OPHITES. - Name of a group of Gnostics, which derives from the prominence they gave to the serpent in the account of paradise.

These Gnostics were originally either Jews or Jewish Christians, because they were called Naassenes from the Hebrew name môhâi of the serpent. Therefore the hypothesis of H. Leisegang (in Eranos-Jahrbuch, 1939 [Zurich 1940], p. 206), which seeks to deduce the Gnostic sect of the Ophites from a Hellenistic milieu, is mistaken. The kinship of the Ophites with Gnostics who spoke of the patriarch Seth (the so-called Sethians) and with the Peratae, who were likewise adherents of a Jewish gnosis, directs us toward a Jewish or Jewish-Christian gnosis. These Gnostics were known to Irenaeus (v. Haer., I, 30 St=I 28 Harv), who identifies them precisely with the Sethians; Celsus also knows them (v. Origen, Contra Cels., VI, 21 ff.) and Epiphanius, Haer., 36 (cf. Ps. Tertullian, Adv. omnes haer., 2; Philastrius, Haer., 1, p. 2, 9 Marx) speaks of them at length. It is always a question of the transmission of gnosis, that is, of the knowledge, thanks to the serpent, of good and evil which the Jewish creator god had not wished to reveal to men in paradise. The opposition to the Jewish concept of a creator God is therefore an integral part of this gnosis. Probably this Jewish sect came from Mesopotamia, where a branch of it has always remained, but later it also spread in the West (in Rome? already in the 2nd century), especially in Egypt. This gnosis was prior to Valentinus and it seems that not Hellenism, but a Jewish (or Jewish-Iranian) speculation was at its basis.

Note that it was not the symbol of the serpent, as had been said at first (v. Comptes rendus de l'Acad. des Inscript. et Belles Lett., 1948, p. 89), but the ankh cross that was the decoration of the leather covering on one of the new Gnostic manuscripts of Nag-Hammadi; v. Puech, op. cit. in bibl., p. 95.

Bibliography8 works

BIBL.: R. A. Lipsius, Über die ophitischen Systeme, in Zeitschr. für wissenschaftl Theol., 1863, p. 410 ff.; Honig, Die Ophiten, Berlin 1899; E. Amann, Ophite, in DThC. XI, 1063 ff.; G. Bornkamm, Ophites, in Pauly-Wissowa, XVIII, 1, 654-58; T. Hopfner, in Charisteria A. Rzach, Reichenberg 1930, p. 86 ff.; G. Scholem, in Zeitschr. für neutest. Wissensch., 1931, p. 170 ff.; H. Ch. Puech, Les nouveaux écrits gnostiques, in Coptic Studies in honour of W. E. Crum, Boston 1950, p. 51 ff.; especially p. 146 ff.

Erik Peterson

@incollection{ec9_ofiti, author = {Peterson, Erik}, title = {Ofiti}, booktitle = {Enciclopedia Cattolica}, volume = {IX}, pages = {80--81}, note = {Cited by column}, publisher = {Ente per l’Enciclopedia Cattolica e per il Libro Cattolico}, address = {Città del Vaticano}, year = {1952}, url = {https://azioneromana.com/article/ofiti} }

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