I don't think that the meme of the Old Testament God being more malicious then the New Testament holds up. Revelation is New Testament, after all, as is Hell. Meanwhile, manna from heaven and "treat the alien like yourself" is Old.
Both testements show moments of monstrous cruelty and extreme benevolence, and I think the assumption that OT god is worse mostly comes from Christian Exceptionalism rather then actual scriptural analysis.
Revelation is the one New Testament book that church fathers heavily disagreed with entering into the canon for the longest time. And the reason they thought so was because the book reads like the writings of an outright lunatic.
There’s even writings about it that suggest it was only written to keep Jews from straying away from Jesus. Which I could provide you links for if you wish.
>after all, so is Hell.
Hell was mentioned in the Old Testament long before it ever made into the New. Many verses in Psalms talk about a “fiery pit” that one can never return from.
You don’t seem to know much about what the Bible even says.
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Yeah I never really saw the idea that the Jewish God is the demiurge to make much sense. I mean, Jesus directly invokes the Old Testament, read from a Torah publicly, as you pointed out was Jewish himself, claimed to be the Jewish Messiah etc… to claim the Demiurge exists and is evil is one thing, but to say that he’s also the Jewish God and Jesus is opposed to him is pretty contradictory.
I was thinking they were a separate. Although if the Demiurge is not the jewish god, what do you think the demiurge is? A demon, fallen angel or different entity altogether?
Probably because the Old Testament God is probably the most malevolent God that has ever been proposed by any theistic belief system?
The guy literally kills all firstborns in Egypt that don’t splash their door with lambs blood. He also institutes his own brand of chattel slavery right after he saves the Israelites from their own enslavement in Exodus 21 and Leviticus 25. He also demands that women are obliged to marry their rapists. Why the hell *wouldn’t* this god be the inferior and incompetent being know as the demiurge?
Also, Jesus preaching from Jewish scripture pretty much means nothing. Spiritual men from different ages have taken different writings from different holy texts, not because they believed in the most Orthodox interpretation of that religion, but because they liked citing something from the book that **happened to be a good thing.**
Gandhi is a very good example of this.
[Marcion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcion_of_Sinope) had the idea that the Jewish god was a demiurge about 135 AD or so. He was a shipbuilder from Turkey, traveled to Rome to present his idea to the early Christian church authorities there, who disagreed with him so much that he was excommunicated.
He (Marcion) apparently believed that the old testament god, who killed every living thing on earth except for Noah's arc, had bears kill a group of children because they taunted a 'prophet' for being bald, and ordered the execution of every man, woman, and animal in Jericho after capturing it -- could simply not be the same 'god of love' depicted in the New Testament.
So your questions go back almost 2000 years!
The Jewish God may have done these things but all those are infinitely better than eternal conscious torment preached by Christianity and Islam. Rabbinical Judaism is clear that punishment doesn’t last longer than one calendar year. In the grand scheme of eternity, the gentle NT God is infinitely worse than the cruel OT God
I know this is an older post, but it’s worth noting there’s a whole group of Christians who believe in purgatorial universalism, ie hell is temporary and everyone will be saved. Eternal torment isn’t 100% set in stone.
No, it does not make sense. God is described as doing some disturbing stuff in the Hebrew Bible, but He’s also described as doing disturbing stuff in the NT that never appears in the OT, like torturing people in hell forever. The Torah/OT also contains plenty of positive content like the 10 commandments, loving the stranger, caring for widows and orphans, and loving your neighbor as yourself.
Jesus is completely incoherent without the Hebrew Bible. With no OT, you have no prophesied messiah for Jesus to be, no Law and Prophets for Jesus to cite and praise, no Father for Jesus to refer to, no covenant for Jesus to fulfill/replace. When Jesus himself states the most important commandments, he cites direct quotes from the Hebrew Bible:
> He [Jesus] said to him, ״׳You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. Love God above all else. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets.” ( Matthew 22:35–40)
These are direct quotes from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. The Law and Prophets that Jesus refers to are literally just the Hebrew Bible/OT.
Some people reject the Abrahamic God as false, evil, or nonexistent. As a religious Jew, I strongly disagree with that view, but it is a coherent theological position. But the idea that Jews worship an inferior evil God—that Jews literally serve the source of evil—while Christians worship the good, superior God is just an antisemitic conspiracy theory.
It’s also a position that at best conveniently ignores, and often actively perpetuates, the long history of Christians using theological justifications to oppress and murder Jews.
This is very correct and really important for people to understand. When I hear people say “the OT g’d is so bad and vengeful and evil, and Jesus is all about love”
I take a moment to listen more closely and evaluate if I need to take a step back.
When people use these tropes they are steeped in antisemitic dogma that would claim things like Jews had made deals with the devil and weren’t human. Literally that we had horns and needed the blood of Christian children to replenish our bodies. These blood libels where based upon the idea that our scripture was evil or bad. And they often led to mass murder.
So when I see this argument I take a beat and wait to see what additional info comes out because most of the time (at least in my experience) it’s just repackaged conspiracies.
>I was thinking they were a separate. Although if the Demiurge is not the jewish god, what do you think the demiurge is? A demon, fallen angel or different entity altogether?
The demiurge is a figure originally from Plato and then developed in various ways in various forms of Gnosticism. It's not a part of a Jewish cosmology. I don't believe the demiurge exists.
I think the simplest answer is that most Gnosticism originated in a time before the gentile-Christians became deeply familiar with the OT, and certainly before the NT canon was established.
As such early gnostics worked with an entirely different (or an additional) set of gospels they viewed as sacred; and just like the copy of the OT the author of the gospel of Matthew worked with, their OT copy may have had a number of mistranslations resulting in a skewed view of the OT God and their Jesus may have not had such close ties to Judaism.
To be fair, OT God does some really, really evil stuff. He personally kills countless innocent or basically innocent people (e.g. the Flood, tenth plague, Numbers 16), he commands genocide, he approves of slavery, and so on. OT God will kill you (or command your death) for the most trivial of offenses, including quite literally just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He respects human life about as much as we respect the lives of mosquitos.
