
Gnostic sects and founders
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Yaldabaoth, otherwise known asJaldabaoth orIaldabaoth[a] (/ˌjɑːldəˈbeɪɒθ/;Koine Greek:Ιαλδαβαώθ,romanized: Ialdabaóth;Latin:Ialdabaoth;[1]Coptic:ⲒⲀⲖⲦⲀⲂⲀⲰⲐIaltabaôth), is amalevolent god anddemiurge (creator of the material world) according to variousGnostic sects, represented sometimes as atheriomorphic, lion-headedserpent.[2][3][4] He is identified as afalse god who keeps souls trapped in physical bodies, imprisoned in the material universe.[2][3][4]
The etymology of the nameYaldabaoth has been subject to many speculative theories. The first etymology was advanced in 1575 byFrançois Feuardent, supposedly translating it fromHebrew to meanLatin:a patribus genitus,lit. 'the child of fathers'.[5][6]: 407 A theory proposed byJacques Matter in 1828 identified the name as descending fromHebrew:ילדא,romanized: yāldā,lit. 'child' and fromHebrew:בהות,romanized: bahot, a supposed plural form ofHebrew:בוהו,romanized: bōhu,lit. 'emptiness, darkness'. Matter, however, interpreted it to mean 'chaos', thus translatingYaldaboath as "child of darkness [...] an element of chaos".[7][6]: 421
This etymology was popular due to its perceived literary merits.[b] It inspiredAdolf Hilgenfeld to keep Matter's proposed 'chaos' translation, while fabulating a more plausible sounding, but unattested second noun:Aramaic: בהותא,romanized:bāhūthā, deriving the name fromAramaic: ילדא בהותא,romanized:yaldā bāhūthā supposedly meaning'child of chaos' in 1884. This and variants of it became the majority opinion from the late 19th to the mid-20th century which was endorsed bySchenke,Böhlig, andLabib.
This analysis was convincingly deconstructed by Jewish historian of religionGershom Scholem in 1974,[6]: 405–421 who showed the unattested Aramaic term to have been fabulated and attested only in a single corrupted text from 1859, with its listed translation having been transposed from the reading of an earlier etymology, whose explanation seemingly equated "darkness" and "chaos" when translating an unattested supposed plural form ofHebrew:בוהו,romanized: bōhu.[6][9]: 69–72 Consequently most scholars retracted their endorsement (for example,Gilles Quispel did so by lamenting humorously that due to its literary merits he believes the originator of the name Yaldabaoth had made the same erroneous association between baoth and tohuwabohu as the former majority opinion).[10] Additionally, Scholem argued that based on the earliest textual data, which termed Yaldabaoth "the King of Chaos", he was the progenitor of chaos, not its progeny.[6]
Scholem's own theory rendered the name asYald' Abaoth.Yald' beingAramaic: ילדא,romanized:yaldā[c] but translated as 'begetter', not 'child' andAbaoth being a term attested inmagic texts, descending fromHebrew:צבאות,romanized: Tzevaot,lit. 'Sabaoth, armies', one of thenames of God in Judaism. Thus he renderedYald' Abaoth as 'begetter of Sabaoth'.[6]Matthew Black objects to this, because Sabaoth is the name ofone of Yaldaboth's sons in some Gnostic texts. Instead he suggests the second noun to beJewish Aramaic: בהתייה,romanized:behūṯā,lit. 'shame'. Which is cognate withHebrew:בושה,romanized: bōšeṯ, a term used to replace the nameBa'al in theHebrew Bible. Thus Blacks' proposal rendersAramaic: ילדא בהתייה,romanized:yaldābehūṯā,lit. 'son of shame/Ba'al'.[11]
In his proposed 1967 etymologyAlfred Adam already diverged from the then majority opinion and translatedAramaic: ילדא,romanized:yaldā similarly to Scholem, asGerman:Erzeugung,lit. 'bringing forth'. He believed the name's second part to derive fromSyriac:ܐܒܗܘܬܗ,romanized: ˀabbāhūṯā,lit. 'fatherhood'. This he interpreted however to describe more broadly 'the power of generation'; thus suggesting the name to mean 'the bringing forth of the power of generation'.[12][11]
Robert M. Grant proposed in 1957 that Ialdabaoth was derived fromYah(weh) El(ohei)-Sabaoth, "Yahweh, God of Hosts (Armies)" (Hebrew:צבאות,romanized: ṣəḇāʾōṯ,lit. 'Sabaoth, armies'), a name for the God of Israel found with variants in1 Samuel 1:3,2 Samuel 7, Amos (3:13, 5:15-16, 27, and elsewhere) 1 Kings, Jeremiah,Zechariah 3:10, and Psalm 89:9.[13] He notes that the change from thetsade) to adaleth or ateth is sometimes seen inAramaic.[13]Simone Pétrement made an argument against Schloem's etymology through analysis of Gnostic mythic texts, and derived it fromIao Sabaoth, which is attested in theGreek Magical Papyri — possibly independently from Grant, although she would not rule out having read Grant's article at some prior point.[14]
