Fate: Condemned by Origen, Celsus (a pagan critic), and Epiphanius. No primary texts survive. The Naassene Sermon is partially preserved in Hippolytus’s Refutation of All Heresies.

The Ophites (from Greek ophis, serpent) venerated the serpent of Genesis 3 as a hero — the revealer who attempted to give Adam and Eve true knowledge against the demiurge’s prohibition. This inverts the orthodox reading: the God who forbids knowledge of good and evil is the villain; the serpent who offers it is the agent of the true God. Naassenes (from Hebrew nachash, serpent) represent a related tradition. Both groups performed ritual meals and used a live serpent in liturgy according to hostile sources, though this may be polemical exaggeration. The deeper theological point is consistent with broader Gnosticism: the creator-God of the Hebrew Bible is a tyrannical inferior power, and humanity’s liberation requires transgressing his commands.

What happens when a group is declared heretical: The process is rarely sudden. It typically begins with episcopal letters condemning a teaching, escalates to synodal condemnation at a regional council, and — after Constantine — can be ratified by an ecumenical council backed by imperial authority. Once condemned: (1) Leaders are excommunicated, exiled, or — in later centuries — handed to secular authorities for execution. (2) Writings are ordered burned; possession becomes a criminal offense. Eusebius records that after Nicaea, Constantine ordered Arian books destroyed under penalty of death. The same logic applied to Gnostic texts — which is why the Nag Hammadi library was buried in a sealed jar around 367 AD, the same year Athanasius’s Easter letter listed the NT canon and ordered non-canonical books removed from churches. (3) Communities are dissolved by force where state power reaches; in regions beyond imperial reach they survive for centuries. (4) Memory is controlled — the only surviving accounts of most heresies are hostile summaries by their opponents (Irenaeus, Tertullian, Epiphanius’s Panarion), meaning we are largely reading prosecution briefs, not the groups’ own self-understanding.