Gnostic philosopher, who founded a sect in Alexandria. His esoteric doctrines seem to have blended Christian thought with elements from Zoroaster, Indian philosophy, and magic. His disciples (Basilidians) were active in Egypt, Syria, Italy, and even Gaul into the 4th-c.
An account of his purported heresy is contained in the work Adversus Haereses ("Against Heresies") by Irenaeus of Lyon, but it is impossible to determine how faithful Irenaeus's hostile reading is to the views actually held by Basilides.Basilides
Basilides was a pupil of an alleged interpreter of St. Peter, Glaucias by name, and taught at Alexandria during the reign of Hadrian (117–138).
The oldest refutation of the teachings of Basilides, by Agrippa Castor, is lost, and we are dependent upon the later accounts of Irenæus, Clement of Alexandria, and Hippolytus. Hippolytus describes a monistic system, in which Hellenic, or rather Stoic, conceptions stand in the foreground, whereas the genuine Basilides is an Oriental through and through, who stands in closer relationship to Zoroaster than to Aristotle.
Influence
Twentieth-century psychoanalyst Carl Jung wrote his Seven Sermons to the Dead and attributed them to Basilides. The Argentine writer Jorge Luis Borges was interested in Irenaeus' account of Basilides' Gnostic doctrine and wrote an essay on the subject: "A Vindication of the False Basilides" (1932). Basilides is also mentioned in Borges's short story "Three Versions of Judas" (1944), which opens with the striking passage "In Asia Minor or in Alexandria, in the second century of our faith, when Basilides published that the Cosmos was a reckless or evil improvisation by deficient angels...
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