SECT

SECT (Gr. hairesis, usually rendered “heresy”, Acts 24=>14; 1 Chronicles 11=>19; Galatians 5=>20, etc.), meaning properly “a choice,” then “a chosen manner of life,” and then “a religious party,” as the “sect” of the Sadducees (Acts 5=>17), of the Pharisees (15=>5), the Nazarenes, i.e., Christians (24=>5). It afterwards came to be used in a bad sense, of those holding pernicious error, divergent forms of belief (2 Peter 2=> 1 ; Galatians 5=>20).