Abstract
From very early times the opening verses of the Prologue of the Fourth Gospel have been taken to have a specific reference to the divine activity of creation 'in the beginning'. The earliest commentator on the Fourth Gospel, Heracleon, the friend of Valentinus the Gnostic, interpreted John 13 in the light of the typical Gnostic dualism; 'he said that it was the Logos who caused the demiurge to make the world'.1 Dr A. Orbe 2 has shown how popular this text was with the Gnostics of the second century and how they interpreted it in support of their cosmological speculations. The first extant orthodox Christian use of the text is by Theophilus of Antioch 3 in the context of an attempt to demonstrate the superiority of the Christian doctrine of creatio ex nihilo over the Platonic
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