1 Earliest Rome

12. R E L I G I O U S G R O U P S
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.6.2-4
So they assert that good works are necessary for us ; otherwise
salvation would be impossible. But they hold the doctrine that they themselves will be
completely saved because they are spiritual not by works but by nattire . . . For this reason
the most 'perfect' of them do without fear everything that is forbidden, of which
scriptures assure us that 'those who do them will not inherit the kingdom of god'
. For instance, they eat with indifference meat sacrifices made to idols,
Imagining that they cannot be polluted by them. And they are the first to gather at every
gentile festivity performed in honour of the idols for the sake of pleasure, while some of
them do not keep away from the murderous spectacle of gladiators fighting with beasts or
each other, which is hateful to god and humans. Some who are intensely addicted to the
pleasures of the flesh say that they render things of the flesh to the flesh, and things of the
spirit to the spirit. And some of them secretly seduce women who are taught this doctrine;
women who were seduced by some of them, but then returned to the church of god, have
often confessed this along with the rest of their error. Others brazen it out quite openly -
they detached from the husbands any women they were in love with and treated them as
their own wives. Others again who pretended, effectively to start with, to live with women
as with sisters were found out as time passed, when the 'sister' was made pregnant by the
'brother'. And committing many other odious and godless deeds, they accuse us as being
uneducated and ignorant, we who from fear of god avoid sinning even in thought or
word, while they extol themselves, claim to be 'perfect' and the 'seed of the elect'.
Irenaeus, Against Heresies 1.26.2
12,7e(iii) Jewish Christianity
The definition of both Christianity and Judaism was extremely problematic.
Christians who believed in a very close relationship to Jewish practices have
often been seen as a single movement of'Jewish Christians', but it seems cer­
tain that there was no such single group. It is preferable to see such Christians
as a number of different groups who closely associated themselves with partic­
ular (and different) Jewish practices or doctrines. The Ebionites are one of the
best known of these groups.
See further: Dauielou (1964) 55-64"; Klijn and Reinink (1973) 19-43,
68-73; Klijn (1992); A. F. Segal (1992)*.
Those who are called Ebionites agree that the world was made by the true god, but their
opinions concerning the Lord are similar to those of Cerinthus and Carpocrates.' 'They
use only the gospel according to Matthew and reject the apostle Paul, saying that he was
an apostate from the Law. As for the prophetic writings, they attempt to expound them
in an excessively diligent manner. They practise circumcision, and persist in those
customs which are according to the Law and in a Jewish way of life, so that they even
worship Jerusalem as the house of god.
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