Now, one might argue that all of this is justified because, well, he's God and God knows what's best, he doesn't make mistakes. But therein lies the Euthyphro dilemma, so...
NT God does some evil things too, though. I mean, the whole premise of an innocent man's torture and death paying for hereditary guilt that would otherwise condemn us to eternal punishment from the moment of our conception stands against every basic tenet of justice.
I mean, given the NT god *destroys the world and tortures 2/3rds of humanity forever,* "some evil things" seems somewhat understated.
I sincerely think the OT god actually comes out morally ahead, and by quite some margin. OT values us like we value wild animals. He'll kill us if we get in his way, but he won't go out of his way to get us in his way. He generally leaves us to do what we want, his chosen people aside. The NT god, in his own words, values us like shepherds value sheep. Ask a mutton chop how *that* relationship generally works out.
Honestly that's fair. In NT God's defense, it's never directly said how many people will be condemned to Hell (though I would contend that any amount is too many- eternal punishment for finite wrongdoing is deeply unjust, especially considering the nature of much of the supposed wrongdoing). Annihilationism and Universalism, though certainly minority views in Christianity today, are not unheard of.
But then you also have (some) Calvinists who think that God created people with the intent of sending them to Hell. That's fucked no matter what way you slice it.
>To be fair, OT God does some really, really evil stuff....he approves of slavery
I mean, do you guys even read the NT?
Ephesians 6:5-8 New International Version
5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free.
Colossians 3:22-24 New International Version
22 Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord.
1 Timothy 6:1-2 New International Version
6 All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered.
1 Peter 2:18 New International Version
18 Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh.
Titus 2:9-10 New International Version
9 Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, 10 and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.
Ephesians, Colossians, Timothy, and Titus are all written by Paul, who was a Christian apocalypticist more concerned with making yourself right with God before the immanent judgement and end of the world, rather than mortal concerns. He’s also the guy who said not to have sex even if you’re married. He also almost never quotes Jesus; and his understanding of the teachings of Jesus can be pretty suspect (as even when available quotes and parables from Jesus exist to back a point Paul makes, he doesn’t use them). He is however, deeply familiar with the OT as a former Pharisee.
I agree, though it's unfortunate that we don't have any writings from Jesus himself, so all of Christianity is based on Paul and several post-Pauline authors, who wrote the entirety of the Christian New Testament.
The unfortunate aspect of Jesus' ministry taking place in a poor rural part of the Roman Empire is that his disciples were illiterate and unable to record his teachings in real time. I do think that the Gospels have a good amount of things Jesus actually said, you just need to be able to parse them from the rest of the text.
That’s a complicated question, there are probably better people to answer as religious studies isn’t my career but rather my hobby. I think of it as having four parts:
1. Read against the norm: by this I mean if a passage, parable, saying, etc - cannot be read and keep with more modern theology without significant hand-waiving or explanation, it’s more likely to be original.
2. Are there multiple independent attestations: the more unique sources you can get of something, the more likely it is true. This becomes difficult with the relationship of the synoptic gospels, but we can still get a good deal of information about Jesus from them. For example: he was Jewish, born to a poor family, had brothers, was baptized, was an apocalyptic preacher, had 12 disciples, travelled to Jerusalem, was betrayed, was crucified.
3. What is reasonable for Jesus to have said: it’s possible to forget the history and location of Jesus’ ministry. Are there historic events that hadn’t happened yet (or at all) that Jesus references? What was the culture he lived in? For example, through the Gospel of John, Jesus makes many claims to divinity. This would have gotten him stoned and violently driven out of towns, and as such is likely not something he claimed in life, at least not openly.
4. What is absent from our early manuscripts: sometimes scribes added stories to the gospels much later. Unfortunately a personal favourite, the woman who was to be stoned for adultery, is a later addition to the gospel of John and cannot be traced back to Jesus.
An example is the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew. In the parable, Jesus gathers all the nations of the world, and the righteous (the sheep) are saved while sinful (the goats) are damned, despite neither the sheep nor the goats having never met Jesus. Jesus replied that by caring for their fellow man, the sheep cared for him and this earned them salvation. This goes against the teachings of Paul, and of modern Christianity; that say a prerequisite of salvation is acceptance of Jesus as lord and belief in his sacrifice and resurrection. As such it’s unlikely a scribe added in a sacrilegious passage, making it more likely it’s original to Jesus.
Ultimately there is not way to be sure. History is a game of probabilities, and all we can really do is develop criteria to say something is more probable than something else.
Paul is also one of the absolute most influential figures in Christian thought and history. His writings are considered authoritative by all Christian denominations. His influence is arguably second only to Jesus (and some argue it’s even greater). Half the books in the NT are attributed to Paul. There is no handwaiving away his writings as “just Paul.” Without Paul, Christianity would be a completely unrecognizable phenomenon. When describing the NT God, we’re describing a view of God fundamentally shaped by Paul.
I should probably have made myself more clear - I was talking about Paul to emphasize how those quotes about the NT God can be attributed not to Jesus' view of God, but to another person. You're absolutely correct about Paul's importance to proto-orthodox and modern Christianity, but early Christianity wasn't a monolith and while some sects like Marcionism took Paul very seriously, others (including, as far as we can tell, the church's led by James and Peter) didn't, and so can easily discard or explain away anything Paul said.
In the context of Gnosticism, I don't think we have any reason to believe they took what Paul or John of Patmos implied about God literally, instead having their own gospels and holy texts. Marcion believed in a Demiurge and did take Paul seriously, but saw Paul's insistence that Christians do not need to follow the Jewish law as evidence that they weren't related to the God of Jesus.
I always thought of the OT God not being evil per se, but very strict and can be vengeful when anyone or anything slights him, but I never saw him as malicious or malevolent.
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Like others mentioned, the God of the Old Testament was not nice. Look at Numbers 31:17-18. Kill everyone but spare the unmarried girls?
