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by Mark Gaffney
Sept-Oct 2006
They teach the insidious doctrine
that there is another God
besides the Creator.
Against Heresies the God Of the Old Testament is one,
and the God of the New
Testament is another. On the Holy Spirit, I, 4
Gnostics attributed the work of creation to a lesser deity or demiurge known as Ialdabaoth (also spelled Yaldabaoth or Jaldabaoth), but the notion of the demiurge was not a Gnostic invention.
Nearly five hundred years before Christianity,
Plato described a similar Creation scheme in his
Timaeus. In fact,
as we know from a number of pagan theogonies that have come down to
us, the same formula existed throughout the ancient world. 1
And so it goes...
At some point the cosmic clock begins to tick.
The various responsibilities attending Creation are delegated, after which heaven and the earth are formed along with the stars, day and night, and the elements air, fire, and earth.
Very late in the game living things appear, including, almost as an
afterthought, the human race.
Most of the Greek philosophers, of course, were monotheists.
Yet, with some exceptions, they managed to coexist with polytheism. The great thinkers were not fooled. They understood that mythology was to be taken figuratively, not literally. The purpose of philosophy was to delve deeper - and the true foundation was obviously monotheism.
The
gods of Olympus were entirely derivative...
The demiurge, of course, was wholly foreign to Judaism.
Whereas the monotheistic Greek philosophers often tolerated a proliferation of lesser deities, Judaism insisted on a single entity: Yahweh. By some accounts he was attended by a council of angels, but,
Even today this remains one of Judaism's distinguishing features.
This may well be so, but it is important to realize that the demiurge was not a simple phenomenon.
The rebellion involved a devaluation of the God of the Old Testament, which is partially explained by historical events - namely, the three failed Jewish revolts against Roman rule. The first and best known of these was the Jewish War of 66-73 CE.
A second less well-known uprising was put down in 115-117 CE, during the rule of Trajan, and a third and final insurrection, the Bar Kokhba rebellion, was crushed in 135 CE. 3
There is no doubt that these failed political revolts against Rome seriously undermined the prestige of Yahweh.
And for this reason the inception of the Gnostic demiurge might date
to as early as the period after 70 CE, the year of the cataclysmic
destruction of the famous temple of Herod.
The devaluation of Yahweh was also rooted in a process of religious reform that had been underway within Judaism for centuries, and which only attained its full fruition in the person of Jesus.
To understand this reform, and how it came about, we must look to the Old Testament, in particular, to the seminal book of Job.
(Many scholars have sought
answers in Genesis, which is understandable, given that the demiurge
is associated with Creation, but with less satisfactory results.)
Any such assumptions are false, however, but not because God changed. God's nature, being absolute and eternal, never changes.
What does change is human understanding. The human conception of God, the God concept, has changed many times over the course of history and will continue to evolve in the future.
In a famous essay called "The God of the Fathers," first published in 1929, the Old Testament scholar Albrecht Alt explored whether such a transformation had occurred at the time of Moses.
Alt found clues in the Pentateuch suggesting that the Elohist scribe had amended the earliest accounts to bring the more archaic God-concept of the early Hebrews, the God of the patriarchs, in line with the later (and more pure) monotheism of Moses. 4
Alt's paper touched off a lively debate among
biblical scholars that continues to this day.
While some Old Testament passages describe Yahweh as merciful, loyal, forgiving, and benevolent, he is at least as often portrayed as jealous, grouchy, wrathful, irritable, proud, boastful, unforgiving, temperamental, cruel, vengeful, and even bloodthirsty, prepared to sanction cold-blooded murder or mass slaughter, including the annihilation of entire cities.
Given the numerous examples of God-sanctioned mayhem in scripture, it is no wonder that discriminating readers have sometimes doubted whether this same Yahweh can inspire our confidence and trust, to say nothing of love, devotion, respect and emulation.
Oftentimes, fear and trembling seems a more likely human response.
And while fear of divine retribution can be a powerful force for good, and, at times, perhaps, a necessary motivator, if the goal is to uplift humanity from a moral standpoint, the example set by Yahweh in the Old Testament falls short of inspirational (to say the least)...
Many scholars rightly regard Job, along with Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, as representative of the high-water mark of the Old Testament. 5
The central part of the book is a series of poems that was probably composed sometime in the fifth or sixth century BCE. Part folk tale, prophetic oracle, hymn, lamentation, didactic treatise, and epic, Job makes use of almost every genre in the Bible.
The question it raises is no less pertinent today:
The answer the story provides broke sharply with Judaic tradition, and for this reason Job was surely controversial in its day. Tradition held that God would eventually reward the good man, regardless of his sufferings.
Like the prophet Jeremiah, however (see Jeremiah 13:14, 24-25 and 15:-7), the author of Job adopts a much more pessimistic outlook that probably reflects the bleak aftermath of the conquest and destruction of Judah by Nebuchadnezzar in the early sixth century BCE.
Although the precise composition date of Job is not known, the
book is obviously from the time of exile or later. 6
Job's flocks are stripped from him, his servants are slaughtered, and his sons and daughters are killed in a mighty whirlwind. He himself is stricken with a terrible wasting disease that causes great suffering and brings him to the edge of the grave.
Job's body literally becomes an open wound.
To make matters worse, Job's wife and his friends also turn against him:
One after another they admonish him, insisting that because Yahweh is punishing him, ipso facto, he must be guilty.
They advise him to submit quietly to his sufferings, which obviously have been ordained by God. But Job will have none of it. Like a rock he holds fast to principle. Stubbornly he maintains his innocence and insists upon justice.
Yet, at the
same time, he remains faithful to Yahweh, refusing to condemn or
even criticize the Almighty.
But instead he hands Job over to Satan with a single proviso:
Though Job remains faithful throughout, before his terrible ordeal is done he curses the day of his birth.
No less shocking is Yahweh's failure to acquit Job even after his innocence has been established. There is to be no moment of truth and no justice under heaven. Instead of vanquishing Satan for making false accusations, Yahweh turns on the victim.
Instead of offering solace and comfort
to the innocent, he badgers Job and bullies him, sneers at him with
rhetorical questions, and then confronts the hapless man with a
mind-boggling display of divine wrath.
He repents, even though he is innocent, and admits that he has been talking about things far beyond his ken.
Having seen the omnipotence of Yahweh, he is prepared to eat dust. In this vein Job responds:
In a final prose epilogue Yahweh shows a loving touch by restoring Job's health and property, but there is no mention of restoring his dead servants and children.
Indeed, the somewhat cheery conclusion feels out of step with the rest of the composition, as if a later scribe who was no less shocked than we by Yahweh's repulsive behavior added it to redeem God's tarnished image. Indeed, so subversive is the Book of Job that it is remarkable the book was retained in the Bible.
Probably the scribal "correction" saved it from being thrown out, this and the fact that Job is a literary masterpiece.
Of course, even with its modified ending, the story is far from satisfactory. Job's total submission in the face of brute force seems a lame solution to the problem of evil.
Nonetheless, the book is momentous because the questions the story fails to resolve were to rebound over the centuries, as we shall see, and preoccupy the final books of the Old Testament.
Carl Jung, the founder of analytical psychology, points out in his able commentary Answer to Job that for all of his infinite power Yahweh ultimately damns himself.
By humiliating Job, by making him eat dust, God unwittingly reveals his own deep character flaw, brutishness, while at the same time elevating the impotent but righteous human.
Job may be powerless before the Almighty, yet he remains free to choose, and by choosing well he shows impressive moral strength. Indeed, Job's fortitude stands in marked contrast with Yahweh's rage and reproaches the deity's ratification of evil. To be sure, Yahweh carries the day.
With infinite power at his disposal, the outcome is not in doubt. Yet, from a moral standpoint Yahweh's display of heavenly fireworks and thunder fails to impress.
