26), and Theodoret's Haereticarum Fabularum Compendium, the Borborites or Borborians (Greek: Βορβοριανοί; in Egypt, Phibionites; in other countries, Koddians, Barbelites, Secundians, Socratites, Zacchaeans, Stratiotics) were a Christian Gnostic sect, said to be descended from the Nicolaitans.
In the seventh reigned a figure variously called Yaldabaoth or Sabaoth, creator of heaven and earth, the God of the Jews, represented by some Borborites under the form of an ass or a hog; hence the Jewish prohibition of swine's flesh.
[10] Buckley notes that this implies treatment of an aborted foetus as "strayed semen", and would serve to prevent it from developing into another body "for the archons' clutches".
With impudent boldness moreover, they even tried to seduce me themselves—like that murderous, villainous Egyptian wife of the chief cook—because they wanted me in my youth.... Now the women who taught this dirty myth were very lovely in their outward appearance but in their wicked minds they had all the devil's ugliness.
But the merciful God rescued me from their wickedness, so that after reading their books, understanding their real intent and not being carried away with it, and after escaping without taking the bait, I lost no time reporting them to the bishops who were there, and finding out which ones were hidden in the church.
Stephen Gero finds the accounts written by Epiphanius and later writers plausible and connects them with earlier Gnostic myths.
[11] J. J. Buckley, similarly, highlights parallels which the Phibionite or Koddian belief system and rituals described by Epiphanius show with other Gnostic groups.
Ehrman writes that accusing opponents of wild sexual practices was common in Roman antiquity, so Epiphanius's lurid accounts should be seen as an outgrowth of that.
[10] More generally, documents written by Egyptian Gnostics themselves such as those found in the Nag Hammadi library do not seem to match what the anti-heresy writers claimed.