Basilides

His view of creation, according to the orthodox heresiologists, was likely similar to that of Valentinus, whom he rivaled, being based on a doctrine of emanations proceeding from an uncreated, ineffable Pleroma. Like his rival, Basilides taught that matter, and the material universe, are evil, and that the God of the Old Testament, who was responsible for creation, is a misguided archon or lesser deity.[12]

Historians, such as Philip Shaff, have the opinion that: "Irenaeus described a form of Basilideanism which was not the original, but a later corruption of the system. On the other hand, Clement of Alexandria surely, and Hippolytus, in the fuller account of his Philosophumena, probably drew their knowledge of the system directly from Basilides' own work, the Exegetica, and hence represent the form of doctrine taught by Basilides himself".[13]

Like other gnostics, Basilides taught that salvation comes through knowledge and not faith.[14] This knowledge, or gnosis, was considered esoteric, a revelation to human beings by the divine being, Jesus Christ. Faith played no part in salvation. Indeed, Basilides believed faith was merely "an assent of the soul to any of the things which do not excite sensation, because they are not present". He also believed faith was a matter of "nature," not of conscious choice, so that men would "discover doctrines without demonstration by an intellective apprehension".[15] Basilides also appears to have accumulated forms of dignity in accordance with ones' faith.[16]

Because Basilides believed faith was a matter of nature, doubtlessly he pushed election so far as to sever a portion of mankind from the rest, as alone entitled by Divine decree to receive a higher enlightenment. In this sense it must have been that he called "the elect a stranger to the world, as being by nature supermundane".[17]

The canon of Basilides had its own Gospel alongside the Gospel of John,[18] rejected the Epistle of Titus[19] and selectively included only specific writings from the Pauline epistles. This canon also contained other unique texts, which are believed to have been penned by Basilides himself or his immediate followers, including the Interpretations of the Gospels and the Exegetica.[20] Unlike the standard Christian canon, it did not include the Synoptic Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—as these were considered inconsistent with the Gnostic perspective.[21] Basilides further eschewed mainstream Christian works he perceived as failing to reflect his Gnostic interpretation of Christianity, viewing such texts as distorting the true nature of the divine.[22] As such, the canon of Basilides provides a distinct example of early Christian diversity and the varied textual traditions that existed within the nascent Christian community.[23]

Basilides likewise brought in the notion of sin in a past stage of existence suffering its penalty here, "the elect soul" suffering "honourably through martyrdom, and the soul of another kind being cleansed by an appropriate punishment." To this doctrine of metempsychosis the Basilidians are likewise said to have referred the language of the Lord about requital to the third and fourth generations;[24] Origen states that Basilides himself interpreted Romans 7:9 in this sense,[25]

The Apostle said, 'I lived without a law once,' that is, before I came into this body, I lived in such a form of body as was not under a law, that of a beast namely, or a bird.[26]

However, if there be any who suffers without previous sin, it will not be "by the design of an [adverse] power", but as suffers the babe who appears to have committed no sin. The infant is said to receive a benefit when it is subjected to suffering, "gaining" many hardships.[25]

Origen complained that Basilides deprived men of a salutary fear by teaching that transmigrations are the only punishments after death.[27]

Because Basilides held to a fatalistic view of metempsychosis, he believed the Christian martyrs were being punished not for being Christians, but for sins they had committed in the past.[28] This is why Origen says that he depreciated the martyrs.[29]

The Basilideans were accustomed to call the passions Appendages, stating that these are certain spirits that append (προσηρτημένα) themselves to rational souls in a certain primitive turmoil and confusion. Then, they imitate the actions of those they are appended to, and not only acquire the impulses of the irrational animals, but even imitate the movements and beauties of plants. These Appendages can also have characteristics of habit [derived from stones], as the hardness of a diamond.[30]

It is impossible to determine the precise origin of this singular theory, but it was probably connected with the doctrine of metempsychosis, which seemed to find support in Plato's Timaeus.[31] St. Clement of Alexandria stated that the plurality of souls makes the body a Trojan horse.[25]

Reciting the views of different heretics on marriage, Clement[32] gives specimens of the teaching of Basilides and his son Isidore, by way of rebuke to the immorality of the later Basilidians. He first reports the exposition of Matthew 19:12 (or a similar evangelic passage), in which there is nothing specially to note except the interpretation of the last class of eunuchs as those who remain in celibacy to avoid the distracting cares of providing a livelihood. He goes on to the paraphrase of 1 Corinthians 7:9, interposing in the midst an illustrative sentence from Isidore, and transcribes the language used about the class above mentioned.

