Elcesaites
Encyclopedia
The Elcesaites, Elkasaites, Elkesaites, or Elchasaites were an ancient Jewish-Christian sect, possibly related to the Ebionites
Ebionites
Ebionites, or Ebionaioi, , is a patristic term referring to a Jewish Christian sect or sects that existed during the first centuries of the Christian Era. They regarded Jesus as the Messiah and insisted on the necessity of following Jewish religious law and rites...

, in Sassanid southern Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia
Mesopotamia is a toponym for the area of the Tigris–Euphrates river system, largely corresponding to modern-day Iraq, northeastern Syria, southeastern Turkey and southwestern Iran.Widely considered to be the cradle of civilization, Bronze Age Mesopotamia included Sumer and the...

.

Some early scholars differentiate Ebionites from Essenic
Essenes
The Essenes were a Jewish sect that flourished from the 2nd century BCE to the 1st century CE which some scholars claim seceded from the Zadokite priests...

 Ebionite-Elchasites. They are discussed by Epiphanius
Epiphanius of Salamis
Epiphanius of Salamis was bishop of Salamis 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...

 and in pseudo-Clementine literature.

Patristic Testimony

The sect is only mentioned in the commentaries on "heresies" by Early Church Fathers. The name of the sect derives the name from the alleged founder: Elchasi (Hλχασΐ, in Hippolytus), Elksai ('Hλξαί) in Epiphanius), or Elkesai (Ελκεσαΐ in Eusebius, and Theodoret).

Hippolytus (c 170 – c 236)

Hippolytus of Rome (Philosophumena, IX, 8-13) records that in the time of Pope Callixtus I
Pope Callixtus I
Pope Saint Callixtus I or Callistus I was pope from about 217 to about 222, during the reigns of the Roman Emperors Elagabalus and Alexander Severus...

 (217-222) a Jewish Christian called Alcibiades of Apamea
Alcibiades of Apamea
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'...

, came to Rome, bringing a book which he said had been received from Parthia
Parthia
Parthia is a region of north-eastern Iran, best known for having been the political and cultural base of the Arsacid dynasty, rulers of the Parthian Empire....

 by a just man named Elchasai. According to Alcibiades the book had been revealed by an angel ninety-six miles high, sixteen miles broad and twenty-four across the shoulders, whose footprints were fourteen miles long and four miles wide by two miles deep. This giant angel was the Son of God
Son of God
"Son of God" is a phrase which according to most Christian denominations, Trinitarian in belief, refers to the relationship between Jesus and God, specifically as "God the Son"...

, who was accompanied by His Sister, the Holy Ghost, of the same dimensions. Alcibiades announced that a new remission of sins had been proclaimed in the third year of Trajan
Trajan
Trajan , was Roman Emperor from 98 to 117 AD. Born into a non-patrician family in the province of Hispania Baetica, in Spain Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of emperor Domitian. Serving as a legatus legionis in Hispania Tarraconensis, in Spain, in 89 Trajan supported the emperor against...

 (A.D. 100), and he described a baptism
Baptism
In Christianity, baptism is for the majority the rite of admission , almost invariably with the use of water, into the Christian Church generally and also membership of a particular church tradition...

 which should impart this forgiveness even to the grossest sinners.

Hippolytus' commentary starts in Book 10 Chapter 8. In his next section Hippolytus recounts that Alciabides teaches the natural birth, preexistence and reincarnation of Christ which may relate, per Louis Ginzberg
Louis Ginzberg
Rabbi Louis Ginzberg was a Talmudist and leading figure in the Conservative Movement of Judaism of the twentieth century. He was born on November 28, 1873, in Kovno, Lithuania; he died on November 11, 1953, in New York City.-Biographical background:...

 (1906) to the kabbala
Kabbala
Kabbala may refer to:*Kabbalah, is a religious philosophical system claiming an insight into divine nature*Sefer ha-Qabbalah by Abraham ibn Daud*Kabbala Denudata , a book from Christian Knorr von Rosenroth, a Christian Hebraist...

 concept of Adam kadmon
Adam Kadmon
In the religious writings of Kabbalah, Adam Kadmon is a phrase meaning "Primal Man". The oldest rabbinical source for the term "Adam ha-Ḳadmoni" is Num. R. x., where Adam is styled, not as usually, "Ha-Rishon" , "Ha-Kadmoni" ....

, and also that Alciabides teaches circumcision and the Law of Moses. 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. 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. Hippolytus concludes his review of the Elcesaites in Refutations Book 10, Ch.12 with a general exhortation to avoid heresy which gives away no more information.

Adolf von Harnack
Adolf von Harnack
Adolf von Harnack , was a German theologian and prominent church historian.He produced many religious publications from 1873-1912....

