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Spiritual Zombies

The "Anti-Jewish" Factor in Gnostic Teachings

 

The mere suggestion that Gnostic teachings contained a significant anti-Jewish element is disturbing to many people, and may even present sufficient cause to dismiss Gnosticism. However, the perception of these elements is not clearly framed, either in scholarly treatments, or in manistream exposure of Gnosticism. In this article I will attempt to clarify this troubling issue.

Gnostic codexes usually do not have a geographic setting, but The First Apocalypse of James has a most dramatic one. James is the name of the brother of Jesus, a revered figure in Jerusalem of the 1st century CE. In his shocking politicization of the Gospels, Dead Sea Scroll scholar Robert Eisenmen identifies James as the head of the "opposition party" in Jerusalem. This was a small sect of ultra-conservative Jews who opposed the Saduccees, Pharisees, and other compromising sects on Temple Mount. By adapting the figure of James to a Gnostic revelation discourse, the anonymous author of the The First Apocalypse of James wanted to make a sensational point: even James, an extremist Jew, could receive Gnosis and be enlightened about spiritual matters.

In fact, some Jews are known to have defected to Gnosticism, most notably a scholar named Elisha ben Abuya. (Deutsch, The Gnostic Imagination, p. 40). Scholars such as Birger Pearson consider Gnosticism to be a heresy that arose among the Hebrews as a reaction against monotheism and the severity of the Mosaic Code. Since Gnostics identified Jehovah, the Jewish tribal God, with Yaldabaoth, the head reptilian of the Archons, it is likely that any Jewish scholar or mystic with Gnostic connections would have been in a most tricky position! As far as I know, the issue of "Jewish counterintelligence"—that is, knowledge among the ancient Hebrews of the alien and insane character of their presumed deity—has been totally ignored by Gnostic scholars.

The Chosen Race

The Master warns James that he must leave the city because "Jerusalem is the dwelling place of many Archons." (25:15) This arresting line demonstrates a constant theme in Gnostic teachings: namely, that Archons operate through the radical religious ideology of the ancient Hebrews. Gnostic scholar Karl Wolfgang Troger estimates that at least one-third of the primary Nag Hammadi texts are virulently anti-Jewish. (Colloque International sur les Textes de Nag Hammadi, Leuven, 1981, ed. Bernard Barc, p. 90). Needless to say, this hot potato has not been dropped by scholars. It has not even been picked up in the first place.

But Gnostics were not anti-Jewish in a racial sense, nor did they condemn the entire Jewish people as pawns of the Archons. They did not condemn anyone, but they considered those who choose to ignore humanity's divine endowment to be self-condemned. "Ignorance is the mother of all evil" (The Gospel of Philip, 83:30). Gnostics were explicit, however, on the impact of the Archons on the religious life of the ancient Hebrews, an impact especially evident in the sect led by James, the brother of Jesus, known for its extremist doctrine of divine retribution and its "chosen race" ideology.

For those who are climbing for the first time on the Streetcar named Deceit, I ought to point out that the fundamentalist ideology expressed in the wrathful and genocidal ranting of the Dead Sea Scrolls, is the nucleus of doctrinal Christianity. For what it's worth, all scholars agree on this point. Gnostics condemned equally the Jewish origins of the Christian salvationist program, and the Pauline-Johannine program itself. Doing so, they did not however spread a hate message against anyone. Rather, they attempted to expose what they perceived to be the hateful and deceiving message disguised in the Judeo-Christian ideology of salvation. At the source of this message, they detected the subliminal intrusion of the Archons into the human mind. Hence the preponderance of politically and theologically incorrect passages in the Coptic materials.

For a close analysis of the salvationist "message of love," see How We Are Deviated (in development).

More on the Dead Sea Scrolls relative to the Nag Hammadi codices in Spies on the Dead Sea, forthcoming in Gnostic Folk-Medicine.

This article is in development...