Talk:Basilides

Writings - Gospel according to Basilides

I have deleted the unsourced sentence:

"In all likelihood this 'Gospel' was compiled out of the canonical Gospels, the text being curtailed and altered to suit his Gnostic tenets, a diatessaron on Gnostic lines."

The "canonical gospels" were not distinguished from other accounts until centuries later. Basilides' writings were contemporaneous or earlier than at least some of the writings selected for the New Testament. The idea that the "canonical gospels" are historically accurate and other writings of the period are not is a contentious and far from generally accepted point of view even among Christian theologians, let alone scholars in general. Enon (talk) 20:08, 25 March 2009 (UTC)

MISSION ACCOMPLISHED

As of now, I am finished editing Basilides. My goal was to shorten the article, and to make it understandable. I believe I did just that. I also tried to remain unbiased. If anybody thinks I did a poor job, you can reverse my work.

Also, here is a list of things I think need to be fixed:

• Reference #1 (not clear)
• Reference #7 (I couldn't find a online addition to verify it, somebody needs to verify if that's a valid reference)
• Reference #15 (not clear)
• Reference #16 (Origen's Commentary on Romans is missing Book 4, so I think this is a bad reference)
• References #17, #19, #21-23, #25-26 (I couldn't find an online addition to verify these, somebody needs to verify if those are valid references)
• References #41-45 (I'm too lazy to verify these)
• Links to Theodoret's Compendium of Heretical Accounts, Psuedo-Tertullian's Against All Heresies, Origen's "Odes of Basilides", and the Basilidean Fragments of Clement of Alexandria would be great.
• At least three things are unsourced, get sources for those.Glorthac (talk) 02:30, 22 March 2010 (UTC)

April 2011

I have removed the {{1911}} and replaced it with {{Cite EB1911}} because the current Wikipedia text no longer seems to include any EB text.

Most of the text seems to be based on one source:

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Hort, F. J. A. (1911). "Basilides, Gnostic sect founder". In Wace, Henry; Piercy, William C. (eds.). Dictionary of Christian Biography and Literature to the End of the Sixth Century (3rd ed.). London: John Murray.

We have a simple rule for citing citations from a secondary source "say where you read it". I have put {{verification needed}} on some of the citations because either I could not find them or they are derived from Hort but contain information that Horst does not include (or if he does it will take more time than I am willing to spend looking through his work), so I leave it to others to continue the work.

-- PBS (talk) 18:42, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Now, if the citations are verified, are they still considered secondary? At some point they should be linked to Wikisource. Kramden (talk) 19:28, 17 May 2011 (UTC)

"Over" 24 Books of Exegetica?

It seems to me the only source cited for the sentence in which it is claimed that Basilides wrote more than twenty-four books of commentary on the Gospels (5. Eusebius of Caesarea, Ecclesiastical History Book iv. Chapter vii.) does not justify this claim. The origin of >24 rather than 24 on this page was in 2009 when a user who is a historian of Gnosticism edited the introduction. Given his background, I can only assume he was correct in modifying the number, but it's unclear to me, having just happened upon the article, what might justify the claim that Basilides' Exegetica (or however one might refer to the sum total of his commentary on the Gospels) comprises more than 24 books. What am I missing? @LOwens

Relevant 2009 edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Basilides&diff=313768869&oldid=308636770 Cerebrosoluble (talk) 11:35, 13 December 2025 (UTC)