Gnosticism in the early church

Gnostic teachers and systems (Valentinians, Basilides, Sethians and others) and refutations of them. Part of Heresy.

Apocalypse of Peter (Akhmim fragment) 1Anonymous · ca. 100–150 · Christ warns that many false prophets will teach doctrines of destruction.
Dialogue with Trypho 35.6Justin Martyr · ca. 155–160 · Justin names the Marcionites, Valentinians, Basilidians, and Saturnilians.
The Instructor 1.6.31Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · All the baptized are sons of God and equal in Christ; there is no division into “gnostics” and lower “psychics.”
The Instructor 1.6.52Clement of Alexandria · ca. 190–200 · Butter fuels the lamp as the Word enlightens; those who call themselves perfect “gnostics” should learn from Paul, who did not claim to have attained perfection.
Against Heresies 1 pref. 2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Irenaeus explains that error disguises itself as truth and that he will expose the teaching of Ptolemy's followers, a branch of the Valentinian school.
Against Heresies 1.1.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Irenaeus sets out the Valentinian account of the first eight Aeons, the Ogdoad.
Against Heresies 1.3.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Valentinians claim their system was revealed in parables and find the Aeons wherever Scripture or the liturgy says “ages”.
Against Heresies 1.4.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Sophia's Intention, called Achamoth, is cast outside the Pleroma, given form by Christ, and left to suffer grief, fear, and bewilderment.
Against Heresies 1.4.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Christ sends the Saviour, who gives Achamoth knowledge and turns her passions into matter; she then conceives spiritual offspring from the sight of his angels.
Against Heresies 1.6.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Valentinians teach that the material perishes, the animate may be saved, and the spiritual, which they claim to be, will be perfected by knowledge.
Against Heresies 1.6.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Valentinians say that church members need good works to be saved, but that they themselves, being spiritual by nature, are saved whatever they do.
Against Heresies 1.6.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Irenaeus charges the Valentinian “perfect” with eating idol food, attending games, and seducing or taking other men's wives.
Against Heresies 1.8.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Irenaeus compares the heretics' use of Scripture to rearranging the jewels of a king's mosaic into the image of a fox.
Against Heresies 1.8.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Valentinians read Jairus's daughter, Paul's “untimely birth”, the veiled woman, and the cries of Jesus's passion as figures of Achamoth.
Against Heresies 1.8.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Valentinians find their three kinds of men in Jesus's sayings to would-be followers, the parable of the leaven, and Paul's letters.
Against Heresies 1.8.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The lost sheep, the lost coin, Simeon, Anna, and texts on wisdom and marriage are made into figures of Achamoth, the Demiurge, and the conjunctions.
Against Heresies 1.8.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Valentinians read the prologue of John's Gospel as a description of their first eight Aeons.
Against Heresies 1.9.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · John speaks of one Christ who is the Word made flesh, not of a series of Valentinian Aeons with these names.
Against Heresies 1.11.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Valentinus's own scheme of Dyads, Ogdoad, two Limits, Christ, the Demiurge and the Spirit differs from his disciples'.
Against Heresies 1.12.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Valentinians disagree about the origin of the Saviour and about why he is called Son of Man.
Against Heresies 1.13.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Marcus counterfeits the Eucharist with cups that turn red and overflow, to deceive women.
Against Heresies 1.13.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Marcus seduces wealthy women by making them 'prophesy', and they reward him with money and their bodies.
Against Heresies 1.14.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Marcus claims the Tetrad appeared to him as a woman and revealed the Father's name of thirty letters in four syllables.
Against Heresies 1.14.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Marcus teaches that the letters of the divine name generate other letters without end, so that each Aeon utters only its own part.
Against Heresies 1.14.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Marcus assigns the mute letters, semivowels and vowels of the Greek alphabet to pairs of Aeons and derives the numbers twenty-four and thirty.
Against Heresies 1.15.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Marcus derives the name Jesus (888) and the titles Christ and Son from numbers, and says knowledge of the name freed men from ignorance and death.
Against Heresies 1.23.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Simon taught that his companion Helena, a freed prostitute, was his first Thought, imprisoned by the angels she made and reborn in many women, among them Helen of Troy.
Against Heresies 1.23.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Simon claimed to have come in apparent human form to free Helena and save men by grace alone, setting his followers free from the prophets and the moral law.
Against Heresies 1.24.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Saturninus taught that seven angels made the world and man, whom a heavenly spark of life raised up and to which it returns at death.
Against Heresies 1.24.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Basilides taught that Christ did not suffer, but Simon of Cyrene was crucified in his place while Jesus laughed, so that one should deny the crucified.
Against Heresies 1.24.5Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Basilides held that only the soul is saved, treated idol-meat and lust as indifferent, and gave names to the 365 heavens.
Against Heresies 1.25.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Carpocrates taught that Jesus was Joseph's son, whose pure soul remembered the unbegotten God and despised the Jewish customs.
Against Heresies 1.25.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Carpocratians hold that souls must pass through every kind of action, however vile, before being freed, misreading Jesus' parable of the adversary.
Against Heresies 1.26.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Cerinthus taught that the world was made by a lower power and that Christ descended on Jesus at his baptism and left him before the passion.
Against Heresies 1.29.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Barbelo-Gnostics derive from an unnameable Father and Barbelo a series of Aeons and Christ, the anointed light.
