Gnostic Christianity teaches that knowledge, rather than faith or observance, is the basis for salvation. “Knowledge” in this tradition is basically knowledge of the human self as divine, and salvation involves the soul’s escape from the body and its return to its transcendent origins. This teaching is rejected in the later writings of the New Testament (1 Timothy 6:20–21). Valentinus, who taught in Alexandria and Rome, was the greatest of the second-century Gnostic Christian teachers. The Valentinian “heresy” persisted into the seventh century.