I was sent a link to this website, and I found that it was really,
really hard to read.
And I did find there was some really great text here, but it was pretty much
impossible for me to read it, so I wasn't going to do that.
But I was shown this.
I'm on Firefox, and you can go to View, enter Reader View, and then you can read
it a lot better.
So, I'm going to read some from this website, BewareDeception.com.
And, you know, you can also do this in other browsers, but I'm not going to get
into how to do that, but it does work in Firefox.
So, there's a lot of good stuff here, but, you know, I know most people are just
going to see the website, and they're not going to want to read it.
I'll leave the link below if you want to check it out to see other pages on there,
but I do suggest putting it into Reader View.
It's much easier to read this way.
And I'm going to read some of this stuff, but I'm just reading because I'm studying.
I am not going to be putting in my beliefs, you know, I'm not saying that
everything I read from this website and everything that I talk about is something
that I believe.
As in my faith, I'm just telling people that I'm studying, and I know a lot of
people like to listen to me when they're at work or something like that.
So, I just make these videos, and you guys can listen to it, and make up your own
minds.
Pray to not be deceived, and pray that God will guide you to the truth.
Yeah, the whole truth, and have faith that He will.
And so, I'm just going to read this, and I might interject once in a while.
I think they talk about eternal souls and stuff like that.
I don't believe in that.
But, you know, for the most part, I'm just going to stay out of it and just
read what's written here.
And then I'm also going to put a video at the end of this, and I'll leave some links
below so that you can study this for yourself.
From BewareDeception.com Who were the Edianites?
The natives of America are commonly called Indians, but strictly speaking,
they are not Indians, and in fact, they never were.
Christopher Columbus ignorantly labeled the natives of America Indians.
He believed mistakenly that the land he discovered was part of the island of Asia,
then called Indies.
The Funk and Wagnalls Encyclopedia, Volume 2, on page 20, candidly admits this
fact.
American Indians, indigenous peoples of the Americas, the name Indian was first
applied to them by Christopher Columbus, who believed mistakenly that the mainland
islands of America were part of the Indies in Asia.
Collier's Encyclopedia, Volume 12, on page 642, further corroborates this
fact.
When Columbus landed in the Bahamas in 1492, he thought he had reached the
islands off the eastern coast of Asia, then known as the Indies, and he called
the villagers who greeted him Indians.
Here we have it in the plain language.
Columbus simply made a mistake.
A mistake which was never corrected by later historians.
The indigenous peoples of the Americas are not, and never were, Indians.
They were known by their tribal names.
The same historians who failed to correct the blunder of Columbus also referred to
Yeshu as Jesus and his earliest followers as Christians.
It is an irrefutable fact that Joseph and Mary and all the relatives of Yeshu never
referred to him by the name Jesus or the title Christ.
Jesus was known by his Hebrew name Yeshu.
Anyway, Yeshu conversed with his relatives and disciples in either Hebrew or Aramaic,
and not in Greek or English.
Therefore, Yeshu never labeled his followers by the name Christians,
since this name is derived from the Greek term christionai, devised in Antioch by
the Paulinist followers.
The teachings and the life of Yeshu, strictly speaking, should not even come
under the heading Christianity, since the Jews in Galilee and Judea never
regarded Yeshu as a Christian or a founder of a new religion, but rather they viewed
Yeshu and his earliest followers as another deviationist sect within Judaism.
The Jewish Encyclopedia, Volume 5, on page 506 corroborates this fact.
Strictly speaking, the career and ministry of Jesus and his relations with his
disciples do not come under the heading Christianity.
They are rather part of the history of Jewish sectarian movements towards the end
of the Second Temple Period.
Before Yeshu even began his ministry, there already were three major sects
within Judaism, Pharisees, Sodomites, Hestenes, and Nazarenes.
Church father Epiphanius, who lived and wrote in the 4th century, testified that
the earliest followers of Yeshu did not call themselves by the name Christian,
but that they were rather identified by the name Nazarene.
The Nazarenes did not apply to themselves the name of Christ or the name Jesus
itself, but the name Nazarene, and all Christians were at that time
similarly called Nazarenes.
But in Antioch, the disciples and the whole Church of God began to be called
Christians.
We also know from the Jewish Talmud that the first followers of Yeshu were not
regarded as followers of a new religion, but rather as members of a deviationist
sect within Judaism.
The Talmud also identifies the first followers of Yeshu as Nazarenes.
Even the Arabs and the Koran refer to the first followers of Yeshu and the community
which he led as Nazrani, that is, Nazarenes.
Even in this day and age, Christians are simply known as Nazarenes among the Arab
Muslims.
Acts 24.5 irrefutably shows that as far as the Jewish populace of Judea and their
leaders were concerned, the followers of Yeshu were simply members of the new sect
within Judaism, which they identified by the name Nazarene.
The Jewish leaders mistakenly assumed that Paul himself was one of the ringleaders of
the Nazarene sect.
It was in Antioch that those who accepted Paul's version of the gospel abandoned the
original name Nazarene and instead began to call themselves by the new name
Christiani, that is, Christians.
At this time, Paul, whose original name was Saul, also abandoned his Hebrew name
and adopted the Roman name Paulus.
Eusebius says that he did so in honor of the proconsul whom he converted to his
version of faith.
The book of Acts clearly shows that Paul was originally always called by his Hebrew
name Saul.
The name change took place in a chapter where he meets the proconsul Sergius
Paulus.
From that point on, Saul is always referred to by his new name Paul.
Acts 13 verses 6-12 It is imperative for you to realize that the new name
Christians was never adopted by the twelve of whom James the Just was the chief.
This is evident by the fact that the Jewish populace in general had no
knowledge of the name Christian, even years after it was adopted by the
Gentile followers of Paul.
Acts 24.5 uses the term Nazarene sect towards the end of Paul's career.
Even the Jews in Rome knew nothing of the new religion called Christianity,
but only of the sect of which the Jews had a bad opinion.
Acts 28 verse 22 The believers in Jerusalem and Galilee retained their
original name and were later also known by their derogatory name, Evianites.
There were many members in the Nazarene sect, as is evident from the book of Acts.
The Nazarenes flourished in Judea and Galilee until in 66 CE when the Romans
besieged Jerusalem.
Just prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, Simeon the cousin of Yeshu was
instructed in a vision to lead the Nazarenes out of the city.
Simeon succeeded James the Just as the leader of the Nazarenes.
A Catholic historian Philip Hughes in his book A History of the Church on page 57
points out Some vision had warned the bishop, Simeon, of the coming troubles,
and the faithful had left the city in time and settled at Pella, in the pagan country
across the Jordan.
Church father Epiphanius wrote, Apostles settled in Pella after the
removal from Jerusalem in consequence of Christ's injunction to leave the city and
emigrate in view of the impending siege.
Teacher, Journal of the Jewish Studies The Encyclopedia of Early Christianity on page
490 gives us the following information.
At the beginnings of the Jewish war against Rome in AD 66, Jewish Christians
in Jerusalem, and perhaps also in Galilee, escaped to Pella in Berea.
As a matter of fact, Yeshu himself warned the disciples to leave Jerusalem when they
see Jerusalem besieged.
And when you see Jerusalem surrounded by armies, then you will know that the time
of its destruction has arrived.
Then those in Judea must flee to the hills.
Let those in Jerusalem escape, and those outside the city should not
enter it for the shelter.
Luke 21 verses 20-22 Yeshu specified that the city of Jerusalem, and in particular
its temple, would be destroyed, and that this would be the time of
punishment, so that everything written concerning it could be fulfilled.
Luke 21-22 The Essenes, Nazarenes, and Evianites believe that the destruction
of the temple took place primarily because the Jewish hierarchy and the Sadducee
priests refused to discontinue the sacrificial cults.
In the Evianite Gospel, Yeshu is quoted as saying that unless the Jews abolished the
sacrificial cult, the wrath of God would not depart from them.
In the recognition of Clement, Apostle Peter points out that the
destruction of Jerusalem and its temple was directly brought by God in order that
the sacrificial cult could cease.
Peter pointed out that all those who rejected the sacrificial cult and
practiced vegetarianism would be preserved and would not perish with the rest in the
city.
It is significant to note that the believers who were led by Simeon,
the successor of James the Just, actually escaped and settled in Pella of
Perea, an area which was known as Transjordan.
All historians agree that this was the area where the Jewish Christians,
or the Christian Christians, did later flourish.
The stronghold of the Evianites was in fact the Transjordan.
Rev.
A.F.
Findley, in his book, Byways in Early Christian Literature, on page 87,
says, We are probably correct in regarding these Evianites of Gnosticizing tendency
as the descendants of the Palestinian Christians who fled to Pella before the
destruction of Jerusalem.
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, on page 433, locates the Evianites
east of the Jordan River.
A sect of Jewish Christians which flourished in the early centuries of the
Christian era, the sect flourished especially on the east of the Jordan.
The Encyclopedia of Religion, volume 4, on page 576-577, states, It is possible
that the Evianites go back to the earliest period of Christian history, when most
Christians were Jews.
If so, they would be the earliest example of a Christian movement within Judaism
that was eventually left behind as Christianity adapted to the influx of
Gentile converts.
These Christians eventually became a distinct group that, along with other
groups, e.g.
the Gnostics, was rejected as heretical by the emerging, great, and quotations,
Church.
They are sometimes identified with the Minim, Heretics, and the Jewish Talmud.
Information on the Evianites is gathered over three centuries, from the middle of
the 2nd to the middle of the 5th, suggesting that the sect had a continuous
history as a distinct group from the earliest period.
The greatest strength of the Evianites was in Palestine and Syria, areas where
Judaism flourished.
