Text
Hippolytus, Refutatio 9.13.1-3:
… a cunning and very impudent man … , someone called Alcibiades, dwelling at Apamea in Syria, … came to Rome, bringing with him a book which, he said, a certain righteous man, Elchasai, had received from Seres of Parthia and which he transmitted to someone called Sobiai, and that it had been revealed by an angel whose height was 24 schoeni - that is 96 miles - and whose girth was 4 schoeni; from shoulder to shoulder he was 6 schoeni; his footprints were three and a half schoeni long - that is fourteen miles -, the breadth being one and a half and the height half a schoenus. With him was a female whose dimensions, he said, accorded with those mentioned, the male being the Son of God and the female was called Holy Spirit.
Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 19.4.1-2:
Next he describes Christ as some power, of whom he also indicates the dimensions: his length is 24 schoeni, approximately 96 miles, and his breadth is six schoeni, 24 miles, and about his thickness he tells the same marvels as well as about his feet and the other fables. And (he says) that there is also the Holy Spirit, a female being, similar to Christ, as a statue extending above the clouds, and standing between two mountains.
Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 30.17.5-7:
When his (= Ebion’s) followers had joined Elxai, they retained from Ebion circumcision and the shabbat and the customs, but from Elxai the phantasy, so as to suppose that Christ is some man-like figure, invisible to men, 96 miles long, that is 24 schoeni, the breadth is six schoeni, 24 miles, and the thickness is of some other dimension. Opposite to him stands also the Holy Spirit, invisible, in the form of a female, and having the same size. “And whence”, he says, “did I know the dimensions? Because”, he says, “I saw from the mountains that their heads extended to them, and when I had learned the dimension of the mountain, I knew the dimensions of Christ and the Holy Spirit.”
Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 53.1.9:
He is called Christ, and the Holy Spirit, with a female shape, is his sister. Both of them, Christ and the Holy Spirit, are 96 miles long and 24 miles bread.
Sources (list of abbreviations)
Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 19.4.1-2
Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 30.17.5-7
Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion 53.1.9
Hippolytus, Refutatio 9.13.1-3
Bibliography
| Luttikhuizen 1985, 45, 101, 109, 113 | Luttikhuizen Gerard P. The Revelation of Elchasai. Investigations into the Evidence for a Mesopotamian Jewish Apocalypse of the Second Century and its Reception by Judeo-Christian Propagandists. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr 1985. |
Amar Annus
URL for this entry: http://www.aakkl.helsinki.fi/melammu/database/gen_html/a0001185.php
|
