Identity of Jesus

Sect of Judæo-Christians of the second to the fourth century. They believed in the Messianic character of Jesus, but denied his divinity and supernatural origin; observed all the Jewish rites, such as circumcision and the seventh-day Sabbath; and used a gospel according to Matthew written in Hebrew or Aramaic, while rejecting the writings of Paul as those of an apostate (Irenæus, "Adversus Hæreses," i. 262; Origen, "Contra Celsum," ii. 1; Eusebius, "Hist. Eccl." iii. 27; Hippolytus, "Refutatio Hæresium," vii. 34; Jerome, Commentary on Isaiah, i. 3, 12; on Matt. xii. 13). Some Ebionites, however, accepted the doctrine of the supernatural birth of Jesus, and worked out a Christology of their own (Origen, l.c. v. 61) .www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=22&letter=E

The original Gnosticism that predated Christianity was a philosophical system built on Greek philosophy that taught matter was evil and the Spirit was good. According to the Gnostic world- view, the created order was evil, inferior, and opposed to the good. God created the first order, but each successive order was the work of anti-gods, archons, or a demiurges (a subordinate deity). These spheres are ruled by archons who guard their spheres by barring the souls who are seeking to ascend from the realm of darkness and captivity which is below, to the realm of light which is above. This was done by spiritual knowledge or experience, we identify it today as enlightenment.

They taught a docetism which promoted a clear separation between the material and spiritual world. Some of the Christian Gnostics said since matter was evil God could not really incarnate in a human body He was not subject to any human experiences or feelings. The Christian form of docetism taught that Jesus body was not a real body, was really a (spirit) phantom. he only appeared in human form and only appeared to suffer, it was an illusion. Thus Jesus could be a pure spiritual being in the midst of an evil world and not be contaminated by it. Jesus only appeared to have flesh which denied his genuine humanity. They believed if Christ suffered he could not be divine, (this was an integral part of Gnosticism) because God cannot suffer. Instead the Bible says that God descended into sinful matter and took on human flesh, it was real, this they could not believe. You can see this error in the cults today when they refuse to believe the Bible teaches God became a man. And that the resurrection was a spirit body and not the flesh. The Bible teaches that the body that emerged from the tomb Sunday morning was the exact same body that went into the tomb except it was glorified.