One community of Evianites lived in Pella, east of the Jordan River, and claimed to
be descended from the original group of Christians, who were thought to have fled
Jerusalem at the time of the war with Romans in 70 CE.
Encyclopædia Britannica, Vol.
4, on page 344, says, Explicit mention of the Evianites is first found in the works
of Irenaeus, p.
185, and they were known to still exist in the 4th century.
They evidently left Palestine and settled in Transjordan and Syria, and were later
known to be in Asia Minor, Egypt, and Rome.
New Age Encyclopedia, Vol.
9, on page 309, says, Evianites, Hebrew, Evian, poor man, name probably
applied at first to all Christians, later used particularly of an ultra-Jewish
party who, though Christians, remained outside the Catholic Church.
Catholic means universal.
They flourished in the early centuries of the Christian era, particularly on the
east side of the Jordan.
The original followers of Yeshu were known as Essenes and Nazarenes, initially
flourished in Transjordan, but soon afterwards, and especially after the
rebellion of Bar Kochba, the Jewish Messiah, they were stigmatized by the
rabbis of newly emerged Pharisaic Judaism as the deviationist sect, and were
therefore expelled by the rabbis of Normative Judaism.
Encyclopedia Judaica, Vol.
5, on page 511, candidly admits, In due course, the Jewish Christians were
included in the category of those sectarians whom the Jewish community
rejected and anathematized.
The male dictation of the Minim contained in the daily Amidah was introduced,
these reformulated, in order to render impossible Jewish-Christian participation
in the service of the synagogue and to compliment their separation.
That Bar Kochba I mentioned just a few lines ago was the one I mentioned in the
previous video.
So you can see my previous video if you haven't already.
The Nazarenes were lining up with this group of Jews who were fighting against
the people who wanted to get rid of the circumcision, the physical circumcision.
The Romans thought that that was horrible, that you should not do that.
And the Nazarenes and the Jews were saying we have to keep it, so there was an
uprising.
But as soon as the Jews labeled Bar Kochba as the Jewish Messiah, and they forsook
Jesus, then the Nazarenes who said Jesus was their only Messiah had to leave,
so they left that fight.
So that's around the same time period here.
Continuing on on this page.
The original believers and followers of Yeshu who were established by the Twelve
were eventually excommunicated by the rabbis of normative Judaism.
They were despised and rejected as a heretical sect.
Encyclopedia Judaica, Volume 2, on page 3, says that Samuel HaKatan
composed a benediction which targeted the Judeo-Christians, or more specifically,
the Nazarenes.
He did this by applying it to the Jewish heretics.
It is generally assumed that this new formulation was meant to force the
Judeo-Christians out of the Jewish community.
In the Genesau version, the word Nazarim actually occurs.
The Hebrew word Nazarim is the very word by which the first followers of Yeshu were
called by the Jewish populace and the rabbis of normative Judaism.
It is the very name by which those same believers were identified by the Jews in
Acts 24, verse 5.
Yeshu's followers were henceforth forced to abandon the Jewish synagogue since the
new formula required them to pronounce a curse on themselves every time they would
assemble with other Jews in a synagogue.
The participants in the Jewish synagogue were henceforth required to pronounce the
following words in their daily prayers.
May the Nazarenes and the heretics be suddenly destroyed and removed from the
book of life.
Chadwick, The Early Church, page 21.
Ravon Gamaliel II introduced the 18th benediction with the following words.
Let the Nazarenes and the heretics perish in a moment.
Let them be blotted out of the book of the living and let them not be ridden with the
righteous.
Ferguson, The Backgrounds of Early Christianity, pages 461-462.
Henceforth, the Essenes, Nazarenes, Thevianites were no longer recognized by
the Jewish rabbis and they were persecuted and ostracized.
While the Jews were looking for a way to get rid of the Nazarenes, the Paulinist
followers and Christians were transforming his movement into the emerging Catholic
Church.
Thus, the original true followers of Yeshu and the Twelve found themselves in a very
peculiar position.
They were excluded and rejected by the Jewish community as a whole, and at the
same time the emerging Catholic Church refused to acknowledge them as true
believers, but branded them as heretics and gave them a new derogatory name,
Thevianites.
The term in Hebrew simply means poor ones, but the Catholic bishops and the Church
Fathers applied it sarcastically, implying that they had a poor intellect
and understanding.
Since according to them they were poor of intellect due to their damned doctrines
and teachings, Hugh Smith, a Presbyterian writer, in his book, History of the
Christian Church, on pages 69 and 72 states, These Judaizing Christians were
first known by outside world as Nazarenes, abhorred and publicly execrated by the
Jews for their attachment to Christianity, and despised by the Christians for their
prejudice in favor of the Mosaic law they were peculiarly oppressed and unfortunate.
The Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, on page 491, explicitly says concerning
the Jewish Christians, that these groups should disappear is not surprising,
since they did not fit either into post-Temple Judaism nor into the emerging
Catholic Church.
Christopher Knight and Robert Lomas, in their book, The Hiram Key, on page 335,
say the following, A sect called the Evianites was a direct descendant of
James' church.
This sect held teachings of James the Just in high regard.
For a long time after the death of Jesus and James, the terms Evianite and Nazarene
were completely interchangeable and these people were condemned under both names by
the Church of Rome as heretics.
Keith Akers, in his book, The Lost Religion of Jesus, on page 174,
says, Jewish Christians were finally excluded from the Jewish synagogues and
condemned as Jewish heretics.
Suddenly, within a space of a few decades, Jewish Christianity becomes a sect
excluded by both Jews and Christians.
It is during this time that the Evianites probably first emerged as a distinct group
to preserve the religious views they felt had been passed down to them from Jesus
himself through James and his spiritual descendants.
Chadwick, a church historian in his book, The Early Church, on page 23, points out
the following fact, From Irenaeus onwards, Jewish Christianity is treated as a
deviationist sect.
Rather than as a form of Christianity with the best claims to continuity with the
practice of the primitive church at Jerusalem, the Jewish Christians call
themselves Evianites.
The most learned of the church father's origin, who was at the same time most
sympathetic towards the Evianites, explicitly stated that the Jews who
accepted Yeshua were called by the name Evianites.
This is what Hastings Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics, Volume 5,
on page 153, has to say on the subject.
Origin says that these Jews who have received Jesus Christ were all called by
the name Evianites.
A Jewish scholar, Shlomo Pines, in his book, The Jewish Christians of the
Early Centuries of Christianity, according to a new source on page 65,
states, Quite clearly, these Jewish Christians believed that they preserved
and continued the traditions of the first, not yet corrupted, Christian community of
Jerusalem founded by immediate disciples of Jesus who professed his religion.
Rabbi Philip Sigal, in his book, Judaism, the Evolution of a Faith,
on pages 82-83, frankly states, Christian Judaism continued to survive
west of Jordan River and south and east of the Dead Sea, and survived in the
variegated sects known to patristic writers, most notably as Evianites.
The Christian Jewish Church of James predominated until 70 CE, and while
significance of James is diminished in canonical Christian literature,
the now-available Nag Hammadi literature highlights the major role he played.
It is clear that some Christians believe Jesus first appeared to James,
and that the disciples chose James as their legitimate leader of the Church of
Jesus.
This movement, the Evianites, grew increasingly isolated from emergent
Catholic, in quotes, Christianity in the 4th and 5th centuries.
Like I said, Catholic means universal, so they're probably doing quotes because
they're talking about the universal Christianity that's not quite universal
because not everybody accepts it.
Moving on, Leonard George, in Primes of Perception, an Encyclopedia of Heresies
and Heretics, or Evianites, writes, Within a few decades of Jesus' death,
the Christian movement split into two factions, the followers of Paul,
who believed that Christianity was a new religion, completely separate from
Judaism, and the Jewish Christians, who held that Christians should continue
to adhere to the traditional religious practices of the Jews.
The Pauline party developed into Orthodox Catholicism.
A group of Jewish Christians who became known as the Evianites survived as a
heresy.
The doctrinal position of the Evianites overlapped the beliefs of the Jews and
Orthodox Christians and caused them to be condemned by both.
In turn, the Evianites regarded the Jews as unenlightened and damned Paul as the
first Christian heretic.
The sect proclaimed that most of the scriptures the Catholics revered were not
authentic.
Even though the Evianites were direct descendants of the Jerusalem and Galilean
believers, the emerging Catholic Church and virtually all of the Church Fathers
vigorously opposed them and regarded them as heretics, condemning them and
ostracizing them.
The Anglican scholar David L.
Edwards, in his book The Real Jesus, on page 39, candidly admits that Evianites
were direct descendants of Yeshu and his earliest followers, and explicitly states
that both the Orthodox Jews and the Paulinist Christians despised them and
condemned them as heretics.
Early in the 4th century, the Church historian Eusebius recorded a tradition
that the Christian had escaped from Jerusalem when the trouble began,
but it is certain that they became a small group which was regarded by fellow
Christians as well as by all Orthodox Jews as heretical.
Their version of Christianity came to be called Evianite.
Yet it was based on a count of Jesus given by his own family and by his earliest
followers.
Edwards, although Anglican, candidly admits and frankly states that the
original believers who escaped from Jerusalem were regarded as heretics by the
mainstream of Christianity, the Paulinist Christianity, which was then emerging into
the Roman Catholic Church.
Edwards is aware of the fact and actually says that it is certain that these
believers who migrated to Transjordan called themselves Evianites and that they
actually preserved their version of faith which was based on the testimony of the
closest relatives of Yeshu and its earliest and closest associates,
the Twelve Apostles.