Against Heresies 1.30.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Ophites teach a First Man, a Second Man (Son of Man), and the Spirit as First Woman, from whom Christ was generated.
Against Heresies 1.31.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Cainites honour Cain, Esau, Korah and the Sodomites, and say Judas alone knew the truth; they use a 'Gospel of Judas'.
Against Heresies 1.31.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Cainites teach that salvation requires passing through every shameful deed, done in the name of the angel who prompts it.
Against Heresies 2 pref.Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · In the preface to Book 2, Irenaeus sums up Book 1 and announces that he will now overthrow the heretics' system.
Against Heresies 2.24.3Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The measurements of the tabernacle, ark, lampstand, oil, and incense fit none of their numbers, and any number at all can be found in Scripture.
Against Heresies 2.31.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The arguments against Valentinus overthrow all the other heresies too, from Marcion and Simon to Basilides and the Gnostics.
Against Heresies 3.11.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · John wrote against Cerinthus and the Nicolaitans: one God made all things through his Word, including our creation.
Against Heresies 3.15.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Valentinians imitate church language to lure the simple, then privately teach their Pleroma, and their initiates grow proud.
Against Heresies 3.16.1Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · Against Gnostic theories that divide Jesus from Christ, Irenaeus will set out the apostles' teaching that Jesus Christ is one.
Against Heresies 4.35.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · If the Saviour used his own apostles, he would have used his own prophets too; the same Word spoke through both, so the prophets cannot be half from the Pleroma and half from the Demiurge.
Against Heresies 4.35.4Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Valentinians disagree among themselves about which Aeon any Scripture refers to, whereas the Church, holding the rule of truth, says the same things about the same words.
Against Heresies 5.18.2Irenaeus of Lyons · ca. 180–190 · The Father over all, the Word through all, and the Spirit in us all show one God; John’s prologue proves the world was made by the Word, not by angels or a Gnostic power.
Excerpts from Theodotus 1.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinians read Christ's dying words as committing to the Father the spiritual seed that Wisdom gave him as a covering when he came down.
Excerpts from Theodotus 7.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · In the Valentinian account, the unknown Father, wishing to be known, put forth the Only-begotten, who is knowledge,
Excerpts from Theodotus 21.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinians read Gen 1:27 as the emanation of Wisdom: the male are the angels (the elect), the female themselves (the called).
Excerpts from Theodotus 22.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Valentinians read “baptized for the dead” as the angels' baptism on our behalf.
Excerpts from Theodotus 23.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · In the Valentinian reading, Paul preached Christ in two ways: as born and suffering, for the lower beings, and as spiritual, born of the Spirit and a virgin, for the higher.
Excerpts from Theodotus 26.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Theodotus says the visible Jesus was Wisdom and the Church of the spiritual seeds, the invisible part the only-begotten Son.
Excerpts from Theodotus 28.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Basilideans read the punishment “to the third and fourth generation” as reincarnation; the Valentinians as the lower powers and their seeds.
Excerpts from Theodotus 29.1Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · In the Valentinian myth, Silence, mother of all the emanations of the Depth, kept silent about the ineffable.
Excerpts from Theodotus 30.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Theodotus argues that sympathy is suffering, and that the whole Pleroma suffered with the fallen Aeon.
Excerpts from Theodotus 31.4Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Wisdom's fall produced an emptiness, a shadow of the Name, the Son.
Excerpts from Theodotus 33.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · They say Wisdom then produced the Demiurge as a copy of Christ, and a type of the Father.
Excerpts from Theodotus 35.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · Theodotus reads Christ's self-emptying as his leaving the Pleroma, bringing with him the angels of the spiritual seed for its correction.
Excerpts from Theodotus 45.2Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · He freed her from passion and turned her passions into the substance of the lower world, which was thus created.
Excerpts from Theodotus 47.3Clement of Alexandria · ca. 200 · The Demiurge produces the psychic Christ, archangels, and angels; “the Spirit borne above the waters” is read as the pure substance above the material.
Miscellanies 2.3.10Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Basilidians make faith a natural gift of the elect; the Valentinians leave faith to simple Christians and claim knowledge for themselves, the spiritual saved by nature.
Miscellanies 2.8.36Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Basilidians read “fear is the beginning of wisdom” of the Ruler's astonishment at the gospel; Valentinus writes that the angels feared Adam because of the higher seed placed in him, and destroyed their work.
Miscellanies 2.8.37Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · There is one first principle; God gave fear through Moses to tame the hard of heart; if the Ruler's astonishment began wisdom, then ignorance would be the cause of God's wisdom, creation, and salvation.
Miscellanies 2.8.38Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Clement presses dilemmas against Basilides and Valentinus: if ignorance is good, baptism is needless; if evil, evil causes the best things; and the angels' plot against Adam fails on every account of what they knew.
Miscellanies 2.16.74Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Against the Gnostics, we are not parts of God or of his substance, or God would sin in us; God, rich in mercy, cares for us out of goodness, though we are neither parts of him nor his children by nature.
Miscellanies 2.20.112Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Basilidians call the passions “appendages,” spirits of animals and plants attached to the soul, whose characteristics make the soul's desires like those of beasts.
Miscellanies 2.20.113Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Basilidian man is like a Trojan horse full of spirits; even Isidore, Basilides' son, warns that the doctrine gives the wicked an excuse to say they were forced.
Miscellanies 2.20.114Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Isidore urges mastering the lower soul; Valentinus writes that the heart is like an inn fouled by demons until the one good Father, revealed through the Son, visits and purifies it, so that the pure in heart see God.
Miscellanies 2.20.115Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If the soul is saved by nature, as Valentinus holds, why is it not cared for from the start? If it must repent, salvation comes from obedient change, not nature; fleshly desires cloud the soul like marsh mists.
Miscellanies 3.2.5Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The Carpocratians hold wives in common; Epiphanes, son of Carpocrates, died at seventeen and was worshiped as a god in Cephallenia; he taught a doctrine of the Monad.
Miscellanies 3.4.30Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The followers of Prodicus claim to be sons of the first God, above all law, and live for pleasure; but they commit adultery in secret like slaves, and whoever sins is a slave.
Miscellanies 4.9.71Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Heracleon distinguishes confession in faith and life, which is universal, from confession by voice before authorities, which is partial; not all the saved, such as Matthew, Philip, and Thomas, confessed by voice and died.
Miscellanies 4.9.72Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Heracleon notes that Christ says “confess in me” but “deny me”: those who are in him confess by their lives and can never deny him; those who deny are not in him.
Miscellanies 4.9.73Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Against Heracleon, Clement holds that confession by voice unto death proves genuine faith, and such martyrdom cuts off all passions at once, a sudden repentance; the Spirit bears witness in martyrs, whose defense strengthens the church and wins outsiders.
Miscellanies 4.13.89Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Valentinus taught that the spiritual, immortal by nature, came down to destroy death, which is the Creator's work; he reads “no one sees God's face and lives” of the Creator, and calls the world an image inferior to the living Aeon.
Miscellanies 4.13.90Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · Valentinus called the Creator an image of the true God, fashioned by Wisdom, and taught that a distinct spiritual seed was breathed into the elect unknown to the Creator, reading Genesis's creation of man in this sense.
Miscellanies 4.13.91Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · If the spiritual race destroys death, Christ did not; if Christ did, the Valentinians do not; their doctrine secretly sets them and Christ above the Creator, as if a son contended with his father.
Miscellanies 4.26.165Clement of Alexandria · ca. 198–203 · The wise soul lodges in the body as a guest, respecting it but ready to leave; Basilides wrongly made the elect foreign to the world by nature, for all belongs to the one God; the elect lives as a stranger by choice.
On the Distribution of the TalentsHippolytus of Rome · ca. 200–235 · From the discourse on the talents: heretics who deny either Christ's divinity or his real flesh, like Marcion and Valentinus, bury one of the talents.
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Against All Heresies 1Anonymous · early 3rd cent. (disputed) · The author passes over the Jewish sects and begins his list of Christian heresies with Simon Magus, Menander, Saturninus, Basilides, and Nicolaus.
Against All Heresies 2Anonymous · early 3rd cent. (disputed) · The author describes the Ophites, who exalted the serpent of Eden, the Cainites, who honored Cain and Judas, and the Sethites, who identified Christ with Seth.
Against All Heresies 4Anonymous · early 3rd cent. (disputed) · The author summarizes Valentinus's system of thirty Aeons, the fall of Achamoth, and his docetic Christ, and notes the variations of Ptolemy, Secundus, and Heracleon.
Against All Heresies 5Anonymous · early 3rd cent. (disputed) · The author describes Marcus and Colarbasus, who built a heresy on the numerical values of the Greek letters.
Prescription against Heretics 30Tertullian · ca. 203 · Marcion, Valentinus, and Apelles were recent, expelled from the church at Rome, and their own innovations prove them later than the truth; they cannot show apostolic authority or apostolic miracles.
Prescription against Heretics 33Tertullian · ca. 203 · Many heresies were already present or foreshadowed in the apostles' day and condemned by them: denial of the resurrection, Judaizing, forbidding marriage, endless genealogies, the Nicolaitans, docetism, and Simon's magic.
Commentary on Daniel 2.30Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 202-204 · The fourth in the furnace was the Word who spoke through the youths; their hymn shows all creation to be God's servant, against heretics who invent aeons and emanations.
Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 1Tertullian · ca. 211–213 · As scorpions strike in the summer heat, heretics such as the Gnostics and Valentinians strike Christians in the heat of persecution, arguing that God does not want martyrdom; Tertullian offers this treatise as an antidote.
Antidote for the Scorpion's Sting 10Tertullian · ca. 211–213 · Against the Valentinians, who put the required confession in heaven before celestial powers, Tertullian argues that confession belongs on earth, before human judges, where persecution, betrayal, and death take place.
On the Flesh of Christ 15Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · Scripture everywhere calls Christ a man; the Valentinian objections to his earthly flesh are the same as the heathen's, and our flesh's resurrection simply awaits Christ's final victory.
On the Flesh of Christ 24Tertullian · ca. 206–211 · The prophets and apostles already struck at each heresy about Christ's flesh; the one Christ who suffered in the flesh is the same who will return in that flesh.
Against the Valentinians 1Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · The Valentinians, like the Eleusinian mysteries, hide their teaching behind silence and fine names, persuading before they teach, whereas truth persuades by teaching.
Against the Valentinians 2Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · The Valentinians despise the church as simple, but Christ joined simplicity and wisdom, and the simple, like the dove, know God better than the cunning serpent.
