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Valentinus (Greek: Οὐαλεντῖνος; c. 100 – c. 180 CE) was the best known and, for a time, most successful early Christian Gnostic theologian. [1] He founded his school in Rome. According to Tertullian, Valentinus was a candidate for bishop but started his own group when another was chosen. [2]
The Gospel of Truth is not titled, but the name for the work comes from the first three words of the text. It may have been written in Greek between 140 and 180 by Valentinian Gnostics (or, as some posit, by Valentinus himself). [2]
Valentinus was said to have been a prolific writer; however, the only surviving remains of his work come from quotes that have been transmitted by Clement of Alexandria, Hippolytus and Marcellus of Ancyra. Most scholars also believe that Valentinus wrote the Gospel of Truth, one of the Nag Hammadi texts. [4]
The Gospel of Thomas, it is often claimed, has some gnostic elements but lacks the full gnostic cosmology. However, even the description of these elements as "gnostic" is based mainly upon the presupposition that the text as a whole is a "gnostic" gospel, and this idea itself is based upon little other than the fact that it was found along with ...
Valentinus, according to Clemens Alexandrinus (Valentini homil. ap. Clem. Strom. iv. 13, 92 ), spoke of the Sophia as an artist ( zographos ) making this visible lower world a picture of the glorious Archetype, but the hearer or reader would as readily understand the heavenly wisdom of the Book of Proverbs to be meant by this Sophia, as the ...
While Eusebius of Caesarea mentions that Valentinus taught a trinity in his work 'on the three natures', this was likely a trinity of natures in one godhead rather than three persons. Paul Linjamaa argues that ethically, the Tripartite Tractate is "an example of early Christian determinism."
A woman shops for flowers ahead of Valentine's Day at the Southern California Flower Market in Los Angeles on Feb. 13, 2024. / Credit: Frederic J. BROWN / AFP / Getty Images
The teachings of Valentinus were compiled in the Gnostic Gospel of Philip (c. 350) where the idea that Eve mated with the serpent, or Satan, and produced Cain, finds its earliest expression. A similar account is recorded in the Gnostic Apocryphon of John which was authored by the Sethians ( c. 180 ).