After theAssyrian conquest of Egypt during the 7th century BCE, Seth was considered an evil deity by the Egyptians and not commonly worshipped, in large part due to his role as the god of foreigners.[15] From at least 200 BCE onward, a tradition developed in the Graeco-EgyptianPtolemaic Kingdom which identifiedYahweh, the God of the Jews, with theEgyptian godSeth.[16] Diverging from previouszoologically multiplicitous depictions, Seth's appearance during the Hellenistic period onwards was depicted as resembling a man with a donkey's head.[17][18] The Greek practice ofinterpretatio graeca, ascribing the gods of another people's pantheon to corresponding ones in one's own, had been adopted by the Egyptians after theirHellenisation; during the process of which they had identified Seth withTyphon, a snake-monster, which roars like a lion.[19]
The story ofthe Exodus, featured in theHebrew Bible, speaks of the Jews as a nation betrayed and subjugated by thePharaoh, for whom Yahweh subjects Egyptians toten plagues — destroying their country, defiling theNile, and killing all their first-born sons. Jewish migration within the Hellenised Ptolemaic Kingdom to Greek-speaking Egyptian cities such asAlexandria led to the creation of theSeptuagint, a translation of the Hebrew Bible intoKoine Greek.[20] Furthermore, the story of the Exodus wasadapted byEzekiel the Tragedian into theAncient Greek:ἐξαγωγή,romanized: Exagōgḗ, a Greek play performed in Alexandria and seen by Egyptians and Jews. Egyptian receptions of the Exodus story were widely negative, because it insulted their gods and praised their suffering. Thus it inspired Egyptian works retelling the story, but changing its details to mock the Jews and exalt Egypt and its gods.[21]
In this context some Egyptians discerned similarities between Yahweh's in-narrative actions and attributes and those of Seth (such as being associated with foreigners, deserts, and storms), in addition to a phonetic resemblance betweenKoine Greek:Ἰαω,romanized: Iaō, Yahweh's name as used byhellenised Jews, andCoptic:ⲓⲱ,romanized: Iō,lit. 'donkey', then considered as the animal of Seth.[22] From this arose a popular response to the Jewish accusation that Egyptians were merely worshipping beasts, namely that, in truth, the Jews themselves worshipped a beast, a donkey or a donkey-headed man, ie Seth.[23]
Accusations ofonolatry against the Jews spread from the Egyptian milieu, with its understanding of the donkey's Seth-related importance, to the rest of theGraeco-Roman world, which was largely ignorant of this context. In the most famous variations of narratives alleging Jewish onolatryAntiochus IV Epiphanes, aSeleucid king famous for raiding theJerusalem Temple, supposedly discovered that itsHoliest of Holies was not empty, but instead contained a donkey idol, and Tacitus (early second century CE) claimed that the Jews dedicated in their holiest shrine a statue of a wild ass.[24][d] After the emergence ofChristianity the same charge was also repeated against its devotees. Most famously so in the earliest known depiction of thecrucifixion of Jesus, theAlexamenos graffito, where a Christian by the name of Alexamenos is shown worshipping a donkey-headed crucified god.[26][27]
According to Litwa, this tradition forms the basis for the development ofGnostic beliefs about Yaldabaoth.[e][30]
Theorigins of Gnosticism are obscure and still disputed. Gnostics emphasised spiritual knowledge (gnosis) of the divine spark within, overfaith (pistis) in the teachings and traditions of the various communities of Christians.[31][32][33][34] Gnosticism presents a distinction between thehighest, unknowable God, and theDemiurge, "creator" of the material universe.[31][32][33][35] Gnostics considered the mostessential part of the process ofsalvation to be this personal knowledge, in contrast to faith as an outlook in theirworldview along with faith in theecclesiastical authority.[31][32][33][35]
