Géza Vermes, is a renowned biblical scholar of the early 20th century, known for his work on the Dead Sea Scrolls and the historical Jesus. He presented the late first century C.E. Jewish Christian Didache, also known as “The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles” (an early Christian text that likely originated in the 2nd century, possibly in Egypt or Syria), as the main source of the early Christian beliefs of Jesus’ nature and teaching, portraying the latter as a devote Jew to Mosaic Law. This book refutes the contemporary interpretations on Jesus as a founder of a separate cult apart of Judaism. In some even passages of the New Testament, Jesus appears as an Anti-Semitic attacking the Pharisees and whoever refuses to believe in him.
This early book (Didache), which in Greek means “teaching”, except of the observance of the Mosaic Law and the love of God, focuses on the love of each other, the baptism and the recitation of “Our Father”, but what strikes in it, is that Jesus is treated as charismatic prophet, referring to him with the term “pais” (παις), a Greek word for “servant or child”, rather than the “Son of God.”
But it is not the only document that gives us a different image of the early Christianity! The early second century Epistle of Barnabas, shows a distinct gentile Christianity, also apparent in the Gnostic Gospels and its presentation of the Hebrew Bible as allegory instead of covenantal fact.
According to Vermes, after Hadrian’s suppression of the Second Jewish Revolt, the Yeshua’s disciples became a minority group in the Church and the latter as a “new distinct religion” discarded of every Jewish trait, at that point, as to give to Yeshua, a Greek Nick-name, that of “Jesus-Christ” and to refute the observance of the Sabbath, the animal sacrifices, the Deuteronomic and Leviticus’ laws and the circumcision. It is more than obvious that the “Church” was Romanized, infiltrated by the ancient Greek theology and literature. Stoicism, Platonism, Aristotelianism, Orphism, Thoth-Hermetism, were some of the influences that shaped the New Church, which according to scholars was “paganized”.
There are very few sources about what happened to Jesus’ followers in the first few decades after his death and they were probably expelled from Palestine for having followed a revolutionary who had been considered a dangerous threat to the state. Besides, in the apocryphal Gospel of Mary and Pistis Sophia, we find clear references of different opinions, mainly between Andrew and Peter, Jesus’ main disciple and Mary Magdalene, not forgetting that his own family did not accept his teaching when he was still alive.
The Ebionites (like the Cerinthians and in the Gospel of the infancy of Jesus), to whom Mary’s family belonged, called Jesus the son of Joseph and the myth that the Holy Ghost impregnated Mary, was unknown to the early Christians and was borrowed later from the Greeks (see Bible for learners vol 3 p 57), namely from the birth of Hercules, or of Krishna, or elsewhere, because the word “spirit” in Hebrew is of feminine gender. Eusebius speaking of the Ebionites (The Poor) tells us that they considered Joseph and Mary as a mere and common couple, as other common men (see Eusebius Ecclesiastical History book 3 ch 24).
The Ebionites or Nazarenes were rejected by the Jews as apostates and by the Romans and Christians as heretics. Note, that the early Jesus’ Christians were called, “The Way”, “The Nazarenes”, the “Poor” (Ebionites), or “The Fools”. Proofs are in Acts 24:5, where it is stated that “We have found this man to be a troublemaker, stirring up riots among the Jews all over the world. He is a ringleader of the Nazarene sect”. The Carpocratians held the same beliefs with the Ebionites. Almost all the early sects of Christianity belonged to the Gnostics (see Lardner’s Works “History of the Christian Church”, vol 8 p 395) who asserted that “All the ancients and even the apostles themselves, held the same beliefs and that the knowledge of the Gospels was preserved until the time of Victor the 13th Bishop of Rome (189-199), but by his successor Zephyrinus 15th Bishop of Rome (199-217), the truth had been corrupted (see Lardner’s Works “History of the Christian Church” vol 8 p 395).
See my previous post…. https://breakingnewsandreligion.online/2025/11/02/the-jesus-disciples-were-called-the-way-or-the-nazarenes/
The Nazarenes, also known as Nasoraeans or Mandaeans, shared similarities in their religious practices and beliefs. They are also known for their reverence for John the Baptist who was considered by them as a true prophet, while the latter considered Jesus, as a false.
How unlikely is it Jesus to have founded his own heresy among the Mandaeans, since he was baptized by John the Baptist? In which cult and god’s name was he baptized, since Christianity didn’t exist at that time, rather than in John’s heresy who venerated the pagan deity Hayyi Rabbi? Which then heresy belongs today Christianity to and who has finally founded it?
Δεσμώτης
Article URL : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandaeism