I was never a fan of the God of the OT....it's contents read with a clear mind are repellent. The Jewish Passover for example, is a celebration of
the deaths of Egypt's first born children and, given that there is not one iota of evidence in Egypt that Hebrews were ever Egyptian slaves, it is
death with zero justification. (Interestingly there is evidence that the Hebrews married into the Pharaohnic lineage.)
It was when I read some of the Gnostic writings in the Nag Hammadi library (in particular
On the Origin
of the World and
The Hypostasis of the Archons (The Reality of the Leaders) that I began
to really question what the Bible represented.
According to these writings Sophia/Pistis (androgynous entity) was the first being (but not
the God. The Light (from
the God) shone on
Sophia/Pistis and created a shadow. That shadow was the 'waters of chaos'.. Sohia/Pistis looked into the waters of chaos at her/his reflection and
felt envious of its creator....from that reflection and engendered by that envy Yaldaboath was raised out of the waters of chaos (we are all in chaos
now).
Yaldaboath, being unable to see Sophia/Pistis, saw chaos and arrogantly assumed that it was he (also androgynous) who had created all that he saw.
Thereafter he produced seven offspring and gave them each there own heaven replete with Angels. If you read the books you will find that through
loyalty the seventh heaven is the best heaven - that God having had some humility. Is it the origin of the term 'I was in seventh heaven'?
Anyway Yaldoboath's seven offspring wanted to be creators also (well they wanted slaves) and they had several failed attempts at creating mankind.
The books tell us that they tried to make one from wood but it was stupid and kept walking into things. The first attempt at making a being from mud
was 'like an abortion'.
Anyhow, Sophia/Pistis took pity on their creation and breathed spirit into their Adam (Yaldaboath's offspring had only a soul) - with spirit and soul
the experimental Adam was a success. Sophia/Pistis took the form of Eve and began to teach Adam. When the leaders returned to Adam they saw
Sophia/Pistis (Eve) who fled leaving a carnal copy of her/himself (in the form of the biblical Eve).
Anyhoo....when read in full I cam to the understanding that the day of judgement is not the judgement of humankind - but of Yaldaboath and his seven
offspring (to ensure they had their arrogance and envy sorted out). Oh and the offspring cast Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden because they
knew that mankind (endowed with spirit and soul) was greater than they were. Their trickery was to ensure that we never ever remembered that.
This Gnostic writings were not written to be taken literally - they was written to open the mind to enable us to envisage scales of time and size that
were incomprehensible to the human mind. They are meditative....and I believe transformative.
The Gnostic writings make more sense that the Book of Genesis which, albeit describes but one Creator, repeatedly refers to this character in plural.
E.g. 'And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness:'
edit on 21-1-2013 by christina-66 because: (no reason given)