not been crucified. He maintained that somebody else, one Simon of Cyrene, had been crucified and that God had miraculously altered Simon’s appearance to resemble that of Jesus, and that the Jews and Romans thus thought they were crucifying Jesus himself. Basilides even wrote that Jesus watched as Simon of Cyrene was being crucified, and that he then moved away and was raised alive into the presence of God. (William Smith, D., A Dictionary of Christian Biography, Volume 1, p. 768)
Where might this information have reached Basilides from? According to the writings of a 3rd century Christian theologian, Clement of Alexandria (150-215), Basilides claimed to have received secret information. According to his account, an individual called Glaucius, who had acted as interpreter for Simon Peter, one of Jesus’ disciples, learned this secret from Peter, and Basilides heard it from him. Basilides wrote a new “Bible,” in which the gospels were corrected in the light of the information he had received from Glaucius.
Basilides was not the only Docetist to support this claim. In addition to him, various individuals or sects regarded as “heretics” by the Church also supported the view that Jesus was not crucified, but was replaced by someone bearing a resemblance to him. In Was Christ Really Crucified? The Christian writer Faris al-Qayrawani writes:
In the year A.D. 185 a sect of the descendant of the priests of Thebes who embraced Christianity claimed that “God forbids that Christ should be crucified. He was safely lifted up to heaven.” Also in the year A.D. 370 a hermetic Gnostic sect that denied the crucifixion of Jesus taught that He “was not crucified but it seemed so to the spectators who crucified
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