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Ophites

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Columbia Encyclopedia

Ophites [Gr.,=believers in the serpent], group of Gnostic sects notorious for extreme cultism and inverted morality. Certain of these sects were known as Naasseni. Almost all that is known of Ophitism has been gleaned from St. Irenaeus, Origen, and other writers opposed to Gnosticism. The Ophites carried to extremes the teaching of Marcion that an essential hostility exists between the God of the Old Testament and the God of the New Testament. The Ophites held that the Old Testament villains were actually heroes and revered Cain, the Sodomites, and the Egyptians. Specially worshiped was the serpent, as the creature in Eden that tried to give Adam and Eve the knowledge withheld from them by Jehovah. Much of the serpent worship and the occult ritualism was probably symbolic of certain esoteric knowledge. The Ophites acknowledged Jesus as the savior, but rejected the importance of the crucifixion; Christ came to reveal gnosis (knowledge), not to die for people's sins. One Ophitic hymn, the Hymn of the Naasenes, survives.

See E. Buonaiuti, Gnostic Fragments (1924); R. M. Grant, Gnosticism and Early Christianity (1959, rev. ed. 1966).

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Wikipedia

The Ophites or Ophians (from Greek ὄφιανοι > ὄφις = snake): any of numerous Gnostic sects in Syria and Egypt about 100 AD. The common trait was that these sects would give great importance to the serpent of the biblical tale of Adam and Eve, connecting the Tree of Knowledge (of Good and Evil) to gnosis. In contrast to Christian interpretations of the Serpent as Satan, Ophites viewed the serpent as the hero, and regarded the figure that the Bible identifies as God instead as being the evil demiurge.

Since the Bible says that the serpent is a wild animal (hayah ha'sadeh), the Ophites felt perfectly justified in their position, pointing to the serpent's trying to cause Adam and Eve to gain knowledge, and the forbidding of this knowledge by the figure which Christianity and Judaism identify as God. Christians who supported the church orthodoxy viewed Gnosticism as their archenemy, and took particular offense at the Ophites turning their view of the serpent on its head.

Most information about the ophitic sects must be gleaned from what their enemies said of them: Hippolytus (Philosoph. v.), Irenaeus (Against Heresies, i), Origen (Contra Celsum vi. 25 seq.) and Epiphanius of Salamis (Panarion. xxvi.). A few Ophite texts have been recovered from discoveries such as the Nag Hammadi find.

Ophite sects

The Naassenes (from Hebrew na'asch = snake)
The Sethians.
The Mandaeans are considered an Ophite religion that has survived (up to and including the present day).
The Perates (from the Greek language peras, "to penetrate")
The Borborites

References

Francis Legge, Forerunners and Rivals of Christianity, From 330 B.C. to 330 A.D. (1914), reprinted in two volumes bound as one, University Books New York, 1964. LC Catalog 64-24125.
The Ophite Diagrams, briefly by the christian Origen and Pagan Celsus. Emanations and angels reveal Persian influence.

Ophite sects

References

See also