(1) Syrian heretics of the ninth century. They were called Brachiniah by the Arabs, from the name of their head, Ibrahim, or Abraham of Antioch. They denied the Divinity of Christ, and were looked on by some as allied to the Paulicians.
(2) A sect of Bohemian Deists. They claimed that they held what had been Abraham's religion before his circumcision. They believed in one God, but rejected the Trinity, original sin, and the perpetuity of punishment for sin, and accepted nothing of the Bible save only the Ten Commandments and the Lord's Prayer. On their refusal to adopt some one of the religions tolerated in Bohemia, Joseph II banished them to Transylvania in 1783. Some became converted later on to the Catholic Faith. There are still found in Bohemia some whose religious belief suggests that of the Abrahamites.
- from the article "Abrahamites" in the Catholic Encylopedia, by John Joseph a'Becket, 1907; this is part of a series of articles on heresies and blasphemies