Basilides

Basilides (circa 117-138) was an early Christian religious teacher in Alexandria, Egypt. His followers, the Basilidians, formed a Gnostic sect. Very little is known for certain about the teachings of Basilides. An account of his purported heresy is contained in the work Adversus Haereses ("Against Heresies") by Saint Irenaeus of Lyons, but it is impossible to determine how faithful Irenaeus's hostile reading is to the views actually held by Basilides.

Twentieth-century psychoanalyst Carl Jung wrote the famous Seven Sermons to the Dead under the pen-name "Basilides of Alexandria." The Argentinean writer Jorge Luis Borges was interested in Irenaeus's account of Basilides's 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).

External links

• Seven Sermons to the Dead