num_pages: 376
description: This book offers a new understanding of Sethianism and the origins of Gnosticism by examining the mythology in and social reality behind a group of texts to which certain leaders of the early church occasionally attached the label Ophite. In the unique Ophite mythology which rewrites the Genesis paradise story and is attested for example in Irenaeus Adversus haereses 1.30 The Apocryphon of John and On the Origin of the World the snakes advice to eat of the tree of knowledge is considered positive the creator and his angels are turned into demonic beasts and the true Godhead is presented as an androgynous heavenly projection of Adam and Eve. It is argued that Hans-Martin Schenkes influential model of the Sethian system only reveals part of a larger whole to which the Ophite material belongs as an important and organic component.
language: English
title: Paradise Reconsidered in Gnostic Mythmaking: Rethinking Sethianism in Light of the Ophite Evidence
publisher: Brill Academic Publishers