But suppose a young man either poor or depressed, and in accordance with the word [in the Gospel] unwilling to marry, let him not separate from his brother; let him say 'I have entered into the holy place, nothing can befall me'; but if he have a suspicion, let him say, 'Brother, lay thy hand on me, that I may sin not,' and he shall receive help both to mind and to senses; let him only have the will to carry out completely what is good, and he shall succeed. But sometimes we say with the lips, 'We will not sin,' while our thoughts are turned towards sinning: such as one abstains by reason of fear from doing what he wills, lest the punishment be reckoned to his account. But the estate of mankind has only certain things at once necessary and natural, clothing being necessary and natural, but sexual intercourse natural, yet not necessary.[33]

Although we have no evidence that Basilides, like some others, regarded Jesus's Baptism as the time when a Divine being first was joined to Jesus of Nazareth, it seems clear that he attached some unusual significance to the event. St. Hippolytus of Rome implied that Basilides regarded the Baptism as the occasion when Jesus received "the Gospel" by a Divine illumination.[34]

"They of Basilides," says Clement,[35] "celebrate the day of His Baptism by a preliminary night-service of [Scripture] readings." The Venice MS. states that the Basilideans celebrated the night before the Epiphany singing and flute-playing in a heathen temple at Alexandria: so that probably the Basilidian rite was a modification of an old local custom.[36]

Eusebius of Caesarea is quoting Agrippa Castor, when he states that Basilides: "taught also that the eating of meat offered to idols and the unguarded renunciation of the faith in times of persecution were matters of indifference".[4] However, from St. Clement of Alexandria's Stromata, it appears that Agrippa Castor misunderstood the purpose of Basilides's argument, partly from the actual doctrine and practices of later Basilidians; but it may also have had some justification in incidental words which have not been preserved. It appears as if Basilides was actually saying that the eating of meat offered to idols and apostasy weren't condemned for immorality, but were punishments because of immorality.[28]

According to Agrippa Castor, Basilides "in Pythagorean fashion" prescribed a silence of five years to his disciples.[4]

Agrippa Castor stated that Basilides "invented prophets for himself named Barcabbas and Barcoph, and others that had no existence".[4] The alleged prophecies apparently belonged to the apocryphal Zoroastrian literature popular with various Gnostics.[25]

According to Basilides and Isidore, Matthias spoke to them mystical doctrines which he heard in private teaching from the Saviour.[37][38] Origen also[39] and after him Eusebius refer to a "Gospel" of or according to Matthias.[40] The true name was apparently the Traditions of Matthias.[41]

Isidore's Expositions of the Prophet Parchor taught the higher thoughts of heathen philosophers and mythologers were derived from Jewish sources.[25] So, by quoting the philosopher Pherecydes, who had probably a peculiar interest for Isidore as the earliest promulgator of the doctrine of metempsychosis known to tradition,[45] Isidore was proving his validity as a descendant of the prophets.[25]

Isidore's allegation that Pherecydes followed "the prophecy of Ham" was also used to claim that the apocryphal Zoroastrian books had quasi-biblical sanctity as proceeding from Zoroaster, a son of Noah; so Isidore gladly accepted the theory as evidence for his argument.[25]

In his book On an Adherent Soul, Isidore appears to have argued against his father's teaching on "Appendages".[46] He insists on the unity of the soul, and maintains that bad men will find "no common excuse" in the violence of the "appendages" for pleading that their evil acts were involuntary: "our duty is", he says, "by overcoming the inferior creation within us through the reasoning faculty, to show ourselves to have the mastery".[25]