Against the Valentinians 3Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Truth hides nothing; the Valentinian myth of Aeons and marriages is a nursery tale, the “endless genealogies” Paul condemned, and exposing it is already refuting it.
Against the Valentinians 4Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Valentinus, passed over for a bishopric, broke with the church; his followers Ptolemy, Heracleon, Secundus, Mark, and others each changed his system, calling their own inventions revelation.
Against the Valentinians 7Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Tertullian mocks the Valentinian heavens and recounts the first eight Aeons: Bythos and Sige, who produce Nus and Truth, who produce the Word and Life, who produce Man and Church.
Against the Valentinians 8Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Tertullian lists the ten and twelve further Aeons that make up the thirtyfold Pleroma and mocks their pompous names.
Against the Valentinians 9Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Only Nus knows the Father; Sophia, the youngest Aeon, rushes to search him out and nearly dissolves, until she meets Horos (Limit), who stops her.
Against the Valentinians 10Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · In another version Sophia bears a formless daughter by herself; from her grief, terror, and ignorance matter begins; the Father sends Horos, who restores Sophia and casts her Enthymesis out of the Pleroma.
Against the Valentinians 11Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · To steady the Pleroma, Nus emits Christ and the Holy Spirit, who teach the Aeons about their marriages and about how the Father can and cannot be known.
Against the Valentinians 12Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Made all alike, the Aeons sing to the Father and pool their best qualities to form Jesus, the Saviour, with angels as his escort; Tertullian compares him to a patchwork.
Against the Valentinians 13Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Tertullian sums up the first act of the Valentinian drama inside the Pleroma and turns to what happened outside it.
Against the Valentinians 14Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Sophia's cast-out Enthymesis, now called Achamoth, is given form by Christ, seeks his light, is stopped by Horos, and falls into grief, fear, bewilderment, ignorance, and a longing to turn back.
Against the Valentinians 15Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · In the Valentinian myth the waters come from Achamoth's tears, the soul from her turning back, the elements from her fear, and light from her laughter; Tertullian mocks each.
Against the Valentinians 16Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · The Saviour (Soter), sent with his angels, gives Achamoth form in knowledge and turns her passions into the two lower substances; this is the matter that Hermogenes also assumed.
Against the Valentinians 17Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Aroused by the sight of the Saviour's angels, Achamoth conceives and bears the spiritual kind, alongside the material and psychic kinds born of her passion and conversion.
Against the Valentinians 18Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Achamoth forms from the psychic substance the Demiurge, whom the Valentinians identify with the church's God, the Creator, and who works as her unknowing puppet.
Against the Valentinians 19Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · The Valentinians make Achamoth, the Demiurge, and the archangels images of the higher Aeons, a set of likenesses so ill-matched that Tertullian laughs at the painter.
Against the Valentinians 20Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · The Demiurge builds this world and seven heavens, called Sabbath after his seventh seat; the Valentinians even put Paradise with its trees above the third heaven.
Against the Valentinians 21Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · The Valentinians give Sophia (Achamoth) many names, even Holy Spirit; and their Demiurge, knowing he had been made, absurdly claims to be the only God.
Against the Valentinians 22Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · The Valentinians derive the devil and evil spirits from Achamoth's grief, call him the World-ruler, and rank him above the Creator in knowledge.
Against the Valentinians 23Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Tertullian sets out the Valentinian order of powers (Pleroma, Achamoth, Demiurge, devil) and mocks the idea that air and fire came from Sophia's sorrow and fever.
Against the Valentinians 24Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · The Valentinian Demiurge makes man from fluid matter, which Tertullian says must be Sophia's mucus, and gives him an earthy “image”, a psychic “likeness”, and a covering of flesh.
Against the Valentinians 25Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Achamoth secretly passes spiritual seed through the Demiurge's breath into Adam; so the Valentinian man has four parts, spiritual, psychic, earthy, and fleshly.
Against the Valentinians 26Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · The Valentinians teach that flesh perishes, the psychic may be saved, and the spiritual is saved by nature; their Saviour had no material body, which denies salvation to our flesh.
Against the Valentinians 27Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · The Valentinian Christ passed through Mary without being born of her, received the Saviour at baptism, and lost him before the passion; so only a psychic Christ suffered.
Against the Valentinians 28Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · In the Valentinian myth the Demiurge, who did not understand his own prophets, welcomes the Saviour like the centurion of the gospel and learns that he will take his mother's place.
Against the Valentinians 29Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · The Valentinians divide mankind into three natures descended from Cain (earthy, lost), Abel (psychic, uncertain), and Seth (spiritual, saved by nature).
Against the Valentinians 30Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Believing themselves saved by nature, the Valentinians neglect discipline, explain away martyrdom, and make union with a woman a sacred mystery, while the church must work out its salvation.
Against the Valentinians 31Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · At the end, the Valentinians say, Achamoth will enter the Pleroma as the Saviour's bride and the Demiurge will move up into her place.
Against the Valentinians 32Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · In the Valentinian end, flesh perishes, psychic souls stay with the Demiurge, and the spiritual become brides of angels in the Pleroma; Tertullian prefers the Creator's promise, where there is no marrying.
Against the Valentinians 33Tertullian · ca. 206–208 · Some of Ptolemy's followers gave Bythos two consorts, Thought and Will, from whom came Monogenes and Truth.
Against Marcion 1.5Tertullian · 207/208 (third edition, completed later) · If two gods are admitted, there is no reason not to admit many; two equal gods would be pointless and would make worship itself impossible to get right.