The Jewish scholar Chaim Maccabi in his book, The Mythmaker, Paul and the
Invention of Christianity on pages 179 and 182 says, Thus, the Evianites,
by their continued belief in Jesus as the prophet and Messiah, were increasingly cut
off from the developing activity of rabbinical Judaism.
Yet it was probably not until about 135 that the Evianites were finally declared
heretics by the Pharisee rabbis.
Gentile Christianity, however, unlike Evianite Christianity, was never
declared heretical since it was too far removed from Judaism to be regarded as a
heretical form of it.
The Evianites were thus in the unhappy position of being ostracized both by what
was now main body of Christians, the Catholic Church, and by the Jews.
The pressure to join one or the other of these two religions was enormous and by
the 4th century the Evianites had ceased to be a discernible separate community.
Constantly they have tended to be disregarded and despised by historians.
Yet what remains of their testimony about the origins of Christianity is of unique
importance, for unlike the Catholic Church, they were directly linked to the
Jerusalem Church, and thus to Jesus himself.
Their testimony about Paul and the circumstances in which he broke with the
Jerusalem Church deserves to be treated with respect, not with the usual scornful
dismissal.
The Evianites did not survive for the simple reason that they were persecuted
out of existence by the Catholic Church.
When this oppression was lifted for any reason, for example when an area changed
from Christian to Muslim rule, they sometimes came out of hiding and
resumed an open existence.
There is even evidence from the works of the Jewish philosopher Zadaia that this
happened as late as the 10th century.
The Evianites suffered persecution by their countrymen, the Jews, just as Yeshua
said they would.
But they were also ostracized and damned by the fellow Christians, who allegedly
believed in Yeshua in fall of the 12th.
Yeshua did say to his disciples that a time would come that whomever kills them
would think they would do God a service.
Man, Myth, and Magic, the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology, Religion,
and the Unknown, Art, Evianites, states, Remnants of Jewish Christianity
survived in various places in Palestine, Syria, and Egypt until the 5th century.
Its members clung to the original tenets of their faith.
They are known only through the garbled and prejudiced accounts of Orthodox
Christian writers who regarded them as heretics.
They are named either Evianites or Nazareans, and various strange beliefs and
customs are ascribed to them.
The church fathers and the bishops of the emerging Catholic Church condemned the
Evianites and branded them as heretics.
Andrew Welburn, who was originally a fellow at the Warburg Institute at the
University of London, but is now fellow of New College, Oxford, argues that the
church fathers got it all wrong and that the Evianites were not heretics,
but rather those who preserved original and true faith.
In his book, The Beginnings of Christianity, on pages 86-87, Welburn
writes, The church fathers described the Evianites as a heretical sect,
which they certainly were not, or at least were not until the later
church thrust that role upon them.
Yeshua said to his disciples that they can only expect to be treated as he was,
since he was regarded as heretic by the mainstream Judaism of his day and in fact
was killed for his heretical views.
It was only to be expected that his immediate followers were to be also
regarded as heretics and that for their views would have to pay with their lives.
Yeshua never envisaged that his followers would comprise a large and powerful
movement aligned with the secular kingdoms, as was the case with the
emerging Catholic Christianity.
So who were the Evianites?
They were true believers who were directly linked to Jerusalem apostles and therefore
to Yeshua.
The second page I'll be reading from is called Evianite Beliefs and Practices.
In this article I will only point out some major beliefs and practices of the
Evianites which are known from patristic writings of the early centuries and some
surviving documents which apparently stem from the Evianites themselves.
In some of my other articles, these beliefs and practices are vindicated.
The first thing I want to point out is the fact that the Evianites had a very
peculiar attitude towards the Jewish Pentateuch and the Bible in general.
They argued that the Jewish Pentateuch was falsified and that it contained many
periscopes which were of diabolical origin.
They likewise believed that the Old Testament as a whole was corrupted by the
Jewish scribes and was not preserved in its original form.
Of the canonical gospels, they only accepted Matthew in its original Hebrew
form.
They outrightly rejected all the epistles of Paul.
The first Evianite doctrine therefore holds that the Bible is fallible and that
not everything in the Bible is inspired or should be believed and practiced.
The following references will demonstrate this fact.
Church Father Epiphanius, who knew some Evianites personally, testifies that they
did not accept the entire Jewish Pentateuch, but rather suppressed and
rejected certain passages.
They do not accept the whole of the Pentateuch of Moses, but suppress certain
passages.
Panarion 38 Epiphanius repeats this statement in Panarion 38.
The Evianites believed that the original Pentateuch of Moses was corrupted by the
lying scribes and contained many falsehoods which, according to them,
were contrary to the nature and character of God.
They claimed that it was the mission of Jesus to purge these falsehoods and
restore the true Pentateuch.
Rabbi Philip Segal, in his book, Judaism, the Evolution of a Faith,
on page 83 states, They regarded him, Jesus, as the last and greatest of the
prophets of Israel who restored a corrupted Torah of Moses to its original
state.
Professor Ferguson, in his book, The Backgrounds of Early Christianity,
on page 578, says of the Evianites, They removed many passages from the Old
Testament as false periscopes, claiming that passages about animal
sacrifice and the monarchy and offensive stories about the patriarchs were
interpolations.
A Jewish encyclopedia, Our Jewish Christian Sex, on page 39 says,
Similarly discarded were all passages of the Bible providing for kingship,
an institution which they abhorred.
All anthropomorphic expressions of God and unpraiseworthy stories about the
representatives of true prophecy, e.g., Adam's sin, Noah's drunkenness,
Abraham and Jacob's polygamy, etc.
Catholic Cardinal Danilu, in his book, The Theology of Jewish Christianity,
on page 64, says of the Evianites, They see Jesus as a reformer of the law
who brings it back to the true ideas of Moses.
As it exists in Judaism, the law seems to them to be mixed with elements of
diabolical origin which are later than Moses'.
From the preachings of Apostle Peter preserved in the Clementine homilies,
where many ideas and beliefs of the Evianites are preserved, we find that
Peter held a very negative opinion of the Jewish scriptures.
In homily 2, chapter 38, Peter says, For the scriptures have had joined to them
many falsehoods against God, after a little the written law had added to it
certain falsehoods contrary to the law of God.
In homily 3, chapter 9, Peter says, Worthy, therefore, of rejection is
everyone who is willing so much as to hear anything against the monarchy of God.
But if anyone dares to hear anything against God as trusting in the scriptures,
let him first of all consider with me that if anyone, as he pleases, form a dogma
agreeable to himself, and then carefully asserts the scriptures, he will be able to
produce many testimonies from them in favor of the dogma that he has formed.
How, then, can confidence be placed in them against God when what every man
wishes is found in them?
A side note is, I've actually said something similar to that before,
where I'd say people can read into the Bible whatever they want to read.
If they believe Jesus is God, then they will read verses to say that Jesus is God.
If they don't believe Jesus is God, they will read verses and see that it does
not say that Jesus is God.
The same Bible, people are using the exact same Bible, it will say different things
to them because people will cling to what they believe.
You have to let go of what you think they should say and you have to trust the Holy
Spirit to lead you to all truth.
Back to the article.
In Homily 2, chapter 52, Peter rejects several well-known passages of the Jewish
Pentateuch which deal with Adam, Noah, Abraham, Jacob, and Moses.
Peter states that these passages which he condemns and rejects are impious
imaginations.
Assuredly, with good reason, I neither believe anything against God nor anything
against the just men recorded in the law, taking for granted that they are impious
imaginations.
For as I am persuaded, neither was Adam a transgressor, who was fashioned by the
hands of God, nor was Noah drunken, who was found righteous above all the
world, nor did Abraham live with three wives at once, who on account of his
sobriety was thought worthy of innumerous posterity, nor did Jacob associate with
four, of whom two were sisters, who was the father of the twelve tribes,
and who intimated the coming of the presence of our Master.
Nor was Moses a murderer, nor did he learn to judge from an idolatrous priest.
He who set forth the law of God to all the world and for his right judgment has been
testified to as a faithful steward.
In Homily 2, Chapter 51, Peter explicitly says,
Peter repeats this assertion in Homily 3, Chapter 50,
And finally, Peter repeats this in Homily 18, Chapter 20, in more elaborate form.
Peter also, he says, wishing to exhibit the cause of their error more distinctly
to them, On this account ye do err, not knowing the true things of the
Scriptures, on which account ye are ignorant also of the power of God.
Wherefore every man who wishes to be saved must become, as the teacher said,
a judge of the books written to try us.
For thus he spake, become experienced bankers.
Now the need of bankers arises from the circumstance that the spurious is mixed
with the genuine.
The statement of Jesus concerning experienced bankers was also known to the
church father, Origen, who quotes it in his commentary on John 19, verse 7.
The Ebionites vigorously repudiated and condemned these teachings, which for them
were blasphemous doctrines.
Catholic Cardinal Danilu, in his book, The Theology of Jewish Christianity,
on page 63, points out,
a point they make very clear, it was at his baptism that a power from God
descended on him.
The Ebionites are radically anti-Trinitarian.
Church historian Eusebius, who lived and wrote in the 4th century, testified that
Ebionites did not believe in the virgin birth of Jesus, and that they denied his
deity.
The heresy of the Ebionites, as it is called, asserts that Christ was born of
Joseph and Mary, and supposes him to be a mere man.
Rabbi Philip Segal, in his book, Judaism, Evolution of a Faith,
on page 82, says,
Encyclopedia of Religion, volume 4, on page 576, states,
He was an exceptional man in the line of Jewish prophets, as described in
Deuteronomy 1815, and denied the virgin birth.
