early accounts
agree in making the province of Asia the scene of his activity, and
Hippolytus (_Haer_. vii. 33) credits him with an Egyptian training.
There can be no truth in the notice given by Epiphanius (_Haer_. xxviii.
4) that Cerinthus had in earlier days at Jerusalem led the judaizing
opposition against Paul.

The difficulty of defining Cerinthus's theological position is due not
only to the paucity of our sources but to the fact that the witness of
the two principal authorities, Irenaeus (1. 26, iii. 11) and Hippolytus
(_Syntagma_), does not agree. Further, Irenaeus himself in one passage
fails to distinguish between Cerinthian and Valentinian doctrines. It
would appear, however, that Cerinthus laid stress on the rite of
circumcision and on the observance of the Sabbath. He taught that the
world had been made by angels, from one of whom, the god of the Jews,
the people of Israel had received their Law, which was not perfect. The
only New Testament writing which he accepted was a mutilated Gospel of
Matthew. Jesus was the offspring of Joseph and Mary, and on him at the
baptism descended the Christ,[1] revealing the hitherto unknown Father,
and endowing him with miraculous power. This Christ left Jesus again
before the Passion, and the resurrection of Jesus was still in the
future. Together with these somewhat gnostic ideas, Cerinthus, if we may
trust the notices of Gaius the Roman presbyter (c. 290) and Dionysius of
Alexandria (c. 340), held a violent and crude form of chiliasm. But the
chief significance of the man is his "combination of zeal for legal
observances with bold criticism of the Law itself as a whole and of its
origin," which reminds us of the Clementine _Recognitions_. Cerinthus is
a blend of judaizing christian and gnostic.

FOOTNOTE:

[1] So Irenaeus. According to Hippolytus and Epiphanius it was the
Holy Ghost that thus descended.

CERIUM (symbol Ce, atomic weight 140.25), a metallic chemical element
which occurs with the rare earths in the minerals cerite, samarskite,
euxenite, monazite, parisite and many yttrium minerals. The particular
earth containing cerium was discovered by M.H. Klaproth in 1803, whilst
J. Berzelius at about the same time also examined it and came to the
conclusion that it was the oxide of a new metal, which he termed
cerium. The crude oxide of the metal is obtained from cerite, by
evaporating the mineral with strong sulphuric acid, removing excess of
ac