EBIONITES AND BOOK ASCENTS OF JAMES

“Ascents of James” (Epiphanius, Pan. haer. 30.16.6-9)
Anonymous [A False Proselyte] (third century?)

By: Scribe Valdemir Mota de Menezes:
Truly the charges and the craziest interpretations are not privileges of our generation. At other times people who came for various reasons were delirious with theories and assumptions without any rational or historical foundation. There are many people who are antagonistic in nature. They only feel complete and happy if they are contradicting each other.

They [sc. the Ebionites] invoke other acts of apostles, in which are many
things full of impiety, which they use primarily to arm themselves against the truth. They also produce certain pilgrimages 1 and expositins, namely in "The Ascents of James," pretending that James spoke against the Temple and the sacrifices and against the fire of the altar, and many other things full of empty talk. So also, in the same place, they are not ashamed to slander Paul, using certain charges trumped up y the malice and error of their pseudo-apostles. They say that he was not only a citizen of Tarsus, as he himself admits and does not deny, but also of Greek origin, basing this on the passage in which Paul candidly says, "I am a Tarsan, citizen of no mean city" [Acts 21.:39]. Then they declare that he was a Greek, child of a Greek mother and a Greek father. He went up to Jerusalem, they say, and when he had spent some time there, he was seized with a passion to marry a daughter of the priest. For this reason he became a proselyte and was circumcised. Then, when he failed to get the girl, he flew into a rage and wrote against circumcision and against Sabbath and Law.