Professor James Dunn, in his book, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament,
on pages 241 and 242, expressly states, One of the most frequently attested
features of Ebionite Christology is their affirmation that Jesus' birth was wholly
natural.
He was the natural son of Joseph and Mary.
Apostle Peter, in the Clementine Homilies, Homilies 16, chapters 15-17, says,
It is the peculiarity of the Father not to have been begotten, but of the Son to have
been begotten.
He who is not the same in all respects as someone cannot have all the same
appellations applied to him as that person.
If the one happens to be self-begotten or unbegotten, they cannot be called the
same.
Nor can it be asserted of him who has been begotten that he is of the same substance
as he is who has begotten him.
Learn this also.
The bodies of men have immortal souls which have been clothed with the breath of
God.
And having come forth from God, they are of the same substance,
but they are not gods.
But if they are gods, then in this way the souls of men, both those who have died and
those who are alive, and those who shall come into being, are gods.
But if, in the spirit of controversy, you maintain that these are also gods,
what great matter is it then for Christ to be called God?
For he has only what we all have.
We call him God, who peculiar attributes cannot belong to the nature of any other.
For as he is called the unbounded because he is boundless on every side,
it must of necessity be the case that it is no other man's peculiar attribute to be
called unbounded.
As another cannot, in like manner, be boundless, but if any one says that is
possible, he is wrong.
For two things boundless on every side cannot coexist.
For the one is bounded by the other.
Thus it is in the nature of things that the unbegotten is one.
And of course I don't believe in eternal souls, because that's a pagan belief and
not found in the Bible.
The Ebionites were strict Unitarians and vigorously opposed the Trinitary dogma.
They believed that there is only one supreme and sovereign God who is truly and
genuinely God.
They argued that even Jesus, who was the greatest of all the prophets, acknowledged
him as God and prayed to him and worshipped him.
The Almighty God and Father of Jesus never prayed to Jesus or ever bowed down in
worship before him.
The Ebionites also rejected the Jewish sacrificial cultists and practiced
vegetarianism.
They also abstained from wine and other intoxicating beverages.
They insisted that Adam was a true prophet and therefore rejected the original sin
dogma of Catholic Christianity.
They maintained that Jesus' mission was strictly to teach and it had nothing to do
with Christian dogma of atonement.
They believed and dogmatically taught that Jesus was murdered by the Jews simply
because they could not accept his views and doctrines and that it had nothing to
do with atonement or paying the penalty for the supposed sin of Adam or that of
his posterity.
When the Ebionites observed the so-called Lord's Supper or Eucharist commemorating
Jesus' death, they did not use wine but only water, proving that they did not
believe in the blood atonement.
Cardinal Danilu, in his book, The Theology of Jewish Christianity, on pages 63-64,
writes to the Ebionites, They also reject any aspect of Christianity which makes it
a religion of salvation.
For them, Christ's mission is simply of teaching.
They see Jesus as a reformer of the law who brings it back to the true idea of
Moses.
As it exists in Judaism, the law seems to them to be mixed with elements of
diabolical origin which are of later dates than Moses'.
The elements to be rejected are primarily the temple worship and in particular the
bloody sacrifices.
Great scholar Dr. Larson, in his book, The Essene Heritage, points out,
It was the basic Essene doctrine that sin did not derive from Adam but from the
activities of the fallen angels known as the Watchers.
Some of the lower angels came to this earth to give instructions.
They became degenerate and could no more ascend to heaven.
This was the Fall, precisely as we learn in Enoch and Jubilees.
This, according to Essene, the Evianite doctrine, was the origin of that dreadful
impiety.
The eating of meat, blood, thus shed, polluted the air with noxious vapors.
Mankind was filled with diseases and death came prematurely and in agony.
The Dictionary of Historical Theology, Art, Evianites, on page 167, points out
that the Evianites rejected Paul's teaching concerning Sodeurology and Blood
Atonement.
He, Jesus, was the true prophet.
C.F.
Deuteronomy 18, 15-22 A second Moses, a teacher and reformer.
He was not a priest.
Rather, he came to abolish the sacrificial cultus and to restore the true spiritual
meaning of the Mosaic Code.
The Pauline construal of the death of Jesus as sacrifice was therefore wrong.
The name Christ was given to Jesus at his baptism when God adopted him as his
messianic prophet.
The Evianites maintained a strong eschatological hope the Son of Man
transfigured into supra-angelic form would return in glory.
The twin foci of Evianite Christology were thus, Baptism and Perugia, not Incarnation
and Atonement.
The Evianites maintained that living water was not the blood of the sacrificial
victim, purified the convert, and was administered for the remission of sins.
They therefore focused on two major doctrines, Baptism and Perugia,
the return of Jesus in glory.
The Catholic Christianity, and later also the Protestant Christianity, focused on
Incarnation, God in the flesh theory, and Atonement, the human sacrifice of
Jesus in order to appease the wrath of God and atone for the sin of Adam.
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Volume 2, Art Evianites,
on page 10, says Jesus was for them the great reformer of the law, whereas Paul
was its distorter.
The Evianites also believed that the grace of baptism put an end to all sacrifices.
The destruction of the temple was brought about by God because of the Jews' refusal
to discontinue the temple's sacrificial system.
Christianity for them was not a religion of salvation.
Jesus came not to save, but to teach.
He stood in a direct line with the great prophet.
Prophetism climaxed in him.
He came after Adam and Moses to reform and purify Judaism.
Man, Myth, and Magic, the Illustrated Encyclopedia of Mythology, Religion,
and the Unknown, Art St. Paul, on page 2152, points out He, Paul,
imagines that before a series of world ages, aeonials, of which present is the
last, God planned to save mankind from their subjection to the Archetones.
The plan took the form of deceiving the Archetones by sending into the world a
preexistent divine being designated the, quote, Lord of Glory, end quote,
who was incarnated in the person of Jesus of Nazareth.
Not recognizing his true nature, the Archetones crucified Jesus and thereby
forfeited their hold over mankind.
The implication of Paul's brief but pregnant statements were worked out by
later Christian theologians into what became the classic form of the doctrine of
salvation.
Paul thus identified Jesus as the incarnation of the, quote, Lord of Glory,
as he interpreted his crucifixion as the climax of God's plan of salvation.
He makes the Archetones responsible for his crucifixion.
By so doing, Paul transformed the original belief in Jesus as the Messiah of Israel
into an esoteric doctrine of a divine savior whose death had delivered mankind
from their enslavement to the planetary powers.
Thus the presentation of Jesus was intelligible to Graco-Roman society.
In thus interpreting Christianity, Paul believed, as we have seen,
that he was inspired by God for the salvation of the Gentiles, to whom the
gospel to the circumcised was both unintelligible and offensive.
When, however, the original Jewish Christians at Jerusalem realized the
nature of Paul's teaching, they were shocked and vigorously repudiated it.
They refused to recognize Paul as an apostle.
He had never been an original disciple of Jesus.
And they sent emissaries of Paul's converse to present their own gospel as
the authentic version of faith.
Church father Epiphanius, in his Panarion 30.16, points out that the Ebionites did
not use wine when they observed the memorial of Yahshua's death.
They have a baptism of initiation and each year they celebrate certain mysteries in
imitation of the Church of the Christians.
In these mysteries they use unleavened bread and, for the other part,
pure water.
Catholic Cardinal Gene Danilu, in his book, The Theology of the Jewish
Christianity, on page 57, comments on the statement of Epiphanius, the reference to
mysteries as evidently concerned with the Eucharist and one detail in particular
should be noticed, the exclusion of the wine.
Church father Epiphanius also testified that the Ebionites rejected the Jewish
sacrificial cultists and that they were in fact vegetarian.
He points out that the Ebionites rejected the biblical passages where it said that
any holy patriarch and therefore true prophet of God ever offered a bloody
sacrifice or ate the flesh of an animal.
They do not accept the whole of the Pentateuch of Moses but suppress certain
passages.
If, in regards to eating of meat, you raise the objection that Abraham
offered a calf to the angels, they say that they do not believe that.
They do not accept the entire Pentateuch of Moses but suppress certain passages
that Abraham, for example, offered a calf with milk to the angels or that Noah,
Isaac, Jacob, or Moses made sacrifice.
Rev.
Finlay, in his book, The Apocryphal Gospels from History of Christianity in
the Light of Modern Knowledge, says of the Ebionites, in practice they
were vegetarians, looking with abhorrence on flesh as food and slaying of animals
for sacrifice.
In his book, Byways in Early Christian Literature, on page 38, Rev.
Finlay says that the Ebionites had an abhorrence of all bloody sacrifices and
the eating of flesh.
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Volume 1, on page 184,
says of the Ebionites, they rejected the Old Testament sacrificial laws and were
vegetarians.
The Catholic Encyclopedia, Art Ebionites, on page 29, says of the Ebionites,
devoted to a life of strictest poverty and community of goods, they practiced
vegetarianism.
From the above references, it is clear that the Ebionites rejected the
sacrificial cultists and that they condemned those who killed animals for
either sacrifice or in order to set a feast on their flesh.
It is also apparent that they rejected the Christian view on soderiology and blood
atonement and the use of wine as an emblem of Jesus' blood, since in their view the
fall did not originate with Adam but rather with the watchers who corrupted all
flesh and introduced men to sacrificial orgies and the eating of animal flesh.
There was another major doctrinal difference between the Ebionites and the
Paulinists or Catholic Christianity.
The Church Fathers and later the Bishops of the Catholic Christianity discarded
God's law and taught that Jesus abolished and abrogated the Mosaic laws altogether.
They maintained that Jesus nailed God's law to the cross and therefore we are no
longer obligated to observe it.
