Excerpt from An Illustration of the Method of Explaining the New Testament by the Early Opinions of Jews and Christians Concerning Christ Observations on the interpretation of the words of the New Testament. (i) By the Jews. (2) The great body of Jewish Christians. (3) The Ebionites. (4) The Gentile Christians. 2. Claim of Simon Magus to identity with Christ. To support this claim, he judged it necessary to assert his own Divinity. The first Gnostical sects denied the human nature of Christ altogether. Correction of their errors by the Sacred Writers and the Apostolical Fathers. In correcting the errors of those, who contended for the simple Divinity of Christ, the Apostles and primitive Fathers must some times have asserted that Christ was a man only, if they had intended to teach the doctrine of his simple humanity. No declaration to this effect is to be found in the New Testament; or in any Christian writing in the first century after the establishment of Christianity.. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.