Note 82 — BOOK IX NOETUS, CALLISTUS, AND OTHERS

This heresy of the Elchesaites was a very old one, and probably had its roots in the Babylonian religion some millennia before Christian times, ablution and exorcism being then considered one of the most effectual modes of removing the consequences of transgression. Prof. Brandt, of Amsterdam, who has paid much attention to the Mandæan religion which has affinities with it, in his monograph on the subject (Elchasai, Ein Religionstifter und sein Werk, Leipzig, 1912), thinks that Elchasai, a name which may mean something like “Power of the Sun,” was a real man who flourished in the reign of Trajan (A.D. 98-117), and founded in Syria an eclectic religion made up of the doctrines of Judaism and Christianity, mingled with the belief in the sovereign efficacy of baptism found among the Hemerobaptists, Mughtasila or “Washers,” who still exist. Thus, according to En-Nadîm (Flügel’s Mani, p. 340), these Mughtasila in the tenth century still reverenced as a prophet a certain Al-[H.]asih who seems to be our Elchasai, along with Moses, Christ, and Mohammed. It also appears that his successors sent out missionaries to the West, including doubtless the Alcibiades of our text. Origen, in his Homily on the 82nd Psalm, mentions having met with one of these who may have been Alcibiades himself. They seem to have obtained some success among the Ebionite and Essene communities on the shores of the Dead Sea, but the effort soon died out, and Eusebius (Hist. Eccl., VI, 38) says that it was stifled almost at its birth. Epiphanius (Haer., XIX, 5; XXX, 17; and LIII, 1) mentions them in connection with the “heresies” of the Nazaræans, Ebionites and Sampsæans respectively, but like Theodoret does little but repeat Hippolytus’ statements.