In fact, the Catholic Christianity and even its offshoots, Protestant
denominations, insist that those who obey God's law revealed to Moses on Sinai are
legalists and in bondage.
The Ebionites, however, maintain that every priesthood God originally revealed
to Moses must be observed and that those who reject and nullify the commands
revealed to Moses are apostates from the law and therefore are not and cannot be
God's children.
There seemed to be a contradiction in the Ebionites' stance towards the law of God.
On one hand, they rejected many commands of the Jewish Pentateuch as uninspired and
in fact of diabolical origin, while on the other they maintained that every single
precept of God's law given on Sinai must not be abrogated or discarded.
The contradiction altogether disappears when we realize that the Ebionites
maintained that the law which God gave through Moses did not contain all the
diabolical commands against which they so vigorously argued.
They maintained that the law which God revealed to Moses was the same and
identical spiritual and universal law which God originally gave through Adam,
the true prophet for all humanity.
The Ebionites insisted that neither God changes nor His perfect and universal law.
As far as they were concerned, only the corrupted commands and forgeries
in the Jewish Pentateuch must be rejected and discarded.
All the true and original precepts which originates with God must be observed out
of love and respect towards God and His will, revealed through His eternal and
holy law.
Christian historian Eusebius of the 4th century confirms the fact that the
Ebionites of his day emphasized the so-called Mosaic law, insisting that those
who reject it and therefore keep on transgressing God's law are apostates.
With them, the observance of the law was altogether necessary, as if they could not
be saved only by faith in Christ and a corresponding life.
Church father Hippolytus wrote that the Ebionians assert that the world is made by
the true God.
They live, however, in all respects according to the law of Moses,
alleging that they are thus justified.
The Anti-Nicene Fathers, Vol.
5, p.
147 When Hippolytus says that the Ebionites lived in all respects according
to the law of Moses, he does not mean that they offered sacrifices and killed animals
in order to eat their flesh.
Nor does he mean that they practiced slavery or did some other Mosaic practices
which, in fact, they abhorred and condemned.
He simply means that the Ebionites embraced the Mosaic law, all the commands
which they believed and argued originated with God and are therefore binding on all
humanity.
The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, Art.
Ebionites, on pages 9-10, clearly explains Ebionite position towards the Mosaic law.
Although strict observance of the law was enjoined, not all of the law of Moses was
accepted as valid.
They held that the true law had been adulterated by the addition of certain
falsehoods post-Mosaic in origin.
These had to be purged, because they contained doctrines that were actually
inimicable of Moses' teachings.
Apostle Peter, in Clementine Homilies, Hom.
3, chapters 51-52, explains the Ebionite position on the law which is based on the
teachings of Yahshua.
And also that He, Yahshua, said, I am not come to destroy the law.
And yet that He appeared to be destroying it is the part of one intimating that
things which He destroyed did not belong to the law.
And His saying, The heaven and the earth shall pass away, but one jot or one tittle
shall not pass from the law, intimated that things which pass away before the
heaven and the earth do not belong to the law in reality.
Since then, while the heaven and the earth still stand, sacrifices have passed away,
and kingdoms, and prophecies among those who are born of women, and such like as
not being the ordinances of God.
Peter clearly explains that Jesus believed in and in fact upheld the true law which
Moses originally gave and insisted that His followers must obey every single
command of that law, even those very least.
Matthew 5, 17-20 Jesus only condemned and discarded the commands which did not
originate with God His Father, but were rather of diabolical origin,
written by the lying pen of the scribes.
Jeremiah 8, 8 In Homily 8, chapter 10, Peter says of Adam and the original law
But thus the matter stands, the only good God, having made all things well,
and having handed them over to man, who was made after his image, he who has
been made breathing of the divinity of him who made him, being a true prophet,
and knowing all things, for the honor of the Father who had given all things to
him, and for the salvation of the son born of him, as a genuine father preserving his
affection towards the children born of him, and wishing them for their advantage
to love God and be loved of him.
Showing them the way which leads to his friendship, teaching them by which deeds
of men the one God and Lord of all is pleased, and having exhibited to them the
things that are pleasing to him, appointed a perpetual law to all,
which neither can be abrogated by enemies, nor is vitiated by any impious one,
nor is concealed in any place, but which can be read by all.
The Ebionites maintain that the true and eternal law, with universal implications,
was originally given through Adam.
This law was generally observed by the first seven generations.
In the days of Enoch, the fallen watchers introduced wicked and lewd practices,
and they influenced the vast majority of humanity to follow in their steps.
The true law was rejected and the whole earth was filled with violence.
All flesh corrupted their original ordinances and began to kill each other
and eat one another.
Noah eventually restored the true and eternal law, which was later again
rejected.
Among Sinai, this true and universal law was once again restored through Moses.
However, the law was rejected by the Jews and Israelites, and they walked in the
ways of the pagans.
Jesus finally came as the last and greatest prophet, the prophet promised in
Deuteronomy 18, who once again restored the true and original spiritual law.
This was the law which the Ebionites observed and maintained that all humans
are obligated to obey, especially those who claimed to be the followers of Jesus.
Paul was the one who rejected this law and claimed that Jesus abolished this law,
and then he nailed it to his cross.
He argued that salvation was now apart from the law and was possible only and
solely through faith in Jesus and his atoning blood.
This was the position of Catholic Christianity and virtually all Protestant
Christians.
I found this article on the Ebionites after I recorded the rest of this stuff,
so I'm just going to read this off real quick.
It's on a blog, religionshistory.blogspot .com.
Of course, use your own discernment, you know, pray to not be deceived and
everything.
I'm just reading what I'm studying, and then there's a lot of links here,
so I'll leave the link below to this page, and then you can click on all the links if
you want to study more.
First century Christian Ebionites.
The original Christians?
1.
The Nazarenes The very first followers of Jesus were called the Nazarenes.
This was a general name for the Jewish followers of Christ, but it is unknown to
what extent they were actually Christian.
They must have known and understood many aspects of Jesus, who spoke Aramaic like
the Nazarenes, which are now lost and misunderstood.
From 70 CE, cataclysmic events led to the Nazarenes being dispersed and broken,
which led to their demise, except for a brief resurgence in the second century.
They were eclipsed by Roman converts to Christ, by the Pauline Christians mostly.
Many Gentiles already called the Nazarenes Christians, but we still know little about
them.
The Ebionites are more distinct and had one of the first Christian documents,
the Gospel Matthew.
All Christians were sometimes called Ebionites, although later Christians moved
so far from their roots that they came to no longer recognize them.
2.
Ebionites Initially a sect of Judaism, Christianity first organized itself in
Jerusalem.
However, although Jewish Christianity was dominant at first, within 20 years it had
moved out into the Gentile, non-Jewish world.
Encyclopedia of New Religions, Christopher Partridge, 2004.
2.1.
The First Recognized Christians in Antiquity The first Christians were the
Jews, who believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah.
They used an early Gospel Matthew, and their beliefs are in accordance with
the earliest reports of the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, and with Jewish
prophecy.
The term Ebionite was first a common name for all Christians, as Epiphanius
testifies, and it was used by the Christian bishop, Irenaeus of Lyons,
Gaul, in the late 2nd century to designate a Jewish Christian sect.
Although some later Christians thought that it came from a person called Ebion,
this is not the correct root of the word.
Ebionites may mean austere ones, but the origin of the term is obscure.
2.2.
Ebionite Beliefs The Ebionites justified all their beliefs by the example of Jesus
himself.
He was circumcised, observed the Sabbath, and celebrated the Jewish festivals,
and taught that all the precepts of the law should be observed.
The Ebionite Christians believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah sent from the
Jewish God to the Jewish people, in fulfillment of the Jewish scriptures.
They also believed that to belong to the people of God, one needed to be Jewish.
As a result, they insisted on observing the Sabbath, keeping kosher, and
circumcising all males.
An early source, Irenaeus, also reports that the Ebionites continued reverence to
Jerusalem, evidently by praying in its direction during their daily acts of
worship.
Their insistence on staying, or becoming, Jewish should not seem especially peculiar
from a historical perspective since Jesus and his disciples were Jewish.
But the Ebionites' Jewishness did not endear them to most other Christians,
who believed that Jesus allowed them to bypass the requirements of the law for
salvation.
The Ebionites, however, maintained that their views were authorized by the
original disciples, especially by Peter and Jesus' own brother, James,
head of the Jerusalem church after the resurrection.
Last Christianites, by Bart Ehrman, 2003.
2.3.
Adoptionism.
Christian Adoptionism and the Baptism of Jesus Christ, Centuries of Belief Before
the Trinity, by Vexen Crabtree, 2011.
The Birth of Jesus and the Christmas Story, Pagan and Unhistorical,
by Vexen Crabtree, 2014.
The Ebionites were Adoptionists.
The very first Christians, the Ebionites, Nazareans, Gnostic Christians,
and others, were all Adoptionists.
In accordance with the first hundred years of Christian belief and with the oldest
manuscripts of the Bible, Jesus was born in a normal way, like the rest of us,
to his parents, Joseph and Mary, from the line of David as prophesied.
Jesus kept God's laws so well that on his baptism, God adopted him as his son and
sent him to the cross as a truly innocent, perfect sacrifice to atone for the sins of
all mankind to fulfill promises made in the Jewish scriptures.
God signaled to the world that this sacrifice had been accepted by raising
Jesus from the dead and raising him up directly into heaven.
The doctrine of the virgin birth, so popular amongst Roman mystery religions
and paganism at the time, was never accepted by Adoptionists.
It was only hundreds of years later when the concept of the Trinity was codified by
the Pauline Cappadocian Christians, the Adoptionist beliefs became condemned.
