ELKESAITES. The Elkesaites or Elehasaites were an early sect to which a book called sacred. They seem to have been a branch of the Ebionites (q.v.), and flourished at the end of the second century A.D. The book Elkesai, which became known to Hippolytus, Origen, and Epiphanius, professed to contain angelic revelations. The revelation is said to have been made in the third year of Trajan (100 A.D.) to a member of the tribe of the Seres, a Parthian people who are sup posed to have lived a life of perfect happiness, purity, and freedom from pain. The book of Elkesai "announced a new method of forgiveness of sin, asserted to have been revealed in the third year of Trajan, by which any person, no matter of what sins he might have been guilty (some of the very grossest are expressly men tioned), might obtain forgiveness by submitting to a new baptism With the use of a certain formula. . . .
A similar baptism was prescribed as a remedy for the bite of a mad dog or a serpent or for disease " (Diet. of Christ. Biogr.). The Elkesaites observed the law of Moses, but rejected sacrifice and the eating of flesh. They held Christ to be simply the greatest of created beings and one of a number of manifestations of the Christ. They refused to acknowledge St. Paul. It is thought that the book of Elkesai was of Jewish origin. Its name seems to be Hebrew or Aramaic. If it is, it might perhaps mean " God is a shelter." It might, however, be Arabic. In that case it would mean simply "The shelter " ('al-hashd[y]). An Arabic author, En bedim, of about 987 A.D., says that one El-Chasaiach founded a sect of Sabeans of the Desert. A special feature in their religion was the practice of frequent ablutions. See J. H. Blunt; Wace and Piercy.