Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects and Gospels

Download or read book Recovering Jewish-Christian Sects and Gospels written by Petri Luomanen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2011-11-25 with total page 310 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The mystery of lost, apocryphal Jewish-Christian gospels has intrigued scholars for centuries. Scholars have also debated whether the Ebionites with their low Christology or the more “orthodox” Nazarenes are the genuine successors of the early Jerusalem church. This book provides a fresh assessment of the patristic sources and the scholarly theories on the number and contents of Jewish-Christian gospels. A new approach, the study of indicators of Jewish-Christian profiles, shows the artificial nature of the church fathers’ heretical discourse, bringing forth previously neglected connections between various Jewish-Christian movements. This book also challenges the widely accepted theory of three Jewish-Christian gospels bringing the Gospel of the Hebrews closer to its synoptic cousins—not, however, as a witness of the earliest Jesus traditions but as a post-synoptic composition.