The Apologists · AD 130–180 · External witness
Epiphanes, son of Carpocrates
d. c. 155 (aged seventeen) · Gnostic author · Object of a posthumous cult · Alexandria → Same, Cephallenia
External witness
Who Epiphanes, son of Carpocrates was
Carpocrates' precocious son, author of On Righteousness — a treatise arguing from the commonality of nature to a community of property and wives, which Clement of Alexandria quotes at length to condemn. He died at seventeen, and at Same in Cephallenia, his mother's home, he was honoured (Clement reports) with a temple and monthly sacrifices — a Gnostic teacher become, uniquely, a pagan-style cult hero. The scandal of the Carpocratians in one biography.
Also listed in non-christian witnesses and heretics & schismatics.
Common questions
When did Epiphanes, son die?
Epiphanes, son of Carpocrates is dated d. c. 155 (aged seventeen) in the archive, which places Epiphanes, son in the Apologists (AD 130–180). The dating is traditional and approximate; the archive marks it as uncertain rather than fixing a year the sources do not give.
What did Epiphanes, son write?
Epiphanes, son of Carpocrates has 1 catalogued writing in the archive: On Justice (fragments).
Which early sources mention Epiphanes, son?
Epiphanes, son of Carpocrates is named in 2 primary-source passages catalogued here, drawn from Clement of Alexandria and Epiphanius of Salamis. Every passage is quoted from a named public-domain translation, earliest first.
Where was Epiphanes, son from?
The archive associates Epiphanes, son of Carpocrates with Alexandria, Same, Cephallenia. The sources record more than one location, so the places are listed in the order the record moves through them.
Writings (1)
On Justice (fragments)
The teenage Gnostic's communalist treatise, preserved by Clement in order to refute itThe righteousness of God is a kind of communion with equality.Read the interlinear source text →
Primary-source mentions (2)
Every passage below is quoted from a named public-domain translation, earliest first.
Stromateis III.2
c. AD 200Epiphanes, whose writings I have at hand, was a son of Carpocrates… he lived in all seventeen years, and at Same in Cephallenia he was honoured as a god.Clement of Alexandria · III.2 · source text
Panarion 32 (Epiphanes among the Secundians, from Clement)
c. AD 375Connected in the archive
People
Events in this lifetime
- AD 95 · Domitian’s reprisals, AD 95
- AD 96 · Rome writes to Corinth: 1 Clement, AD 96
- AD 112 · Pliny writes Trajan, AD 112
- AD 117 · Symeon and Ignatius martyred, AD 117
- AD 135 · Bar Kokhba crushed; Aelia Capitolina, AD 135
- AD 144 · Marcion expelled at Rome, AD 144
Place
Places served
The one place the sources put Epiphanes, son.