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Started writing a response to this thread by @Panasonicdx, and when I was more than half way through I figured out any gnostic in the 21st century is probably a larper at worst and at best just some cool way to score rhetorical points against Christianity. I highly doubt anyone here seriously believes in the Pneuma, Sophia, or the aeons. But hey, saying Yahweh is THE DEMIURGE sounds really cool--- Anyways. I was like 80% done with this post so figured I might as well finish it.
Note: Barring the anachronism of using gnosticism to describe early heretical sects, I'm using the term gnostic to refer to the idea that: the religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above the proto-orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions. Gnostic cosmogony generally presents a distinction between a supreme, hidden God and a malevolent lesser divinity (sometimes associated with the God of the Hebrew Bible) who is responsible for creating the material universe. Consequently, Gnostics considered material existence flawed or evil, and held the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the hidden divinity, attained via mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment. (Taken from Wikipedia cause laziness.)
1. The Gnostics were wrong about Genesis being about material creation.
Genesis 1 is most likely not describing a process of material creation. In the context of ancient Mesopotamia, writers of myths were way more concerned about giving the universe order and function. In fact, function was seen as what made something real. To quote John Walton:
"I propose that people in the ancient world believed that something existed not by virtue of its material properties, but by virtue of its having a function in an ordered system. Here I do not refer to an ordered system in scientific terms, but an ordered system in human terms, that is, in relation to society and culture. In this sort of functional ontology, the sun does not exist by virtue of its material properties, or even by its function as a burning ball of gas. Rather it exists by virtue of the role that it has in its sphere of existence, particularly in the way that it functions for humankind and human society. In theory, this way of thinking could result in something being included in the "existent" category in a material way, but still considered in the "nonexistent" category in functional terms (see the illustration of the restaurant mentioned above). In a functional ontology, to bring something into existence would require giving it a function or a role in an ordered system, rather than giving it material properties. Consequently, something could be manufactured physically but still not "exist" if it has not become functional."
Ancients didn't really care about where matter came from, in the ancient near east, there's a common theme of matter already existing, specifically a watery chaos and how the gods turn that chaos into order by assigning roles. This concept can be seen in Genesis.
Woah RSD, don't you know that Genesis 1 starts with IN THE BEGGINING GOD CREATED the heavens and the earth? Woah, looks like you're FAKE NEWS.
Well, there's a consensus in most modern scholars of ancient Hebrew that Genesis 1:1 has been mistranslated, and a better translation is: When God began to create heaven and earth....
See The Five Books of Moses by Robert Altar or this paper: http://individual.utoronto.ca/holmstedt/Holmstedt_GenesisRelative_VT2008.pdf
This concept can be seeing in other creations myths of surrounding cultures. See the start of the Enuma Elish:
When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,
And the primeval Apsu, who begat them,
And chaos, Tiamut, the mother of them both
Their waters were mingled together,
And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods none had been called into being,
And none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained;
Then were created the gods in the midst of heaven,
Lahmu and Lahamu were called into being...
Or again, Epic of Atrahahish:
When the gods were man
they did forced labor, they bore drudgery.
Great indeed was the drudgery of the gods,
the forced labor was heavy, the misery too much
The verb the hebrew uses for create is 'Bara', John Walton did a comparative analysis of this verb with the way it's used in the rest of the OT, and he found out the verb never necessarily refers to material creation, in fact it's often used to create a role on function and many times it is necessarily used in that way. When we take into account that ancients were way more concerned about function than material creation, the interpretation that Genesis 1 is about assigning functions becomes probable. Yawveh was assigning order and function to the things already created by giving them order, function and purpose, which for ancients, was synonymous for giving them existence. (See John Walton the Lost World of Genesis One Chapter 3 and Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament).
So yeah, there's no DEMIURGE to create anything simply because Genesis 1:1 isn't saying Yawveh is behind material creation, he is giving order and function to the watery chaos instead. God isn't creating anything, he's assigning things their proper function within the cosmos. The water is separated from the earth, the light from the darkness. The animals, the plants and humans were part of a seven temple inauguration, which is what Genesis 1.1 is about, God ordaining his sacred temple. Again, we see parallels of in other ancient near east cultures: The Gudea Cylinders speak of a 7 day temple dedication, and Baal also completed his temple in seven days. God is giving everything order to function within his holy temple, aka the Garden of Eden.
