MENANDER (Menandros). — One of the earliest Gnostics, a disciple of Simon Magus. Born at Kaparataia (St. Justin, Apol., I, 26), in the 1st century A.D., he carried on his doctrinal activity at Antioch in Syria.
According to St. Irenaeus (Adv. haer., I, 17-23), he claimed to have been sent by the invisible aeons for the salvation of men. He taught that the world had been made by angels, emanations of the eternal reason (ἐννοίας). He distinguished himself from his master Simon Magus by teaching that his baptism made men immortal and by rejecting the latter’s libertinism. He was the teacher of Saturninus or Saturnilus and of Basilides, the former teaching at Antioch and the latter in Alexandria. It seems that the doctrine of M. was closely approached by that of Saturninus (Irenaeus, I, 18; Hippolytus, VII, 28; Eusebius, Hist. eccl., IV, 7; Epiphanius, Haer., 23; Theodoret, Haer. fab., I, 3). M. probably facilitated the transition from Eastern to Hellenic Gnosticism.