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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]
Valentinus was born in approximately 100 AD and died in Alexandria circa 180 AD. [4] According to the Christian scholar Epiphanius of Salamis, he was born in Egypt and schooled in Alexandria, where the Gnostic Basilides was teaching.
In Gnostic tradition, the name Sophia (Σοφία, Greek for "wisdom") refers to the final emanation of God, and is identified with the anima mundi or world-soul. She is occasionally referred to by the Hebrew equivalent of Achamoth [ dubious – discuss ] (this is a feature of Ptolemy's version of the Valentinian Gnostic myth).
The most successful Christian Gnostic was the priest Valentinus (c. 100 – c. 160), who founded a Gnostic church in Rome and developed an elaborate cosmology. Gnostics considered the material world to be a prison created by a fallen or evil spirit, the god of the material world (called the demiurge). Gnostics identified the God of the Hebrew ...
Gnosticism in modern times (or Neo-Gnosticism) includes a variety of contemporary religious movements, stemming from Gnostic ideas and systems from ancient Roman society. Gnosticism is an ancient name for a variety of religious ideas and systems, originating in Jewish-Christian milieux in the first and second century CE.
In Gnosticism the use becomes more technical, though its applications are still very variable. The Gnostic writers appeal to the use in the NT (evidenced in Irenaeus' account of their views and his corresponding refutation, Iren I. iii. 4), and the word retains from it the sense of totality in contrast to the constituent parts; but the chief associations of pleroma in their systems are with ...
Mandaeism, another Gnostic tradition that has survived to the present day, also incorporates a concept akin to the world soul. In Mandaean cosmology, the soul's journey through the material world and its eventual return to the World of Light is a central narrative.
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 ."