• (n. pl.) Ancient heretics who held that Christ`s body was merely a phantom or appearance.
Docetae was the name given, in the earlier ages of the Christian church, to those who denied the reality of the human form of Christ, maintaining it to be merely a phantom or shadow. In the sense of regarding Christ's body as a heavenly and ethereal, instead of a human one, docetism had its partisans even among the orthodox.
early Christian adherents of Docetism.