He affirmed that Christ is not God, but a simple man; the more moderate currents, on the other hand, also admitted their divine origin This heresy comes, in the first century, from the influence of the Judaizers (they wanted to interpret Christianity according to Judaism without correctly taking into account the fullness of the revelation in Christ).
Called Ebionites, also called Nazarenes because of their ideal of poor life and who, based on a rigid one-person monotheism, denied the divinity of Christ for being unable to conceive a single divine substance in various people. The Ebionites spread from Persia to Syria. They used a special gospel, called the "Gospel of the Hebrews," about whose precise identity scholars are currently arguing. The heresy of the Ebionites affirmed that Christ is not God, but a simple man; the more moderate currents, on the other hand, also admitted their divine origin.
They rejected St. Paul's teaching and considered him an apostate for having betrayed Hebraism by placing Christ's teaching above the Mosaic law. Many Ebionites made mistakes from Gnosticism, including Cerinto. Cerinthus, probably an Egyptian Jew, argued, assuming Gnostic elements, that the world had not been created by the omnipotent God, who transcended all that exists, but by a demiurge inferior to Him who would be the Christ. He accepted only the Gospel according to Saint Matthew and maintained that Jesus was a human being born of Mary and Joseph, who had received the "Christ" in baptism as a type of divine virtue that revealed him to God and gave him the power to do miracles; This virtue was removed from his body at the time of his death. The ideas of Cerinthus and his followers were rejected by the Church. According to Saint Irenaeus in his Adversus omnes Haereses, Saint John wrote his Gospel to refute the numerous errors sustained by Cerinthus.
Although the importance of the observance of Jewish law was diminishing, the Christological question became crucial. Estimating Christ as mere man was specifically considered an Ebionite. Origen (Contra Celsum v. 61) distinguished between two branches of Ebionites, those who denied and those who accepted the virgin birth, but of both he says that they rejected Paul's letters (Contra Celsum, L 65). The two groups of ebionites who lived in the vicinity of the Dead Sea had little influence on the nascent Catholic Church. The case was different with the third group, the Gnostic syncretistic Jewish Christians, whom only Epiphanius calls ebionites, although he knew other factions related to them. Those Ebionites represented a syncretistic Judaism that combined theosophical speculation with ascetic tendencies.
Pagan elements derived from Asian religions, combined with Jewish monotheism; the Old Testament became the object of criticism, some parts being eliminated and the angelic powers having a great role. That type of Judaism, by absorbing Christian elements, became syncretistic Jewish Christianity. Jesus was just a man on whom the Holy Spirit descended in the form of a dove at his baptism, making him a prophet. Circumcision and daily ablutions were important, they rejected sacrifices, and the Old Testament was only partially recognized. Christianity was the modified mosaic covenant and Paul was fought and rejected.