We need to talk about Yaldabaoth

“I’m not sure if he deserves it, but God should have a capital G” – David Baboulene.

Why were some "gospels" not included in the bible at the time of its composition? If the bible is the word of God why should it have been sifted through by a council of Roman men before being approved? How can it be that some of these so-called Gospels were considered canon because they fit a certain narrative; and what was contained in those gospels which didn't make the cut?

In 1945 an Egyptian boy was sent out looking for fuel for the fire by his mother. Egypt was short of large trees, firewood was scarce, and locals often burned animal dung in their cooking fires and for heat. However, this enterprising lad decided to eschew the hunt for donkey and camel shit and broke into some local tombs instead. Near the village of Nag Hammadi, he discovered a buried cache of papyrus books dating back to around the 4th century in some ancient graves. Some scholars have even suggested that some of the papyri may date as early as the 2nd century. When Egyptologist Jean Doresse heard about this horde of books, he tracked down the farmer and rescued the remains. Unfortunately, The farm boy’s mother had burned several of the books by the time Jean arrived to recover them. 

The Nag Hammadi library consists of some ancient philosophical texts, early Christian writing, early Jewish and Gnostics writings, the only complete copy of “The Gospel of Thomas” ever discovered, and some more esoteric texts regarding magic and mysticism. The books were written in the Coptic language of Egypt and contained some of the most incendiary texts ever found. 

The Gnostics were a sect of Ancient Judaism. Gnostics agree with both modern Jewish and Christian scholars upon the identity of the God worshipped under the Jewish and Christian faiths. However, unlike the more orthodox view of this being, the Gnostics described this as evil and misguided. The Gnostic texts described the creation story thus.

In the beginning, there was the supreme consciousness or “pleroma”, and this being or entity consisted of various aspects or Aeons working as one symbiotic collective awareness. One of these aspects, Pistis Sophia (better known as Sophia or the Goddess Sophia, which means knowledge or wisdom) decided to take the power of creation into her own hands. In creating without the consensus of the one, Sophia defied the divine order of things. She took the power of creation into only her hands, without the balance of her opposing aspect or the will of the combined oneness. In doing so, she conceived of a child. 

Being born of such an act of individualistic imbalance, this child was imperfect, ill-begotten and deformed. Sophia, regretting her intransigence, expelled the creature from her womb. The creature she named Yaldabaoth had the face of a lion and the body of a man/serpent. In shame for what she had done, she created a place outside of the supreme oneness whence to hide her regrettable creation (our universe) and fashioned for him a throne of gold, ringed in luminous clouds to better conceal her monstrous offspring. She left him to his fate and fled back to the divine oneness to seek repentance for her selfishness. From his lonely throne, such a being of ignorance became mad and sadistic. 

Yaldabaoth (also known as the Demiurge) is the Gnostic name for the Christian/ Jewish god. Finding no other god but himself, he foolishly believed that he was the creator of all. He created humans and our physical world, an intrinsically imperfect one outside of the divine oneness. In his ignorance, he proclaimed, “I am God, and there is no other God beside me” and insisted that he be worshipped as the divine creator. He takes pleasure in ruling over his creations with a jealous prideful wrath.

Although he is considered the architect of our world, he is not considered the divine creator in the monotheistic sense, his very existence being owed to the Goddess Sophia. He created Adam and Eve and imprisoned within them divine sparks from heaven, given to him by Sophia. He issues the ten commandments to them and insists they comply with these rules, which he himself does not adhere to. For example, lying to Adam and Eve when he claimed to be the only God and then telling them the fruit of knowledge (placed in the garden of Eden by Sophia, in an attempt to enlighten Adam and Eve to Yaldabaoth’s treachery) would kill them. He made a graven image of the Pleroma when he fashioned the physical world in its image and was even accused of attempting to rape Eve. His creation exists only in the material realm, not in the divine spiritual one, and he takes pleasure in the misery of his creations. The Gnostics believed that Sophia, feeling sorry for the misery her creation had caused, strives against the Demiurge to free us of the physical realm in which he has trapped us. The physical realm is considered by these writings to be a place of suffering and evil. 

The cache of books found at Nag Hammadi now reside in the Coptic Library of Egypt; they are some of the very few remaining copies of the early Gnostic books. Most of the copies of such texts were hunted down and eradicated by the early Christians, much like the Gnostics themselves. The writings are considered heretical by the Catholic church, leading many scholars to believe that the original owner of the manuscripts had buried the collection to protect them from the fires of the early Christian crusaders. As a result, the Gnostic texts and many of the other “Gospels” found in the Nag Hammadi Library, the dead sea scrolls, and several other proto-Christian writings were excluded from the bible and are referred to as the “Apocrypha”.

So, the next time your stuffy old great Auntie Mabel grumbles about your language and warns you not to take God’s name in vain, ask her does she mean Yaldabaoth?