There were others named Ptolemy: see Ptolemy (disambiguation)

Ptolemy the Gnostic (not the same person as the astronomer and geographer, nor the Egyptian ruler) was a disciple of the Gnostic teacher Valentinius, known to us for writing an epistle to a wealthy woman named Flora, herself not a gnostic.

Ptolemy was probably alive circa 180 CE. No other certain details are known about his life; Harnack's suggestion that he was identical with the Ptolemy spoken of by St. Justin is as yet unproved (Text. u. Untersuch. New. Ser. XIII, Anal. z. ält. Gesch. d. Chr.). He was, with Heracleon, the principal writer of the Italian or Western school of Valentinian Gnosticism.

Ptolemy's works have reached us in an incomplete form as follows:

• a fragment of an exegetical writing preserved by Irenæus(Adv. Hær., I, viii, 5);
• an epistle to Flora, a Christian lady, not otherwise known to us.

The latter is found in the works of Epiphanius (Hær. XXXIII, 3-7). It was written in response to Flora's inquiry concerning the origin of the Law of the Old Testament. The Decalogue , Ptolemy states, cannot be attributed to the Supreme God, nor to the devil; indeed, the set of laws does not even proceed from a single law-giver. A part of it is the work of an inferior god, analogous to the gnostic demiurge; the second part is attributable to Moses, and the third part to the elders of the Jewish people.

1. the absolutely pure legislation of the Decalogue which was not destroyed, but fulfilled by the Saviour;
2. the laws mixed with evil, like the right of retaliation, which were abolished by the Saviour because they were incompatible with His nature;
3. the section which is typical and symbolical of the higher world.

It includes such precepts as circumcision, fasting, and was raised by the saviour from a sensible to a spiritual plane. The god who is the author of the law, in so far as it is not the product of human effort, is the demiurge who occupies a middle position between the Supreme God and the devil. He is the creator of the material universe, is neither perfect, nor the author of evil, but ought to be called 'just', and benevolent to the extent of his abilities.

In his cosmogonic depiction of the universe, Ptolemy referred to an extensive system of aeons, emanated from a monadic spiritual soruce. Thirty of these, as he believes, rule the higher world, the pleroma. This system becomes the basis of a wild exegesis which discovers in the prologue of St. John's Gospel the first Ogdoad.

References

Pagels, Elaine. The Johannine Gospel in Gnostic Exegesis, ed. J. Ross (Atlanta, 1989)