Basilides's teachings were condemned as heretical by Irenaeus of Lyons (c. 130 – c. 200),[1] and by Hippolytus of Rome (c. 170 – c. 236),[2] although they had been evaluated more positively by Clement of Alexandria (c. 150 – c. 215).
[6][7]Origen's notice is the source for references to the Gospel of Basilides in Jerome,[8] Ambrose,[9] Philip of Side,[10] and the Venerable Bede.
Although Irenaeus’s makes no mention of Basilides having written a gospel, he does record him as teaching that Christ in Jesus, as a wholly divine being, could not suffer bodily pain and did not die on the cross; but that the person crucified was, in fact, Simon of Cyrene.
[34] Accounts of the living Christ being seen laughing alongside, or above, the crucifixion are also found in two second/third century Gnostic texts in the Nag Hammadi Library; the Apocalypse of Peter[35][36] and the Second Treatise of the Great Seth;[37][38] and in the latter text, Simon of Cyrene is also identified as being one of a succession of bodily substitutes for the spiritual Christ.
Winrich Löhr infers that a common mid-2nd century gospel tradition (which he nevertheless doubts as originating with Basilides himself) must underlie both the Irenaeus notice and the two Nag Hammadi texts.