c.100. Heretic who lived in Asia Minor. His theology appears to have been a combination of Ebionite theology with Gnostic speculation. The world, he taught, was not the creation of the Supreme God, but that of an inferior angel who held the world in bondage. According to him, Jesus was a normal man, the son of Joseph and Mary, who differed from ordinary men only in greater wisdom and righteousness. He was chosen by the Supreme God to proclaim Him and release the world from its bondage. For this task the Christ descended upon him at his baptism in the form of a dove, sent from the Father. This Christ departed from Jesus before his crucifixion, and it was only Jesus who suffered and rose again. Cerinthus taught also a carnal doctrine of the Millennium, in that at his coming Jesus would introduce 1,000 years of sensuous pleasure before the consummation. According to the Alogi,* Cerinthus was the author of the gospel of John and the Apocalypse.