Basilideans - Creedopedia(Site not responding. Last check: 2007-11-06)
Basilidean is a gnosticsect founded by Basilides of Alexandria, who claimed to have received his esoteric doctrines from Glaucus, a disciple of the Apostle Peter.
The Gnosticsect of the Basilideans, from the second century after Christ, thought it named the hidden divinity and it incorporated great mysteries because it contained the seven Greek letters which compute numerically to 365, the number of days in the solar year.
The heretical Basilideans taught that the divine Christ first appeared on earth at the baptism of Jesus and was then temporarily united with the human Jesus.
Syrian or Egyptian founder of the Basilideansect of Christian Gnostics in Alexandria during the reigns of the Roman Emperors Hadrian and Antonius Pius.
This last doctrine may be the source of Irenaeus's accusation that the Basilideans were characterized by libertinism, even though Basilides himself taught ascetism.
Some of the later Basilideans may have developed a libertine morality based on the idea that the sins of the flesh are irrelevant, and may be viewed with indifference.
Many stones and gems were cut with his capricious symbolic markings, such as a human body having a fowl's or lion's heads, and snakes as limbs, which were worn by the Basilideans as amulets.
A Gnosticsect founded by Basilides of Alexandria, that existed during the second century, who claimed to have received his esoteric doctrines from Claucias, an apostle of St. Peter.
The Basilideans recognized Abraxas as the Supreme Being whom they worshipped.
The Basilideans reverenced the Christ not in Jesus alone but as the Divine Mind which could be appropriated by all men after sufficient purification of the "sinful" nature— the same Mind that Paul referred to as "that Mind that was in Christ Jesus."
The Basilideans are accustomed to give the name of appendages [or accretions] to the passions.
Could the Basilideans be teaching that human thoughts and feelings take on specific animal forms, which then have a life of their own so long as the individual sustains the consciousness which these forms represent?
The Cerinthians, one of the earliest Gnosticsects, if not the very earliest, of whom we have any knowledge, also held this doctrine.
The Basilideans, another numerically very important Gnostic Christian sect, held a similar doctrine.
The Manichaeans, a much later and only semi-Christian sect, evidently inherited this part of their doctrines from one of these Gnosticsects, as they believed that Jesus descended from heaven in the form of a man about thirty years of age.
Everett Procter, books on 'Basilideans -- Controversial literature -- History and criticism'
Books on 'Basilideans -- Controversial literature -- History and criticism':
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