Naassene Fragment


The Naassene Fragment is a fragmentary text that survives in no document save a quotation in the early third century encyclopedia of heresies by Hippolytus of Rome, Refutation of All Heresies (5.7.2-9). It may be considered part of the New Testament apocryphal tradition. The Naassenes (from Hebrew na'asch, snake) were a Gnostic Ophite sect. The fragmentary quotation is given by Hippolytus as expressing the fundamental ideas of the Naassene Ophites, and possibly of all Gnostics.

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