On Illustrious Men

21. Agrippa Castor

XXI. AGRIPPA CASTOR grippa, surnamed castor,1 a very learned man, refuted with great effectiveness the twenty-four vol umes of the heretic Basilides,2 which the latter had composed against the Gospel, 2. in which he disclosed all his mysteries and named his prophets, Bar Cochebas and Bar Coph,3 and other barbarous names, which cause terror to his hearers, and Abraxas,4 his supreme deity, a name which occupies about the space of a year in the numerical system of the Greeks. 3. Now Basilides, from whom the Gnostics had their origin, lived in Alexandria in the time of Hadrian,5 at the very time that Bar Kochba,6 the leader of the Jewish faction, slaughtered the Christians with various punishments. notes 1. = Eus., h.e. 4.7.6; Jerome’s Castoris is an epexegetic genitive. 2. On Basilides (c. 100–160): Q 1, 257–59; Dr, 88–89; CPG 1127; F. W. Norris, EEC 12 , 176–77; A. Monaci Castagno, EECh 1, 113; W. A. Löhr, LThK 23 , 59; Scholer, NHB, 50; J. H. Waszink, RAC 1 (1950), 1217–25; E. Muhlenberg, TRE 5, 296–301; B. Layton, GS, 417–44; W. A. Löhr, Basilides und seine Schule. Eine Studie zur Theologie und Kirchengeschichte des zweiten Jahrhunderts, WUNT 83 (Tübingen, 1996); R. M. Grant, “Place de Basilide dans la théologie chrétienne ancienne,” REAug 25 (1979): 201–16; M. Jufresa, “Basilides, a path to Plotinus,” VigChr 35 (1981): 1–15; idem, “Jewish Christianity at Antioch in the Second Century,” RechScRel 60 (1972): 97–108. 3. Otherwise unknown. 4. On Abrasax, cf. Irenaeus, Adv. haer. 1.24.7: “The ruler of these [heavens ] they claim, is Abrasax, and because of this he possesses three hundred and sixty-five numbers in himself,” ACW 55, 87, trans. D. J. Unger and J. J. Dillon, and loc. cit., 238, n. 24: “So Abrasax was the name of the ruler of the highest heavens. And Irenaeus is saying the same as Hippolytus, who writes that the ruler of the Ogdoad had this name (Adv. haer. 7.26.6 [GCS 26, 205]). The numeric value of the name in Greek letters is 365, namely, 1 plus 2 plus 100 plus 1 plus 200 plus 1 plus 60.” See also Hippolytus, Ref. 5.3; Epiphanius, Pan. 24.7.2–4. See further Courcelle, LLW, 97 and n. 49. 5. On Hadrian and Gnosticism, cf. Grant, Greek Apologists, 36. 6. P. Schäfer, Der Bar Kokhba–Aufstand: Studien zum zweiten jüdischen Krieg ON ILLUSTRIOUS MEN 41 ...