Yet, it represented the truer and original form of Christian belief.
The Crucifixion Facade, by Vexen Crabtree, 2002.
In Pauline Christianity, Jesus died for rather mystical reasons.
It does not make sense to state that Jesus died so that people could know Jesus as
people such as Moses existed before Jesus died on the cross.
Nor does it make sense to say that Jesus died so God could forgive or lower the
wages of sin.
God could do that whatever it pleased.
Evianite Christianity did not suffer these problems.
Animal sacrifices were made to God, but were never perfect.
Only when finally a human who followed the law perfectly sacrificed himself was the
ultimate sacrifice made, thus ending the need for routine animal sacrifices.
This simple and old Christian belief makes a lot of sense, without managing to
introduce further complexities or scriptural contradictions, whereas the
Christianity we know today struggles to explain why Jesus was sacrificed at all.
I'll link Scripture Thoroughly and Clearly Endorses Adoptionism, see the verses here.
And there's a link, like I said, you can check those out.
I find it interesting that the previous stuff that I read to you says that the
Evianites did not believe that there should be any sacrifices, and yet this
person is saying that the Evianites did believe in sacrifices, but until you
sacrificed yourself, then the other sacrifices would be taken away.
I also find it interesting that the Holy Spirit has led me to read the Bible and
understand that we are supposed to be the living sacrifices.
We are supposed to be following after Jesus' own footsteps and be living
sacrifices every day.
We sacrifice our fleshy will and do God's will instead.
So, that actually falls in line with what this is saying about us being the
sacrifices instead of animals being the sacrifices.
Continuing on...
So,
then you can click on that.
The Evianites repeatedly condemned Paul as his preachings gained support because of
his denigration of Jewish law, and the Evianites considered all of his
writings to be dangerous sources of sinful living.
Indeed, for them, Paul was not just wrong about a few minor points.
He was the archenemy, the heretic who had led so many astray by saying that you
could be saved even without keeping the Jewish law, and who forbade circumcision.
Other Christian groups arose who rejected the Jewish foundation of Christianity.
Bart Ehrman and Lost Christianities provide the detailed description of the
history of many early Christian groups.
We know of Christian groups taking stands on Judaism that were at polar ends of the
spectrum.
Some groups insisting that the Jewish law was to be followed for salvation,
and others insisting that the Jewish law could not be followed if one wanted
salvation.
All of these groups claim to be representing the views of Jesus himself.
Lost Christianities by Bart Ehrman, 2008.
The success and popularity of these groups caused the Evianites to be eclipsed,
and the beginnings of the Pauline Christianity as we know it today
flourished.
This developing church and its founders largely forgot and rejected the Jewish
roots of their religion.
But curious Christians later wanted to know things that they did not know.
For example, when was Jesus born?
And when did he die?
So they went in search of their past.
Indeed, when in 160, Bishop Mobito of Sardis went to Judea to discover what had
become of the legendary Jerusalem church, to his dismay, he found not the
descendants of the apostles, but instead a small group of Christians who called
themselves the Evianites, or poor men, who had their own gospel of the Evianites,
and also a gospel of the Hebrews, a gospel of the Twelve Apostles,
and a gospel of the Nazarene.
All of these gospels differed significantly from the gospels of the New
Testament.
The Jewish Mysteries by Timothy Freak and Peter Gandy, 1999.
This is not the only time that church elders went in search of their history
only to discover that what they found was not what they expected.
They did not realize that over time their religion had changed, the same as with all
other religious groups in history.
They discovered that the beliefs of the early Evianite Christians differed from
those of their own developing church.
3.
The Gospel of Matthew About the Gospel of Matthew on holybooks.info, there is a
link.
The Gospel of Matthew became the first book of the New Testament.
Here are some important facts about it.
Time of Authorship.
The Gospel of Matthew was written about the fall of the Jewish Temple in 70 CE in
Syria, probably at around the same time as the Gospel of Luke was written,
as they were unaware of each other's writings.
And almost definitely written before 100 CE, the first two chapters of Matthew,
the virgin birth and the genealogy, were not contained in the first version of
Matthew's Gospel and were added at a later date.
A copy of Mark.
Matthew's Gospel contains 92% of the text of Mark.
This is almost a copy, but Matthew corrected many of Mark's blunders about
Jewish ways of life.
There is a link there.
And proceeded a few versions later to add the chapters about the virgin birth.
Matthew also uses a source that historians call Q, a completely unidentified source
who was supposedly an original disciple of Christ or a friend of Paul, none of whose
work has survived, but which was quoted, copied, used by Matthew and Luke.
Anonymous.
It was not until about 150 CE that the author of Matthew was assigned to the
writing.
In traditional pseudo-pyrographic fashion, the author was based on a historic
character, in this case on Matai, a disciple of Yaishu ben Tanfira,
who lived in Hashemonian times, and whose story has many similarities to
that of Jesus.
See the link there if you want to.
Not written by an eyewitness of Jesus.
We know this because it is a copy of Mark.
No eyewitness of such an important person would have needed or wanted to simply copy
someone else's memories about him.
Matthew staked his writing career on the fact that Jesus was a great man,
divine, and a messiah.
He set out in his writings to prove that Jesus was all these things.
The first two chapters of Matthew, the virgin birth and genealogy,
were not contained in the first version of Matthew's gospel, but were added later by
an unknown editor.
The Ebionites had a very early version of the gospel of Matthew.
There were many versions and editions of the gospels in the early years of
Christianity.
The Ebionites, being such an early group of Christians, had access to the earlier,
less edited version of Matthew.
Their own version of Matthew, however, may have been a translation of the text
into Aramaic.
Jesus himself spoke Aramaic in Palestine, as did his earliest followers.
So it makes sense that a group of Jewish followers of Jesus that originated in
Palestine would continue to cite his words and stories about him in his native
tongue.
It appears likely that this Aramaic Matthew was somewhat different from the
Matthew now in the canon.
In particular, the Matthew used by Ebionite Christians would have lacked the
first two chapters which narrate Jesus' birth to a virgin, a notion that the
Ebionite Christians rejected.
There were doubtless other differences from our own version of Matthew's gospel
as well.
Lost Christianity by Bart Forman, 2003.
Number four.
Pauline Christians edited the gospels to make the Ebionites look wrong.
Early scribes were not beyond editing the text in order to prove their own views or
to disprove the views of others.
When the later Pauline Christians went in search of their own history and discovered
the Ebionites, they found that their Jewish and Adoptionist beliefs were
different than their own.
They could not accept that they were the ones who had deviated from the truth.
So, first they set out to discredit and disprove the Ebionites in literature.
Secondly, they burnt all the Ebionites' books.
Luke was edited in three places.
Luke 2.33 and Luke 2.48 both contain verses that state that Joseph was Jesus'
father.
At least, that is what is said in the older manuscripts.
Verses such as Luke 2.33 supported Ebionite Christians' belief in
Adoptionism.
Strangely, in some later manuscripts, Luke 2.33 and Luke 2.48 both had the word
Father edited out, although over half of our Bibles today have thankfully reverted
to the original version.
Luke 3.22, where God clearly says that He is adopting Jesus, was also edited so that
it did not say so.
This is one proto-Orthodox alteration that proved remarkably successful.
Even though the potentially dangerous, heretical form of the text is found in
virtually all of our oldest witnesses, it is the altered form of the text that is
found in the majority of surviving manuscripts and reproduced in most of our
English translations.
There are a couple of links here.
Later editors mistranslated Isaiah 7.14 in the Septuagint and handily turned the
prophecy that a young woman would have a child to a prophecy that a virgin would
have a child.
This was used heavily in the debate against the Ebionites and other
Adoptionists by later Christians.
5.
Conclusion and the Demise of the Ebionites The Ebionites were some of the original
Christians, Jews who believed that Jesus was Messiah.
They populated the legendary Jerusalem church.
Ebionite was sometimes used as a term to describe all Christians.
Those who we now know of as Pauline Christians opposed the Ebionites,
after discovering them and realizing that their beliefs differed.
Authors such as Tertullian or Ginnida Alexandria and many other intolerant
heresy hunters wrote at great length against the Ebionites.
Many of the claims made against them were based on misunderstandings of their
beliefs, and many anti-Ebionite claims were plainly ridiculous.
Pauline Christians eradicated the Ebionites, burning all of their books,
none survived, and harassing and arresting the people until none were left.
They edited Luke 2.33 and Luke 2.48 where Joseph was twice called the father of
Jesus so that it did not say so, and they also edited Luke 3.22 where it
plainly stated in accordance with Ebionite beliefs that God adopted Jesus.
Pauline Christians, as non-Jewish Romans, handily came across a mistranslated
prophecy that said Jesus would be born of a virgin, like other Roman sons of God,
adding a whole two chapters to the beginning of Matthew to prove their point.
These edits, when they were uncovered, have shown that the Ebionites were treated
very cruelly and unfairly, and that the original readings of Matthew and Luke both
support Ebionite Christianity, rather than the Pauline Christianity that
the West has inherited.
If we were to guess which group was the more austere, holy and godly, we would
have to guess it was the Ebionites rather than the Pauline Christians, who
slaughtered, slandered, and oppressed them.
Unfortunately, the victors get to write history, and it is Pauline Christianity
that became the legacy of the Roman Empire.
After the 4th century, the Ebionites were vanquished.
I'm now going to play a video, this is a mirror of somebody else's video,
and I'll leave the link below.
Nazarene Acts playlist.
That's where you can find everything that he's going to get into, because at the end
of this video, then he's going to get into the next videos.
And if you're as interested as I am, then you might want to check it out.
So I put them all in a playlist, and like I said, the link will be below.