Note: You can arrive at the conclusion that God made the universe by other theological assumptions, but the gnostic narrative is dependent on the events described in Genesis 1:1 as being material creation, without it their narratives about matter being evil doesn't make a lot a of sense.
2. Knowledge of Good and Evil is never described as an evil thing in Genesis.
Consider this. The writers of Genesis weren't stupid. Also consider the following, why would God allow an evil thing inside a sacred space where he dwells, aka the Garden of Eden? We know Eden is a sacred space because it resembles Temple Inauguration narratives of the region. Would you put cocaine in a holy altar and just leave a sign that says: DO NOT SNORT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. No, that's really stupid. Yet those that suggest that we see the Tree of Knowledge as evil are arguing exactly that. Simply put evil things do not belong in a sacred garden.
But RSD, the snake was in the garden and the snake was le evil!
Well, to not go into the complexities of what the snake described in Genesis might actually be, a simpler answer is to point out where does it say that the snake was inside the sacred garden? The assumption behind this is that the whole earth was the garden, but as had been argued on my first point, this isn't what Genesis is saying.
Speaking of things that Genesis isn't saying, where does it say that Knowledge of good and evil is le evil? Ignoring the fact that a sacred space wouldn't admit evil thing, there's no indication that God didn't want humans to attain this knowledge at some point. The rest of the OT described knowledge and wisdom as a good thing (See proverbs), most scholars also think Genesis was compiled during the Babylon exile, so again, the team that edited Genesis together was probably aware that their own traditions saw knowledge as a gift from God. The issue wasn't humans attaining this knowledge, the issue is that they got it in a time outside of God's plan.
Was God preventing humans from gaining some knowledge until a certain development an evil thing? I find this hard to argue. We apply the same principle in real life all the time. We don't expose children to certain media not because we think the media in question is intrinsically bad, but rather because they're not developed, mature enough for it. Another example, if you think promiscuity is moral, you still don't want children having sex, not because sex is intrinsically evil but rather because sex is bad for children until they develop into an age of consent. For a more modern example, knowledge of quantum physics isn't intrinsically bad, but it probably was a bad thing for humans not morally developed enough to see that maybe atomic bombs are a bad idea to attain such knowledge.
The sin was eating from the Tree of Knowledge for the wrong reasons, to become like God. A trick from the serpent. Notice that God never tells Adam or Eve that they will become like him, it's a thing the serpent says, and this pushes Eve into eating this fruit. Eve wanted this knowledge for evil reasons. Now, if you're an rad humanist who thinks humans should have the place of God, fair enough even if I find recent history (or all of human history really) to make that view very implausible, but still it refutes the point that the evil thing humans did was get knowledge of good and evil. It wasn't, and thus it goes against the Panasonicdx claim that God is evil because he didn't want humans to know about good and evil.
TLDR:
The assumption that an evil tree was planted in his sacred garden to test humans doesn't make any sense. Adam and Eve were God's representatives on earth, by trying to gain knowledge for themselves, they are breaking their covenant with God.
But this is all post-hoc christian rationalization! Yes, you're critiquing the internal logic of Christianity by arguing the God of the Bible is evil, hence its valid to also make an internal defense of it.
3. Ancient Hebrews having a flawed concept of divinity and/or morality or being simply wrong is more likely than there being a DEMIURGE.
We don't need to multiply entities beyond necessity. Even if you don't think points 1 and 2 are true, what's more likely, that ancient hebrews (tldr) didin't know what they were talking about and had a flawed moral system, or that mmm achktually, its because they were deceived by THE DEMIURGE. If for whatever reason you prefer option 2, then I will ask, what's the evidence for the demiurge existing? The Hebrew Bible? Why take that as anything other than human invention in the first place? I have my Christian reasons for accepting it as at least an insight into the divinity of God, but here I'm critiquing the internal logic of gnosticism. What's compelling about the Old Testament that makes you believe it's describing the actions of a deceitful being? Instead of just being a bunch of lies, either intentionally or not.
