Gospel of the Ebionites closely with the lost "Gospel of the Twelve". It shows no dependence on the Gospel of John and is similar in nature to the harmonized gospel sayings based on the Synoptic Gospels used by Justin Martyr, although a relationship between them, if any, is uncertain. There is a similarity between the gospel and a source document contained within the Clementine "Recognitions" (1.27–71), conventionally referred to by scholars as the "Ascents of James", with respect to the command to abolish the Jewish sacrifices. Epiphanius is believed to have come into possession of a gospel that he attributed to the Ebionites when
God Is Not Great conceive, and bear a son" (see ), pointing out where the stories converge, Old Testament to New. Comparing the Testaments, he considers the New Testament "also a work of crude carpentry, hammered together long after its purported events, and full of improvised attempts to make things come out right". He points out that, while H. L. Mencken considered some of the New Testament events to be historically verifiable, Mencken maintained that "most of them ... show unmistakable signs of having been tampered with". Hitchens also outlines the inaccuracy in Luke's attempt to triangulate three world events of the time with