Note 160 — Chapter VIII · POST-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: THE OPHITES

This is a variant, and an important one, of the Babylonian myth which makes Bel, after defeating Tiamat the Dragon of Chaos, cut her in two halves and make out of them the visible heaven and earth. See Rogers, op. cit. p. 126. The heaven which there is fashioned from the powers of evil, is here at any rate half divine. In later systems, such as one of those in the Pistis Sophia and especially that of the Manichaeans, the older Babylonian idea is returned to. It would therefore seem that for the modification here introduced, the Ophites were indebted to Jewish influence and forced it to agree with the story of Genesis. See Irenaeus, op. cit. Bk I. c. 28, p. 229, Harvey.