Note: Barring the anachronism of using gnosticism to describe early heretical sects, I'm using the term gnostic to refer to the idea that: the religious ideas and systems that coalesced in the late 1st century AD among Jewish and early Christian sects. These various groups emphasized personal spiritual knowledge (gnosis) above the proto-orthodox teachings, traditions, and authority of religious institutions. Gnostic cosmogony generally presents a distinction between a supreme, hidden God and a malevolent lesser divinity (sometimes associated with the God of the Hebrew Bible) who is responsible for creating the material universe. Consequently, Gnostics considered material existence flawed or evil, and held the principal element of salvation to be direct knowledge of the hidden divinity, attained via mystical or esoteric insight. Many Gnostic texts deal not in concepts of sin and repentance, but with illusion and enlightenment. (Taken from Wikipedia cause laziness.)
1. The Gnostics were wrong about Genesis being about material creation.
Genesis 1 is most likely not describing a process of material creation. In the context of ancient Mesopotamia, writers of myths were way more concerned about giving the universe order and function. In fact, function was seen as what made something real. To quote John Walton:
"I propose that people in the ancient world believed that something existed not by virtue of its material properties, but by virtue of its having a function in an ordered system. Here I do not refer to an ordered system in scientific terms, but an ordered system in human terms, that is, in relation to society and culture. In this sort of functional ontology, the sun does not exist by virtue of its material properties, or even by its function as a burning ball of gas. Rather it exists by virtue of the role that it has in its sphere of existence, particularly in the way that it functions for humankind and human society. In theory, this way of thinking could result in something being included in the "existent" category in a material way, but still considered in the "nonexistent" category in functional terms (see the illustration of the restaurant mentioned above). In a functional ontology, to bring something into existence would require giving it a function or a role in an ordered system, rather than giving it material properties. Consequently, something could be manufactured physically but still not "exist" if it has not become functional."
Ancients didn't really care about where matter came from, in the ancient near east, there's a common theme of matter already existing, specifically a watery chaos and how the gods turn that chaos into order by assigning roles. This concept can be seen in Genesis.
Woah RSD, don't you know that Genesis 1 starts with IN THE BEGGINING GOD CREATED the heavens and the earth? Woah, looks like you're FAKE NEWS.
Well, there's a consensus in most modern scholars of ancient Hebrew that Genesis 1:1 has been mistranslated, and a better translation is: When God began to create heaven and earth....
See The Five Books of Moses by Robert Altar or this paper: http://individual.utoronto.ca/holmstedt/Holmstedt_GenesisRelative_VT2008.pdf
This concept can be seeing in other creations myths of surrounding cultures. See the start of the Enuma Elish:
When in the height heaven was not named,
And the earth beneath did not yet bear a name,
And the primeval Apsu, who begat them,
And chaos, Tiamut, the mother of them both
Their waters were mingled together,
And no field was formed, no marsh was to be seen;
When of the gods none had been called into being,
And none bore a name, and no destinies were ordained;
Then were created the gods in the midst of heaven,
Lahmu and Lahamu were called into being...
Or again, Epic of Atrahahish:
When the gods were man
they did forced labor, they bore drudgery.
Great indeed was the drudgery of the gods,
the forced labor was heavy, the misery too much
The verb the hebrew uses for create is 'Bara', John Walton did a comparative analysis of this verb with the way it's used in the rest of the OT, and he found out the verb never necessarily refers to material creation, in fact it's often used to create a role on function and many times it is necessarily used in that way. When we take into account that ancients were way more concerned about function than material creation, the interpretation that Genesis 1 is about assigning functions becomes probable. Yawveh was assigning order and function to the things already created by giving them order, function and purpose, which for ancients, was synonymous for giving them existence. (See John Walton the Lost World of Genesis One Chapter 3 and Ancient Near Eastern Thought and the Old Testament).
So yeah, there's no DEMIURGE to create anything simply because Genesis 1:1 isn't saying Yawveh is behind material creation, he is giving order and function to the watery chaos instead. God isn't creating anything, he's assigning things their proper function within the cosmos. The water is separated from the earth, the light from the darkness. The animals, the plants and humans were part of a seven temple inauguration, which is what Genesis 1.1 is about, God ordaining his sacred temple. Again, we see parallels of in other ancient near east cultures: The Gudea Cylinders speak of a 7 day temple dedication, and Baal also completed his temple in seven days. God is giving everything order to function within his holy temple, aka the Garden of Eden.