On the Soul 23Tertullian · ca. 210 · Heretics claim that souls came down from heaven, drawing on Plato's teaching that souls pre-existed and that learning is recollection; refuting Plato refutes them.
On the Soul 34Tertullian · ca. 210 · Simon Magus built his myth of Helen, his fallen “first Thought,” on transmigration; Tertullian ridicules it by comparing Simon to Menelaus.
On the Soul 50Tertullian · ca. 210 · Death is the debt of nature for all; Menander's claim that his baptism exempts from death is refuted, for even Enoch and Elijah will die, and the apostle John died.
Against Praxeas 8Tertullian · ca. 213 or later · The Son was “put forth” from the Father, not separated as in Valentinus' system, but as a shoot from a root, a river from a spring, a ray from the sun; the Spirit is third, and the Trinity preserves the monarchy.
On First Principles 2.9.5Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · Followers of Marcion, Valentinus and Basilides object that the unequal ranks of heavenly beings and the unequal births of humans can only be explained by different natures of souls or by chance.
On First Principles 3.1.23Origen · ca. 220–230 (Rufinus's translation 398) · The one lump refutes the doctrine of different natures; vessels may change from honour to dishonour or the reverse in later ages, as rational beings rise or fall through immeasurable ages.
Refutation of All Heresies 4.51.9Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Simon and Valentinus renamed the Pythagorean seven as their divine beings.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.2.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Book 5 will treat the Naassenes and show their debt to Greek philosophy and the mysteries.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.6.4Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes call themselves Gnostics and honor a divine Man and Son of Man.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.7.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Naassenes claim a tradition from James through Mariamne; Hippolytus will show it comes from pagan mysteries.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.19.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Sethians teach three principles, each with countless powers, that is, capacities to become anything.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.22.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Hippolytus points to the Paraphrase of Seth for the full Sethian system and turns to the Gnostic Justin.
Refutation of All Heresies 5.23.3Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · All these sects share one spirit and call themselves Gnostics, claiming special knowledge.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.29.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Valentinus and his school, Heracleon and Ptolemy, built their teaching on Pythagorean number, not on the Gospels.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.29.2Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Valentinians' first principle is an unbegotten, generative monad, which they call Father.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.29.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Father emitted Mind and Truth, mother of all the Aeons in the Pleroma.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.30.6Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Sophia, the youngest Aeon, noticed that only the Father begets without a consort.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.31.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Sophia's formless offspring caused alarm among the Aeons, who feared corruption.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.31.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Father emits the Aeon Cross, the Boundary that guards the Pleroma of thirty Aeons.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.32.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The thirty Aeons together emitted one Aeon, the common fruit of the Pleroma, as an offering to the Father.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.32.7Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Demiurge arose from Sophia's fear; he is fiery and is called Place, Hebdomad, and Ancient of Days.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.33.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Valentinians make the devil and Beelzebul the rulers of matter and demons, and the ignorant Demiurge a tool of Sophia who wrongly claims to be the only God.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.34.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Valentinus reuses the Pythagorean tetraktys: Sophia is spirit, the Demiurge soul, and the devil and Beelzebul rulers of world and demons.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.35.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The Valentinians say the law and prophets came from the foolish Demiurge, citing John 10:8.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.35.5Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · The question of Jesus' body split the Valentinians into Eastern and Italian schools.
Refutation of All Heresies 6.38.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Secundus taught a right and a left tetrad and said that the fallen power came from the Aeons' fruits.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.2.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Basilides took his system from Aristotle.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.3.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Saturnilus, a contemporary of Basilides.
Refutation of All Heresies 7.6.1Hippolytus of Rome · ca. 222–235 · Contents: Carpocrates also said angels made the world.
Commentary on John 2.100Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon, a Valentinian, limited “all things” to the visible world and added words to the text.
Commentary on John 2.101Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon's reading is forced, and he adds to Scripture without support, as if he had apostolic authority.
Commentary on John 2.102Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon made the Demiurge the maker and the Word only the cause, reversing the natural sense of “through him.”
Commentary on John 2.103Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon seems to have seen the natural meaning and deliberately contradicted it.
Commentary on John 2.134Origen · ca. 230–248 · Darkness and death are not natures; Paul was once darkness and became light, against the idea of fixed spiritual natures.
Commentary on John 2.135Origen · ca. 230–248 · If Paul, a “spiritual” man, was once darkness, then any darkness can become light, which refutes fixed natures.
Commentary on John 2.137Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon took “in him” to mean the spiritual people, whom the Word gave their first form.
Commentary on John 2.138Origen · ca. 230–248 · Paul does not call the spiritual person a mere “man,” since the spiritual person shares in the divine Spirit.
Commentary on John 2.139Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon's view is unsupported and implausible.
Commentary on John 2.155Origen · ca. 230–248 · The Valentinian pairing of Word and Life as partner Aeons does not fit John's words.
Commentary on John 6.108Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon ranks Christ as Word, John as voice, and the prophets as mere sound.
Commentary on John 6.306Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon says “Lamb of God” refers to Christ's body and “who takes away sin” to the one dwelling in it, since a lamb is an immature sheep.
Commentary on John 6.307Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon claims a ram would have signified a perfect body; Origen replies briefly that the world needed a lamb, not a ram. The text then breaks off.
