Written sometime in the second century ce, the “Letter to Flora,” by a Rome-based theologian named Ptolemy, presents a sophisticated critique of the Jewish scriptures from the perspective of one of the major schools of Gnostic thought: Valentinianism. In the letter, addressed to an educated Roman woman named Flora, who was presumably a pupil of his, Ptolemy argues that Jewish law should be divided into different levels of authenticity and evaluated according to this criterion. Whereas some Christian sects in the second century believed that Jewish law came entirely from God, others—radical Gnostics in particular—argued that it came from the Devil. Perhaps responding to questions posed to him by Flora, likely in a previous letter, Ptolemy criticizes both these perspectives and suggests that while some of the law can be shown to come from Moses and the Jewish ancestors, the core of the law was revealed by a just deity subordinate to the perfect God.