Theodotus the Fuller

Theodotus the Fuller (ὁ σκυτεύς) was a leather dresser who went from Byzantium to Rome about the end of the 2nd century, and there taught Ebionitish doctrines; but the Romish bishop Victor is said to have excommunicated him from the Church. Theodotus maintained that Jesus, although born of the Virgin according to the will of the Father, was a mere man, and that at his baptism the higher Christ descended upon him. But this higher Christ Theodotus conceived as the Son of him who was at once the supreme God and Creator of the world, and not (with Cerinthus and other Gnostics) as the son of a deity superior to the God of the Jews. Epiphanius (Haeres. 54) associates him with the Aloji. He must not be confounded with another heretical Theodotus (ὁ τραπεζίτης or ἀργυραμοιβός) ivho was connected with a party of the Gnostics, the Melchisedekites. See Neander, Hist. of Christ. Church, 1, 580; Ueberweg, Hist. of Philosophy, 1, 308.