In Gnosticism, thebiblical serpent in theGarden of Eden was praised and thanked for bringing knowledge (gnosis) to Adam and Eve and thereby freeing them from themalevolent Demiurge's control.[35] Gnostic Christian doctrines rely on adualistic cosmology that implies the eternal conflict between good and evil, and a conception of the serpent as theliberating savior and bestower of knowledge to humankind opposed to the Demiurge orcreator god, identified with the Yahweh from the Hebrew Bible.[35][32] Some Gnostic Christians (such asMarcionites) considered the Hebrew God of the Old Testament as the evil,false god and creator of the material universe, and theUnknown God of theGospel, the father ofJesus Christ and creator of the spiritual world, as the true, good God.[35][32] In theArchontic,Sethian, andOphite systems, Yaldabaoth is regarded as the malevolent Demiurge and false god of the Old Testament who generated the material universe and keeps the souls trapped in physical bodies, imprisoned in the world full of pain and suffering that hecreated.[2][3][4]
However, not all Gnostics regarded the creator of the material universe as inherently evil or malevolent.[36][37] For instance,Valentinians believed that the Demiurge is merely an ignorant and incompetent creator, trying to fashion the world as well as he can, but lacking the proper power to maintain its goodness.[36][37] They were regarded asheretics by theproto-orthodoxEarly Church Fathers.[35][32][33]
Yaldabaoth is mentioned mainly in the Archontic, Sethian, and Ophitewritings of Gnostic literature,[4] most of which have been discovered in theNag Hammadi library.[2][3] In theApocryphon of John, "Yaldabaoth" is the first of three names of the domineeringarchon, along with Saklas andSamael. InPistis Sophia he has lost his claim to rulership and, in the depths of Chaos, together with 49 demons, tortures sacrilegious souls in a scorching hot torrent of pitch. Here he is a lion-faced archon, half flame, half darkness. Yaldabaoth appears as a rebelliousangel both in theapocryphalGospel of Judas and the Gnostic workHypostasis of the Archons. In some of these Gnostic texts, Yaldabaoth is further identified with theAncient Roman godSaturnus.[4]
Yaldabaoth is the son ofSophia, the personification of wisdom according to Gnosticism, with whom he contends. By creatively becoming matter in goodness and simplicity, Sophia created the imperfect Yaldabaoth, who has no knowledge of the other aeons. From his mother he received the powers of light, but he used them for evil. Sophia rules the Ogdoas, the Demiurge rules the Hebdomas. Yaldabaoth created six more archons and other fellows.[38] The angels he created rebelled against Yaldabaoth. To keep the angels in subjection, Yaldabaoth generated the material universe.
In the act of creation, however, Yaldabaoth emptied himself of his supreme power. When Yaldabaoth breathed thesoul into the first man,Adam, Sophia instilled in him thedivine spark of the spirit. After matter, Yaldabaoth produced the serpent spirit (Ophiomorphos), which is the origin of all evil. The light being Sophia caused thefall of man through the serpent. By eating theforbidden fruit, Adam andEve became wise and rejected Yaldabaoth. Eventually, Yaldabaoth expelled them from the ethereal region, theParadise, as punishment.
Yaldabaoth continuously attempted to deprive human beings of the gift of the spark of light which he had unwittingly lost to them, or to keep them in bondage. As punishments, he tried to make humanity acknowledge him as God.[3] Because of their lack of worship, he causedthe Flood upon the human race, from which a feminine power such as Sophia or Pronoia[39] (Providence) rescuedNoah.[3] Yaldabaoth made acovenant with Abraham, in which he was obligated to serve him along with his descendants. TheBiblical prophets were to proclaim Yaldabaoth's glory, but at the same time, through Sophia's influence, they reminded people of their higher origin and prepared for the coming ofChrist. At Sophia's instigation, Yaldabaoth arranged for the generation ofJesus through theVirgin Mary. For his proclamation, he usedJohn the Baptist. At the moment of thebaptism organized by Yaldabaoth, Sophia took on the body of Jesus and through it taught people that their destiny was the Kingdom of Light (the spiritual world), not the Kingdom of Darkness (the material universe). Only after his baptism did Jesus receive divine power and could perform miracles. But since Jesus destroyed his kingdom instead of promoting it, Yaldabaothhad him crucified. Before his martyrdom, Christ escaped from the bodily shell and returned to the spiritual world.
