A Dictionary of All Religions and Religious Denominations/Dositheans

by Hannah Adams

*DOSITHEANS. The founder of this sect was a magician of Samaria, who pretended to be the Messiah. He had thirty disciples answering to the days of the month, and among them a woman, whom he called the moon.

They practised circumcision, and rigid fastings, and in whatever attitude the Sabbath found them, they remained during its continuance. At last to make it believed he was taken to heaven, he retired into a secret cavern, and starved himself to death; some remains of this sect were found in Egypt in the sixth century.^[1]

Original footnotes

1. <Mosheim, vol. i. p. 139, 140.