Early Christianity · Part 2 · Alexandria · B1–B2
Teachers of Alexandria: Basilides, Valentinus and the Search for Hidden Meaning
Part 2 of Early Christianity: in the great city of books, two Christian teachers built systems of thought that their opponents called heresy and their followers called the deepest truth. Who were they, what do their own words say, and why do their enemies’ reports contradict each other? The passive for reporting: he is said to have…, it is believed that…
Alexandria, in Egypt, was one of the largest cities in the Roman world, with its famous Library, its Museum of scholars and a large Jewish community. A century earlier, the Jewish philosopher Philo of Alexandria had read the books of Moses as allegories: stories with a hidden, deeper meaning about the soul and God. This way of reading became very important to the Christians of the city.
We know surprisingly little about how Christianity reached Alexandria. Tradition says that the church there was founded by Mark, the writer of a gospel, but there is no early evidence for this. What is clear is that by the second century the city had many Christian teachers, who ran their own schools and taught their own students, often with very different ideas.
In Alexandria, to understand a text was to look beneath its surface.
Basilides taught in Alexandria around 120 to 140 CE. He is said to have written twenty-four books of commentary on the gospel, and he claimed that his teaching came from a man called Glaucias, who had been an interpreter of the apostle Peter. Almost all his writings are lost. A few short passages survive because Clement of Alexandria, a Christian teacher who disagreed with him, quoted them. In one of them, Basilides wonders why good people suffer, and suggests that…
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