FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE - The NAG HAMMADI CODICES Part 1

sandalphon (62)in #knowledge • 6 years ago

Preamble: How old is our civilization? The answer to this question keeps changing over the last 2,000 years and will continue to change as we learn more and more about “our past”. One thing is clear – our “civilization” isn’t the first to have existed on this planet.

Just how many civilizations existed before us? The “oldest” civilization that is widely accepted at this time is the Sumerian which is believed to have existed around 4000 BC. Not everyone agrees though since several other pieces of “history” are not accounted for. The giants mentioned in the bible, the “fluvial” erosion in the body of the Sphinx in Egypt that could not have occurred before 10,000 BC, the Nephilim mentioned in Genesis (6:4) who took earthy women for wives who gave birth to the “giants”, the Anunnakis - believed to have created humans by altering ape’s DNA and ruled over earth for over 400,000 years plus the recent discovery of a 700,000-Year-Old Stone Tools found in the Philippines used to butcher a Rhino.

History as we know it is incomplete and convoluted with mythology. But advances in technology is allowing us to separate history from myths.

Who or what created us and for what purpose? I think this is the ultimate riddle that sentient beings like us should strive to get an answer for. Imagine that you woke up one day with no memory of who you are. Would you not spend the rest of your life finding out who you really are, who your parents were, whether you have a family etc.? In a way, this is what happened to us. We forgot. Or maybe something tricked us to forget our true nature and our rightful place in the universe.

It is clear that "higher knowledge" has been deliberately hidden from us for thousands of years. Therefore, you and me are beholden to uncover and bring this information out to enlighten the world. To end the battle between knowledge and ignorance. To free us from the obstruction caused by established dogmas and lies; for this knowledge could lead us to a greater understanding of our universe and of ourselves.

In my previous post, we've explored the story of the creation of man according to two sources: the Scripture and the Sumerian tablets. We've concluded the post that there is a high parallelism between the two stories and the Sumerian text outdated the Scriptures by thousands of years.

The Genesis as we know it today is the Orthodox version which prevailed during the century-long battle of truths between opposing religious sects. We've heard about the other less powerful sects such as the Gnostics although their teachings were not widely spread and accepted or at the very least known until the discovery of the Nag Hammadi Scrolls in 1945.

Almost 80 years after their discovery, the Nag Hammadi teachings still remains suppressed. This despite the luminaries that follow and preach the esoteric knowledge. For example, the statement that "all men are created equal" does not occur in that scripture, but sprang from the inspiration of the American revolutionaries, who drew from Gnostic sources.

A brief overview of the Nag Hammadi Texts

When analyzed according to subject matter, there are six separate major categories of writings in the Nag Hammadi codices:

1.) Writings of creative and redemptive mythology, including Gnostic alternative versions of creation and salvation:

The Apocryphon of John
The Hypostasis of the Archons
On the Origin of the World
The Apocalypse of Adam
The Paraphrase of Shem

2.) Observations and commentaries on diverse Gnostic themes, such as the nature of reality, the nature of the soul, the relationship of the soul to the world:

The Gospel of Truth
The Treatise on the Resurrection
The Tripartite Tractate
Eugnostos the Blessed
The Second Treatise of the Great Seth
The Teachings of Silvanus
The Testimony of Truth

3.) Liturgical and initiatory texts:

The Discourse on the Eighth and Ninth
The Prayer of Thanksgiving
A Valentinian Exposition
The Three Steles of Seth
The Prayer of the Apostle Paul

4.) Writings dealing primarily with the feminine deific and spiritual principle, particularly with the Divine Sophia:

The Thunder
Perfect Mind
The Thought of Norea
The Sophia of Jesus Christ
The Exegesis on the Soul

5.) Writings pertaining to the lives and experiences of some of the apostles:

The Apocalypse of Peter
The Letter of Peter to Philip
The Acts of Peter and the Twelve Apostles
The (First) Apocalypse of James
The (Second) Apocalypse of James
The Apocalypse of Paul

6.) Scriptures which contain sayings of Jesus as well as descriptions of incidents in His life:

The Dialogue of the Saviour
The Book of Thomas the Contender
The Apocryphon of James
The Gospel of Philip
The Gospel of Thomas

As you can see, the topics covered in the Nag Hammadi codices are broad and cannot be covered in just one post. So zeroing this post to the creation story, to begin with.

After studying these texts, they not only reinforces the parallelism between the Genesis and the Sumerian tablets but also provides (indirect and often direct ) confirmation that the Genesis story of creation was derived from the Sumerian tablets.

In the treatise The Apocalypse of Adam, the Gnostics text confirms the creation of man by a more advanced species:

The revelation which Adam taught his son Seth in the seven hundreth year, saying:

"Listen to my words, my son Seth. When God had created me out of the earth, along with Eve, your mother, I went about with her in a glory which she had seen in the aeon from which we had come forth. She taught me a word of knowledge of the eternal God. And we resembled the great eternal angels, for we were higher than the god who had created us and the powers with him, whom we did not know."

It also confirms the long-debated and ultra long life of Adam, his children and their creators before the flood.

The "gods" who created Adam & Eve

The Gnostic gospels also shed light on the omnipotence, temperament and the whole being of the gods of Eden.

