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Source-basedStable

Basilides

2nd century Christian Gnostic religious teacher based in Alexandria

  • Fame53.8
  • Momentum1.3
  • Wikipedia4.7K
Lived 117–140, aged 23Egypt
  • Wikipedia
    27 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Era
    117–140
    Aged 23
Summary
Updated 2026-06-22

Basilides was an early Christian Gnostic religious teacher in Alexandria, Egypt who, according to Clement of Alexandria, was active between 117–161 AD, and claimed to have inherited his teachings from the apostle Saint Matthias. He was a pupil of either the Simonian teacher Menander, or a disciple of Peter called Glaucias. He is believed to have written over a 24 book long commentary on the Christian Gospel as reported by Agrippa Castor entitled Exegetica, making him one of the earliest Gospel commentators. Origen of Alexandria informs us of a Gospel according to Basilides but his report is probably nothing more than a distortion of the well-known fact that Basilides had composed a collection of commentaries on the Gospel, his Exegetica. Jerome and Ambrose similarly follow this error.

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In the 2nd century
#71
of 890 people
Most active
c. 140
estimated from their dates
Most talked about
the 1870s
their loudest decade in print
Echoed
22 decades
with the name in print
After death
All of it
they died before print was measured
18001850190019502000
How often the name appears in English books, decade by decade (Google Books, 1800–2019) — in English, because their own language has no corpus. The gold band is their lifetime.
The 2nd century, ranked →
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Fame
Stable
53.8
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Momentum1.3
Historical22.2
Now attention7.0
Source confidence60.0
Completeness55.0
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