As I was indicating last week, I have rewritten the section in my New Testament textbook that discusses early Christian Gnostics.  I have already devoted two posts on the matter, and here will be my third and final one.   This one deals with another famous group of Gnostics, the Valentinians; it also gives two of the “boxes” that I will be including in the chapter, taken over from the earlier edition, on interesting side issues (my view in general is that the “boxes” in my chapters are the most interesting parts!)

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Valentinian Gnostics

A second group that was very important in the history of early Christianity is known as the Valentinian Gnostics.  Unlike the Sethians, the Valentinians were named after an actual person, Valentinus, the founder and original leader of the group.  We know about the Valentinians from the writings of their proto-orthodox opponents beginning with Irenaeus and by some of the writings discovered among the Nag Hammadi Library that almost certainly derive from Valentinian authors, including one book that may actually have been written by Valentinus himself (The Gospel of Truth).

Valentinus was born around 100 CE and was raised in Alexandria Egypt.  He allegedly was a student of the Christian teacher Theudas, who was in turn said to have been a disciple of the apostle Paul.  Valentinus moved to Rome in the late 130s and there became an influential speaker and teacher.   According to some of our early reports he very nearly was elected to be the bishop of Rome.    Despite his distinctive views – which for the proto-orthodox seemed completely aberrant – he and his followers continued on in the Roman church.  There is nothing to suggest that he or his followers started their own churches; they worshiped with proto-orthodox Christians and were in outer appearance very difficult to tell apart from them (see box 12.6).

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