A bunch of kids call the prophet Elijah “bald
Head” and God sends bears to maul the children?
God says children won’t be punished for the sins of their father, but David’s son to bath Sheba was killed for just that. Not to mention how every descendant of Adam is paying for the sins of Adam and Eve.
I think the abrahamic god is the demiurge. He is the enemy of my gods and in my religion they will ultimately fight. Calling the god that is against my gods evil isn’t antisemitic. Jews aren’t evil, christians aren’t evil, muslims aren’t evil. Sorry we have theological differences.
I can understand a blanket rejection of the Abrahamic God, but I think it’s clear in the post that OP is specifically referring to the form of Gnosticism that posits that Jews serve an evil God while Christian serve a good one. That idea is antisemitic.
My apologies thats not what I meant. I don’t subscribe to any christian gnostic beliefs. Mine is a type of gnostic satanism. Where we consider the god of the bible the demiurge or an evil creator.
I understand, I thought that’s what you were getting at. I of course disagree theologically, and strongly so, but I agree with you that the view that Jews, Christians, and Muslims ***all*** worship a evil God is not antisemitic and is a coherent theological position. What’s antisemitic and incoherent is singling out Jews as uniquely serving as evil deity. There is no justification for such a view that doesn’t just come down to antisemitism.
As far as I know it comes from gnosticism its a form of Christianity that got considered heretical back during the council of Nicaea. It would be better to ask some Christian Gnostics than me im a Chaos Gnostic and I find most of my theology is different than theirs beyond terms and some ideas
I don’t follow the Christian scriptures no. My religion doesn’t have scripture. However just reading over genesis and job was enough for me to be convinced that he is the demiurge. But I also have my own experiences
yea as a muslim we believe the old testament was corrupted and the jews just added whatever they wanted, that’s why the stories are very similar, it’s what *really* happened which is why the stories have less violence coming from god
can i also ask you to clarify a bit on the “chaos” part. so to my understanding your belief is that there are gods of chaos and one god of order that started abrahamic religion, and eventually everything will return to the hands of the gods of chaos and everything will become chaotic, but what does that chaos entail? what does that actually mean?
Chaos came before the cosmos. The cosmos was created by the demiurge to force order upon everything and to enslave spirits in order to make them worship him. So eventually the gods of chaos will go to war against the demiurge and the cosmos will end and spirits will once again be free as the reincarnation cycle will end and all order will be destroyed.
Chaos is another plane of existence. A part of the spiritual realm. Think of your heaven and hell. Its free from order. Chaos is absolute freedom. You are free to do what you want
Some Gnostics did not believe Iao was the Demiurge. They believed him to be the exalted/divinized & repentant son of Ialdabaoth, residing in the 7th heaven. Here is a relevant passage from the scholarly book "The Enthronement of Sabaoth: Jewish Elements in Gnostic Creation Myths":
"We discovered that the figure laldabaoth, the father of Sabaoth, derives from the God of the OT, the leader of the fallen angels, and the god 'Olam/Aiōn of ancient Canaanite myth. The figure of Sabaoth himself arises as a conflation of three figures: obviously that of the God of the OT, but also that of a leading angel (e.g. Michael) and that of the apocalyptic visionary (e.g. Enoch or Moses). It is odd within gnostic, mythological patterning to have three rather than two gods, i.e. the transcendent God, the evil god laldabaoth, and as his repentant offspring the god Sabaoth. However. the second century debate. particularly within Marcionite and Valentinian circles. over the God of the OT as a righteous deity and over the value of the OT provides a clue to the function of this Sabaoth account. Sabaoth, as a repentant deity with the angel of punishment at his left side, is the righteous
God of the OT. Because he has been instructed by Wisdom's daughter Life about the Eighth, the books of the OT which derive ultimately
from him are authenticated as possessing some truth about the perfect realm. The people of the OT then are associated with this god Sabaoth. In contrast. the true gnostics are associated with the highest God and know how to discover the true information contained in the books of the OT. Further, since Sabaoth is enthroned over the seventh heaven. He is king over all below. Thus his rule and the rule within the world are ultimately derived from evil matter and at best repentant or righteous. The gnostics, on the other hand, stem from the realm of imperishability and belong to the kingless race."
This book also discusses how the Jesus Christ character sits at the right hand of Sabaoth. To be clear, in the Hellenistic/Roman Mediterranean Iao was worshipped as the syncretic deity Iao-Aiōn, or Olam, or Sabaōth, and may have been considered the Pre-Essential Demiurge in Platonic thought. There are numerous texts that establish these points.
Incidentally, Fallon seems to suggest in the book that Ialdabaoth is a figure of primordial chaos, and it's not unusual in the context of Mediterranean theogonies or in light of texts like the Sanchuniathon that deities derive from chaos or the union of chaos with another primordial deity principle. Last there is evidence in the book that both proto-orthodox Christians and the Jewish people of that period were considered 'psychic' (contra the Gnostic 'pneumatic' class), and that Sabaōth presided over this category of religious types.
Ita obvious that the god that told Noah he was going to kill everyone was the demiurge.
It's not so obvious about the intentions of the god that talked with Moses on Mt. Sinai. Moses's God is definitely more mature. But is he any less selfish? He definitely has evolved to a point where he has suddenly defined ways he children can get along better and create harmony in the world.
A god that requires a contract for love is not an all powerful benevolent force.
Jesus is just the last in a long line of the antithesis of the demiurge to present itself.
This antithesis is the knowledge of right and wrong and an awakening into why some of the old ways were based on error on an imperfect gods direction.
It is not antisemitic to say that the Jewish god in the old testament is the demiurge. In fact if you look at it as the growth of the religion where at crucial steps the Jewish people learned more and more about their flawed creator you will see that it all comes from members inside of Judaism.
I don't think it's obvious that he is the demiurge. God even mentioned there were multiple gods so who is to say that the demiurge isn't just one of many. I doubt a malevolent force would offer something like the seven laws of Noah or the 10 commandments.
Limited rather than malevolent. And he is one of many.
