They forbade alcohol of any kind, substituting milk or water for wine when they performed the Eucharist. The Encratites’ name derives from the Greek word for “continence,” since they withheld a number of things from themselves, including marriage and eating meat. Unfortunately, we have no idea how widespread the belief was or when it faded into obscurity. The Naassenes even counted a few non-canonical books among their spiritual tools, chiefly The Gospel of Thomas, a book that was unknown to scholars until it surfaced with the trove found at Nag Hammadi in 1945. The mysteries of the ancients (Greek, Roman, Egyptian, etc.) played a key role in their spiritual understanding, as they believed everything was connected. Naassenes claimed to have received their teachings from James the Just, the human brother of Jesus. One of the earliest groups to be declared heretical, the Naassenes were given their name-which they probably didn’t call themselves-because Hippolytus decreed they “celebrated a serpent,” nahash being the Hebrew word for “snake.” They had a lot in common with another sect that arose around the same time, the Ophites, who derived their name from the Greek word for “snake.” Known to us only through the writings of the Christian theologian Hippolytus, the Naassenes are believed to be a Gnostic sect which existed during the second century A.D. The relatively small sect flourished during the second century A.D. They even go so far as to say that Judas’s betrayal of Jesus was actually a good deed done on Jesus’s behalf. They believed Judas possessed knowledge about the truth of God, which was written down in a book called the Gospel of Judas that details Jesus’s teaching of Judas. They took Gnosticism one step further, claiming that the creation of the world was itself an act of evil designed to keep man from getting closer to the divine.īecause the God of the Old Testament was seen as a figure of evil, an obstacle to overcome in the pursuit of the true god, Cainites also revered other “bad guys” of the Bible, such as the people of Sodom and Gomorrah and Judas Iscariot. They believed the God of the Old Testament was nothing but a lesser deity, a jealous god who punished Cain unjustly. 10The CainitesĪs their name suggests, the Cainites were fiercely dedicated to Adam and Eve’s oldest son. Many of them can be classified as Gnostic, which is normally characterized by the rejection of the material world and embrace of the spiritual world, often in direct conflict with the established religions of the time. All rights reserved.While there are a number of different sects of Christianity today, from Roman Catholic to Seventh-day Adventist, there are even more that were put down by mainstream Christianity. Scripture passage from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright 1989, 1993, Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America.
Then he said to them, ‘If one of you has a child or an ox that has fallen into a well, will you not immediately pull it out on a sabbath day?’ And they could not reply to this. So Jesus took him and healed him, and sent him away. And Jesus asked the lawyers and Pharisees, ‘Is it lawful to cure people on the sabbath, or not?’ But they were silent. Just then, in front of him, there was a man who had dropsy. On one occasion when Jesus was going to the house of a leader of the Pharisees to eat a meal on the sabbath, they were watching him closely. They are Israelites, and to them belong the adoption, the glory, the covenants, the giving of the law, the worship, and the promises to them belong the patriarchs, and from them, according to the flesh, comes the Messiah, who is over all, God blessed for ever. For I could wish that I myself were accursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my own people, my kindred according to the flesh. I am speaking the truth in Christ-I am not lying my conscience confirms it by the Holy Spirit- I have great sorrow and unceasing anguish in my heart. For 3 November 2017, Feast of St Martin de Porres, based on Romans 9:1-5, Luke 14:1-6
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