1. ילדא בהות,fils des ténébres; בהות, pluriel de בוהו; les fils deSophia avait, en effet, un élément dechaos; il devait être analogue à la matière qu'il était appelé à former.
{{cite book}}:ISBN / Date incompatibility (help)Gershom Scholem, the third genius in this field, more specifically the genius of precision, has taught us that some of us were wrong when they believed that Jaldabaoth means "son of chaos", because the Aramaic wordbahutha in the sense of chaos only existed in the imagination of the author of a well-known dictionary. This is a pity because this name would suit the demiurge risen from chaos to a nicety. And perhaps the author of the "Untitled Document" did not know Aramaic and also supposed as we did once, that baoth had something to do withtohuwabohu, one of the few Hebrew words that everybody knows.
{{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link){{citation}}: CS1 maint: work parameter with ISBN (link)In the course of the last millennium B.C. the Egyptians experienced disagreeable contacts with Asiatics. Around 670 B.C. the Assyrians conquered Egypt: Esarhaddon burned Memphis and Ashurbanipal plundered Thebes. The Egyptian sources are taciturn as to these humiliations, but it is probable that at this time the former self-assured goodwill of the Egyptians broke down and turned to hatred of foreigners, with desolating effects for the cult of Seth. In the 26th dynasty a certain Neshor calls upon his gods to be gracious, "as you have saved me from the distress of soldiers, Syrians, Greeks, Asiatics and others." This is very different from the interested and superior attitude of the Egyptians towards foreigners in the [New Kingdom]. Texts and images referring to Seth are scarce after the 20th dynasty, compared with the time before. After the Assyrian period there are hardly any indications of Seth-worship. It would seem that after the conquest of Egypt by foreigners, particularly Assyrians and Persians, the Egyptians in general no longer believed that positive forces for the maintenance of the cosmos might be drawn from the divine foreigner[...].
We see this tradition recounted by several writers. Around 200 BCE, a man called Mnaseas (an Alexandrian originally from what is now southern Turkey), told a story of an Idumean (southern Palestinian) who entered the Judean temple and tore off the golden head of a pack ass from the inner sanctuary. This head was evidently attached to a body, whether human or donkey. The reader would have understood that the Jews (secretly) worshiped Yahweh as a donkey in the Jerusalem temple, since gold was characteristically used for cult statues of gods. Egyptians knew only one other deity in ass-like form: Seth.
Since the above was written, there has appeared an important article by B. H. Stricker,Asinarii I, OMRO NR 46 (1965), p. 52-75. In Stricker's opinion there can be no reasonable doubt that the Seth-animal represents an ass. Apart from the late data of the Graeco-Roman period, his arguments are the unusual script of the word ꜥꜣ (ass) with the Seth-animal as determinative, already mentioned above, and Daressy's description of the šꜣ-animal on the sarcophagus of Nesamon as having an ass's head: G. Daressy,L'animal séthien à tête d'âne, ASAE 20 (1920), p. 165-166. These arguments only prove, it seems to me, that the ass was one of the Typhonic animals, as the pig was for instance. From the fact that the šꜣ-animal may have a pig as determinative, while šꜣ is indeed a common word for pig, I conclude that the pig, like the ass, is a Typhonic animal. On the socle Behague the Seth-animal or šꜣ-animal has a jackal as determinative (A. Klasens,A magical statue base (socle Behague) in the Museum of Antiquities at Leiden, Leiden, 1952, (=OMRO NR 33), p. 41, h 14). The Seth-animal does not seem to be exclusively an ass, but a mythical animal that if necessary or desired can be connected with various zoologically definable animals. In Graeco-Roman times there is a reluctance, connected with the ending of the official cult of Seth, to depict this mythological animal itself. The earlier multiplicity of approach with zoologically definable animals is also restricted, and the Seth-animal is unilaterally replaced by the ass. Yet the author of theMagical Papyrus of London and Leiden XIX, 27 still knows "the griffin in whose hand is Osiris" (F. L. Griffiths and H. Thompson,The demotic Magical Papyrus of London and Leiden, I, London 1904, p. 127). The tradition, therefore, that the Seth-animal was not merely an ass but a mythical animal, was carried on until the end.
