Early Jewish-Christian groups.

The different early Jewish-Christian groups mentioned in Early Church writings are often confused with each other, some of that confusion may begin witch the Greek and Latin fathers themselves not always treating them as different.  Nazarenes, Ebonites and Hebrews are three names that get thrown around.

The Nazarenes according to most references were not guilty of any major Heresies, they had the entire New Testament, they viewed Jesus as the Son of God and The Messiah, and believed in The Virgin Birth, and they did not reject Paul.  They were viewed as outside of Orthodox Christianity only because they kept Torah.

The Ebonites didn't believe Jesus was Divine, used only an altered version of Matthew, and rejected Paul as well as the Virgin Birth.

The name Nazarenes is Biblically used of Believers in Acts 24:5, but it is of outside origin just as much as the name Christian was.  Contrary to how some people present it, I feel the origin of the name Christians in Acts 11 at Antioch is presented positively.

A website called NazareneJudaism.Com claims the Nazarene sect were the True Church and seek to identify themselves as the heirs to that group.  They have a lot of good information, but I also have to disagree with them in many areas.  Mainly they think the fact that the Nazarenes kept the Law means they must have disagreed with "Christianity" that we're not under it anymore.

Justin Martyr in Dialogue with Trypho distinguished between Jewish-Christians who keep the law but don't teach it's obligatory, and those who teach it is obligatory.  I believe the former were the Nazarenes and the later the Ebonites.  My own position is that keeping the Law can be beneficial, but we are not obligated to keep it.

The Nazarenes as I said used the proper New Testament, but they did have the original Hebrew version of Matthew.  Confusion seems to come in via that the altered Matthew the Ebonites used was called the Gospel According the Hebrews and sometimes of the Nazarenes.  In Bart Ehrman's Lost Scriptures of Christianity book, everything he puts under either the Nazarenes or the Ebonites I view as being from the Ebonite Gospel, and I think the Egyptian Gospel of the Hebrews may be the same as the Gospel of the Egyptians.

The Nazarenes viewed Jesus as the Son of God, but it's difficult to verify if they held a true Trinitarian doctrine.  What's said of their Christology could be interpreted as consistent with Arianism, or a view that Jesus had no pre-existence before being conceived in Mary's Womb (which is sometimes an aspect of Modalism).  It's difficult to know one way or the other.  However that the Arian Emperors engaged in a lot of Antisemitism makes me think them and the Nazarenes wouldn't have seen eye to eye.

According to http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/antioch the Gentile Christians of Antioch at least originally weren't that Antisemitic, but often joined the Jews in Synagogues.  But after the Church married Rome the establishment started trying to fight this.  It may not be a coincidence that the key adversaries of Nestorius (Cyril of Alexandria and the Sister of Theodosius II) were also highly Antisemitic.

In Antioch, various means were used to counteract the great influence which the Jews had upon the local Christians. The synod of Antioch (341) forbade the Christians to celebrate Easter when the Jews were observing Passover, and John Chrysostom of Antioch, in his six sermons (c. 366–387), vituperatively denounced those Christians in Antioch who attended synagogues and resorted to the Jewish law courts.

When Christianity became the state religion, the position of the Jews of Antioch deteriorated. The Jews of Imnestar were accused of having crucified a Christian boy on the feast of Purim, and the Antiochian Christians destroyed the synagogue (423 C.E.). When the emperor Theodosius II restored it, he was rebuked by Simon Stylites and refrained from defending the Jews. In the brawls between the sport factions known as the "blues" and the "greens," many Jews were killed.

So that may make interesting background for my Nestorians and the Church of The East post.  Epiphanius of Salamis associates the Nazarenes with Boreas (Aleppo) and Basanitis (Bashan), thus placing them near Antioch.

Some commentators view the Gospel reaching Damascus as fulfilling the Syria part of the Great Commission, but that's because of Old Testament Aram being misleadingly translated as Syria.  Antioch was the capital of the Roman Province of Syria, so the Church being established in Antioch by the end of Acts 11 is what I view as fulfilling the Syria part of the Great Commission.