Commentary on John 10.48Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon says Capernaum stands for the lowest, material part of the world, which is why Jesus did nothing there.
Commentary on John 10.49Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon's reading might be plausible if Jesus had done nothing in Capernaum in any Gospel.
Commentary on John 10.210Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon: going up to Jerusalem means the Lord's ascent from the material to the “psychic” realm.
Commentary on John 10.211Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon distinguishes the inner sanctuary (for the spiritual) from the outer temple (for psychics saved outside the Pleroma).
Commentary on John 13.67Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon says the woman's “husband” is her heavenly counterpart in the Pleroma, with whom she must be united.
Commentary on John 13.68Origen · ca. 230–248 · Origen objects that if Jesus meant a heavenly partner, he would have explained who he was and how to call him.
Commentary on John 13.71Origen · ca. 230–248 · because her husband was in the Aeon; he also reads a different number of husbands.
Commentary on John 13.97Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon: spiritual people worship neither creation nor the Demiurge but the Father of truth, and the woman is counted among them.
Commentary on John 13.98Origen · ca. 230–248 · “Not on this mountain” rejects heretical “gnostic” worship; “not in Jerusalem” means the perfect will surpass even the church's ordinary worship.
Commentary on John 13.114Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon says “we” means the Savior from the Aeon and those who came with him.
Commentary on John 13.115Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon: salvation came from Judea, not from all Jews, and spiritually because Jews are images of beings in the Pleroma.
Commentary on John 13.116Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon's followers should show how each detail of Jewish worship images the Pleroma, if they mean it.
Commentary on John 13.122Origen · ca. 230–248 · The Valentinians' myth of a lost spiritual nature is too vague to engage. Next lemma: “God is spirit.”
Commentary on John 13.416Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon makes the official the Demiurge, a petty king, and his sick son a person in the lower region near matter, in ignorance and sin.
Commentary on John 20.358Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon says the one who judges is not the Father but Moses, the Lawgiver, the king's avenger.
Commentary on John 20.362Origen · ca. 230–248 · Heracleon cannot show that judgment belongs to the Demiurge, for Scripture gives it to the Son.
Commentary on John 28.179Origen · ca. 230–248 · The Valentinians say God's scattered children are their “spirituals,” contrary to Paul's description of the spiritual man.
Homily on 1 Samuel 1.10Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · Hannah’s “My heart exulted in the Lord” teaches joy in the Lord rather than in earthly things; her exalted horn and enlarged mouth stand for the power to overthrow evil powers and refute heretics and philosophers.
Homilies on Ezekiel 3.4Origen · ca. 238–250 (Jerome's translation in the 380s) · God threatens to tear apart the pillows, that is, the soft teachings of heretics such as the Valentinians and Basilideans, who even permit denial under persecution.
Homilies on Numbers 12.3Origen · ca. 238–250 (Rufinus's translation ca. 400–410) · The princes and kings who dug the well are the prophets and apostles who uncovered Christ beneath the letter, and Israel's stages from the well signify the soul's journey through gifts, God's grace, and dying with Christ to the heights of blessedness.
Homilies on Jeremiah 10.5Origen · ca. 240 · The heretics who blaspheme the Creator, like Marcion, Basilides, and Valentinus, seem to flourish and have many followers, but they name Jesus without having him; God's punishments are meant to purify.
Homilies on Jeremiah 17.2Origen · ca. 240 · The partridge that gathers eggs it did not lay is the devil, who through heretics like Valentinus, Marcion, and Basilides gathers believers who belong to God.
Against Celsus 3.13Origen · ca. 248 · Origen cites Paul's word that heresies must exist so that the approved may be revealed, and notes that Socrates' and Plato's schools also divided; groups like the Ophites and Cainites, who reject Jesus altogether, are not Christian at all.
Against Celsus 5.61Origen · ca. 248 · Divisions among Christian sects no more discredit Christianity than rival schools discredit philosophy or medicine; Origen distinguishes the church from Valentinians, Gnostics, and the two kinds of Ebionites.
Against Celsus 5.62Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus lists many sects, including Simonians, who are not Christians at all since they exalt Simon rather than Jesus, and others Origen has never even encountered.
Against Celsus 6.24Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus compares Mithraism with a Christian “diagram,” which Origen identifies as belonging to the obscure Ophite sect, a teaching he has never found anyone actually holding.
Against Celsus 6.25Origen · ca. 248 · Origen describes the Ophite diagram, with its world-soul called Leviathan, and explains the biblical meaning of Gehenna, the Valley of Hinnom, as pointing to purifying punishment.
Against Celsus 6.28Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus confuses Christians with the Ophites, who side with the serpent against the Creator, curse Jesus, and cannot be called Christians at all.
Against Celsus 6.30Origen · ca. 248 · Origen compares Celsus's list of seven animal-faced ruling demons with the Ophite diagram he himself had seen, to show that these are not Christian teachings.
Against Celsus 6.31Origen · ca. 248 · Origen quotes the passwords that the Ophites taught their members to say to each of the seven archons as the soul ascends through their gates.
Against Celsus 6.32Origen · ca. 248 · Origen explains that he describes these Ophite teachings only to expose them, and that their archons mix names from magic with Hebrew names that all belong to the one God.
Against Celsus 6.38Origen · ca. 248 · Origen describes further inscriptions in the Ophite diagram, such as circles labelled Father and Son, Love, Life, and Wisdom, to show that he knows it better than Celsus and rejects it.