Important for our purposes, Seth was frequently described as having the form or skin of a donkey. From ancient times, he appeared in Egyptian art as a human figure with the head (or mask) of a creature showing long, cropped ears and a drooping snout. The Greeks, at least, identified this creature with a donkey, and the donkey was portrayed—along with the pig—as Seth's sacred animal
Since the fifth century BCE (and probably earlier), there was a Greek cultural practice of identifying foreign gods now dubbedinterpretatio Graeca. In short, Greeks would identify two different gods from two different cultures based on shared traits. For instance, the Egyptian god Thoth was identified with the Greek Hermes because both were considered clever. [...] When it came to Seth, the Greeks had long identified him with Typhon, lord of chaos. Typhon was more of a monster than a god. [...] Another Greek poet described him as "enemy of gods.[...] Hellenized Egyptians capitalized on this cultural practice of translation by viewing the Jewish god Yahweh as a form of Seth.
The case of Ezekiel is important because he adapted the story for the stage. Theater was enjoyed, not just by Jews, but by Egyptians, Greeks, and by the many peoples of mixed cultural heritage in Egypt. If Ezekiel's play was staged (as its form indicates), it was probably presented to a wide audience.[...] Egyptian priests, including famous historians like Manetho and Chaeremon, would have been horrified by the Exodus myth's rhetorical violence wielded against Egypt, its people, and its gods. The Egyptian gods were depicted as powerless to defend themselves against the relentless attacks of a foreign deity, a being who showed open favoritism to his own people while unleashing the equivalent of biological warfare against the Egyptian populace. Beginning in the first century BCE, Hellenized Egyptian literati punched back to refute and reverse elements of the Exodus story using the resources of their own millennia-long cultural memory. In their retellings, the Egyptians were not plagued; it was the Hebrews who were afflicted with leprosy and boils. Instead of the Egyptians drowned in the Red Sea, it was the Hebrews drowned in lakes on leaden rafts. Instead of the Hebrews bursting out of Egypt weighted with gold, they were disgorged into the desert—the realm of Seth—and left there to wander with nothing. The flight of a liberated people was retooled as an expulsion of a diseased and doomed tribe.
From the Greco-Egyptian perspective, Yahweh and Seth shared several traits: they were both gods of foreigners, of the desert, and of frightening storms. They both sent calamities. Indeed, Egyptians could not help but notice that some of the plagues unleashed by Yahweh resembled disasters customarily inflicted by Seth: darkness, eclipse, and pestilence. Red was the distinctive hue of Seth, and Yahweh turned the Nile crimson before ordering the Hebrews to paint their lintels with blood. Mount Sinai, the desert crag from which Yahweh revealed his Law, quaked as it was enveloped in thunder, lightning, and fire—all phenomena associated with Seth. Finally, the Greek word for Yahweh (Iaō)—with a perverse twist of the tongue—sounded like the native Egyptian word for donkey (eiō or simply iō). These factors, even if judged artificial today, were more than enough for Hellenized Egyptians to portray Yahweh as a form of Seth.
For centuries, Jews had scorned the religion of Egypt as the worship of dumb beasts. One way for learned Egyptians to fight back was to depict the Jewish deity as himself the most vile and ridiculous beast. If Yahweh was a form of Seth, then he could be portrayed in Seth's ass-like shape. Thus there arose the tradition that the Jews (secretly) worshiped Yahweh as a donkey or as a man standing upright with an ass's head.
