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Home > Catholic Encyclopedia > E > Elcesaites


ELCESAITES

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(Or HELKESAITES).

A sect of Gnostic Ebionites, whose religion was a wild medley of heathen
superstitions and Christian doctrines with Judaism. Hippolytus (Philosophumena,
IX, 13-17) tells us that under Callistus (217-222) a cunning individual called
Alcibiades, a native of Apamea in Syria, came to Rome, bringing a book which he
said had been received from Parthia by a just man named Elchasai (’Elchasaí; but
Epiphanius has ’Elksaí and ’Elkessaîoi; Methodius, ’Elkesaîos, and Origen,
’Elkesaïtaí). The contents of 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
was the Son of God, and He 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 (A.D. 100), and he described a baptism
which should impart this forgiveness even to the grossest sinners. Harnack makes
him say "was proclaimed" instead of "has been proclaimed" (as if eúaggelisthênai
and not eúeggelísthai), and thus infers that a special year of remission is
spoken of as past once for all—that Alcibiades had no reason for inventing this,
so that Hilgenfeld was right in holding that Elchasai really lived under Trajan,
as Epiphanius supposed. If we put aside this blunder of Harnack's (and also his
earlier odd 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. Hippolytus represents this
doctrine as an improvement invented by Alcibiades on the lax teaching of his
enemy Callistus. He does not perhaps expect us to take this seriously—it is most
likely ironical—but he seems to regard Alcibiades as the author of the book.
Origen, writing somewhat later (c. 246-9), says the heresy was quite new; he
seems to have met with Alcibiades, though he does not give his name. There is no
reason why we should dissent from these contemporary witnesses, and we must
place the first appearance of the book of Elchasai c. 220. A century and a half
later, St. Epiphanius found it in use among the Sampsæans, descendants of the
earlier Elcesaites, and also among the Ossæns, and many of the other Ebionite
communities. En-hedim, an Arabic writer, c. 987, found a sect of Sabæans in the
desert who counted El-Chasaiach as their founder (Chwolsohn, Die Ssabier, 1856,
I, 112; II, 543, cited by Salmon).



According to Hippolytus the teaching of Alcibiades was borrowed from various
heresies. He taught circumcision, that Christ was a man like others, that he had
many times been born on earth of a virgin, that he devoted himself to astrology,
magic, and incantations. 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. Other Ebionites in Epiphanius's time practised this treatment.
That saint tells us that mention was made in the book of Elchasai's brother,
Iexai, and that the heresiarch was a Jew of the time of Trajan. Two of his
descendants, two sisters, Marthus and Marthana, lived till the days of
Epiphanius. They were reverenced as goddesses and the dust of their feet and
their spittle were used to cure diseases. This suggests that Elchasai was not a
fictitious personage. He was presumably a primitive leader of an Ebionite
community, to whom Alcibiades ascribed his own book. We learn further from
Epiphanius that the book condemned virginity and continence, and made marriage
obligatory. It permitted the worship of idols 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 sacrifice was
condemned, with a denial that it had been offered by the patriarchs or under the
Law. The Prophets as well as the Apostles were rejected, and of course St. Paul
and all his writings. It has been customary to find Elcesaite doctrine in the
Clementine "Homilies" and "Recognitions", especially in the former. On the
groundlessness of this see CLEMENTINES.




SOURCES

     HIPPOLYTUS, Philosophumena, IX, 13-17; X, 29; ORIGEN in EUSEBIUS, Church
History VI.38; METHODIUS, Conviv., VIII, 10; EPIPHANIUS, Her., XIX and LIII,
also XXX, 3, 17, 18. THEODORET has simply used EPIPHANIUS. See HILGENFELD, N.
T., extra canonem receptum (Leipzig, 1881), fasc. III; cf. also ID., Judentum
und Christentum (Leipzig, 1886) and the various writers on the
Pseudo-Clementines, esp. UHLHORN. A good article by SALMON is in Dict. Christ.
Biog., s.v. Elkesai; more recent are HARNACK, Gesch. der altchr. Lit., I, 207;
II, i, 267; II, ii, 16; BARDENHEWER, Gesch. der altkirchl. Lit., I, 350; IDEM,
SHAHAN tr., Patrology (Freiburg im Br., 1908), 81.


ABOUT THIS PAGE

APA citation. Chapman, J. (1909). Elcesaites. In The Catholic Encyclopedia. New
York: Robert Appleton Company. http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05372a.htm

MLA citation. Chapman, John. "Elcesaites." The Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 5.
New York: Robert Appleton Company, 1909.
<http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/05372a.htm>.

Transcription. This article was transcribed for New Advent by WGKofron. With
thanks to St. Mary's Church, Akron, Ohio.

Ecclesiastical approbation. Nihil Obstat. May 1, 1909. Remy Lafort, Censor.
Imprimatur. +John M. Farley, Archbishop of New York.

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