Basilides

Basilides, a Syrian gnostic who flourished in Alexandria about 120 A.D., but of whose doctrines nothing is known save through the contradictory accounts of Irenaeus and Hippolytus. He appears to have built up a system of abstract theology in which the God of the Jews occupied a very inferior position, being, according to the first account, antagonistic to the higher spiritualities, and, according to the second, subordinate to two loftier divinities. But in either case the Son - representing the Nous - was the revealer to mankind of truth and salvation.