This is the beautiful and terrible irony of the story: that Job, despite his relative impotence, comes to stand in righteous judgment over God himself.
As Jung put it:
The word Moira refers to fate or destiny.
In Greek religion Moira was one of the three personified seasons that accompanied Zeus, and were often pictured hovering just above his shoulder.
The point is that Zeus was governed by them even though he was the most important Greek deity. The mere thought that such a thing might also hold in monotheistic Judaism is shocking.
Surely the Godhead cannot be subject to fate.
It is God, after all, who determines the destinies of others. Nonetheless, from the story it is clear that despite his omnipotence Yahweh is lacking in something.
Job apparently intuits this because in his suffering he asks:
In the very next verse Job answers his own question.
Here, as Jung notes, Job shows that he is unaware of his own achievement.
He does not seem to understand that in holding firm, standing on his innocence, and insisting on justice he has won a tremendous moral victory, not just for himself, but for all mankind.
Job's answer may seem unsatisfactory, but it is important because
during the apocalyptic age it became the grist for the scribal mill,
as we shall see.
It seems that Yahweh has been split off from a part of himself, which means that he is not fully conscious. Which is incredible!
This discomfiting aspect of Yahweh's behavior, analyzed long ago by the unknown author of the Secret Book of John, one of the Gnostic gospels found at Nag Hammadi, was the key Gnostic insight:
Of whom, indeed?
No scholar in the modern era has understood the theological question implicit in the Book of Job better than the Gnostic scribe of old. Nor has anyone stated it more succinctly.
While the phrase "I am a jealous God..." does not appear in the text of Job, it is implied, and it does occur in Exodus 20:5 and Isaiah 14:5-6.
In addition, numerous other passages in the Old Testament, eg.,
...convey a similar meaning.
In fact, Yahweh's jealous tantrums are a prominent feature of the Old Testament, running through scripture like the surly residue of the old Canaanite storm god, which is precisely the point.
It is of interest that the famous heretic hunter Irenaeus, writing two generations before Hippolytus, quotes the very same line about the jealous Yahweh in his lengthy treatise, Against Heresies. 9
There is no
question that the controversy surrounding the demiurge was one of
the major battle lines separating the Gnostics from orthodox
Christianity.
Jung was apparently intrigued by the same question, for he writes:
The psychologist goes on to suggest that Yahweh's behavior is driven by an ulterior concern, namely, the divine suspicion that our frail human consciousness is more keen than his own.
The very idea is stunning! Consider, though, that driven by the ever-present knowledge of our own severe limitations as well as our relative impotence, we humans are required to cultivate consciousness simply to survive.
We have little choice in the
matter. Yahweh, on the other hand, has no such need for
introspection because he is unchallenged, has no opposition, and
encounters no obstacles; nothing requires him to reflect upon
himself.
Judging from Yahweh's sadistic behavior, the reason can have nothing to do with compassion.
Yahweh is perfectly content to wreak mayhem on Job without regret or remorse. Nor can the reason involve a former loyalty, namely, the Mosaic covenant; for the Book of Job reflects the period following the destruction of the first temple, when the old covenant must have seemed a moot article.
In fact, in Job there is not the slightest pretense of a covenant.
Quite probably he does, which would explain Jung's
purpose in mentioning Moira, the season of destiny.
We know from the oldest extant account from Greek mythology, the Hymn of Demeter, that when Hades abducted Demeter's beautiful daughter, Persephone, and took her to his realm of the dead, Demeter, the grain goddess, became so heartsick that she refused to extend her usual bounty upon the earth. 11
Stricken by a year-long drought and resulting crop failures, humanity faced extreme privation, even mass starvation.
In this dire circumstance mighty Zeus was compelled to intervene and arrange a compromise:
And why would Zeus be concerned enough to intervene?
Just as humankind needed the gods, so also did
the Greek gods need humankind.
Of course, the relationship between God and human is not between equals.
