This movement, named for its founder, the Gnostic sage Basilides, is the earliest distinctly and identifiably Gnostic sect we have some knowledge of. With that said, what we know happens to have come almost entirely from “heresy hunters” who opposed Basilides and his sect. So it must all be regarded carefully.
Adding to the questions that must be kept in mind, because of this, is that some explanations of Basilidean mythology differ substantially from one another. They’re different enough to make one wonder — at times — if their writers had the same sect in mind.
Even so, the sect has a single reported founder, and the comments and descriptions we have from other Church Fathers, including Clement of Alexandria, make it clear that we’re talking about a single sect.
Basilides was one of a number of Gnostic sages who hailed from the area of Alexandria, who were active in the early and middle decades of the 2nd century. Others are Valentinus and Carpocrates. Their careers may have overlapped, but it seems Basilides is the oldest of the group. He’s reported to have been active, or “flourished” as scholars often put it, during the reign of Emperor Hadrian, who ruled from 117 to 138 CE.
Even so, there’s no known, direct link among any of these teachers. The most that can be said of a connection between any of them, is that these Gnostic sages all emerged from the same cosmopolitan Alexandrian cultural and religious milieux.
Basilides’s own reported mentors are St Matthias (Judas’s replacement as apostle), Menander (a follower of Simon Magus), and/or an associate of St Peter named Glaucius.
Unlike other early Gnostic sages from Alexandria, who ventured to other parts of the Roman Empire either before or after launching their movements, Basilides appears never to have left Lower Egypt. His sect remained mostly an Egyptian phenomenon, for as long as it lasted. Basilides was succeeded as the leader of the sect that bears his name, by his son, Isidore (or Isidorus).
Among the reports about Basilides and his sect, is that he held that the name of the Cosmos’s ruler was Abraxas. This name may well be the origin of the magic-evoking English word “abracadabra.” The origins of “Abraxas” itself are far less certain; it may come from a Coptic phrase meaning “holy word” or “blessed name,” or a Hebrew phrase meaning “a blessing.”
The significance of this name, for Basilideans, lies in the fact that the sum of its Greek letters is 365, the number of days in the year, and also the number of heavens in the cosmos according to at least one version of Basilides’s cosmology.
Basilides taught that the Cosmos, and everything in it, started out from absolute nothingness. He’s reported to have employed every possible word or expression to convey the concept of non-existence, from which a not-being deity emerged, that began creating other not-being things out of not-beingness. The initial not-being thing that somehow emerged from not-being under the auspices of this not-being deity was a seed; a single seed, the origin of which contained the entire mass of the Cosmos.
Basilides reportedly wrote at least one, and possibly two, documents: A massive, many-volume commentary called Exegetica and (maybe, this one is less certain) his own “gospel of Basilides” about the life of Christ. Like his fellow Alexandrian sages, he taught that a supreme, ineffable deity had spun off a sequence of emanations or aeons which, in turn, brought the Cosmos into being. Human beings are trapped in physical existence and can only be released from that through experiential knowledge (gnōsis) of their own nature, and of the Divine.
Where Basilideanism varies from other Gnostic sects lies in the details of all of this. According to Clement of Alexandria, Basilides taught there were eight beings in control of the Cosmos. Other accounts provide different numbers of cosmic-controller beings (sometimes called archons). In some reports, Abraxas is treated as one of this octet, while in others that being is treated as being outside of that group. At other times, this octet itself is spoken of as a single entity.
The details of this sect’s mythology varies from one description to another. In particular, what Irenaeus reports is at loggerheads with the account of Hippolytus of Rome and those aren’t quite the same as what Epiphanius of Salamis reports. Even so, despite the particulars being different, there’s more than a little overlap between them, and also with the reported mythologies of Basilides’ contemporaries.
Irenaeus relates an interesting element of Basilides’ teachings. Basilides appears to have taught that Jesus had managed, magically, to switch places with Simon of Cyrene, who according to the gospels had been dragooned into carrying Jesus’ cross to Golgotha or Calvary. Simon took on Jesus’ appearance, and Jesus took on Simon’s. As Irenaeus tells it, according to Basilides, it was Simon who’d been crucified, and moreover, Basilides supposedly taught that Jesus had watched it all happen, and laughed.