The channel is David H.
Natsari.
Sorry if I didn't pronounce the name very well.
But the link will be below, like I said, and you can check out his channel and that
playlist.
And he discusses the Nazarene Acts.
It's a book.
And if you guys want to check out the book, the link will be below.
There's a PDF for it.
And on that webpage, there's also a book of Enoch and another book, which I haven't
looked at any of these things.
So anyway, I put together the playlist from this channel, and I haven't watched
everything, obviously.
I just put it together because I watched the first video, which is the
introduction, and then I wanted to watch the next video, so I put it in a playlist.
I didn't realize how many there were.
There's a lot.
And I clicked on one random video, so I did watch one of the videos in the
playlist concerning the virgin birth.
He says, the Ebionites did not believe in the virgin birth, but the Nazarenes did
believe in the virgin birth.
So anyway, he does give some commentary on things.
I don't know what he's going to say in all the videos.
I mean, I haven't watched them.
I'm just doing this to study, and I hope that you guys also study to show
yourselves approved to God.
We are supposed to test everything and hold fast to what is true.
And basically, I'm just being led to study, study, study, like I studied the
Trinity last year.
So I'm just kind of in that pattern right now of studying, and so I can't be firm on
what I know and what I don't know.
I just find it interesting that this past year, I was led to vegetarianism.
I was led to following the law, the Moses law.
I know the Bible says that in the end times, we're going to remember ye the law
of Moses.
So I just think it's interesting, some of the stuff that lines up.
Obviously, I was led to find out Jesus wasn't God, because I always believed he
was before this past year.
So I just find it interesting.
I'm going to spend some time, I think, watching the playlist.
You can also check out the PDF, like I said, it's free.
So if you want to check that out, you can.
Shalom.
Today we're going to be talking about a document known as the Recognitions of
Clement.
It's also gone by the name of the Nazarene Acts of the Apostles, or the Teachings of
Peter.
I've also seen it referred to as the Travels of Peter.
So, I'm going to start off by asking a question.
Have you ever wondered this question?
What about the twelve apostles?
What happened to them?
Why don't we know anything about them, really?
We have apostle lists in the New Testament, in the Gospels, that tell us
how Yeshua personally hand-picked his apostles.
He went throughout the countryside of Judea and Galilee, and he found these
particular men that he picked out to be his apostles, his sent ones.
And they were to go out and teach his doctrine and his gospel to the nations.
But we don't know a whole lot about them.
We know a lot about Paul.
We've got a bunch of letters from Paul.
Very long letters.
But the only thing we have from the actual twelve is...
We've got some very short epistles from John.
We've got one epistle from James.
We've got two from Peter, although 2 Peter is widely regarded not to have been
written by Peter.
And that belief goes back as far as the 200's AD.
So it's not a new doctrine or anything that atheist scholars have come up with.
It's something that the church was saying 1,800 years ago.
That 2 Peter was not genuine.
We have the book of Revelation which is written by John.
But for the most part we don't have a whole lot.
We don't know much about them.
We don't really know where they went aside from some Catholic histories that may or
may not be true.
But when it comes to really understanding their doctrine and what did Yeshua...
What was the message that Yeshua gave them to preach?
All we really have is Paul.
So, why don't we know much about them?
Well, for one reason, the original followers of Yeshua were not Christian.
They were, some people say, Jewish.
Although, what exactly Jewish means today is much different than what Jewish may
have meant 2,000 years ago.
They were Hebraic, certainly.
They kept the Torah.
They kept the commandments of Elohim.
And they had the testimony of Yeshua.
But the church, the church itself, rejects the Torah.
Now, they do keep the testimony of Yeshua.
However, they teach that his testimony had to do in a way with the law and freeing us
from the burden of Yeshua's father's commandments.
But, that wasn't the doctrine that was taught by the original followers of
Yeshua.
So, what name did they go by?
Well, most people in the Hebraic Roots Movement knows that they went by the title
of the Nazarenes.
But that's not the only cognomen that they answer to.
They were known as followers of the Way.
They called themselves the Sons of Light.
They saw themselves as the Sons of Righteousness.
Incidentally, many of the same titles that the earliest followers of Yeshua went by
is also the same titles that the group that wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls called
themselves.
And I believe there's a reason for that.
Because the scrolls themselves, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the secretarian
works contained there, were most likely written by the original apostles and their
immediate disciples.
There's a teacher of righteousness that's mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls.
And there's lots of theories as to who exactly he is.
But there's only one person in history that they absolutely fit perfectly based
upon all the information we know about this person.
And that person is James, the brother of Yeshua.
And it's highly likely that the teacher of righteousness was, in fact, the brother of
the Master.
So why don't we know more about these twelve apostles?
What other names do they go by?
Well, the one I want to focus on today is the Ebionites.
Or, in English, it would be the poor.
Ebionim being the Hebrew word for poor.
The Ebionites, we don't know a whole lot about them.
Most of the information that we have comes from heresiologists.
They were men that wrote against the groups that believed in Yeshua who were
not part of the church.
So basically, for instance, we've got a lot of information about the Ebionites
from a church historian known as Epiphanius in his work, the Panarion.
Now, keep in mind, Epiphanius was a... essentially, he was a company man.
He was a Catholic, or at least he was a member of the church that eventually
evolved into the Catholic Church.
The purpose of his writing was not necessarily to teach truth so much as it
was to protect the orthodoxy.
And so, in his writings, anything that does not fit with the official church line
or the official church doctrine, in his mind, is a heresy.
So, I'm going to read through some of his quotes.
He has an extensive chapter on the Ebionites in his book.
But I'm just going to go over a few key pieces of information.
Mostly because if we go through too much of this information, it's hard to really
understand what he's writing about.
Because in his writings, he is trying so hard to demonize this group.
But he makes several key admissions.
Now, you'll notice here, this is the beginning of chapter 30 of the Panarion.
Chapter 29 was about the Nazarenes.
So, he's flowing right into the Ebionites.
And he says at the beginning of the chapter, Following these, which is the
Nazarenes, and holding views like theirs, Ebion, the founder of the Ebionites,
arose in the world in his turn as a monstrosity with many forms, and
practically represented on himself the snake-like form of the mythical
many-headed Hydra.
He was of the Nazarene school, but preached and taught other things than
they.
So, right away you see the tone of his letter, or his book, is completely against
the Ebionites.
He calls this person, their founder Ebion, a snake like a many-headed Hydra.
Now, in reality, there was no Ebion.
The Ebionites are not named after a man named Ebion.
But, for whatever reason, Epiphanius is asserting that they are.
And he is attacking this person, Ebion.
However, as we go on, you'll see that he admits who the Ebionites say founded them.
And it's very revealing.
So, we'll jump down a couple of paragraphs.
And he says,
Okay, so what does this mean?
Well, every time that you read a historical reference to James,
whether it's Hegasypis, or Epiphanius, or Eusebius, Hippolytus, there's this
association with James and the poor.
Now, using translations, they pick and choose how they're going to translate this
word, the poor, because they want to disassociate James with the Ebionites.
So, when they say that in their writings, they, of course, translate the word
Ebionim into Greek, so it shows up as the poor, not the Ebionim.
Same thing with English.
They translate it into English as the poor, rather than leaving it as the
Ebionites.
Because they don't want to associate James with this group.
However, here you can see this admission by Epiphanius that the Ebionites were very
much associated with James.
So, James, according to several historical references we have, was a lifelong virgin.
And, originally, the Ebionites practiced celibacy, but once they moved out of
Jerusalem, they actually forbid celibacy, because they realized that if they did not
have children, then their movement was eventually going to die out.
So, we'll go on to the next reference.
He says that their origin, the Ebionites' origin, came after the fall of Jerusalem,
for since practically all who had come to faith in Christ had settled in Perea,
then in Pella, a town in the Decapolis.
The Gospel mentions, which is near Botania and Bishantas, as they have moved there
and were living there.
Now, this is a very well-known event.
Just prior to the destruction of Jerusalem, in or around 66 Common Era,
the early church, we'll call them church, the early assembly in Jerusalem were
warned by a prophet to flee the city.
And so, at their first opportunity, they left the city of Jerusalem,
because they knew it was about to be destroyed.
And they went to Pella.
So, if you were to go to Google and type in the flight to Pella, you'll get all
kinds of information about this.
This is a well-known historical event, that the original followers of Yeshua fled
to Pella before the destruction of Jerusalem.
Now, notice that he's admitting that the Ebionites originated out of Pella,
which was the same area where the original apostles went to.
Moving on, he says, they too accept the Gospel according to Matthew, like the
Corinthians and the Morinthians.
They too use it alone.
They call it according to the Hebrews.
And it is true to say that Matthew expounded and preached the Gospel in the
Hebrew language, and Alphabet in the New Testament.
So, okay, this is a bit of a legendary book.
The Gospel according to the Hebrews.
We've got several references to it.
Jerome quotes out of it.
Supposedly, he even translated it into Latin.
It's also mentioned by Origen, and several other historians.
I mean, it's a well-known book.
However, it's been lost.
Or some may say it was destroyed by the church.
But what this was, it was a Hebrew Gospel, very similar to the Gospel of Matthew.
In fact, many people who look into the Gospel according to the Hebrews believe it
to be the original Gospel.
And that it was translated into Greek.
And somewhat changed, and that became what we know as the Gospel of Matthew.
So, here's an admission that the Ebionites used the Gospel according to the Hebrews.
Which is widely regarded to be the original, very first of the Synoptic
Gospels.
And he says, but they used certain other books as well.
Supposedly, the so-called Travels of Peter, written by Clement.
