contains still more violent maledictions
than those of the Gospel against the world, the rich, and the
powerful.[2] Luxury is there depicted as a crime. The "Son of man," in
this strange Apocalypse, dethrones kings, tears them from their
voluptuous life, and precipitates them into hell.[3] The initiation of
Judea into secular life, the recent introduction of an entirely
worldly element of luxury and comfort, provoked a furious reaction in
favor of patriarchal simplicity. "Woe unto you who despise the humble
dwelling and inheritance of your fathers! Woe unto you who build your
palaces with the sweat of others! Each stone, each brick, of which it
is built, is a sin."[4] The name of "poor" (_ebion_) had become a
synonym of "saint," of "friend of God." This was the name that the
Galilean disciples of Jesus loved to give themselves; it was for a
long time the name of the Judaizing Christians of Batanea and of the
Hauran (Nazarenes, Hebrews) who remained faithful to the tongue, as
well as to the primitive instructions of Jesus, and who boasted that
they possessed amongst themselves the descendants of his family.[5] At
the end of the second century, these good sectaries, having remained
beyond the reach of the great current which had carried away all the
other churches, were treated as heretics (_Ebionites_), and a
pretended heretical leader (_Ebion_) was invented to explain their
name.[6]

[Footnote 1: See, in particular, Amos ii. 6; Isa. lxiii. 9; Ps. xxv.
9, xxxvii. 11, lxix. 33; and, in general, the Hebrew dictionaries, at
the words:

[Hebrew: evion, dal, ani, anav, chasid, ashir, holelim,
aritz].]

[Footnote 2: Ch. lxii., lxiii., xcvii., c., civ.]

[Footnote 3: _Enoch_, ch. xlvi. 4-8.]

[Footnote 4: _Enoch_, xcix. 13, 14.]

[Footnote 5: Julius Africanus in Eusebius, _H.E._, i. 7; Eus., _De
situ et nom. loc. hebr._, at the word [Greek: Choba]; Orig., _Contra
Celsus_, ii. 1, v. 61; Epiph., _Adv. Haer._, xxix. 7, 9, xxx. 2, 18.]

[Footnote 6: See especially Origen, _Contra Celsus_, ii. 1; _De
Principiis_, iv. 22. Compare Epiph., _Adv. Haer._, xxx. 17. Irenaeus,
Origen, Eusebius, and the apostolic Constitutions, ignore the
existence of such a personage. The author of the _Philosophumena_
seems to hesitate (vii. 34 and 35, x. 22 and 23.) It is by Tertullian,
and especially by Epiphanes, that the fable of one _Ebion_ has been
spread. Besides, all the Fathers are agreed on the etymology, [Greek:
Ebion] = [Gr