Over a hundred years later, two respected scholars [...] passed on a tradition that the Jews venerated their deity in the form of a golden donkey head. According to their versions (whose differences we cannot precisely discern), it was the Macedonian king—archenemy of the Jews—Antiochus IV Epiphanes who discovered the donkey head when he ransacked the Jewish temple around 167 BCE. [...] Variants of this story fusing the form of Seth and Yahweh spread like a cancer. [...] Tacitus, who wrote (early in the second century CE) that the Jews dedicated in their holiest shrine a statue of a wild ass. We gather that the tradition of the Jews (secretly) worshiping their god in donkey form was widely known by the early second century CE. Whoever originally invented the tales of the statue(s) was probably a person of Egyptian cultural heritage attempting to depict Yahweh as a form of Seth. But the image had gone viral and could be learned in Syria, Rhodes, Greece, Egypt, Rome—and evidently the places in between.
As in Luke, Zechariah entered the temple, beheld a vision, and was made dumb. As he was releasing a cloud of incense from his censor, he beheld, to his surprise, a person standing in the Holy of Holies. This mysterious being lurking in the smoke was no Gabriel, however, but a being with the face or form of a donkey (onou morphēn). This was the creature who silently—and secretly—received the devoted worship of the Jewish people. The stunned Zechariah stormed out of the temple intending to shout to the bystanders: "Woe to you! Whom are you worshiping?!" He would have done so, had not the ass deity—much like Gabriel—stopped up his mouth. But the powers of the donkey god were evidently frail, because Zechariah managed to soften his stony tongue and relate to the Jews the horror he beheld inside. The people were aghast—not (or not only) to learn of the perverse shape of their deity—but that Zechariah the high priest would say things so disturbing as to strike at the root of their religious worship. And so—as if Zechariah himself were some sacrificial bull or goat—they cut him down then and there at the foot of the temple altar
an unknown graffiti artist carved into the plaster of a palace chamber in Rome a donkey-headed deity dangling from a cross (see Figure 1.3). At the foot of the cross stands a stumpy, loutish figure with hand raised in adoration. The caption, written in Greek, reads: "Alexamenos worships god." Alexamenos—a slavish buffoon given his posture and dress—is evidently a Christian worshiping the crucified Christ. It just so happens that Christ has the head of an ass. [...] It is possible that a Roman slave or schoolboy who worked in the palace was familiar with a being like Onocoetes, a Christian amulet, or the donkey worship mentioned by Minucius. It is also possible, however, that whoever scratched the crucified donkey into the plaster was familiar with alternative Christian traditions that portrayed the creator or one of his minions as a donkey-headed demon. He would then be invoking the idea of "like father, like son": donkey-headed father god gives birth to donkey-headed son (Jesus).
Sabaoth, sometimes identified with Yaldabaoth, was identical to the Judean creator. After the souls of the redeemed depart from this world, they make their way past every ruler. The last and most difficult ruler to evade is the creator, who cannot be passed apart from the attainment of full knowledge (gnosis). These Christians believed that Sabaoth had either the shape of a donkey or of a pig.
One copy of the shorter version of the Secret Book reports that the chief creator Yaldabaoth "had the face of a snake and the face of a lion." In the longer version, he is described as "a lion-faced serpent."91 These traits were reminiscent of Seth-Typhon's snake heads and lionlike roar—not to mention his eyes, "flashing like fires of lightning.[...] When it comes to donkey features, however, one must attend to Yaldabaoth's offspring. These include the seven planetary rulers. The second of these, called Eloaios, had the face of a donkey. In one manuscript, Eloaios's donkey face is explicitly called "the face of Typhon." The notion of "like father, like son" seems to be implied. Eloaios activated the typhonic potential embedded in the chief creator, Yaldabaoth. "Evidence for this view is Yaldabaoth's shape-shifting character. As a being expressing chaos, he had a "crowd of faces"—innumerable appearances that he could manifest at will. Whenever he desired, apparently, Yaldabaoth could manifest donkey features. Eloaios was the child of the creator, and his donkey visage realized one of Yaldabaoth's many forms."
Seth-Yahweh was a donkey-shaped god of evil established in pre-Christian cultural memory and adapted by alternative Christian groups to express a hostility toward the Judean creator that had been voiced for centuries. This means that so-called Phibionite, Sethian, and Ophite Christians did not have to invent Yahweh as an evil character out of whole cloth. The wicked creator was already available, and his symbolic value was cashed out in new mythmaking practices that could be aimed not (or not only) at Jews but also at other Christian opponents who had adopted the Jewish creator as their chief deity.