 (1898) reads "was proclaimed" instead of "has been proclaimed" (as if eúaggelisthênai and not eúeggelísthai), and thus infered 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 Hilgenfeld (1884) was right in holding that Elchasai really lived under Trajan
Trajan
Trajan , was Roman Emperor from 98 to 117 AD. Born into a non-patrician family in the province of Hispania Baetica, in Spain Trajan rose to prominence during the reign of emperor Domitian. Serving as a legatus legionis in Hispania Tarraconensis, in Spain, in 89 Trajan supported the emperor against...

, as Epiphanius
Epiphanius
Epiphanius was the name of several early Christian scholars and ecclesiastics:*Epiphanius of Pavia *Epiphanius of Salamis , bishop of Salamis in Cyprus, author of the Panarion, or Medicine Chest against Heresies*Epiphanius of Constantinople, , Patriarch of Constantinople*Epiphanius Scholasticus ,...

 supposed. Putting aside this claim of Harnack's (and also his earlier conjecture that the remission in the third year of Trajan meant that the first two books of the Pastor of Hermas were published in that year), we see that the remission offered is by the new baptism.

Eusebius (c. 263–339)

Eusebius (History 6.38) records a summary of a sermon on Psalm 82 delivered in Caesarea by Origen
Origen
Origen , or Origen Adamantius, 184/5–253/4, was an early Christian Alexandrian scholar and theologian, and one of the most distinguished writers of the early Church. As early as the fourth century, his orthodoxy was suspect, in part because he believed in the pre-existence of souls...

 c.240-250 which warns his audience against the doctrine of "the Elkesaites". Eusebius' record of this sermon forms the second source on the group. According to Eusebius Origen
Origen
Origen , or Origen Adamantius, 184/5–253/4, was an early Christian Alexandrian scholar and theologian, and one of the most distinguished writers of the early Church. As early as the fourth century, his orthodoxy was suspect, in part because he believed in the pre-existence of souls...

 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.

Epiphanius (c. 310/20 – 403)

A century and a half later, Epiphanius of Salamis
Epiphanius of Salamis
Epiphanius of Salamis was bishop of Salamis 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...

 found it in use among the Sampsæans, descendants of the earlier Elcesaites, and also among the Ossæns and many other Ebionite communities. We learn further from Epiphanius that the book condemned virginity and continence, and made marriage obligatory. It permitted the worship of idol
Cult image
In the practice of religion, a cult image is a human-made object that is venerated for the deity, spirit or daemon that it embodies or represents...

s 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 under the Mosaic Law
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...

. The Prophets as well as the Apostles were rejected, and of course St. Paul
Paul of Tarsus
Paul the Apostle , also known as Saul of Tarsus, is described in the Christian New Testament as one of the most influential early Christian missionaries, with the writings ascribed to him by the church forming a considerable portion of the New Testament...

 and all his writings.

Epiphanius mentions as Elkesai's brother a man called Jekseos (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").

Ibn al-Nadim

The Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim
Ibn al-Nadim
Abu'l-Faraj Muhammad bin Is'hāq al-Nadim , whose father was known as al-Warrāq was a Shia Muslim scholar and bibliographer. Some scholars regard him as a Persian, but this is not certain. He is famous as the author of the Kitāb al-Fihrist...

, an Arabic writer, c. 987, found Mogtasilah, a sect of Sabians
Sabians
The Sabians of Middle Eastern tradition were a monotheistic Abrahamic religious group mentioned three times in the Quran: "the Jews, the Sabians, and the Christians." In the Hadith they are nothing but converts to Islam, while their identity in later Islamic literature became a matter of...

 in the desert who counted al-Hasih (possibly Arabic for "Elchasai") as their founder..

Scholarly analysis

It has been customary to find Elcasaite doctrine in the Clementine "Homilies" and "Recognitions", especially in the former. The Catholic Encyclopedia
Catholic Encyclopedia
The Catholic Encyclopedia, also referred to as the Old Catholic Encyclopedia and the Original Catholic Encyclopedia, is an English-language encyclopedia published in the United States. The first volume appeared in March 1907 and the last three volumes appeared in 1912, followed by a master index...

 1911 calls this groundless and refers to the article on Clementine literature
Clementine literature
Clementine literature is the name given to the religious romance which purports to contain a record made by one Clement of discourses...

.

The parents of Mani
Mani (prophet)
Mani , of Iranian origin was the prophet and the founder of Manichaeism, a gnostic religion of Late Antiquity which was once widespread but is now extinct...

, founder of Manichaeanism were claimed, according to the Cologne Mani-Codex
Cologne Mani-Codex
The Cologne Mani-Codex is a minute papyrus codex, dated on paleographical evidence to the fifth century CE, found near Asyut , Egypt; it contains a Greek text describing the life of Mani, the founder of the religious Manichaeism...

, to have been Elkasites.

External links

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