"Ophite" and Peratic Christians

Heresiographers accused some early Christians of worshiping a snake, symbol of the devil. To be sure, a certain bronze snake was associated with Christ on the basis of Jesus’s statement in John 3:14-15: “Just as Moses exalted the snake in the desert
(Num. 21:6-9), so the Child of the Human must be exalted, so that all who believe in him can have eternal life.” Most ancient Christians recognized that in this verse Jesus spoke of himself as the Child of the Human, and thus as analogous to the salvific
snake. An early Christian group who developed this interpretation was later called “Ophite” after the Greek ophis, or snake. Yet the idea of them worshiping the snake in itself must be challenged as heresiological distortion. My aim in this chapter is to introduce these “Ophites,” mainly by combining information from two heresiological reports (Irenaeus and the Refutator) on two groups with significant ideological and exegetical overlap. Irenaeus referred to the group as “others,” by which he meant “other gnostics” (keeping in mind that for Irenaeus, “gnostic” became a global term for “heretic”).1 The Refutator reported on people he called “Peratai,” sometimes called “Peratics.” Another main source, namely Origen of Alexandria, will be used to discuss Ophite ritual and their picture of the cosmos.

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