page_title: Naassenes
section_title: First Man
hierarchical_section_title: Naassenes / Naassene Sermon / First Man
caption_attribution_description: Creation of Adam. После сотворения земли, Бог создает человека и оживляет его. Byzantine mosaic in Monreale
context_page_description: The Naassenes were a Christian Gnostic sect known only through the writings of Hippolytus of Rome.
  The Naassenes claimed to have been taught their doctrines by Mariamne, a disciple of James the Just. The retention of the Hebrew form shows that their beliefs may represent the earliest stages of Gnosticism. Hippolytus regards them as among the first to be called simply "Gnostics", alleging that they alone have sounded the depths of knowledge.
context_section_description: The Naassenes so far agreed with other Ophites that they gave to the first principle the names First Man and Son of Man, calling him in their hymns Adamas:
  The First Man (Protanthropos, Adamas); the fundamental being before its differentiation into individuals (cf. Adam Kadmon).
  The Son of Man; the same being after it has been individualized into existing things and thus sunk into matter.
  Instead, however, of retaining the female principle of the Syrian Ophites, they represented their "Man" as androgynous; and hence one of their hymns runs "From thee, father, through thee, mother, the two immortal names." They declared that "the beginning of Perfection is the gnosis of Man, but the gnosis of God is perfected Perfection."
  Although the myths of the earlier Ophite system are but lightly touched on, there is some trace of an acquaintance with them, as for example the myth that Adam was brought forth by the Earth spontaneously; he lay without breath, without motion, without stirring, like a statue; being made after the image of the First Man, through the agency of several Archons. In order for them to seize hold of the First Man, there was given unto Adam a soul, that through this soul the image of the First Man above might suffer and be chastened in bondage.
  The Naassenes taught that their primary man was, like Geryon, threefold, containing in himself the three natures to noeron, to psychikon, to choikon; and so that in Jesus the three natures were combined, and through him speak to these different classes of men. From the living waters which he supplies each absorbs that for which his nature has attraction. From the same water the olive can draw its oil, and the vine its wine, and in like manner each other plant its special produce: chaff will be attracted by amber, iron only by the magnet, gold only by the prickle of the sea-hawk, so each according to his nature attracts and imbibes a different supply from the same source.
caption: Creation of Adam, Byzantine mosaic in Monreale
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