Early life
An Egyptian Teacher
Valentinus was born around 100 in Egypt. Epiphanius, writing much later, passes on a report that he was born at a place called Phrebonis on the coast of Lower Egypt, and says he was educated at Alexandria, the great center of Greek learning. His followers claimed that he had been taught by a man named Theudas, said to have been a disciple of Paul. Nothing can confirm the claim, and it served to give his teaching an apostolic pedigree.
He was gifted, eloquent, and poetic. The few fragments of his own writings that survive, preserved by Clement of Alexandria and Hippolytus, include part of a hymn and passages on the purifying of the heart. They show a man of real literary skill.
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