Naassenes

The Naassenes (Greek Naasseni, possibly from Hebrew נָחָשׁ naḥaš, snake)[1] were a Christian Gnostic sect known only through the accounts in the books known as the Philosophumena or the Refutation of all Heresies (which have been attributed to Hippolytus of Rome but may in fact not be by him).

[3] The Naassenes are said to have had one or more books containing discourses communicated by James, the brother of Jesus, to Mariamne: these treatises were of a mystical, philosophic, devotional, and exegetical character, rather than a cosmological exposition.

[citation needed] Thus there are three classes of men and three corresponding churches:[6] The Naassene work known to Hippolytus would seem to have been of what we may call a devotional character rather than a formal exposition of doctrine, and this perhaps is why it is difficult to draw from the accounts left us a thoroughly consistent scheme.

Yet he seems to have a rival in this work; for we have reference made to a fourth being, whence or how brought into existence we are not told, a "fiery God," Esaldaios, the father of the idikos kosmos.

On the other hand, it is the Logos, who is identified with the serpent, and this again with the principle of Water, who brings down the pneumatic and psychical elements, so that through him man became a living soul.

But he has now to do a greater work, namely, to provide for the release of the higher elements now enslaved under the dominion of matter, and for their restoration to the good God.

And baptism applied to none save the man who was introduced into this divine bliss, being washed with the Living Water, and "anointed with the Ineffable Chrism from the Horn, like David [was],[8] not from the flask of clay, like Saul,[9] who was fellowcitizen with an evil daemon of fleshly desire.

"[10] The Hermetic alchemists asserted that the Great Work was an opus contra naturam;[11] Paul's use of "against nature" (παρὰ φύσιν, Romans 1:26) may have been given a similar allegorical meaning by the Naassene exegete.

Carl Jung remarked, "such a disposition should not be adjudged negative in all circumstances, in so far as it preserves the archetype of the Original Man, which a one-sided sexual being has, up to a point, lost.

[citation needed] Great part of the extract given by Hippolytus is a commentary on a hymn to the Phrygian Attis, all the epithets applied to whom are shown when etymologically examined, to be aspects of the Logos.

[citation needed] Every temple, naos, shows by its title that it is intended for the honour of the serpent naas as "the Moist Essence," of the universe, without which "naught at all of existing things, immortal or mortal, animate or inanimate, can hold together."