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Concept
Cainites
Summary
The Cainites or Cainians (Καϊνοί, Kainoi, and Καϊανοί, Kaianoi) were a Gnostic and antinomian sect known to venerate Cain as the first victim of the Demiurge, the deity of the Old Testament, who was identified by many groups of Gnostics as evil. The sect was relatively small. They were mentioned by Tertullian and Irenaeus as existing in the eastern Roman Empire during the 2nd century. One of their purported religious texts was the Gospel of Judas.
The oldest source is to be found in Irenaeus, Against Heresies. i. 31.
Ireneaus states that the Cainites regarded Cain as derived from the highest God, not the Creator God worshipped by Jews and other Christians. According to Irenaeus, they claimed fellowship with Esau, Korah, the men of Sodom, and all such people, and regarded themselves as persecuted by the Creator. But they escaped injury from him, because they were protected by the goddess Sophia.
Epiphanius of Salamis (Haer. 38), who appears to have some source of information independent of Irenaeus, gives a much longer account. He describes Abel as being derived from the weaker principle.
Like other Gnostics, the Cainites distinguished between the Creator and the Supreme God. They identified the Creator with the God of the Jews, viewing him and those he favored with hostility and believing that the purpose of redemption was the dissolution of his work. They claimed kinship with those to whom he showed antagonism in the Old Testament but believed he was the weaker power and could do them no permanent harm, since they enjoyed the protection of Sophia.
They may have shared with other heretical Christians a belief in the division of humanity into two classes: the spiritual and the material. Material people belonged to the realm of the Creator and derived their being from him but were doomed to destruction. Spiritual people were imprisoned in bodies of flesh but derived their essential being from the highest Power. They were opposed by the Creator and his minions but were destined to triumph over them as Cain did over Abel.
Official source
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