A passage from Isidore's Ethics says: "Abstain, then, from a quarrelsome woman lest you are distracted from the grace of God. But when you have rejected the fire of the seed, then pray with an undisturbed conscience. And when your prayer of thanksgiving," he says, "descends to a prayer of request, and your request is not that in future you may do right, but that you may do no wrong, then marry."[47]

Basilides had to all appearance no eminent disciple except his own son. Although Basilides is mentioned by all the Church Fathers as one of the chiefs of Gnosticism, the system of Valentinus seems to have been much more popular and wider spread,[25] as was also Marcionism.

20th-century psychoanalyst Carl Jung wrote his Seven Sermons to the Dead and attributed them to Basilides. The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was interested in Irenaeus' account of Basilides' Gnostic doctrine and wrote an essay on the subject: "A Vindication of the False Basilides" (1932).[51] Basilides' Gnostic Gospel is one of the books mentioned in Borges's short story "The Library of Babel" (1941). Basilides also appears in Borges' "Three Versions of Judas" (1944), which opens with the striking passage: "In Asia Minor or in Alexandria, in the second century of our faith, when Basilides published that the Cosmos was a reckless or evil improvisation by deficient angels...".

Historians know of Basilides and his teachings mainly through the writings of his detractors, and it is impossible to determine how reliable these accounts are. The oldest refutation of the teachings of Basilides, by Agrippa Castor, is lost, and we are dependent upon the later accounts of:[52]

• Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History, Book IV, Chapter vii, written around the 4th century.
• St. Clement of Alexandria, Stromata, Book I, Chapter xxi; Book II, Chapters vi, viii, and xx; Book IV, Chapters xi, xii, and xxv; Book V, Chapter I, etc., written between 208 and 210, and the so-called Excerpta ex Theodoto perhaps from the same hand.
• St. Hippolytus of Rome, Philosophumena, Book VII, written about 225.
• Pseudo-Tertullian, Against All Heresies, a little treatise usually attached to Tertullian's De Praescriptionibus, but really by another hand, perhaps by Victorinus of Pettau, written about 240 and based upon a non-extant "Compendium" of St. Hippolytus.
• St. Epiphanius of Salamis, Panarion, Book I, Sect xxiv.
• Theodoret of Cyrus, Compendium of Heretical Accounts, Book I, Chapter iv.

Nearly everything Basilides wrote has been lost, but the names of three of his works and fragments are available in the present day:

• Fragments of the Exegetica are available from St. Clement of Alexandria in his Stromata, Book IV, Chapter 12, and from Archelaus in his Acts of the Disputation with Manes, Chapter 55, and probably also from Origen in his Commentary on Romans V, Book I.
• Origen states that "Basilides had even the audacity to write a Gospel according to Basilides",[53] and both St. Jerome[54] and St. Ambrose[55] repeat Origen. Yet no trace of a Gospel by Basilides exists elsewhere; and it is possible either that Origen misunderstood the nature of the Exegetica, or that the Gospel was known under another name.[56]
• Origen in a note on Job, xxi, 1 sqq., speaks of "Odes" of Basilides.[25]

Some fragments are known through the work of Clement of Alexandria:

• The Octet of Subsistent Entities (Fragment A)
• The Uniqueness of the World (Fragment B)
• Election Naturally Entails Faith and Virtue (Fragment C)
• The State of Virtue (Fragment D)
• The Elect Transcend the World (Fragment E)
• Reincarnation (Fragment F)
• Human Suffering and the Goodness of Providence (Fragment G)
• Forgivable Sins (Fragment H)

A book called Acts of the Disputation with Manes, which was written during the close of the 3rd century or later, speaks about the Basilidean origins of Manichaeism.[25]

• Artistic remains of Gnosticism such as Abrasax gems, and literary remains like the Pistis Sophia, the latter part of which probably dates back to the end of the 2nd century and, though not strictly Basilidian, yet illustrates early Alexandrian Gnosticism.