Who Were the Elkesaites and What Can Their History Teach Us About Early Christian Error and Apostasy? - Christian Publishing House Blog
But it does not mention reincarnation.
Here are some snips. It is extremely rare to see a scholar reference them - Bart Ehrman acts like he never heard of them. These are the words of not Bart Ehrman, however, but of a Christian fundamentalist:
quote:
One of the most unexpected and enigmatic groups to emerge in the late first and early second centuries C.E. was the sect known as the Elkesaites.
....
The movement flourished primarily in the regions of Syria, Mesopotamia, and Palestine during the second and third centuries C.E., infiltrating Jewish-Christian communities and leaving a mark on sectarian groups such as the Ebionites and certain strands of Gnostic thought.
....
Another grave error of the Elkesaites was their Christology. Reports suggest that they held an adoptionist view of Jesus, similar to that of the Ebionites, claiming that Jesus was merely a human being upon whom the Spirit descended at baptism, rather than affirming the true preexistence of the Son as expressed in John 1:1-3. This denial of Jesus’ divine nature directly opposed the consistent testimony of the apostles
....
Likewise, the Ebionites provide a particularly close parallel to the Elkesaites, as they too combined adherence to the Mosaic law with adoptionist Christology, viewing Jesus as a merely human figure empowered by the Spirit at baptism. The Ebionites rejected the virgin birth and held to strict monotheism in a way that denied the preexistence of Christ. The Elkesaites, in their reported Christological views, appear to have been either influenced by or contiguous with Ebionite thinking.
....
The Cerinthians, followers of Cerinthus, offer another point of comparison, particularly regarding their Christological confusion. Cerinthus taught that Jesus was a mere man upon whom the Christ spirit descended temporarily. The Elkesaites’ adoptionist tendencies reflect a similar departure from biblical truth, though the full details of their Christology remain less clearly documented. What is evident, however, is that both groups denied the permanent union of divine and human natures in the person of Jesus—a doctrine central to the gospel itself, as testified in John 1:14: “And the Word became flesh and dwelled among us.”
Who Were the Elkesaites and What Can Their History Teach Us About Early Christian Error and Apostasy? - Christian Publishing House Blog
This was the fundamentalist scholar's blog. The author has written 250 books, it seems! Kind of like a Christian version of Jacob Neusner.
Cerinthians slightly pre-date the Elkesaites, so that makes them the (arguable) earliest Christian sect that we know of. They get mentioned far more often than the Elkesaites.
But here is another website to give a read:
And in it there is a very astute observation, that we all should consider:
quote:
According to Irenaeus of Lyons, Cerinthus was learned in Egyptian Gnosticism. If true, that’d make him by far the earliest among a collection of early Gnostic sages originally from Alexandria (the list of those includes Basilides, Valentinus, and Carpocrates). But he’d reportedly been most active elsewhere, especially in the Levant.
....
Cerinthus’s Gnosticism
In classical times, Christian “heresy hunters” classified Cerinthus as a Gnostic. However, they did so well after his own time (the earliest of them was Irenaeus, who wrote about him anywhere from 70 to 100 years later).
....
Cerinthus’s “Not-Gnosticism”
Other aspects of what Cerinthus reportedly taught are decidedly non-Gnostic in nature. In fact, it appears his primary message was that Christians, including Gentile converts, had to follow Mosaic Law to the letter (including men being circumcised).
....
And Cerinthus reportedly followed a gospel of his own that was more or less identical to that of the Ebionites. All of this places Cerinthus well outside of any “Gnostic” designation.
Legacy of Cerinthus
From a modern perspective, Cerinthus wasn’t much of a Gnostic, but more of a Jewish Christian. In fact, a good deal of what’s reported about him resembles what the Ebionites or Nazoreans would become, by the 2nd century.
Early Christian History / Heresies: The Sage Cerinthus
Cerinthus is often said to have died 100 CE. And his life is commonly graphed out as being from 50-100 CE.
The Elcesaites were attested to have started during the third year of the Roman Emperor Trajan - so that would make the Elkesaite origin 100 CE as Trajan ruled from 98-117 CE. Hippolytus of Rome lived from around 160/170 to 235 CE. He wrote his Refutation of All Heresies from 217-222. He was the one who first mentioned the Elkesaites and Elchesai. Mani was born in 216, and belonged to the Elkesaite's sect in Babylon/Persia. Mani was not mentioned by Hippolytus (he was not important but simply an unknown child living far away - nobody knew, or could know, he would found a religion decades later) but he talked about the Elkesaite sect beginning in Serae, a town of Parthia, "that there was preached unto men a new remission of sins in the third year of Trajan's reign." (Book 10, Refutation of All Heresies)
Do note that the Elkesaite religion is stated to have started from the third year of Trajan's reign, not the third year of the Parthian war of 114-117.
So 100 CE for the origin of the Elkesaites. A Jewish Christian sect that taught reincarnation. It could be suggested that the reincarnation doctrine did not start right at the beginning of the sect, but developed between the 100 CE origin and the first mention around 200 CE. But the 200 CE mention seems to completely explicitly indicate the soul transmigration of Jesus/ Son of God was fully embedded in the Book of Elcesai, which was "revealed by an angel whose height was 24 schoenoi" ("And he asserts that the male (angel) is Son of God"-Hippolytus, Refutation of All Heresies Book 10) to the same Elcesai.
These are the Elkesaites - the ignored sect, and even Bart Ehrman seems to have flubbed it when it comes to factoring them into his reincarnation/transmigration investigations of the early Christian believers.
The Elkesaites were not mentioned by Ehrman or by his readers in his post comment section on his blog.
But the Cerinthians were.
Mani was born into the Elcesaites sect in 216 CE and his religion is an offshoot of the Jewish Christian sect. It has transmigration-of-the-soul/reincarnation and Oxford University knows he very obviously got his views from the Jewish Christian religion he was born into.
But Artificial Intelligence engines will tell you that Mani got his reincarnation views from his trip to India in 241 CE.
Why?
It was not until the Cologn Mani Codex discovery in the 1970s that it was known that Mani was born into the Jewish Christian Elcesaite sect in 216 CE. Mani and the Manicheans had been commented on for a very long time - the 1920s Cambridge History of Christianity spilt a lot of ink on Manicheans.
But the Elcesaites are very poorly covered by scholars and especially popular AND THEOLOGICAL works.
It has been a horrible lack of coverage, and the few times they do get covered will often be in a prose that completely lacks mention of the reincarnation views.
™ Version 4.2