Note: You can arrive at the conclusion that God made the universe by other theological assumptions, but the gnostic narrative is dependent on the events described in Genesis 1:1 as being material creation, without it their narratives about matter being evil doesn't make a lot a of sense.
2. Knowledge of Good and Evil is never described as an evil thing in Genesis.
Consider this. The writers of Genesis weren't stupid. Also consider the following, why would God allow an evil thing inside a sacred space where he dwells, aka the Garden of Eden? We know Eden is a sacred space because it resembles Temple Inauguration narratives of the region. Would you put cocaine in a holy altar and just leave a sign that says: DO NOT SNORT FOR THE LOVE OF GOD. No, that's really stupid. Yet those that suggest that we see the Tree of Knowledge as evil are arguing exactly that. Simply put evil things do not belong in a sacred garden.
But RSD, the snake was in the garden and the snake was le evil!
Well, to not go into the complexities of what the snake described in Genesis might actually be, a simpler answer is to point out where does it say that the snake was inside the sacred garden? The assumption behind this is that the whole earth was the garden, but as had been argued on my first point, this isn't what Genesis is saying.
Speaking of things that Genesis isn't saying, where does it say that Knowledge of good and evil is le evil? Ignoring the fact that a sacred space wouldn't admit evil thing, there's no indication that God didn't want humans to attain this knowledge at some point. The rest of the OT described knowledge and wisdom as a good thing (See proverbs), most scholars also think Genesis was compiled during the Babylon exile, so again, the team that edited Genesis together was probably aware that their own traditions saw knowledge as a gift from God. The issue wasn't humans attaining this knowledge, the issue is that they got it in a time outside of God's plan.
Was God preventing humans from gaining some knowledge until a certain development an evil thing? I find this hard to argue. We apply the same principle in real life all the time. We don't expose children to certain media not because we think the media in question is intrinsically bad, but rather because they're not developed, mature enough for it. Another example, if you think promiscuity is moral, you still don't want children having sex, not because sex is intrinsically evil but rather because sex is bad for children until they develop into an age of consent. For a more modern example, knowledge of quantum physics isn't intrinsically bad, but it probably was a bad thing for humans not morally developed enough to see that maybe atomic bombs are a bad idea to attain such knowledge.
The sin was eating from the Tree of Knowledge for the wrong reasons, to become like God. A trick from the serpent. Notice that God never tells Adam or Eve that they will become like him, it's a thing the serpent says, and this pushes Eve into eating this fruit. Eve wanted this knowledge for evil reasons. Now, if you're an rad humanist who thinks humans should have the place of God, fair enough even if I find recent history (or all of human history really) to make that view very implausible, but still it refutes the point that the evil thing humans did was get knowledge of good and evil. It wasn't, and thus it goes against the Panasonicdx claim that God is evil because he didn't want humans to know about good and evil.
TLDR:
The assumption that an evil tree was planted in his sacred garden to test humans doesn't make any sense. Adam and Eve were God's representatives on earth, by trying to gain knowledge for themselves, they are breaking their covenant with God.
But this is all post-hoc christian rationalization! Yes, you're critiquing the internal logic of Christianity by arguing the God of the Bible is evil, hence its valid to also make an internal defense of it.
3. Ancient Hebrews having a flawed concept of divinity and/or morality or being simply wrong is more likely than there being a DEMIURGE.
We don't need to multiply entities beyond necessity. Even if you don't think points 1 and 2 are true, what's more likely, that ancient hebrews (tldr) didin't know what they were talking about and had a flawed moral system, or that mmm achktually, its because they were deceived by THE DEMIURGE. If for whatever reason you prefer option 2, then I will ask, what's the evidence for the demiurge existing? The Hebrew Bible? Why take that as anything other than human invention in the first place? I have my Christian reasons for accepting it as at least an insight into the divinity of God, but here I'm critiquing the internal logic of gnosticism. What's compelling about the Old Testament that makes you believe it's describing the actions of a deceitful being? Instead of just being a bunch of lies, either intentionally or not.
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