The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name

by Brian C. Muraresku

Princeton scholar Elaine Pagels has written extensively about the forbidden nature of the Greek gnosis (knowledge) that was the Gnostics’ chief aim. “Self-knowledge is knowledge of God; the self and the divine are identical.” Pagels looks to the Greek-educated Valentinus (ca. AD 100–160) as the most famous and influential of the early Gnostics, a “spiritual master” who established his school in the Eternal City around AD 140.7 Just like Simon Magus, Valentinus was out there trying to steer Romans toward the true version of Christianity. He claimed to have been initiated by Theudas, a direct disciple of Saint Paul, “into a secret doctrine of God.”8 Pagels explains the position: “Paul himself taught this secret wisdom, he [Valentinus] says, not to everyone, and not publicly, but only to a select few whom he considered to be spiritually mature.”