THE OPHITES

The Ophites should hold by right the first place amongst the schools we are considering, for that impartial and acute historian of the Gnosis, Hippolytus, styles them, “The Naaseni who specially call themselves ‘Gnostics.’ But inasmuch as this deception of theirs is multiform and has many heads (a play upon their name of serpent-followers), like the Hydra of fable, if I smite all the heads at once with the wand of Truth, I shall destroy the whole serpent, for all the other sects differ but little from this one in essentials.” He therefore commences his history of the Gnostic heresies, properly so called, with a minute account of this one, illustrated with copious extracts from their text-books; on account of their antiquity and importance bestowing much more of his space upon them than upon any other of their offshoots or competitors.

Their strange-sounding title “Naaseni”–“Followers of the Naas” (the only way in which the Greek, from its want of aspirate letters, could write the Hebrew Nachash, “Serpent”)was literally rendered by “Ophites,” the name which has ever since served to designate them.