Part of a series on |
Jewish Christianity |
---|
![]() |
The Elcesaites, Elkasaites, Elkesaites or Elchasaites were an ancient Jewish Christian sect in Lower Mesopotamia, then the province of Asoristan in the Sasanian Empire that was active between 100 and 400 CE. The members of this sect, which originated in the Transjordan, performed frequent baptisms for purification and had a Gnostic orientation. [1] [2] : 123 [3]
The name of the sect derives from the alleged founder, Elkhasaí (Koinē Greek : Ἠλχασαΐ in Hippolytus), Elksai (Ἠλξαί in Epiphanius), or Elkesai (Ελκεσαΐ in Eusebius, and Theodoret).
The sect is directly mentioned only in the commentaries on "heresies" by Early Church Fathers.
Hippolytus of Rome ( Refutation of All Heresies , IX, 8–13) records that in the time of Pope Callixtus I (217–222 AD), a Jewish Christian called Alcibiades of Apamea came to Rome, bringing a book which he said had been received in Parthia by a just man named Elchasai. [4] According to Alcibiades, the book had been revealed by an angel 96 miles (154 km) high (337,920 cubits), 16 miles (26 km) broad (56,230 cubits) and 24 miles (39 km) (84,480 cubits) across the shoulders, whose footprints were 14 miles (23 km) long, 6 miles (9.7 km) wide and 2 miles (3.2 km) deep. This giant angel was the Son of God, who was accompanied by his sister, the Holy Ghost, of the same dimensions. [5] Alcibiades announced that a new remission of sins had been proclaimed in the third year of Trajan (100 AD), and he described a baptism which should impart this forgiveness even to the grossest sinners.
Hippolytus' commentary starts in book 9, chapter 8. [6] In his next section, Hippolytus recounts that Alcibiades teaches the natural birth, preexistence and reincarnation of Jesus, which Louis Ginzberg suggested in 1906 may relate to the concept of Adam Kadmon, [7] and also that Alcibiades teaches circumcision and the Law of Moses. [6] Hippolytus then goes on at length to describe the group's teaching on baptism. For all sins of impurity, even against nature, a second baptism is enjoined "in the name of the great and most high God and in the name of His Son the great King", with an adjuration of the seven witnesses written in the book (sky, water, the holy spirits, the angels of prayer, oil, salt and earth). One who has been bitten by a mad dog is to run to the nearest water and jump in with all his clothes on, using the foregoing formula, and promising the seven witnesses that he will abstain from sin. The same treatment – forty days consecutively of baptism in cold water – is recommended for consumption and for the possessed. [6] In his chapter 11, Hippolytus discusses in more detail the teaching of the book including Elchasai's Sabbatarian teaching and the instruction not to baptise under certain astrological stars. [6] Hippolytus concludes his review of the Elcesaites in Refutations, book 10, chapter 12 with a general exhortation to avoid heresy which gives away no more information. [6]
Adolf von Harnack (1898) reads "was proclaimed" instead of "has been proclaimed" (as if eúaggelisthênai and not eúeggelísthai), and thus inferred that a special year of remission is spoken of as past once for all – and that Alcibiades had no reason for inventing this, so that Adolf Bernhard Christoph Hilgenfeld (1884) was right in holding that Elchasai really lived under Trajan, as Epiphanius of Salamis supposed. [8]
Eusebius (History 6.38) records a summary of a sermon on Psalm 82 delivered in Caesarea by Origen c. 240–250 AD which warns his audience against the doctrine of "the Elkesaites". Eusebius' record of this sermon forms the second source on the group. [9] According to Eusebius, Origen regarded the heresy as quite new, and states that the group deny the writings of Paul, but claim to have received a new book from heaven. [10]
Eusebius (History 6.38)
— Book VI. Chapter 38. "The Heresy of the Elkesites."Another error also arose at this time, called the heresy of the Elkesites, which was extinguished in the very beginning. Origen speaks of it in this manner in a public homily on the eighty-second Psalm: "A certain man came just now, puffed up greatly with his own ability, proclaiming that godless and impious opinion which has appeared lately in the churches, styled 'of the Elkesites.' I will show you what evil things that opinion teaches, that you may not be carried away by it. It rejects certain parts of every scripture. Again it uses portions of the Old Testament and the Gospel, but rejects the apostle altogether. It says that to deny Christ is an indifferent matter, and that he who understands will, under necessity, deny with his mouth, but not in his heart. They produce a certain book which they say fell from heaven. They hold that whoever hears and believes this shall receive remission of sins, another remission than that which Jesus Christ has given."
Such is the account of these persons.
A century and a half later, Epiphanius of Salamis found it in use among the Sampsæans, descendants of the earlier Elcesaites, and also among the Essenes and many other Ebionite communities. Epiphanius also mentions that the book condemned virginity and continence and made marriage obligatory. It permitted the worship of cult images to escape persecution, provided the act was merely an external one, disavowed in the heart. Prayer was to be made not to the East, but always towards Jerusalem.
