Isidore (Gnostic)

Life

Isidore (Greek: Isidoros) was a Gnostic teacher active in Alexandria, Egypt, in the first half of the second century. Korean-language sources also transliterate his name in forms corresponding to "Isidoros" and "Isidore." Gnosticism was an intellectual and religious movement that regarded the material world as inferior and taught that salvation is attained through a special enlightenment (Greek gnosis, "knowledge"). It spread in the milieu surrounding the early church.

His father, Basilides, was also a Gnostic teacher. Basilides was active in Alexandria during the reigns of the Roman emperors Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, roughly between 120 and 140. Isidore is said to have been his father's disciple and successor. The details of his life, including the years of his birth and death, are unknown.

Work and Writings

None of Isidore's books survive intact. They are known only through passages, or fragments, quoted by the Church Fathers who criticized him. His known works are the following:

• On the Adjunct Soul: A treatise on an "adjunct soul" attached to the human soul. Clement of Alexandria quotes it in Book 2 of his Stromata (meaning "Miscellanies"). Basilides explained the passions (violent emotions) as appendages attached to the soul; Clement quotes this explanation and then corrects it with a passage from Isidore. On the basis of this passage, some scholars hold that Isidore advanced a view different from his father's.
• Expositions of the Prophet Parchor: A commentary in at least two books. Clement quotes Books 1 and 2 in Book 6 of the Stromata. In the quoted passages, Isidore argues that the lofty ideas of pagan philosophers originally derived from Jewish tradition, citing as an example the story that Socrates received revelations from a divine spirit. It is unclear which prophet Parchor was.
• Ethics: Clement refers to the work under this title, while the fourth-century writer Epiphanius mentions it under the title Exhortations.

Hippolytus records the claim of Basilides and Isidore that the apostle Matthias had passed on to them secret teachings he had received privately from the Savior. The 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia regards Isidore as the only person who developed his father's system, particularly in the area of anthropology (the study of human nature).

Influence on the Korean Church

No direct influence of Isidore on the Korean church has been identified. In Korea he is mentioned only briefly, alongside Basilides, in church history lectures and courses as an example of Gnosticism in the early church.

Assessment

The early Church Fathers regarded the Basilidians as heretics who had departed from the true faith and criticized them accordingly. Irenaeus and Epiphanius condemned the thought of Basilides as immoral. The Catholic Encyclopedia, citing a passage from Isidore preserved by Clement and Epiphanius, interprets it as advising that bodily desires be freely satisfied so that the soul may find peace in prayer. The same encyclopedia also states that Basilides himself was probably not immoral. The Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge, for its part, holds that later Basilidians often advocated license, in contrast to their master's strict ethics.

Scholars have noted that because so little of his writing survives, and that only in quotations by his critics, it is difficult to reconstruct Isidore's thought as a whole.