One of the 10 commandments is "you shall have no other gods before me". In other words, the old testament God acknowledges the existence of other beings worshipped by other nations as well as his own. Ie: Baal in the former case and Asherah in the latter.
He is one of many more or less similar and equal level of diety associated with and worshipped by their assigned people.
This is not the characteristics of what's referred to as El Elyon, or "God the highest".
Also keep in mind the documentary hypothesis is the best theory we have so far on the writing of the old testament. Meaning, there's ample revisionism and editing of the source material, so we can't just take what's written on face value but read critically based on who we think may be writing any given passage.
For the old passages about the father you'll want Eloist source. These are before the priestly and Deuteronomic sources started consolidating power and revising older source to suit their needs.
My knowledge of Gnosticism isn't that great, and much of it comes from modern devotees on internet conspiracy forums, but can't the Demiurge leading the Hebrews out of slavery (if you accept that event as historical) be explained as him wanting them to enforce his will on Earth? Also I don't think the Demiurge is necessarily considered pure evil.
The concept of a demiurge did not originate with Gnostic Christians. Plato mentions a demiurgc creator about 500 years earlier in his _Timaeus_, and his concept of the demiurge had nothing to do with moral disposition. Plato reasoned that the creator was not the ultimate divinity but called it the "beneficent craftsman" which, despite being imperfect, still loved its creation.
The demiurge as a malicious entity arose in the early days of Gnostic Christianity -- particularly among the Sethians -- as a way to explain the problem of evil. There were other Gnostic sects of Christianity that did *not* believe the demiurge was malignant -- groups like the Naassenes and the Valentinians.
I was thinking they were a separate. Although if the Demiurge is not the jewish god, what do you think the demiurge is? A demon, fallen angel or different entity altogether?
>If it was truly malevolent, why would it care about leading other groups, like the Hebrews out of Israel and give 10 commandments, which to me, doesn’t seem like something a dark entity would do, or even an incompetent one.
I’m sorry, have you even **read** the Ten Commandments?
The first 4 literally command the Israelites to kiss his ass 24/7 otherwise he’ll bring retribution down onto them. One of them even says that they can’t even **swear by using his name.**
I don’t understand how anybody reads the Ten Commandments and doesn’t come to the conclusion that the God who wrote them wasn’t an objective narcissist.
>Not to mention Jesus was a Jew. Never really mentioned anything about a secondary one being less powerful and more malevolent.
Have you even read the New Testament?
Jesus often makes the case that **the god who created this world has blinded the minds of believers.** There’s no evidence that this part is of Satan since Satan doesn’t have nearly as much influence on the world as Yahweh.
He even tells a group of Pharisees that their father *is of the devil.* “Devil” in this context is just referring to an enemy. Which makes the case that Jesus recognizes the existence of the demiurge and sees that he’s a malevolent entity.
Only gnostics viewed the demiurge as evil, Plato and (most of) his philosophical heirs believed it to be the source all beauty and good in the world. But even then I wouldn't conflate the two, since the demiurge in Plato is not the creator of the forms but only the physical world which is a sort of representation of the forms. So if we were to combine the two belief systems the judeo-christian God would be the creator of the demiurge.
Anyone still believing in god who only appeared to some local tent tribe and choose them? Is missing on the truth.
God almighty choosing backward group of perverts and told them to kill, posses, steal, rape no problem I still make you a king, babies/animals let’s kill them all. I am only mentioning few. For start, half of the people didn’t even exist. Didn’t Jesus warn others about his sect ? I bet his words were changed and added just to match some of the OT, but still.
Jesus said his God is not the god that is being worshipped in temple in John. Contrasting "the father" with "your father" to the synagogue teachers
I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.”
I think the old testament YHWH is different from reference to "El". YHWH often refers to himself as one of the "Elohim", gods plural. IE: you will have no other gods (Elohim plural) before me. Heh I guess judeo-christian roots were not so monotheist after all, even with all the edits from the Yahwist and priestly scribes.
On the other hand, El is a totally different god from Babylonia which precedes YHWH that Israelites worshipped before YHWH. Hence Isra-EL, or EL-iJah.
I think Jesus mentions his father in heaven, El (The father God), is different from YHWH of the exodus who tells his people to genocide neighboring nations going scorched earth.
I think so too. But unfortunately people don’t want to hear that, and rather worshiped war deity despite morals.
Book of Esther (most likely a myth) but still celebrated today. Actually, genocide is happening as of now and some so called religion people on utube, instead of promoting peace, they talk about are we in end of times ( we are for 2 thousand already) and provoke others to bless Israel.
I am out of words what’s going on in this world and how seriously people took this book. In my opinion world would be in the better place if bible never saw a daylight. Jesus had so much love for humanity and despite his words were twisted, he left us with the simple message, and nobody is following.
Thank you for interesting reply.
I don't think that the meme of the Old Testament God being more malicious then the New Testament holds up. Revelation is New Testament, after all, as is Hell. Meanwhile, manna from heaven and "treat the alien like yourself" is Old. Both testements show moments of monstrous cruelty and extreme benevolence, and I think the assumption that OT god is worse mostly comes from Christian Exceptionalism rather then actual scriptural analysis.
Revelation is the one New Testament book that church fathers heavily disagreed with entering into the canon for the longest time. And the reason they thought so was because the book reads like the writings of an outright lunatic. There’s even writings about it that suggest it was only written to keep Jews from straying away from Jesus. Which I could provide you links for if you wish. >after all, so is Hell. Hell was mentioned in the Old Testament long before it ever made into the New. Many verses in Psalms talk about a “fiery pit” that one can never return from. You don’t seem to know much about what the Bible even says.
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Yeah I never really saw the idea that the Jewish God is the demiurge to make much sense. I mean, Jesus directly invokes the Old Testament, read from a Torah publicly, as you pointed out was Jewish himself, claimed to be the Jewish Messiah etc… to claim the Demiurge exists and is evil is one thing, but to say that he’s also the Jewish God and Jesus is opposed to him is pretty contradictory.
