Elcesaites

Manichaeism (; in ; ) was a major world religion founded in the third century CE by the Parthian Iranian prophet Mani (216–274) in the Sasanian Empire. It taught an elaborate dualistic cosmology describing the struggle between a good spiritual world of light, and an evil material world of darkness. Through an ongoing process in human history, light is gradually removed from the world of matter and returned to the world of the divine.

3rd century prophet and founder of Manichaeism

Ebionites (Ancient Greek: Ἐβιωναῖοι, romanized: Ebiōnaîoi, derived from the Hebrew word , , meaning 'the poor' or 'poor ones') were an adoptionist Mosaic Law-observant Jewish-Christian movement that existed in and around Transjordan during the early centuries of the Common Era. Since original writings by Ebionites are scarce, fragmentary and contested, much of what is known or conjectured about them derives from the polemical reports by their proto-orthodox and later orthodox Christian opponents, the Church Fathers (Irenaeus, Origen, Eusebius, and Epiphanius of Salamis), who generally portraye

in Kabbalah, the first spiritual World that came into being after the contraction of God's infinite light

The Elcesaites, Elkasaites, Elkesaites or Elchasaites were an ancient Jewish Christian sect in Lower Mesopotamia, then the province of Asoristan in the Sasanian Empire that was active between the early second century and the fifth century CE. The members of this sect, which originated in the Transjordan, performed frequent baptisms for purification and had a Gnostic orientation.

5th century Manichean manuscript

work by Hippolytus of Rome