Also to the ophitic circle belongs the next example, taken from Hippolytus  ’ account of the Peratae (Refut. V. 16. 9 f.):

This general Serpent is also the wise Word of Eve. This is the mystery of Eden: this is the river that flows out of Eden. This is also the mark that was set on Cain, whose sacrifice the god of this world did not accept whereas he accepted the bloody sacrifice of Abel  : for the lord of this world delights in blood. This Serpent is he who appeared in the latter days in human form at the time of Herod. . . .

The elevation of Cain, prototype of the outcast, condemned by God to be “a fugitive and a vagabond” on earth, to a pneumatic symbol and an honored position in the line leading to Christ is of course an intentional challenge to ingrained valuations. This opting for the “other” side, for the traditionally infamous, is a heretical method, and much more serious than a merely sentimental siding with the underdog, let alone mere indulgence in speculative freedom. It is obvious that allegory, normally so respectable a means of harmonizing, is here made to carry the bravado of non-conformity. Perhaps we should speak in such cases, not of allegory at all, but of a form of polemics, that is, not of an exegesis of the original text, but of its tendentious rewriting. Indeed, the Gnostics in such cases hardly claimed to bring out the correct meaning of the original, if by “correct” is meant the meaning intended by its author—seeing that this author, directly or indirectly, was their great adversary, the benighted creator-god. Their unspoken claim was rather that the blind author had unwittingly embodied something of the truth in his partisan version of things, and that this truth can be brought out by turning the intended meaning upside down.

The figure of Cain, after which a gnostic sect called itself (for the Cainites  , see Iren. I. 31. 2), is only the most prominent example of the working of the method. In the construction of a complete series of such countertypes, stretching through the ages, a rebels’ view of history as a whole is consciously opposed to the official one. The siding with Cain extends consistently to all the “rejected” among Scriptural figures: the passage quoted above continues with a like elevation of Esau, who “did not receive the blind blessing but became rich outside without accepting anything from the blind one” (loc. cit. 9); and Marcion, whose hate of the Old Testament creator-god led him to the most radical conclusions in all respects, taught that Christ descended into hell solely to redeem Cain and Korah, Dathan and Abiram, Esau, and all nations which did not acknowledge the God of the Jews, while Abel, Enoch, Noah, Abraham, and so on, because they served the creator and his law and ignored the true God, were left down below (cf. p. 140, note 11). [Hans Jonas  ]