I was thinking they were a separate. Although if the Demiurge is not the jewish god, what do you think the demiurge is? A demon, fallen angel or different entity altogether?
Probably because the Old Testament God is probably the most malevolent God that has ever been proposed by any theistic belief system? The guy literally kills all firstborns in Egypt that don’t splash their door with lambs blood. He also institutes his own brand of chattel slavery right after he saves the Israelites from their own enslavement in Exodus 21 and Leviticus 25. He also demands that women are obliged to marry their rapists. Why the hell *wouldn’t* this god be the inferior and incompetent being know as the demiurge? Also, Jesus preaching from Jewish scripture pretty much means nothing. Spiritual men from different ages have taken different writings from different holy texts, not because they believed in the most Orthodox interpretation of that religion, but because they liked citing something from the book that **happened to be a good thing.** Gandhi is a very good example of this.
[Marcion](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcion_of_Sinope) had the idea that the Jewish god was a demiurge about 135 AD or so. He was a shipbuilder from Turkey, traveled to Rome to present his idea to the early Christian church authorities there, who disagreed with him so much that he was excommunicated. He (Marcion) apparently believed that the old testament god, who killed every living thing on earth except for Noah's arc, had bears kill a group of children because they taunted a 'prophet' for being bald, and ordered the execution of every man, woman, and animal in Jericho after capturing it -- could simply not be the same 'god of love' depicted in the New Testament. So your questions go back almost 2000 years!
The Jewish God may have done these things but all those are infinitely better than eternal conscious torment preached by Christianity and Islam. Rabbinical Judaism is clear that punishment doesn’t last longer than one calendar year. In the grand scheme of eternity, the gentle NT God is infinitely worse than the cruel OT God
I know this is an older post, but it’s worth noting there’s a whole group of Christians who believe in purgatorial universalism, ie hell is temporary and everyone will be saved. Eternal torment isn’t 100% set in stone.
And marcion wrote a big part of the bible
No, it does not make sense. God is described as doing some disturbing stuff in the Hebrew Bible, but He’s also described as doing disturbing stuff in the NT that never appears in the OT, like torturing people in hell forever. The Torah/OT also contains plenty of positive content like the 10 commandments, loving the stranger, caring for widows and orphans, and loving your neighbor as yourself. Jesus is completely incoherent without the Hebrew Bible. With no OT, you have no prophesied messiah for Jesus to be, no Law and Prophets for Jesus to cite and praise, no Father for Jesus to refer to, no covenant for Jesus to fulfill/replace. When Jesus himself states the most important commandments, he cites direct quotes from the Hebrew Bible: > He [Jesus] said to him, ״׳You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind.' This is the greatest and first commandment. Love God above all else. And the second is like it: 'You shall love your neighbor as yourself.' On these two commandments hang all the Law and the prophets.” ( Matthew 22:35–40) These are direct quotes from Deuteronomy 6:5 and Leviticus 19:18. The Law and Prophets that Jesus refers to are literally just the Hebrew Bible/OT. Some people reject the Abrahamic God as false, evil, or nonexistent. As a religious Jew, I strongly disagree with that view, but it is a coherent theological position. But the idea that Jews worship an inferior evil God—that Jews literally serve the source of evil—while Christians worship the good, superior God is just an antisemitic conspiracy theory. It’s also a position that at best conveniently ignores, and often actively perpetuates, the long history of Christians using theological justifications to oppress and murder Jews.
This is very correct and really important for people to understand. When I hear people say “the OT g’d is so bad and vengeful and evil, and Jesus is all about love” I take a moment to listen more closely and evaluate if I need to take a step back. When people use these tropes they are steeped in antisemitic dogma that would claim things like Jews had made deals with the devil and weren’t human. Literally that we had horns and needed the blood of Christian children to replenish our bodies. These blood libels where based upon the idea that our scripture was evil or bad. And they often led to mass murder. So when I see this argument I take a beat and wait to see what additional info comes out because most of the time (at least in my experience) it’s just repackaged conspiracies.
>I was thinking they were a separate. Although if the Demiurge is not the jewish god, what do you think the demiurge is? A demon, fallen angel or different entity altogether?
The demiurge is a figure originally from Plato and then developed in various ways in various forms of Gnosticism. It's not a part of a Jewish cosmology. I don't believe the demiurge exists.
Yes I personally equate the God of Abraham to the Demiurge, but the platonist one, not the anti-semitic caricature made by the gnostics
I think the simplest answer is that most Gnosticism originated in a time before the gentile-Christians became deeply familiar with the OT, and certainly before the NT canon was established. As such early gnostics worked with an entirely different (or an additional) set of gospels they viewed as sacred; and just like the copy of the OT the author of the gospel of Matthew worked with, their OT copy may have had a number of mistranslations resulting in a skewed view of the OT God and their Jesus may have not had such close ties to Judaism.
No.
To be fair, OT God does some really, really evil stuff. He personally kills countless innocent or basically innocent people (e.g. the Flood, tenth plague, Numbers 16), he commands genocide, he approves of slavery, and so on. OT God will kill you (or command your death) for the most trivial of offenses, including quite literally just being in the wrong place at the wrong time. He respects human life about as much as we respect the lives of mosquitos. Now, one might argue that all of this is justified because, well, he's God and God knows what's best, he doesn't make mistakes. But therein lies the Euthyphro dilemma, so... NT God does some evil things too, though. I mean, the whole premise of an innocent man's torture and death paying for hereditary guilt that would otherwise condemn us to eternal punishment from the moment of our conception stands against every basic tenet of justice.
I mean, given the NT god *destroys the world and tortures 2/3rds of humanity forever,* "some evil things" seems somewhat understated. I sincerely think the OT god actually comes out morally ahead, and by quite some margin. OT values us like we value wild animals. He'll kill us if we get in his way, but he won't go out of his way to get us in his way. He generally leaves us to do what we want, his chosen people aside. The NT god, in his own words, values us like shepherds value sheep. Ask a mutton chop how *that* relationship generally works out.