Yet all animal sacrifice was condemned, with a denial that it had been offered by the Patriarchs or in the Torah. The Prophets as well as the Christian Apostles were rejected, as well as Paul the Apostle and all his writings.
Epiphanius mentions as Elkesai's brother a man called Jekseos (Koinē Greek : Iεξέος in Hæreses, xix. 1), and explains the brother's name as being derived from the Hebrew for "hidden power" and Elkesai as "the hidden God." Epiphanius records that the saints of the Elcesaites were two women: Martha ("mistress") and Marthana ("our mistress").
According to Joseph Lightfoot, the Church Father Epiphanius (writing in the 4th century CE) seems to make a distinction between two main groups within the Essenes: [11] "Of those that came before his [Elxai (Elkesai), an Ossaean prophet] time and during it, the Ossaeans and the Nasaraeans. "Part 19" [12] Epiphanius describes the Ossaeans as following:
After this Nasaraean sect in turn comes another closely connected with them, called the Ossaeans. These are Jews like the former... originally came from Nabataea, Ituraea, Moabitis, and Arielis, the lands beyond the basin of what sacred scripture called the Salt Sea... Though it is different from the other six of these seven sects, it causes schism only by forbidding the books of Moses like the Nasaraean. [12]
The Cologne Mani-Codex (dated from the fourth century) describes the parents of Mani, founder of Manichaeism, as "followers of the prophet Alchasaios", which scholars have identified with Elchasai. [13] Alchasaios is stated to be a prophet also honoured by Mani. His name appears in several other sources on Manichaeism, but in so altered a form that the identification with Elchasai was clear only with the publication of the Cologne codex. [14]
The Codex deals with the Elcesaites extensively, confirms some of the Church Fathers’ statements about them, and depicts Mani as a "reformer" with the purpose to "restore" the true doctrine of prophet Alchasaios, which his followers had "misunderstood". In particular, Mani criticises their repeated baptism rituals. [15]
The Elcesaites may be mentioned in a Persepolis inscription from the third century, with a sect name mktk- from the Iranian root mak-, "to moisten" or "to wash". [15] Much later, in his Fihrist, the Arabic Muslim scholar ibn al-Nadim, c. 987, found Mogtasilah ("washers"), a sect of Sabians in the desert who counted al-Hasih (possibly Arabic for "Elchasai") as their founder. [16] [15]
Van Bladel (2017) suggests that hymns which have close parallels in the Mandaean Qulasta and Left Ginza and the Manichaean Psalms of Thomas (earlier suggested by Säve-Söderbergh (1949) to be due to Manichaean adaptations of Mandaeans hymns [17] ) may have a common Elchasaite source. [18]
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)The Essenes or Essenians were a mystic Jewish sect during the Second Temple period that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE.
Gnosticism is a collection of religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above the proto-orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions.
Ebionites as a term refers to a Jewish Christian sect that existed during the early centuries of the Common Era, whose name may have been taken from the first group of people mentioned in the Beatitudes of Jesus as blessed and meriting entry in the coming Kingdom of God on Earth.
Epiphanius of Salamis was the bishop of Salamis, Cyprus, at the end of the 4th century. He is considered a saint and a Church Father by both the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Churches. He gained a reputation as a strong defender of orthodoxy. He is best known for composing the Panarion, a compendium of eighty heresies, which included also pagan religions and philosophical systems. There has been much controversy over how many of the quotations attributed to him by the Byzantine Iconoclasts were actually by him. Regardless of this, he was clearly strongly against some contemporary uses of images in the church.
The Ophites, also called Ophians, were a Christian Gnostic sect depicted by Hippolytus of Rome (170–235) in a lost work, the Syntagma ("arrangement").
The Nazarenes were an early Jewish Christian sect in first-century Judaism. The first use of the term is found in the Acts of the Apostles of the New Testament, where Paul the Apostle is accused of being a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes before the Roman procurator Antonius Felix at Caesarea Maritima by Tertullus. At that time, the term simply designated followers of Jesus of Nazareth, as the Hebrew term נוֹצְרִי, and the Arabic term نَصْرَانِي, still do.
Cerinthus was an early Gnostic, who was prominent as a heresiarch in the view of the early Church Fathers. Contrary to the Church Fathers, he used the Gospel of Cerinthus, and denied that the Supreme God made the physical world. In Cerinthus' interpretation, the Christ descended upon Jesus at baptism and guided him in ministry and the performing of miracles, but left him at the crucifixion. Similarly to the Ebionites, he maintained that Jesus was not born of a virgin, but was a mere man, the biological son of Mary and Joseph.
