He also reports on the teachings of other deviant movements, such as those of Simon Magus, Menander, Satornil (or Saturninus) of Antioch, Basilides, Carpocrates, Marcellina, Cerinthus, Cerdo, Marcion of Sinope, Tatian, and the Ebionites.
Some bore the title Ebionites, "the poor" (compare Matthew 5 3), and did not accept the tradition that Jesus was born of a virgin.
A similar speculative Christology was found among the primitive Ebionites of Judaea; in Theodotus and Artemon of Rome (both of whom were excommunicated); and perhaps in other early Christian writers (and suggested by phrases in the New Testament, such as Acts 2 36).
In searching for an essence of truth and the way of salvation, some primitive Jewish Christian groups, such as the Ebionites, and occasional theologians in later ages employed a metaphor of adoption.
The Ebionites were vegetarians, and believed that Jesus was too.
His non-existence is the perfect illustration of how the mainstream church failed to understand the Ebionites, and with them their own roots.
Writers dismissing the Ebionites started around 200 CE to assume that if there were Ebionites there must have been an Ebion, and they countered his errors.
The movement he founded, the Ebionites, did exist.
The Ebionites were largely Jewish and remained attached to Jerusalem while the mainstream church spread throughout the Roman Empire.
The fact is that "the Ebionites" simply meant "the poor", it's the Hebrew word evyonim.