Against Celsus 7.40Origen · ca. 248 · Celsus confuses Christians with the Ophite sect, whose magical names for the doorkeepers of the heavens Christians reject; those sectarians do not die for their faith, as Christians do.
Commentary on Matthew, Latin Series 38Origen · ca. 244–249 (Latin translation, 4th–5th century) · Figuratively, the wars among nations are rival heresies, the famines a lack of understanding in reading Scripture, and the pestilences the teachings of Marcion, Valentinus, and Basilides, which the one awaiting Christ's coming in the soul must see without harm.
Lepr. 2Methodius of Olympus · late 3rd cent. (disputed) · The good seed of faith is planted by the Father; the saying about plants not planted by him does not support Gnostic classes of souls or Marcion's two gods.
Church History 4.7.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · From Menander came Saturninus in Syria and Basilides in Egypt, founders of two heresies.
Church History 4.7.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Irenaeus says Saturninus repeated Menander's teaching, while Basilides spun endless fables.
Church History 4.7.6Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Agrippa Castor's refutation of Basilides has survived.
Church History 4.7.7Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Agrippa Castor reports that Basilides wrote 24 books on the gospel, invented prophets, allowed eating idol food and denying the faith under persecution, and imposed five years' silence.
Church History 4.7.8Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Agrippa Castor thoroughly exposed Basilides' error.
Church History 4.7.9Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Irenaeus reports that Carpocrates' Gnostics practised magic openly and taught that shameful deeds were needed to escape the cosmic rulers.
Church History 4.11.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Irenaeus (quoted): Valentinus was in Rome from Hyginus to Anicetus; Cerdo repeatedly confessed, taught secretly, and was expelled.
Church History 4.11.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Irenaeus exposes the hidden wickedness of Valentinus's system.
Church History 4.11.5Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Irenaeus (quoted): the Marcosians perform a “bridal chamber” rite and a baptism in the name of the unknown Father, Truth, and the one who descended on Jesus.
Church History 4.30.3Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Bardesanes left the Valentinians but never fully shed their errors; Soter of Rome died at this time.
Church History 5.20.1Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 300–325 · Irenaeus wrote letters against Blastus and Florinus and a treatise On the Ogdoad against Florinus's drift into Valentinianism.
Acta Archelai (Latin) 67Hegemonius · early to mid 4th century (Greek original) · Archelaus argues that Manes did not invent his dualism but took it over, and quotes the thirteenth book of Basilides's treatises on light and darkness as an earlier witness to it.
Theophany 4.29Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 325–337
Demonstration 3.9Aphrahat · 337-345 · The fasting of Marcionites, Valentinians, and Manichaeans earns no reward, since they deny the true Maker.
On Ecclesiastical Theology 2.9.4Eusebius of Caesarea · ca. 337–339 · Marcellus's quiet in God before creation resembles Valentinus's “God and Silence.”
Oration III Against the Arians 60Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · Scripture speaks of will only for creatures; the idea of a will preceding the Word comes from the Valentinian Ptolemy, and Asterius's argument makes the Son one of the things made.
Oration III Against the Arians 65Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 339–346 · The Son is himself God's wisdom, understanding, and living counsel, in whom God's will lies; to say he came “by will” is to say Wisdom came to be in wisdom; the Father calls him simply “my Son.”
Catechetical Lecture 6.17Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Basilides and Valentinus followed; Valentinus’s thirty Aeons, derived from Jesus’s age at baptism, show the absurdity of his system.
Catechetical Lecture 6.18Cyril of Jerusalem · ca. 350 · Valentinus degrades Christ, the Wisdom of God, into a fallen female Aeon; Cyril then turns to Manes, who gathered other men’s errors into one heresy.
On the Trinity 6.9Hilary of Poitiers · ca. 356–360 · By condemning Valentinus's “emanation,” the Arians aim to deny any true birth of the Son; but the church, rejecting Valentinus's aeons, confesses God truly born from God.
Letters 261, 262Basil of Caesarea · ca. 357–378 · Basil warns the church of Sozopolis against those who say Christ had a heavenly body or that the Godhead itself suffered, setting out why the Lord took real human flesh from Mary; in a second letter he warns the monk Urbicius against the idea that God was changed into flesh.
Against Arius 1.16Marius Victorinus · ca. 357–362 · Victorinus answers Valentinus from John 1:18 and argues from the sin against the Holy Spirit that the Spirit is God's, so that the three are of one substance with distinct subsistence by action.
Against the Manichees, Greek continuation of book 3, Lagarde p. 83Titus of Bostra · ca. 360s · Titus contrasts the Valentinian, Marcionite and Manichaean rejections of the Law and argues that the just and the good are one, since the Son who judges justly is the image of the Father.
Letter to Adelphius 2Athanasius of Alexandria · ca. 370 · Athanasius identifies the new error with the old heresies of Valentinus, Marcion and Mani, and explains why he answers it.
