBION, the author of the heresy of the Ebionites, was a disciple of Cerinthus and his successor.

   1829, London Encyclopaedia

   3 more examples

   And if the pious bishop and martyr, St. Irenaeus, happen to drop any thing pointed against the Doctor's progenitors, the ancient Ebionites, of heretical memory, he gently passes it over as though no such passages occurred in that learned and venerable Father's writings.

   1798, David Simpson, An Apology for the Doctrine of the Trinity, page 504

   The passage was so taken by the Jewish or Ebionite translators, Aquila, Theodotion, and Symmachus.

   1896, Joseph Barber Lightfoot, Saint Paul's Epistle to the Galatians, page 52

   * Jesus teaches vegetarianism. Epiphanius describes the Ebionites as vegetarians, and in the Recognitions and Homilies vegetarianism is strongly connected to the rejection of animal sacrifice and is required of all the followers of Jesus. When Epiphanius questions a Jewish Christian as to why he was a vegetarian, the Jewish Christian responds simply: “Christ revealed it to me” (Panarion 30.18.9).

   2000, Keith Akers, chapter 2, in The lost religion of Jesus: simple living and nonviolence in early Christianity, New York, NY: Lantern Books, →ISBN, →OCLC, page 27