Though they corrupt the contents while leaving a few genuine passages.
So, here you see that this is the book that we're going to be studying in this
series of studies I'm going to try to put together.
He's speaking about what has become known as the Nazarene Acts of the Apostles.
Or the Pseudo-Clementine Recognitions.
This is the book that we're going to be reading.
But he admits here that this is actually an Ebionite document.
And in fact, in the Recognitions of Clement in the Nazarene Acts, it in itself
says that it's written by Clement.
And that Clement was sending this information.
He was sending his writings to James.
So, we have within the Nazarene Acts of the Apostles, Clement tells us that he's
sending it to James.
And that James is associated with the Ebionites.
And then, a couple hundred years later, when Epiphanius was writing about this,
he mentions that they have this book.
So, you can see how the whole series of possession goes.
From Clement, sent to James, from James to the Ebionites, and now it's being
mentioned by Epiphanius.
He says, Nor are they ashamed to accuse Paul here with certain fabrications of
their false apostles' villainy and imposture.
They say he was a Tarsian, which he admits himself and does not deny, and they
suppose that he was of Greek parentage, taking the occasion for this from the same
passage because of his frank statement, I am a man of Tarsus, a citizen in no mean
city.
They then claim that he was a Greek and a son of a Greek mother and Greek father,
and that he went up to Jerusalem and stayed there for a while, desired to marry
a daughter of the high priest, and had therefore become a proselytite and
been circumcised.
But since he still could not marry that sort of girl, he became angry and wrote
against circumcision and against the Sabbath and the legislation.
So, this in itself is probably, to most of you, a very controversial
statement.
And this is something that I hope to get into somewhat throughout this study.
There are many people out there on YouTube and Facebook that spend a lot of time
bashing Paul and calling him a false apostle.
And the majority of what they say is really nothing other than slander.
I'm personally not interested in slander.
I'm not interested in, you know, just going out vindictively to destroy
Paul's reputation.
That being said, if Paul is a false apostle, do we not need to know that?
And that's the key.
You know, most people don't even want to look at it.
They don't want to think about the fact that Paul might be a false apostle.
But how would we know?
Well, I would say that the best way to know would be to know what do the original
apostles feel about Paul.
In the book of Acts, we're given the impression that things were favorable
between himself and the other apostles, including James.
However, if you look at Paul's epistles, you begin to think that maybe there was a
different story there.
Personally, after coming to this information about the Abianites and
studying it, and studying a number of different historical documents,
what I believe happened was, I believe that initially, Paul was part of their
movement.
That at first, when he first had his conversion, they accepted him.
They believed that he was teaching the same doctrine that they were.
But over time, I think that either Paul changed his doctrine, or possibly they got
to know a little bit more about Paul, and realized he was teaching something
contrary to what they were.
And I'll let you make your decision yourself about that.
I do think, though, if there is a possibility that Paul was a false apostle,
you owe it to yourself to study that out.
Now, Paul is not mentioned in the recognitions of Clement by name.
He does appear in there.
He's not mentioned by name.
But, the recognitions of Clement gives you another version of the incident where
there was a riot started in the temple.
And in the book of Acts, it ends with the stoning of Stephen.
And immediately afterwards, Paul is sent with letters after the assembly to chase
them down in Damascus.
In the Nazarene Acts of the Apostles, you have the same story, only more
detailed.
And instead of attacking and stoning Stephen, there is an injury done to James
by this unnamed person, who is clearly Paul.
Based upon the comparison between the story in Acts and the story in the
Nazarene Acts.
It's obviously Paul that attacks James.
And immediately after that, this unnamed person is sent with letters to pursue the
Apostles to Damascus.
Again, perfectly fits Paul.
So, we know that it is Paul.
In fact, if you were to go and buy this book, it will probably tell you in the
footnotes that the unnamed person is Paul.
So, Paul appears in the Nazarene Acts, but he is never mentioned by name.
But a lot of the doctrines that Peter argues against in the Nazarene Acts of the
Apostles are clearly Pauline doctrine.
So, before you shut this off and say, I'm not going to listen to this because I
like Paul.
Again, I ask you to please think about it and ask yourself, if Paul was false,
do I have a duty to study that out for myself?
I'm not here to bash Paul.
I'm not here to try and come up with different ways to slander him and
different unfounded arguments.
However, I really feel like the remedy for the argument is not to debate it
endlessly, but to honestly go back and study history and to look at what the
other Apostles said.
What literature do we have from there?
What references do we have from historians?
And then use all the evidence to form your conclusion, not just based upon slander
and opinions.
And honestly, if you really want to study it out, I think you can come to a pretty
good picture of what's going on in the New Testament between Paul and the other
Apostles.
So, one final slide before we get into the Nazarene Acts.
Epiphanius says that he, being an Ebion, this fictitional founder of the Ebionites,
that he is making a completely false accusation that accusation is against
Paul.
This horrid serpent with his poverty of understanding, for Ebion translated from
Hebrew to Greek means poor.
For truly he is poor in understanding, hope, and actuality, since he regards
Christ as a mere man, and thus has come to hope with him in the poverty of faith.
They themselves, if you please boastful, claim they are poor, because they sold
their possession in the Apostles' time and laid them at the Apostles' feet,
and went over to a life of poverty and renunciation, and thus they say they are
called poor by everyone.
So, again you see that Epiphanius is making sure that he is constantly bashing
Ebion and the Ebionites.
However, he admits pretty openly here that the Ebionites themselves claim,
in his word, that they are poor because they sold their possessions to the
original Apostles.
So again, there is no proof, there is no evidence anywhere, aside from what
Epiphanius is saying, that there was ever this person named Ebion.
Ever.
But even in the Epistle of James, you see him associating himself with the
poor, with the Ebionites.
And you hear Paul is told to make sure he remembers the Ebionites.
So, we got these references to the poor in the New Testament.
And the Ebionites themselves are telling Epiphanius, he is having some sort of a
communication with Ebionites, and they are telling him that no, we were not founded
by Ebion, we were founded by the Apostles.
And that is why we are called Ebionites, not because of Ebion, some guy named
Ebion.
So, that is what we have from Epiphanius.
You can also find information on them from Hippolytus, and Eusebius, and other
heresiologists.
Just keep in mind, whatever you read about them, you have got Catholic, Christian,
the official church is not going to have anything favorable to say about the
Ebionites, or the Nazarenes, or any of the original followers of Yeshua.
Because they have got an agenda to protect.
Alright, so, Hidden Truth.
This is in the Recognitions of Clement.
It tells the story of Clement meeting Peter.
It contains authentic teachings of Simon Peter.
It also contains authentic letters between James, Peter, and Clement.
Peter is portrayed as debating Simon Magus, and I will let you be the judge of
this, but I think he was actually debating Paul.
Because a lot of the doctrines of Simon Magus seem to be very Pauline.
It contains lost Ebionite doctrines.
Some of these lost doctrines that you hear mentioned by people like Epiphanius,
there is a belief called the Primal Atom Doctrine.
Which basically is that Yeshua was going to be like a second atom.
And of course you see that mentioned and alluded to in the New Testament a couple
of times.
And that is what is meant by the Son of Adam, or the Son of Man.
Is that he was a type and shadow of like a repeat of Adam.
He was sent to restore what Adam had destroyed.
There is also a doctrine known as the Standing One, or the Standing Man
Doctrine.
Where Messiah, one of the titles for Messiah is the Standing Man.
And when you see a character, you see this in the New Testament, you even see it back
in the Torah.
That when someone is said that they stand up, or they straighten themselves up.
That what they are doing is they are essentially doing some sort of act of
righteousness.
Righteousness or restoration or redemption.
And so this is what you would expect from the Messiah.
You expect him to be, by standing up, he is there to restore righteousness and
justice.
Now this Ebionite Doctrine, they are all contained within the Nazarene Acts of the
Apostles.
Which is proof that it is a genuine document.
It is not something that was written in the 300's or 400's.
Or in the medieval time, like some people say.
But it was actually written right after the destruction of Jerusalem.
And some of the story line is likely fictional.
I think somebody took the teachings of Peter and took the letters of Clement.
And put them together and then added a bit of a story line to it.
Especially later in the book.
To basically turn it into a novel.
But because they did that, they were able to preserve these teachings that we have
from Peter.
And I really think that if they had not put this into the novel form.
And had not added the story line to it to make it sound like some kind of romantic
novel.
Then we probably wouldn't have this work today.
But because they did that, they were able to preserve and protect the teachings of
Peter.
If you want to get a copy of this document, you can go to the web address at
the top of your screen.
And this page will take you to the home page of the where to start area of
JacksonSnyder.com And right there on that screen there is a PDF that you can click
on and get the PDF for free.
If you want to order a print copy of it, there is links on JacksonSnyder.com.
Where you can go to his Lulu store and you can order a print on demand version of it.
You will have to pay for that, I think it is around $25.
This is a book that you want imprinted for.
This is something you want to be able to highlight and put notes in and flip
through and refer back to.
This book is going to bless you tremendously if you will actually take the
time to read it.
It has so much information in it.
It answers so many questions about what Yeshua taught and what Peter taught and
what the apostles believed.
I highly, highly, highly recommend getting a print copy of this.
But, like I said, the PDF version is there for free.
So you can get it for free and read it yourself.
So, well, that is it.
From this point forward, the next video I put up, I am just going to start from
chapter 1.
And we will make our way through the book and we will take it one chapter at a time.
A chapter in this book is just a paragraph.
So we will go paragraph after paragraph and we will read it and see what sticks
out in the reading.
And if you get yourself a copy of the PDF, you can read along too.
So, thank you for listening and I hope you choose to continue.
Shalom.