Note 171 — Chapter VIII · POST-CHRISTIAN GNOSTICS: THE OPHITES

Irenaeus, Bk I. c. 28, pp. 231, 232, Harvey. A sort of echo or perhaps a more detailed repetition of the story is found in one of the latest documents of the Pistis Sophia, where Jesus tells His disciples that the ἀρχοντες or rulers of Adamas once rebelled and persisted in begetting “archons and archangels and angels and serving spirits and decans”; that the 12 aeons, who are evidently the Signs of the Zodiac, divided into two companies of six, half of them under the rule of one Jabraôth repenting and being translated into a higher sphere, while the others were “bound” in our firmament under the rule of the five planets. Perhaps the origin of the whole story is the battle of the Gods and the serpent-footed giants, which appears on the Mithraic bas-reliefs, for which see P.S.B.A. 1912, p. 134, and Pl. XVI, 7. It is certainly of Asiatic or Anatolian origin, and seems to be connected with volcanic phenomena. Hippolytus, op. cit. Bk V. c. 13, p. 192, Cruice, says this rebellion is a “Chaldaean” doctrine.