Ptolemy the Valentinian

Valentinus's most systematic pupil, and the author of the one Gnostic document that survives as a complete, calm, argued letter to a named person: the Letter to Flora, preserved by Epiphanius. In it he takes the Law of Moses apart into three parts — some from God, some from Moses, some from the elders — and does it with the tools of ordinary literary criticism.

The best evidence against the caricature. The Letter to Flora is patient, reasoned, addressed to a woman treated as an intellectual equal, and does not read like a mystery cult at all.