We know perhaps more about Valentinus and his pupils than about any other such figure in the early church, largely because of the sheer volume of writings attacking them. But the biased nature of such writing and the lack of primary sources have meant that we could say very little for certain. The discovery of Valentinian texts in the Nag Hammadi Library has helped remedy this to some extent by allowing a fairer evaluation of the heresiologists’ accounts and by opening new perspectives. But while previous scholarship has tended to focus on religio-historical issues such as how Gnostic the Valentinians were, Ismo Dunderberg, in this ground-breaking new study, has chosen to ask why the Valentinians were so keen on constructing elaborate myths. His answer is that they used myths, like other contemporary teachers, to explain the world they were living in, to construct pictures of social reality and thereby to provide a foundation for a way of life and the moral instruction connected with it.

After a brief introduction to the Valentinians and the sources, Dunderberg, noting recent criticism of the term and concept of ‘Gnosticism’, seeks to go beyond it in a closer study of the intellectual and social milieu from which Valentinianism emerged (chapter 1). Then in part 1 he considers three examples of the use of myth in the fragments of Valentinus: his view of human immortality as something already possible in this life (chapter 2), his distinctive understanding of Adam's freedom of speech over against his angelic creators, a frequent topos in the philosophical schools (chapter 3), and the apparent clash between a more optimistic understanding of the created order and one which derives evil from matter (chapter 4), a view found in Platonism. In part 2 he considers the uses of myth by other Valentinians, first Ptolemy's Letter to Flora (chapter 5), in which he supports the identification of Ptolemy with the Ptolemy of Justin Martyr's Second Apology, argues for his use of Marcion, for a more egalitarian relation between him and Flora and for a significant moral element in his teaching. He then discusses the Valentinian myth of the fall of Wisdom (chapter 6) in terms of her entanglement in the emotions and how that too was dealt with in the philosophical schools. In chapter 7 he considers the different Valentinian views on the Creator God and his relation with the cosmos, tracing the differences to different functions, educational (more positive) versus ritual (more negative), while in chapter 8 he considers Valentinian tripartite versus dipartite analyses of humanity, arguing for a less deterministic understanding than Irenaeus seems to present. Chapter 9 analyses the Interpretation of Knowledge as presenting two classes in practice within a Christian community. Part 3 consists of two chapters exploring the link between myth and society in the Tripartite Tractate, the first (chapter 10) analysing the dubious origins of the lust for power, but its necessary place in the Saviour's oikonomia, the second on the way the text deals with ethnic groups, Greeks, Jews and Christians, condemning Greek philosophy while being more positive and nuanced on the Jews. Dunderberg's concluding chapter suggests that Valentinian esotericism is best understood in the context of ancient schools of thought and their distinction between beginners and the more advanced.

The great merit of Dunderberg's work is his focus on the neglected areas of morality, the emotions and society and his insightful comparison with pagan contemporary thought on these topics. However his analysis does not entirely succeed in abandoning all comparison with the Gnostics: Valentinus’ debt to them is greater than he makes out and his denial that Valentinus taught a fall of Wisdom and a Creator God is not entirely convincing in the light of Irenaeus’ own claim (Adversus haereses 1.11.1), which he virtually ignores, and of the evidence of his followers’ development of the Wisdom myth.