In
Christian terminology,
docetism (from the
Greek dokein (to seem) /
dókesis (apparition, phantom), according to Norbert Brox, is defined narrowly as "the doctrine according to which the phenomenon of Christ, his historical and bodily existence, and thus above all the human form of Jesus, was altogether mere semblance without any true reality." Broadly it is taken as the belief that
Jesus only seemed to be human, and that his human form was an illusion. The word
Doketaí (illusionists) referring to early groups who denied Jesus' humanity, first occurred in a letter by Bishop
Serapion of Antioch (197–203), who discovered the doctrine in the
Gospel of Peter, during a pastoral visit to a Christian community using it in
Rhosus, and later condemned it as a forgery. It appears to have arisen over theological contentions concerning the meaning, figurative or literal, of a sentence from the
Gospel of John: "the Word was made Flesh".