6. An officer in the household of Ahaz, king of Ju- dah, and slain by Zichri the Ephraimite, when Pekah invaded Judah ; apparently the second in command under the pra>fect of the palace (2 Chron. xxviii, 7). B.C. 739. Josephus says that he was the general of the troops of Judah, and that ho was merelj' carried into captivity by "Amazinh," the Israelitish general (^Ant. ix, 12, 1). See Ahaz.
7. Father of one Asa, and head of a Levitical f im- ;iy resiaent in the "villages of the Netophathites" (1 Chron. ix, 16). B.C. long ante 536.
Elkesaites, a sect of Jewish Christians, which j sprang up in the 2d century. The oriijin of the name I is uncertain. Delitzsch (in Rudclbach u. Guericke, I Zeitschrift, 1841) derives it from a hamlet, Elkesi, in I Galilee. The Churcli fathers derived it from the name of a pretended founder, Elxai, which name, according ' to Epiphanius, denotes " a hidden power" (^&!3 b"!)!). |
Elxai is probably not the name of a person, hut the name of a book which was the chief authority for this sect. Gieseler thinks that the name signifies the Holy Ghost, which in Horn. Clem, xvii, 16, is called cvvaiuQ iiaapKog, "the incorporeal power." At all events, the sect held as highest doctrinal authority a book which is brought into connection with Elxai. This book, which appears to have been the chief authority of all the Gnostic sects of Jewish Christians, was known tn Uri- gen (Euseb. Hist. Eccl. vi, 38), and the Syrian Alcibi- ades of Apamea brought it with him to Rome. Epi- phanius shows its influence among all sects of Jewish Christians. As Origen reports, this book was believed to have fallen from heaven ; according to an account in the Pkilosophoumena, it was revealed by an angel, who was the Son of God. Elxai is said to have re- ceived it from the Seri, in Parthia, in the third year of Trajan (A.D. 101), and its contents were connnuni- cated to no one except upon an oath of secrecy. Ritschl puts the origin of the book in the last tliird of the second century, while Uhlhorn thinks that it must have originated soon after the beginning of the second century, as it served as the basis of the doc- trinal sj'stem of the Clementine Homilies, which were nearly completed about A.D. 150.
The best account of the standard book of the Elke- saites is to be found in the Pkilosophoumena, and its main points are confirmed by the statements of Ori- gen. Epiphanius, as usual, is somewhat confused in his exposition of the sect, and his report seems in manj' points to refer to a modified, and not the orig- inal system. According to the Philosopkoumena, there was in the Elkesaite system a pagan element of natur- alism, mixed with Jewish and Christian elements. The pagan element shows itself in particular in the ablutions. A remission of sins is proclaimed upon the ground of a new baptism, consisting without doubt in oft-repeated ablutions, which were also used against sickness, and were made in the name of the Father and the Son. In connection with these ablutions ap- pear seven witnesses — the five elements, and oil and salt (also bread), the latter two denoting baptism and the Lord's Supper. The same pagan element appears in the use made by the Elkesaites of astronomy and magic ; even baptismal days were fixed in accordance with the position of the stars. The Jewish element appears in the obligatory character of the law, and in circumcision. Thej' rejected, however, sacrifices, and also several parts of the Old and New Testaments (of the latter, the Pauline epistles). Their views of Christ seem not to have been settled. On the one hand, their Christ is described as an angel ; on the other, they taught a repeated, continuous incarnation of Christ, although his l)irth of a virgin seems to have been re- tained. The Lord's Supper was celebrated with bread and salt ; tho eating of meat was forbidden ; marriage was highly esteemed ; renunciation of the faith in time of persecution was allowed. A prayer, which is preserved by Epiphanius (xix, 4), is entirely unintel- ligible.
The Elkesaite doctrine probably arose among the Jewish Christians, who, in the neighborhood of the Dead Sea, coalesced with the Essenes, and were to some extent influenced by Oriental paganism. Under bishop Callistus of Rome, a certain Alcibiades of Apa- mea went to that city as an Elkesaite teacher, and in 274 Origen met a missionar^' of the sect at Ca>sarea. These eflTorts appear, however, to have met witli but little success. The Clementine Homilies contain a further development of Elkesaite doctrines, -with a stronger predominance of the Christian element. At the time of the emperor Constantius, Epiphanius found Elkesaites to the east of the Dead Sea, in Nabath.-ea, Ituraja, and Moabitis. He calls them 2«/i>//a(0(, w hich name he explains as yXiaKoi, and therefore seems to have derived from C"9"c5, "sun." From the cir-
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cumstonce that in Epiphanius Elxai appears among nearly all parties of Jewish Christians, Uhlhorn infers that the Elkesaites were not so much a separate sect as a school among all sects of Jewish Christians. Ritschl regards them as antipodes of the Montanists, and, as their chief peculiarity, the setting forth of a new theory of remission of sins by a new baptism. Hefele, in Wetzer u. Welte, Kirchcn-Lex. art. Ehioni- ten, iii, 359, takes the Elkesaites for the highest of four classes of Jewish Essenes, from whom, or, rather, from a member of whom (the Elxai of Epiphanius), a part}' of Ebionites received about the middle of the second century a gnosis or theosophic secret sj'stem, •which was fully developed in the Clementine Homi- lies. See Uhlhorn, in Herzog, ReaUEncyklop. iii, 771 (which article is the basis of our account) ; Ritschl, Ueher d. Sekte. der M/cesaiten, in ZeUschrift fiir histor. Theologie, 1853; Hefele, in Wetzer u. Welte, Kirchen- Lex. [art. EbioniUn], iii, 358 ; and [art. Clement I] ii, 590 ; Schaff, Hist, of the Christ. Church, § 69 ; Lipsius, Zur Quellen-Kritik des Epiphanius (Vien. 1865) ; Mos- heim, Ch. Hist. bk. i, c. ii, pt. ii, ch. v, 3, 6-7. (A. J. S.)