Group
An early Jewish-Christian sect that kept the Jewish law and held that Jesus was a man chosen by God; some writers compare their view to the Quran’s.
What it means
The Ebionites (“the poor”) are known mainly from Church writers such as Irenaeus and Epiphanius. They followed Jesus as the Messiah and kept the Torah, and some denied his virgin birth and divinity. They were later condemned as heretics.
Often misunderstood as
That the Quran’s account of Jesus comes from the Ebionites.
What the sources say
Some scholars have proposed a link, and Muslims reject it. The Quran affirms the virgin birth (3:47, 19:20), which the Ebionites generally denied, and it does not describe Jesus as a Jewish sect’s teacher. Its portrait of Jesus is the Quran’s own, and Muslims hold that it comes from God.