Kehilat HaEvionim (The Community of the Poor)

 One of the bizarre Jewish sects of the time of Jesus was the Evionim (Poors in Hebrew and Aramean). They were ascetics who lived in voluntary poverty. They rejected possessing wives and shared women equally (Scandalizing the Antiquity). Today they are included among the gnostics because of their "secret" knowledge and rituals. Some Berkeley hippies of my times (I was there! did not get laid!) tried to adopt similar ideas but it did not last. Being Americans, they left no theoretical literature I know of. The Jews wrote lots. The movie "Hair" hinted at them. Pic.

 Irenaeus (he may be making fun of them) explains the abundance and diversity of sects by saying that "numbers of them – indeed, we may say all – desire themselves to be teachers, and to break off from the particular heresy in which they have been involved. Forming one set of doctrines out of a totally different system of opinions, and then again others from others, they insist upon teaching something new, declaring themselves the inventors of any sort of opinion which they may have been able to call into existence" (Against Heresies, I, 28, 1)