The Apostolic Age · c. 140–160; survives in fragments
The Fragments and the Harvest Hymn
Valentinus · c. 100 – c. 175
What it is
Six or seven passages preserved by Clement and Hippolytus, plus a short poem in which the poet sees all things hanging on spirit and borne by it. One fragment describes the angels taking fright at Adam because the being they had made spoke greater things than they had put in him.
Why it lasted
All that survives in the founder's own voice from the man who nearly became bishop of Rome and instead became the century's most influential heretic — and the only Christian verse of the period outside the Odes.
Scripture it works from
Where to read it
Public domain and free to read in full, though not held here. The archives below have it.
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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