The Ancient Ebionite Movement
Most people realize that Jesus (we will hereafter refer to him as Yahshua) was a Jew, and his activities, as best they can be reconstructed, were totally within the Jewish first century milieu. Not only that, but his students and followers were overwhelmingly Jewish or people attracted to Judaism and contemplating conversion. I use the term Judaism here loosely just as I would Christianity for at the time under discussion neither existed as they do in their present theologically developed forms. It is more accurate to talk of Yahwism, that is, the religion based on the Hebrew Torah and prophets centered on the revelatory experience of the single god, Yahweh. Yet, within Yahwism there were more than one interpretation and expression of the religion.
Most are familiar with the Pharisees (P'rushim), the Sadduccees (Tsaduqqim), Zealots (Qinna'im), and, now, the Essenes (`Ossim) who may be responsible for the documents discovered beginning in 1948 in the area of the Dead Sea. All different, yet all held the Torah and prophets at their core.
The relationship of the itinerant teacher from the Galilee and these movements is complex. Some will claim he was a Pharisee, while others an Essene (who were most likely a separatist branch of the Sadduccees), and others still see him as a revolutionary. Later, under a pagan influence, he would be worshipped as a god in Christianity.
Much of the Christian writings cannot be trusted at face value, and often not at all for information concerning Yahshua and his teachings. In fact, because of Christianity it is hard to be sure there was a Yahshua if it weren't for detailed critical reconstruction. But Ebionites consider the following as being more reliable than the theological mythology presented by Christianity:
* Yahshua was not divine.
* He was a religious Jew.
* His teachings were fully within the framework of Yahwism, yet may have conflicted with other sectarian views.
* He was not a Pharisee, or a "Qumran Essene" yet was aware of their issues and in agreement on some issues.
* Yahshua was perhaps able to achieve miraculous feats, though not necessarily those attributed to him as recorded.
* Yahshua had a political-social agenda.
* Yahshua was "liberal" in his halaka on Torah.
* He was a reformer, trying to recapture an earlier spirit and purity of Yahwism.
* He was not the Messiah but undertook a messianic mission. He called people to accept the Reign of God, i.e., prepare for the Messianic Age by living as if they were already in it. In this way Yahshua was trying to bring the Messiah and Messianic Age by righteousness and loving-kindness.
* He was unsure of his ability to bring this about, and his feelings concerning messiahship were tied to that doubt.
* After his death his immediate Jewish followers' further dealt with the messiahship issue, and came to terms with it correctly, developing their movement on the relationship of action, faith, and community to messiahship and the Messianic Age considering Yahshua to be "a" messiah---i.e., someone furthering the goal of a Messianic Age.
* Non-Jews focused on a deified person, objectifying and mythologizing in the manner of the Mystery religions of the time, placing all in the realm of allegory to compensate for what obviously did not happen---the Messianic Age.
* Yahshua took a prophetic stance imitative of earlier prophets condemning casulatry, legalism, and divided loyalty; yet, was devoted to Yahwism, and elements of new testament writings denigrating Yahwists and Yahwism can be dismissed as later Christian polemics.
* As part of Yahshua's social agenda, he appealed to those who had little stake in existing socio-economic structure, e.g., those disenfranchised by the rich, semi-Jewish Herodian regime, and religious elite.
And this brings us to those disenfranchised ( "poor" ), or 'evyonim who responded to Yahshua's ideas. Yahshua was their champion and eventually their martyr. They were politically powerless and probably adverse to such machinations and therefore, were not able to impress their movement or glamorize it, unlike the sect of Jewish Mystery Religion initiated by Paul of Tarsus who did have and use political connections and influence. They remained simple Jewish peasants, and were eventually drowned by false sects who commandeered the man Yahshua to gain both wealth and political influence, or integrated him into new age, Gnostic systems of belief. Christianity itself is little more than a first century "new age" religion, which integrated Yahshua into the position usually, occupied by some version of a savior god, like Mithras or Orpheus.
As the Christian Mystery cult grew powerful, and Judaea and Jews were repeatedly crushed under the Roman boot, the Jewish followers of Yahshua either conformed in part ( for example, the "Nazarenes" ) to the now "Universal Church" of "Christ" accepting the myths of virgin birth, divinity and incarnation, and Christ-hood of "Jesus," or they were criminalized as heretics (the 'Evyonim), demonized along with other Jews, and pushed into areas outside the power of the Church. These are represented in history as the sect encountered by the Muslim historian Abd al-Jabbar almost 500 years later than most Christian historians admit for the survival of the Ebionites, as al-Jabbar wrote at around 1000 CE.
Some "Jewish-Christians" considered to be Ebionites veered into Gnostic teachings, but are better identified as the Elchasites. At some point Christian scholars categorize all non-orthodox (i.e., orthodox in accepting the tenets the Nazarenes did) Jews holding some doctrine about Yahshua as Ebionite, though this is an incorrect generalization, as there were many views and sects related to some belief in Yahshua, yet they were not all Ebionite.