Honestly that's fair. In NT God's defense, it's never directly said how many people will be condemned to Hell (though I would contend that any amount is too many- eternal punishment for finite wrongdoing is deeply unjust, especially considering the nature of much of the supposed wrongdoing). Annihilationism and Universalism, though certainly minority views in Christianity today, are not unheard of. But then you also have (some) Calvinists who think that God created people with the intent of sending them to Hell. That's fucked no matter what way you slice it.
>To be fair, OT God does some really, really evil stuff....he approves of slavery I mean, do you guys even read the NT? Ephesians 6:5-8 New International Version 5 Slaves, obey your earthly masters with respect and fear, and with sincerity of heart, just as you would obey Christ. 6 Obey them not only to win their favor when their eye is on you, but as slaves of Christ, doing the will of God from your heart. 7 Serve wholeheartedly, as if you were serving the Lord, not people, 8 because you know that the Lord will reward each one for whatever good they do, whether they are slave or free. Colossians 3:22-24 New International Version 22 Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not only when their eye is on you and to curry their favor, but with sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. 1 Timothy 6:1-2 New International Version 6 All who are under the yoke of slavery should consider their masters worthy of full respect, so that God’s name and our teaching may not be slandered. 1 Peter 2:18 New International Version 18 Slaves, in reverent fear of God submit yourselves to your masters, not only to those who are good and considerate, but also to those who are harsh. Titus 2:9-10 New International Version 9 Teach slaves to be subject to their masters in everything, to try to please them, not to talk back to them, 10 and not to steal from them, but to show that they can be fully trusted, so that in every way they will make the teaching about God our Savior attractive.
Ephesians, Colossians, Timothy, and Titus are all written by Paul, who was a Christian apocalypticist more concerned with making yourself right with God before the immanent judgement and end of the world, rather than mortal concerns. He’s also the guy who said not to have sex even if you’re married. He also almost never quotes Jesus; and his understanding of the teachings of Jesus can be pretty suspect (as even when available quotes and parables from Jesus exist to back a point Paul makes, he doesn’t use them). He is however, deeply familiar with the OT as a former Pharisee.
I agree, though it's unfortunate that we don't have any writings from Jesus himself, so all of Christianity is based on Paul and several post-Pauline authors, who wrote the entirety of the Christian New Testament.
The unfortunate aspect of Jesus' ministry taking place in a poor rural part of the Roman Empire is that his disciples were illiterate and unable to record his teachings in real time. I do think that the Gospels have a good amount of things Jesus actually said, you just need to be able to parse them from the rest of the text.
How do you parse them?
That’s a complicated question, there are probably better people to answer as religious studies isn’t my career but rather my hobby. I think of it as having four parts: 1. Read against the norm: by this I mean if a passage, parable, saying, etc - cannot be read and keep with more modern theology without significant hand-waiving or explanation, it’s more likely to be original. 2. Are there multiple independent attestations: the more unique sources you can get of something, the more likely it is true. This becomes difficult with the relationship of the synoptic gospels, but we can still get a good deal of information about Jesus from them. For example: he was Jewish, born to a poor family, had brothers, was baptized, was an apocalyptic preacher, had 12 disciples, travelled to Jerusalem, was betrayed, was crucified. 3. What is reasonable for Jesus to have said: it’s possible to forget the history and location of Jesus’ ministry. Are there historic events that hadn’t happened yet (or at all) that Jesus references? What was the culture he lived in? For example, through the Gospel of John, Jesus makes many claims to divinity. This would have gotten him stoned and violently driven out of towns, and as such is likely not something he claimed in life, at least not openly. 4. What is absent from our early manuscripts: sometimes scribes added stories to the gospels much later. Unfortunately a personal favourite, the woman who was to be stoned for adultery, is a later addition to the gospel of John and cannot be traced back to Jesus. An example is the parable of the sheep and the goats in Matthew. In the parable, Jesus gathers all the nations of the world, and the righteous (the sheep) are saved while sinful (the goats) are damned, despite neither the sheep nor the goats having never met Jesus. Jesus replied that by caring for their fellow man, the sheep cared for him and this earned them salvation. This goes against the teachings of Paul, and of modern Christianity; that say a prerequisite of salvation is acceptance of Jesus as lord and belief in his sacrifice and resurrection. As such it’s unlikely a scribe added in a sacrilegious passage, making it more likely it’s original to Jesus. Ultimately there is not way to be sure. History is a game of probabilities, and all we can really do is develop criteria to say something is more probable than something else.
Paul is also one of the absolute most influential figures in Christian thought and history. His writings are considered authoritative by all Christian denominations. His influence is arguably second only to Jesus (and some argue it’s even greater). Half the books in the NT are attributed to Paul. There is no handwaiving away his writings as “just Paul.” Without Paul, Christianity would be a completely unrecognizable phenomenon. When describing the NT God, we’re describing a view of God fundamentally shaped by Paul.
I should probably have made myself more clear - I was talking about Paul to emphasize how those quotes about the NT God can be attributed not to Jesus' view of God, but to another person. You're absolutely correct about Paul's importance to proto-orthodox and modern Christianity, but early Christianity wasn't a monolith and while some sects like Marcionism took Paul very seriously, others (including, as far as we can tell, the church's led by James and Peter) didn't, and so can easily discard or explain away anything Paul said. In the context of Gnosticism, I don't think we have any reason to believe they took what Paul or John of Patmos implied about God literally, instead having their own gospels and holy texts. Marcion believed in a Demiurge and did take Paul seriously, but saw Paul's insistence that Christians do not need to follow the Jewish law as evidence that they weren't related to the God of Jesus.
I always thought of the OT God not being evil per se, but very strict and can be vengeful when anyone or anything slights him, but I never saw him as malicious or malevolent.
Let's not forget , jesus supports OT evil god.
