Ptolemy

Who is Ptolemy?

Ptolemy the Gnostic, or Ptolemaeus Gnosticus, was a disciple of the Gnostic teacher Valentinius and is known to us for an epistle he wrote to a wealthy woman named Flora, herself not a gnostic.

Ptolemy was probably still alive c. 180. No other certain details are known about his life; Harnack's suggestion that he was identical with the Ptolemy spoken of by St. Justin is as yet unproved. It is not known when Ptolemy became a disciple of Valentinius, but Valentinius was active in the Egyptian city of Alexandria and in Rome. Ptolemy was, with Heracleon, the principal writer of the Italian or Western school of Valentinian Gnosticism, which was active in Rome, Italy, and Southern Gaul.

Ptolemy's works have reached us in an incomplete form as follows:

⁕a fragment of an exegetical writing preserved by Irenæus; and

⁕an epistle to Flora, a Christian lady not otherwise known to us.

The latter is found in the works of Epiphanius. It was written in response to Flora's inquiry concerning the origin of the Law of the Old Testament. The Decalogue, Ptolemy states, cannot be attributed to the Supreme God, nor to the devil; indeed, the set of laws does not even proceed from a single law-giver. A part of it is the work of an inferior god, analogous to the gnostic demiurge; the second part is attributable to Moses, and the third part to the elders of the Jewish people. In addition, Ptolemy subdivides the part of the Decalogue ascribed to the inferior god into three further sections: