Elcesaites

The Elcesaites, Elkasaites, Elkesaites or Elchasaites were an ancient Jewish Christian sect in Sassanid southern Mesopotamia. The sect may be related to the Ebionites.

The Elcesaites are discussed by Epiphanius and in pseudo-Clementine literature.

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

Hippolytus of Rome (Philosophumena, IX, 8-13) records that in the time of Pope Callixtus I (217-222) a Jewish Christian called Alcibiades of Apamea, came to Rome, bringing a book which he said had been received from Parthia 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, 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 (AD 100), and he described a baptism 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 Alcibiades teaches the natural birth, preexistence and reincarnation of Christ which may relate, per Louis Ginzberg (1906) to the kabbala concept of Adam kadmon, and also that Alcibiades 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.

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