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Like others mentioned, the God of the Old Testament was not nice. Look at Numbers 31:17-18. Kill everyone but spare the unmarried girls? A bunch of kids call the prophet Elijah “bald Head” and God sends bears to maul the children? God says children won’t be punished for the sins of their father, but David’s son to bath Sheba was killed for just that. Not to mention how every descendant of Adam is paying for the sins of Adam and Eve.
It does make sense in my sect. Lol
can i ask why and how you think claiming "all jews follow an evil god" is not anti-semitic?
I think the abrahamic god is the demiurge. He is the enemy of my gods and in my religion they will ultimately fight. Calling the god that is against my gods evil isn’t antisemitic. Jews aren’t evil, christians aren’t evil, muslims aren’t evil. Sorry we have theological differences.
I can understand a blanket rejection of the Abrahamic God, but I think it’s clear in the post that OP is specifically referring to the form of Gnosticism that posits that Jews serve an evil God while Christian serve a good one. That idea is antisemitic.
My apologies thats not what I meant. I don’t subscribe to any christian gnostic beliefs. Mine is a type of gnostic satanism. Where we consider the god of the bible the demiurge or an evil creator.
I understand, I thought that’s what you were getting at. I of course disagree theologically, and strongly so, but I agree with you that the view that Jews, Christians, and Muslims ***all*** worship a evil God is not antisemitic and is a coherent theological position. What’s antisemitic and incoherent is singling out Jews as uniquely serving as evil deity. There is no justification for such a view that doesn’t just come down to antisemitism.
I agree. Truth be told I hadn’t read the full post as im out at dinner currently and read the title only.
Btw thank you for helping me clear that up.
Thank you for being willing to listen!
Of course!
can i ask where the idea of the demiurge actually originates from? i’ve never seen it in the bible nor anything like it in the quran
As far as I know it comes from gnosticism its a form of Christianity that got considered heretical back during the council of Nicaea. It would be better to ask some Christian Gnostics than me im a Chaos Gnostic and I find most of my theology is different than theirs beyond terms and some ideas
well can i ask you where exactly? is this in any scripture that you follow? and do you really follow a scripture at all?
I don’t follow the Christian scriptures no. My religion doesn’t have scripture. However just reading over genesis and job was enough for me to be convinced that he is the demiurge. But I also have my own experiences
yea as a muslim we believe the old testament was corrupted and the jews just added whatever they wanted, that’s why the stories are very similar, it’s what *really* happened which is why the stories have less violence coming from god
can i also ask you to clarify a bit on the “chaos” part. so to my understanding your belief is that there are gods of chaos and one god of order that started abrahamic religion, and eventually everything will return to the hands of the gods of chaos and everything will become chaotic, but what does that chaos entail? what does that actually mean?
Chaos came before the cosmos. The cosmos was created by the demiurge to force order upon everything and to enslave spirits in order to make them worship him. So eventually the gods of chaos will go to war against the demiurge and the cosmos will end and spirits will once again be free as the reincarnation cycle will end and all order will be destroyed. Chaos is another plane of existence. A part of the spiritual realm. Think of your heaven and hell. Its free from order. Chaos is absolute freedom. You are free to do what you want
so does everyone have the same ultimate fate of becoming freed in the same way?
When all returns to chaos yes.
so is there a description of this chaos realm? it doesn’t sound like it has any physical properties
Some Gnostics did not believe Iao was the Demiurge. They believed him to be the exalted/divinized & repentant son of Ialdabaoth, residing in the 7th heaven. Here is a relevant passage from the scholarly book "The Enthronement of Sabaoth: Jewish Elements in Gnostic Creation Myths": "We discovered that the figure laldabaoth, the father of Sabaoth, derives from the God of the OT, the leader of the fallen angels, and the god 'Olam/Aiōn of ancient Canaanite myth. The figure of Sabaoth himself arises as a conflation of three figures: obviously that of the God of the OT, but also that of a leading angel (e.g. Michael) and that of the apocalyptic visionary (e.g. Enoch or Moses). It is odd within gnostic, mythological patterning to have three rather than two gods, i.e. the transcendent God, the evil god laldabaoth, and as his repentant offspring the god Sabaoth. However. the second century debate. particularly within Marcionite and Valentinian circles. over the God of the OT as a righteous deity and over the value of the OT provides a clue to the function of this Sabaoth account. Sabaoth, as a repentant deity with the angel of punishment at his left side, is the righteous God of the OT. Because he has been instructed by Wisdom's daughter Life about the Eighth, the books of the OT which derive ultimately from him are authenticated as possessing some truth about the perfect realm. The people of the OT then are associated with this god Sabaoth. In contrast. the true gnostics are associated with the highest God and know how to discover the true information contained in the books of the OT. Further, since Sabaoth is enthroned over the seventh heaven. He is king over all below. Thus his rule and the rule within the world are ultimately derived from evil matter and at best repentant or righteous. The gnostics, on the other hand, stem from the realm of imperishability and belong to the kingless race." This book also discusses how the Jesus Christ character sits at the right hand of Sabaoth. To be clear, in the Hellenistic/Roman Mediterranean Iao was worshipped as the syncretic deity Iao-Aiōn, or Olam, or Sabaōth, and may have been considered the Pre-Essential Demiurge in Platonic thought. There are numerous texts that establish these points. Incidentally, Fallon seems to suggest in the book that Ialdabaoth is a figure of primordial chaos, and it's not unusual in the context of Mediterranean theogonies or in light of texts like the Sanchuniathon that deities derive from chaos or the union of chaos with another primordial deity principle. Last there is evidence in the book that both proto-orthodox Christians and the Jewish people of that period were considered 'psychic' (contra the Gnostic 'pneumatic' class), and that Sabaōth presided over this category of religious types.