Basilides was an early Christian Gnostic religious teacher in Alexandria, Egypt who taught from 117 to 138 AD, and claimed to have inherited his teachings from the apostle Saint Matthias. He was a pupil of either the Simonian teacher Menander, or a supposed disciple of Peter named Glaucias. The Acts of the Disputation with Manes state that for a time he taught among the Persians. According to Agapius of Hierapolis he appeared in the 15th year of Trajan reign. He is believed to have written over two dozen books of commentary on the Christian Gospel entitled Exegetica, making him one of the earliest Gospel commentators.
The Alogi, also called Alogoi or Alogians, were a group of heterodox Christians in Asia Minor that flourished c. 200 CE, and taught that the Gospel of John and the Apocalypse of John were not the work of the Apostle, but his adversary Cerinthus. What we know of them is derived from their doctrinal opponents, whose literature is extant, particularly Epiphanius of Salamis. It was Epiphanius who coined the name "Alogi" as a word play suggesting that they were both illogical and they were against the Christian doctrine of the Logos. While Epiphanius does not specifically indicate the name of its founder, Dionysius Bar-Salibi, citing a lost work of Hippolytus, writes in his commentary on the Apocalypse,
Hippolytus of Rome says: A man appeared, named Caius, saying that the Gospel is not by John, nor the Apocalypse but that it is by Cerinthus the heretic.
The Gospel of the Ebionites is the conventional name given by scholars to an apocryphal gospel extant only as seven brief quotations in a heresiology known as the Panarion, by Epiphanius of Salamis; he misidentified it as the "Hebrew" gospel, believing it to be a truncated and modified version of the Gospel of Matthew. The quotations were embedded in a polemic to point out inconsistencies in the beliefs and practices of a Jewish Christian sect known as the Ebionites relative to Nicene orthodoxy.
Dositheos was a Samaritan religious leader. He was the founder of a Samaritan sect often assumed to be Gnostic in nature, and is reputed to have known John the Baptist, and been either a teacher or a rival of Simon Magus.
Mandaeism, sometimes also known as Nasoraeanism or Sabianism, is a Gnostic, monotheistic and ethnic religion with Greek, Iranian, and Jewish influences. Its adherents, the Mandaeans, revere Adam, Abel, Seth, Enos, Noah, Shem, Aram, and especially John the Baptist. Mandaeans consider Adam, Seth, Noah, Shem and John the Baptist prophets, with Adam being the founder of the religion and John being the greatest and final prophet.
The Encratites ("self-controlled") were an ascetic 2nd-century sect of Christians who forbade marriage and counselled abstinence from meat. Eusebius says that Tatian was the author of this heresy. It has been supposed that it was these Gnostic Encratites who were chastised in the epistle of 1 Timothy (4:1-4).
The Simonians were a Gnostic sect of the 2nd century which regarded Simon Magus as its founder and traced its doctrines, known as Simonianism, back to him. The sect flourished in Syria, in various districts of Asia Minor and at Rome. In the 3rd century remnants of it still existed, which survived until the 4th century.
In early Christian heresiology, the Panarion, to which 16th-century Latin translations gave the name Adversus Haereses, is the most important of the works of Epiphanius of Salamis. It was written in Koine Greek beginning in 374 or 375, and issued about three years later, as a treatise on heresies, with its title referring to the text as a "stock of remedies to offset the poisons of heresy." It treats 80 religious sects, either organized groups or philosophies, from the time of Adam to the latter part of the fourth century, detailing their histories, and rebutting their beliefs. The Panarion is an important source of information on the Jewish–Christian gospels, the Gospel of the Ebionites, and the Gospel of the Hebrews.
Alcibiades of Apamea was a Jewish Christian member of, or possibly even founder of, the Elcesaites. Of the several cities called Apamea it is Apamea in Syria which is intended. He is known only from the accounts of Hippolytus of Rome in his Refutations, where he follows on from Hippolytus' attacks on Pope Callixtus I:
Hippolytus 10.9
The Book of Elchasai or the Book of Elxai is a lost prophetic book, written during the reign of Trajan, that contained laws and apocalyptic prophecies pertaining to Jewish Christian and Gnostic doctrines. It is known only from fragments quoted in the early Christian writings of Hippolytus of Rome, Eusebius, Epiphanius of Salamis, and Origen. The book was used by a number of Transjordanian sects, including Ebionites, Essenes, Nazarenes, and especially by Elcesaites who based their origins on it.
Hemerobaptists were a Jewish sect mentioned by some early Christian writers. They were known for their daily ritual baptisms for purification, distinct from mainstream Jewish practices of ritual immersion. They are considered one of several minor Jewish sects, including the Bana'im and the Maghāriya.
Elkesai was a religious leader and prophet who is believed to have lived in the late 1st century CE and early 2nd century CE. He is primarily known through references in Christian, Manichaean, and other religious texts. Elkesai is associated with a religious movement known as the Elkesaites or Elkesaians, generally considered the founder of Elkesaism, which had significant influence on early Christian Gnostic and heterodox communities.