Letter 75.3Jerome · ca. 370–419 · Jerome praises Lucinius for resisting the Basilidian heresy in Spain, citing Irenaeus on the Gnostic Marcus.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 25.2.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Gnostic sects spring from Nicolaus.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 25.7.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Gnostics spring from Nicolaus and Simon.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 27.1.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Gnostics grew from all these teachers.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.1.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epiphanius turns from the Ebionites to the Valentinians, who also call themselves Gnostics.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.1.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · All these teachers called themselves Gnostics.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.1.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Epiphanius turns to Valentinus, punning on 'Gnostic' and 'condemnable'.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.2.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Valentinus came after Basilides, Saturnilus, Ebion and Cerinthus, who were roughly contemporary.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.2.6Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Valentinus posits thirty aeons, fifteen male and fifteen female.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.2.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The aeons form fifteen male-female pairs, listed next.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.4.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Valentinians invented a 'Deficiency', whom they call the Demiurge.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.4.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · From the Demiurge came a lower Ogdoad and seven heavens.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.4.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · An aeon came from the Pleroma, called Saviour, Limit, Cross and Jesus, who passed through Mary like water through a pipe.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.4.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The saviour rises above the Demiurge and lifts his followers to the Pleroma.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.5.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · In the beginning the Self-Father contained all things, and his Thought willed.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.5.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Thought united with the Greatness and brought forth the Father of Truth, called Man.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.5.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Man and Church produce a group of twelve aeons.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.6.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The aeons of the Triacontad unite in pairs in spiritual union.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.7.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Valentinians claim to be the spiritual order, saved by knowledge whatever they do.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.7.11Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Righteous psychic souls, without bodies, become brides of Christ's angels.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.10.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Valentinians teach a perfect pre-existent Aeon, Depth, with his consort Thought or Silence.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.10.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Mind emitted Word and Life, and they emitted Man and Church.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.10.13Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The thirty aeons make up the Pleroma of eight, ten and twelve.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.10.14Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Saviour's thirty hidden years are said to signify the thirty aeons.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.10.15Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The hours in the parable of the labourers add up to thirty, for the thirty aeons.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.11.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Wisdom, the youngest aeon, leapt forward in a passion to seek the Father.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.12.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Matter originated from Wisdom's ignorance, grief, fear and astonishment.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.12.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Wisdom's Intention was cast out of the Pleroma as a formless spiritual substance.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.13.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Only-begotten emitted Christ and the Holy Spirit to stabilize the Pleroma.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.13.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The joint product was Jesus, the Fruit of the Pleroma, with attendant angels.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.14.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Irenaeus summarizes the Valentinian account of events inside the Pleroma.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.14.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They claim Paul names the aeons in Ephesians.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.14.5Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They read every liturgical 'for ever and ever' as a reference to their aeons.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.14.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The eighteen aeons are found in eighteen months after the resurrection and in the letters of Jesus's name.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.14.9Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Wisdom's passion is signified by Judas, the twelfth apostle, and by a one-year ministry.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.14.10Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The woman healed after twelve years is read as the suffering twelfth aeon.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.15.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Limit has two functions: as Cross he supports, as Limit he divides.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.16.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Achamoth, cast out of the Pleroma, was formless like an untimely birth.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.17.2Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They teach these mysteries only to those who can pay large fees.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.17.12Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Saviour healed Achamoth and turned her passions into matter.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.18.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · From psychic substance Achamoth formed the Demiurge, king of right and left.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.18.4Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Demiurge, moved secretly by the Mother, has several titles.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.18.7Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Demiurge made seven heavens and is called the Hebdomad; Achamoth is the Ogdoad.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.18.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The seven heavens and paradise are angels; the Demiurge is an angel like God.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.19.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Demiurge, ignorant of higher things, declared himself the only God.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.19.11Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Achamoth's spiritual seed was secretly sown through the Demiurge into humans.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.20.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They claim the spiritual cannot be corrupted by any deed.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.21.8Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They claim to own grace and say they must always practise 'the mystery of the pair'.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.21.11Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · At the end Achamoth enters the Pleroma as the Saviour's bride.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 31.23.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · They see three human kinds typified by Cain, Abel and Seth.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 51.23.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The Valentinians linked their thirty aeons to Christ's thirty years.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 51.28.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Valentinus based his thirty aeons on Christ's thirty years.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 51.28.3Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · The total of thirty-two years refutes Valentinus.
Panarion (Adversus Haereses), Haer. 1-64 56.2.1Epiphanius of Salamis · 374-377 · Bardesanes adopted Valentinian emanations and denied the resurrection.
Book of Heresies 1.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The Ophites worship the serpent as the bringer of knowledge.
Book of Heresies 3.1Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The Sethians venerate Seth and speak of a female heavenly power.
Book of Heresies 32.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Basilides taught a chain of emanations from the unbegotten God.
Book of Heresies 33.2Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · The Gnostics, who venerate Barbelo, arose from Nicolaus.
Book of Heresies 38.4Philastrius of Brescia · ca. 380s · Valentinus counted thirty Aeons.
Eleven Tractates 1.27Priscillian · ca. 380–385 · They condemn the Ophites and all heresies by name, whether drawn from canonical or apocryphal writings.
On Illustrious Men 21Jerome · 392–393 · Agrippa Castor refuted the Gnostic Basilides, whose god Abraxas has the number of the days of the year.
Commentary on the Apostles' Creed 41Rufinus of Aquileia · ca. 404 · The resurrection of the flesh, denied by Valentinus and the Manichees, is taught by Isaiah, Daniel, and Christ, and brings the pure into the angels' fellowship.
Seven Books of History against the Pagans 7.14.2Orosius · ca. 417–418 · Valentinus, Cerdo, and Justin's apology.