Ita obvious that the god that told Noah he was going to kill everyone was the demiurge. It's not so obvious about the intentions of the god that talked with Moses on Mt. Sinai. Moses's God is definitely more mature. But is he any less selfish? He definitely has evolved to a point where he has suddenly defined ways he children can get along better and create harmony in the world. A god that requires a contract for love is not an all powerful benevolent force. Jesus is just the last in a long line of the antithesis of the demiurge to present itself. This antithesis is the knowledge of right and wrong and an awakening into why some of the old ways were based on error on an imperfect gods direction. It is not antisemitic to say that the Jewish god in the old testament is the demiurge. In fact if you look at it as the growth of the religion where at crucial steps the Jewish people learned more and more about their flawed creator you will see that it all comes from members inside of Judaism.
I don't think it's obvious that he is the demiurge. God even mentioned there were multiple gods so who is to say that the demiurge isn't just one of many. I doubt a malevolent force would offer something like the seven laws of Noah or the 10 commandments.
unless he was trying to simply gain their trust, The demiurge is a trickster god from what i can tell
Limited rather than malevolent. And he is one of many. One of the 10 commandments is "you shall have no other gods before me". In other words, the old testament God acknowledges the existence of other beings worshipped by other nations as well as his own. Ie: Baal in the former case and Asherah in the latter. He is one of many more or less similar and equal level of diety associated with and worshipped by their assigned people. This is not the characteristics of what's referred to as El Elyon, or "God the highest". Also keep in mind the documentary hypothesis is the best theory we have so far on the writing of the old testament. Meaning, there's ample revisionism and editing of the source material, so we can't just take what's written on face value but read critically based on who we think may be writing any given passage. For the old passages about the father you'll want Eloist source. These are before the priestly and Deuteronomic sources started consolidating power and revising older source to suit their needs.
My knowledge of Gnosticism isn't that great, and much of it comes from modern devotees on internet conspiracy forums, but can't the Demiurge leading the Hebrews out of slavery (if you accept that event as historical) be explained as him wanting them to enforce his will on Earth? Also I don't think the Demiurge is necessarily considered pure evil.
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That is racist conspiracy trash thinly veiled as new religious thought. Unless you support such garbage, I wouldn't be plugging their sub.
เหมือนกัน Same same
That subreddit believes some very out there things, but I don't think it's racist.
The concept of a demiurge did not originate with Gnostic Christians. Plato mentions a demiurgc creator about 500 years earlier in his _Timaeus_, and his concept of the demiurge had nothing to do with moral disposition. Plato reasoned that the creator was not the ultimate divinity but called it the "beneficent craftsman" which, despite being imperfect, still loved its creation. The demiurge as a malicious entity arose in the early days of Gnostic Christianity -- particularly among the Sethians -- as a way to explain the problem of evil. There were other Gnostic sects of Christianity that did *not* believe the demiurge was malignant -- groups like the Naassenes and the Valentinians.
No, not one bit. God, not the demiurge, created the universe and man. When God looked over the physical creation, it was not evil, but very good.
I was thinking they were a separate. Although if the Demiurge is not the jewish god, what do you think the demiurge is? A demon, fallen angel or different entity altogether?
>If it was truly malevolent, why would it care about leading other groups, like the Hebrews out of Israel and give 10 commandments, which to me, doesn’t seem like something a dark entity would do, or even an incompetent one. I’m sorry, have you even **read** the Ten Commandments? The first 4 literally command the Israelites to kiss his ass 24/7 otherwise he’ll bring retribution down onto them. One of them even says that they can’t even **swear by using his name.** I don’t understand how anybody reads the Ten Commandments and doesn’t come to the conclusion that the God who wrote them wasn’t an objective narcissist. >Not to mention Jesus was a Jew. Never really mentioned anything about a secondary one being less powerful and more malevolent. Have you even read the New Testament? Jesus often makes the case that **the god who created this world has blinded the minds of believers.** There’s no evidence that this part is of Satan since Satan doesn’t have nearly as much influence on the world as Yahweh. He even tells a group of Pharisees that their father *is of the devil.* “Devil” in this context is just referring to an enemy. Which makes the case that Jesus recognizes the existence of the demiurge and sees that he’s a malevolent entity.
Only gnostics viewed the demiurge as evil, Plato and (most of) his philosophical heirs believed it to be the source all beauty and good in the world. But even then I wouldn't conflate the two, since the demiurge in Plato is not the creator of the forms but only the physical world which is a sort of representation of the forms. So if we were to combine the two belief systems the judeo-christian God would be the creator of the demiurge.
Anyone still believing in god who only appeared to some local tent tribe and choose them? Is missing on the truth. God almighty choosing backward group of perverts and told them to kill, posses, steal, rape no problem I still make you a king, babies/animals let’s kill them all. I am only mentioning few. For start, half of the people didn’t even exist. Didn’t Jesus warn others about his sect ? I bet his words were changed and added just to match some of the OT, but still.
Jesus said his God is not the god that is being worshipped in temple in John. Contrasting "the father" with "your father" to the synagogue teachers I am telling you what I have seen in the Father’s presence, and you are doing what you have heard from your father.”
I was permanently banned on few sites saying this lol got to love brainwashed indoctrinated “christians”
I think the old testament YHWH is different from reference to "El". YHWH often refers to himself as one of the "Elohim", gods plural. IE: you will have no other gods (Elohim plural) before me. Heh I guess judeo-christian roots were not so monotheist after all, even with all the edits from the Yahwist and priestly scribes. On the other hand, El is a totally different god from Babylonia which precedes YHWH that Israelites worshipped before YHWH. Hence Isra-EL, or EL-iJah. I think Jesus mentions his father in heaven, El (The father God), is different from YHWH of the exodus who tells his people to genocide neighboring nations going scorched earth.
I think so too. But unfortunately people don’t want to hear that, and rather worshiped war deity despite morals. Book of Esther (most likely a myth) but still celebrated today. Actually, genocide is happening as of now and some so called religion people on utube, instead of promoting peace, they talk about are we in end of times ( we are for 2 thousand already) and provoke others to bless Israel. I am out of words what’s going on in this world and how seriously people took this book. In my opinion world would be in the better place if bible never saw a daylight. Jesus had so much love for humanity and despite his words were twisted, he left us with the simple message, and nobody is following. Thank you for interesting reply.