An enormous gulf separates Yahweh from the puny and subservient Job. Nevertheless, it is a reciprocal relationship. Yahweh needs humans as much as humans need him. The deeper conclusion to which this leads is never openly stated in the Book of Job.
But it is certainly implied, which explains why Job was (and remains) so controversial:
Of
course, he cannot. Yahweh as presented in Job is but a figurehead, a
demiurge on a par with Zeus and the other pagan storm gods.
The Greek word for her is Sophia.
In Judaism, however, awareness of her nature and importance was a late development.
That
it happened at all may have been due in no small part due to the
anonymous scribe responsible for the Book of Job.
The Hebrew God prefers to stand alone, imperious in his majesty, bristling with archetypal wrath. Indeed, in his raging aspect Yahweh is almost the antithesis of Wisdom...
It is no wonder that many of the Old Testament descriptions of Yahweh closely resemble the old Canaanite gods El and Baal, the raw matter for so much of his composite character. 13
In the sixth century BCE these dross elements
were still very much in evidence.
Thus, we find her, Sophia, Wisdom, described in the eighth Proverb, where we are told that her presence is as old as Creation:
Parts of Proverbs are very old and may even date to the time of Solomon, but the chapters about Wisdom, including the ones cited above, were composed much later, although an exact date has never been established.
Dating Proverbs has proved difficult. Jung interpreted the presence of Wisdom as evidence of Greek influence and dated the above passage to the third or fourth century BCE. 14
While this has yet to be confirmed, there is no doubt about the very late date of a similar description of Wisdom in Ecclesiasticus 24:3-30:
Here she is the spirit of God who broods upon the waters in the moment of Creation.
Thus, there is no doubt about her
antiquity. Yet, Ecclesiasticus dates to no earlier than around 200
BCE. The description is meant to be taken retroactively, but the
passage itself was a late addition to scripture, and is firm
evidence of a process of reform of the Jewish God concept.
All were written after the time of Job, during the apocalyptic age, and all are heavily indebted to Job, again and again taking up themes that first appear in that book.
For example, the preacher of Ecclesiastes 9:16-17 states:
And in the Book of Wisdom 5:1-2 the scribe offers firm support for Job's right to demand justice:
In the Wisdom literature we also learn more about the nature of the great feminine companion to the Deity. As it happens, she is a marvelous boon to mankind.
Wisdom 10:17 waxes eloquent about her:
And in the Song of Songs, which pretends to be the composition of Solomon (but isn't), we find details of the wondrous union, or syzygy, of both sides of God, male and female.
This was a positive and important development because it produced a deeper awareness of the sublime attributes of the Godhead.
The process continued in the person of Jesus, who campaigned vigorously against every kind of superstitious nonsense, including society's morally reprehensible treatment of lepers. 15
At issue, time and again, was the old Judaic belief in a vindictive God.
The affirmation of Wisdom by Jesus is evidenced also by his respectful treatment of women. That this new awareness of the Divine Mother was also absorbed into Gnostic Christianity is confirmed by the text of the Naassene Sermon, which was embedded en toto in the Refutation of Hippolytus.
The Sermon quotes a hymn honoring the Mother as the companion to the Father:
We know from a lost scripture called the Gospel according to the Hebrews that Jesus made another extraordinary contribution to the Wisdom dialogue.
Though this gospel was suppressed and thus did not survive, from the descriptions of early writers it seems that it closely followed the Gospel of Matthew, except that it was written in Hebrew or Aramaic instead of Greek; hence its name.
The scripture was apparently so popular that it was referred to as the "fifth gospel."
Most important, it included the following key passage quoting Jesus, which was preserved (in two separate places) in the writings of Origen, and also in Saint Jerome:
Here, the words of Jesus explicitly link the Holy Spirit with the Divine Mother; and virtually the same idea occurs in the Gospel of Thomas (Saying 101):
The passage is also noteworthy for its use of the word life, a word specifically used by Jesus in reference to spiritual life.