One looks in vain to see any mention of Jesus laughing within the canonical gospels, but other Gnostic writings do mention that he’d laughed, perhaps most famously in the Gospel of Judas. In virtually all of these cases, Jesus’ laughter is directed at those who’re ignorant or otherwise miscomprehend reality. One assumes Basilides’ laughing Jesus was doing the same thing, laughing at those who thought they’d executed him.
Basilides’ sect featured a belief in transmigration (not unlike that of Carpocrates). Humans are apparently reborn repeatedly into the physical world, whether in other human bodies or even as animals, as a form of punishment for sin and ethical transgressions. It was gnōsis that released humans from an endless cycle of rebirth by opening their eyes to “right living.”
Where Basilides differed from Carpocrates was in a certain ascetic approach. Whereas the latter encouraged his followers to fulfill all possible human experiences, the former taught a more stringent lifestyle. For example, reminiscent of the Pythagoreans of old, Basilides called for his followers to pursue five years of silence when they joined the sect.
Where Basilides differed from Valentinus was not only in the details of his mythology, but also in his overall approach to life and the human condition. For Valentinus, the physical universe was an imperfect reflection of the divine realm or Pleroma. It’s a wayward shadow, if you will, of the perfection presided over by the Ineffable Divine. For Basilides, it’s something else entirely: A kind of cosmic punishment-zone, in which people live multiple lifetimes, in sequence, enduring (repeatedly) the consequences of failure and sin.
For both sages, however, the solution was nearly the same: Intimate knowledge, or gnōsis, of the divine. In Valentinus’s formulation, it allowed a person to know perfection and move beyond the physical realm’s imperfection. In that of Basilides, it allowed a person to live a more constructive and even sinless life, thus rising at last into the divine realm. For both, however, gnōsis had first been brought to humanity by the Christ.
Also, Basilides appears to have set up an institution of his own; a distinct Church, separate from those of other Christians, unlike Valentinus, many of whose followers also belonged to conventional congregations. Basilides’s sect had distinct liturgies and liturgical calendar, observing holidays of its own, including an annual celebration of Jesus’ baptism.
Basilides appears no longer to have been active by about 140 CE (which is around the time Valentinus had set himself and his movement up in the environs of Rome). Although his movement had followers, Basilides doesn’t appear to have had a serious protégé (as leader of the movement) other than his son Isidore.
Isidore took up his father’s mantle and continued leading the movement. It’s very likely that Isidore revised his father’s teachings and added to them, thus accounting for some of the variations reported about this sect.
Isidore reportedly wrote a few works, perhaps the most interesting of which is An Explanation of the Prophet Parchor. In that, Isidore reportedly attempted to show that Hellenic academics had actually been inspired by Hebrew prophets. Note that this notion wasn’t old; the Therapeutae of Alexandria, for example, had previously taught an overlap between Hellenic philosophy and Hebrew theology.
Despite having almost no known leadership beyond Basilides and, later, Isidore, Basilideanism endured at least long enough for the heresy-hunter Epiphanius to condemn it, in the middle of the 4th century. At that time, there must have been a body of Basilidean literature available, since Epiphanius comments on it and offers some of its details. He also lists several communities (all of them in Lower Egypt) where Basilidean churches had significant membership.
The Basilidean sect isn’t mentioned after this in any detail. It may have endured for some time, but we have no way to know how long.
Interestingly, St Jerome stated that Priscillian, who set up his own Gnosticism-influenced movement in Iberia, had been influenced by Basilides. His was an ascetic form of Gnosticism, so there might have been some Basilidean inspiration. Priscillian’s teachings reportedly had reflected those of a Gnostic sage originally from Egypt named Marcus, and that too aligns with this scenario. Beyond this, however, and the fact that both were Gnostic movements, there’s nothing else that convincingly connects the two.
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