Valentino gnostico e platonico. Il Valentinianesimo della 'Grande Notizia' di Ireneo di Lione: fra esegesi gnostica e filosofia medioplatonica

The author reconstructs the Gnostic doctrine of Valentinus and some of his followers, offering a wide and varied religious-historical analysis of one of the most important and indirect valentinian sources, the 'Great Notice', i.e. the first eight chapters dell'Adversus haereses of Irenaeus of Lyon. It returns for the first time the original greek text, transmitted by Epifanius and so far philologically subject to the ancient Latin translation. In support, in synoptic form, there is the version provided for long stretches dall'Adversus Valentinianos of Tertullian. The emergence and spread of the doctrine of Valentinus are placed in a particularly difficult phase of the development of early Christianity: around the middle of the second century, in fact, in Rome as part of the Great Church was articulating the distinction between heresy and orthodoxy. The extensive analysis of the doctrinal content of the 'Great Notice' has made use of the tools developed by the historical-comparative method of the History of Religions, which has sought to illuminate the peculiar manner in which Valentinus and Ptolemy have interpreted and used the materials they offered by contemporary middle-platonist speculation, by Jewish tradition and the Christian one. The author proposes a new vision of the first Valentinianism, far from both recent deconstructionistic instances both older stereotypes, such as those of a pessimistic and anticosmic Gnosticism derivated from pre-Christian or Jewish origin.