The idea that the Spirit (spiritual life) flows from the Divine Mother was unprecedented in Judaism, and thus was a momentous development in the West.
But the idea had long been understood in the East.
In the Hindu traditions the same Divine Mother who brings the world into existence and sustains it also makes available a very special form of her own divine Self:
Hindus believe that by means of this extremely subtle energy, known as the Chitti Kundalini or the Shakti Kundalini, the Divine Mother brings about the dramatic reversal of the flow that leads to the heavenly source.
Today, the living traditions of Hinduism describe this key concept of the reversal of the flow in almost exactly the same language used by Gnostics in the first centuries of Christianity.
The only difference is that Hindus describe the "descent" of Spirit
as an awakening from within. Either way, it is the decisive turning
point in the spiritual life of the disciple.
From the riveting account of Josephus, the consequences must have been horrific, much worse than the damage wreaked by Nebuchadnezzar six centuries before.
In the act of breaching the walls of Jerusalem and destroying the great temple, the Roman general Titus proved the prophecies of the apocalyptic age to be a colossal failure, indeed, a collective fantasy.
Many Jews survived the siege, the famine, and the final battle only to be crucified. Tens of thousands of others were carried off into slavery, or were thrown to the lions in the great Coliseum of Rome.
Traumatized by war, many Jews in its aftermath must have questioned their faith, including the darker attributes of Yahweh.
For Jews who had believed in the grand apocalyptic vision, there were only three possible options.
According to scholar Robert Grant, they could rewrite the apocalypse
and postpone history; they could explain the failed prognostications
by trying to show that the sacred writings had been misinterpreted;
or they could simply abandon their faith. 20 One scholar who did study the matter, S.G.F. Brandon, concluded that the impact was no less horrendous. 21
The war scattered Jewish Christians far and wide.
And if the followers of Jesus were as angry with their Jewish brothers as they were with the Romans, they had good reason: the zealots had hijacked Judaism and brought ruin upon the nation.
For which reason Jewish Christians probably shared the conviction that if only more people had listened to Jesus, events might have turned out very differently.
Anyone with an eye in his head, after all, could see that the zealots had been blind. The entire nation had been led off the cliff like a pack of lemmings.
To think the fools had believed that Yahweh would come down out of the sky and destroy the Romans!
The scattered remnants of the original Jerusalem Church found it difficult to regroup.
We know that Roman pursuit continued, and was intense. 22
Eventually, Jewish Christian sects did emerge, including the Ebionites and Elchaisites, and held on in places like Alexandria. But Jews would never again dominate the Jesus movement.
The war and the subsequent Jewish revolts had set in motion a great
reshuffling of men and ideas, and out of the rubble emerged Gentile
Christianity.
Probably for this reason, as time passed, there was less sympathy for Yahweh's noisy tantrums, less tolerance for the residue of the old pagan storm god. There may also have been a feeling that the Wisdom literature did not go far enough.
To many it probably seemed that events had completely discredited the Jewish God along with his people.
Thus, the God of the Jews suffered the fate history has always accorded losers.
Irenaeus devoted much of his
leaden prose, including the greatest portion of Against Heresies, to
refuting the Gnostic "error." 23
The Godhead, after all, had not changed.
What had changed was the concept of God, which simply reconstituted itself in human understanding. Indeed, the sloughing off of the less desirable elements in Yahweh's character surely helped many to clarify the nature of the Godhead, and thus was a positive development.
Yahweh was rechristened Saklas, "the fool," and Samael, "the blind."
Behind Yahweh, unseen by him, stood Wisdom (the Divine Mother, Sophia, Achamoth, the Ogdoad, Barbelo, and so forth), now recognized as the true boss. Yahweh was simply the hired man.
Above Wisdom, indeed, over all, presided the incomprehensible Father about whom Jesus had spoken in such loving terms. 24
It is interesting to note that although Wisdom
was often ranked below the Father, their relationship was intimate:
Wisdom was an integral part of the Godhead.
Footnotes
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