The Gnostic text states that "the serpent was wiser than all the animals that were in Paradise." After extolling the wisdom of the serpent, the treatise casts serious aspersions on the creator: "What sort is he then, this God?" Then come some of the answers to the rhetorical question. The motive of the creator in punishing Adam was envy, for the creator envied Adam, who by eating the fruit would acquire knowledge (gnosis). Neither did the creator seem quite omniscient when he asked of Adam: "Where are you?" The creator has shown himself repeatedly to be "an envious slanderer," a jealous God, who inflicts cruel punishments on those who transgress his capricious orders and commandments. The treatise comments: "But these are the things he said (and did) to those who believe in him and serve him." The implication clearly presents itself that with a God like this, one needs no enemies.

Jack Miles, in his provocative book God: A Biography writing: "Much that the Bible says about him is rarely preached from the pulpit because, examined too closely, it becomes a scandal." Perhaps we may need to take a second look at the Gnostic proposition that the creator mentioned in Genesis is not the true and ultimate God. The unfavorable potential present in the Book of Genesis did not go unnoticed throughout history. Rabbi Johanan ben Zakkai, a religious teacher prominent in the years after A.D. 70, warned that the Genesis story of creation should not be taught before even as many as two people. Saint Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin, wrote that many of the narratives in the Old Testament were "rude and repellent." He certainly included those in Genesis.

Another treatise, The Hypostasis of the Archons, informs us that not only was Eve the emissary of the divine Sophia, but the serpent was similarly inspired by the same supernal wisdom. Sophia mystically entered the serpent, who thereby acquired the title of instructor. The instructor then taught Adam and Eve about their source, informing them that they were of high and holy origin and not mere slaves of the creator deity.

When discussing the story of Noah and the flood, author Karen Armstrong (A History of God, 1993), asserted that God is "not some nice, cozy daddy in the sky," but rather a being who decidedly behaves frequently "in an evil way." With his actions in connection with the flood, Armstrong said, God originated the idea of justifiable genocide. Hitler and Stalin, one might deduce, acted on the instruction of such stories as that of the flood and of Sodom and Gomorrah when instituting the holocaust and the camps of the Gulag. Had the panelists called on Gnostic scriptures, they could have quoted many precedents for Armstrong's criticism of the vengeful God of the Old Testament.

The "gods" according to the Greeks

Of all past civilizations, the Greeks provided the most colorful and detailed accounts of the gods' countenance, predilection and disposition. From the Titans, to Zeus who overthrew them, to the accounts of gods sleeping with mortal men and women, to gods fighting for providence among mortal men. The Greeks seemed to have a crystal clear understanding of these gods whom they borrowed from the civilizations before them.

The One True God

The "official version" per the Genesis is that the cause of the flood was the turning of humans to wickedness, causing God to repent of his creation. In the Sumerian tablets however as discussed in previous posts, we learned that Adam and his sons, got too "noisy" and their noise irritated the gods. I think the proper translation should be "nosy" since, on the contrary, the human slaves to the gods were becoming wiser and better, so an envious and spiteful creator decided to wipe them out in the flood. Noah was told by the creator to build an ark and place it atop Mount Seir-a name that does not occur in Genesis, but in one of the psalms referring to the flood. Noah's wife, unnamed in Genesis but called Norea by the Gnostics, is a special person, possessing more wisdom than her husband. Norea is the daughter of Eve and a knower of hidden things. She tries to dissuade her husband from collaborating with the schemes of the creator, and ends up burning down the ark which Noah had built.

The creator and his dark angels then surround Norea and intend to punish Norea by raping her. Norea defends herself by refuting various false claims they make. Ultimately she cries out for help to the true God, who sends the golden Angel Eleleth (Sagacity), who not only saves her from the attack of the creator's dark servants, but also teaches her regarding her origins and promises her that her descendants will continue to possess the true gnosis.

It is quite apparent that the creator god who visits humanity with the disaster of the flood is not identical with the "true God" to whom Norea calls out for help. Viewing the character of the deity of Genesis with a sober, critical eye, the Gnostics concluded that this God was neither good nor wise. He was envious, genocidal, unjust, and, moreover, had created a world full of bizarre and unpleasant things and conditions. In their visionary explorations of secret mysteries, the Gnostics felt that they had discovered that this deity was not the only God, as had been claimed, and that certainly there was a God above him.

This true God above was the real father of humanity, and, moreover, there was a true mother as well, Sophia, the emanation of the true God. Somewhere in the course of the lengthy process of pre-creational manifestation, Sophia mistakenly gave life to a spiritual being, whose wisdom was greatly exceeded by his size and power. This being, whose true names are Yaldabaoth (child of the chaos), Samael (blind god), and also Saclas (foolish one), then proceeded to create a world, and eventually also a human being called Adam. Neither the world nor the man thus created was very serviceable as created, so Sophia and other high spiritual agencies contributed their light and power to them. The creator thus came to deserve the name "demiurge" (half maker), a Greek term employed in a slightly different sense by philosophers, including Plato.

Much later there would be a new era with the coming of the man of light ("Phoster"), who would teach gnosis to all. The Apocalypse of Adam concludes with this passage:

This is the hidden knowledge of Adam which he gave to Seth, which is the holy baptism of those who know the imperishable Gnosis through those who are born of the Logos, through the imperishable Illuminator, who himself came from the holy seed (of Seth) Jesseus, Mazareus, Jessedekeus.

These names, which are obviously versions of the name of Jesus (they are found in other scriptures also), identify the culmination of the Gnostic tradition in the figure of Jesus. The "Race of Seth" is thus a biblical metaphor for those following this tradition. In the Gnostic book Pistis Sophia, Jesus identifies himself as coming from the "Great Race of Seth".

Other Sources: Source 1; Source 2;