jan 1, 170 - ? Hegesippus

Description:

The first church chronicler and heresiologist, Hegesippus, writes; the date of his writing is a guesstimate based on Eusebius' description in relation to the Roman bishops of the time. His works are lost, but Eusebius’ quotations from them attest to clearly legendary, dubious, or otherwise uncorroborated tales, as well as claims about church history that are clear odds with the New Testament manuscript evidence. He may have influenced later sources that make claims about early church history, though the extent of his writing as a chronicler may also have been inflated over time.

Per Hegesippus, Jesus’ direct kin (nephews and grand-nephews) were given high placement in the church (e.g. bishop of Jerusalem and “presidents” of all the churches) during the era of Domitian to Trajan.

Hegesippus claims that the primal source error within the church was a certain Thebulis, who was upset about not being made a bishop. He had some sort of connection with seven (subsequent?) “sects”, which were named after other figures. Five of these were the Simoniani (from Simon), the Cleobiani (from Cleobius), the Dorithiani (from Doritheus), the Gortheani (from Gorthaeus), and the Masbothaei (from Masbothaeus). “From” these later came the Menandrianists, the Marcionists, the Carpocratians, the Valentinians, the Basilideans, and the Saturnilians.

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