The Apostolic Age · c. 130–145; survives in fragments
The Exegetica
Basilides
What it is
Twenty-four books of commentary, of which a few paragraphs survive in Clement and Hippolytus. From a God who is not, a seed containing everything unfolds; suffering is never undeserved, since the martyr is paying for sins we cannot see, and even the sinless infant carries the capacity to sin.
Why it lasted
The earliest Christian biblical commentary of any length, and the earliest attempt to solve the problem of innocent suffering by extending the account backwards past birth.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
This work is in the public domain and can be read in full, free, at the archives below. The Library catalogues it; it does not host the text.
These open a search on each archive rather than a direct link, which is the honest way to point at an edition nobody here has checked line by line.
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