“Question, Seek, Reflect, Respect.”

So far, I’ve been doing a mix of Accepted teachings and Gnostic perceptions/questions.  Since I came across the questions as a child before I was aware of the Gnostics, it seems to me that such are natural progressions, not chance or induced by outside influences.   IN fact, much of the questions come from the ethics taught by the Churchs, and observation of dichotomies, or as some may put it, Hypocrisy.   

So lets carry on: Adam and Eve get kicked out of Eden to make their way in the world.    Here I will break from the Gnostics for a moment to discuss one of the questions I had as a kid that was answered by an Anthropologist.   Where did all the other people come from if God created Adam and Eve from the dust?    Well,,,   that answer is kind of shadowy since it falls into Tribal characters.    EVERY tribe before written word, and many after, did not see other Tribes as Human.   Fact, in most pre-written languages, the name of a tribe literally means, in their language, “The People” and every one else is seen as sub-human.  its a survival thing.    SO, the tribe(s) that carried the Adam and Eve story probably knew of others, but didn’t see them as human so ‘just left them out’.   BUT, that explains why one pair of humans were able to go out and propagate the earth without the genetic backlash of inbreeding one would expect.    Adam and Eve concieved two male children.  Cain and Abel, (two more after that story,   Seth (m) and Noria (f) and I’ll swing around to them in a bit.)   Cain and Abel became farmers.    Abel was a cattleman, and Cain was a wheat farmer.   When it came time for a sacrifice to God, Cain was shocked to find God didn’t appreciate his offering, where Abels’ was happily ‘ate up’.   Jealousy ensued and Cain killed Abel.   God was amused by this and gave Cain a mark  and sent into the world alone.  That part of the story gets blended up and mixed around.  Some say the mark is a Curse, some the mark is a blessing/protection, but being sent out into the world is always the same.   Mostly because his parents didn’t want anything to do with that sort of evil.   (recall, they ate of the Tree of Knowledge and now know the difference between good and evil.)

They then attempted further family life with two others, Seth a son, and Noria a girlchild.   Noria is almost not even mentioned in the Old testament of KJV, but is mentioned twice more in the gnostic texts.   What happens to her, that she achieves enlightenment and ascends to the heavens WHILE STILL CORPREAL is one reason all mention of her after her birth was ‘erased’ by the Church.   She is supposedly ‘adopted’ by Sophia, the spirit mother of the Demi-Urge who is also the God of the Old Testament, who rejected him and cast him into the void where he began his ‘creations’, to include US and this planet/universe of matter. 

Side note here: there are several books of the Gnostics that use the word sophia, but are not exactly books of that Spirit form; The Sophia of Christ for example.   Sophia is Greek for “wisdom” so the word can be used as a noun or a proper noun interchangably.    Keep in mind as well, Names, as seen by the ancients, were magical, they held power: A spirit form with the name meaning wisdom would/could bestow that very thing on others. 

All of this was before the book of Enoch, which IS referenced in the New Testament, but was cut out entirely by the Church in the Council of Nicea.  Now, reading the book of Enoch can be extremely confusing; it doesn’t read like Genesis at all: Genesis in the Bible always reminds me of an military After Action report, or so severely appended as to be more like a book report than a story.   The book of Enoch has more dialogue and reads a bit smoother.    The Nephalim mentioned in Genesis get expanded on in Enoch, and they aren’t at all nice: Giants that eat everything, including people.   There is mention of the watchers, and that Enoch acts as a go-between of the watchers that made the Nephalim, incuring God’s wrath, and God, attempting to get them a reprieve.  Instead God seals them underground on earth ‘for eternity’ (and there is some speculation that this is where the legend of hell arose.   This is highly debateable and there are other areas where that legend could have arose, and some are better arguments.)

Timelines get scattered, stretched and compressed through all of Genesis.   The Book of Enoch is something of an ‘expansion pack’ detailing things that happened from creation to the time of the great flood, to include why God held off until the death of Methusalah, father of Noah.   The book of Enoch covers a time period that is only three chapters of the CEV, but apparently is several centuries in length. *

Honestly, reading the books, I get the impression that God was much more human than God: jealous, anger issues, vindictive, sometimes willing to compromise and haggle, other times operating on rightous fury (but seemingly never as a loving parent type.)   I read through the Old Testament and get the impression of Narcisstic Drunken Abusive Dad character. 

Keep in mind please, these writings are only MY OPINION, not meant as an attack on anyone.  I find the historical applications, like the family trees, of high value to the the world.   I DO feel that it is NOT the end all be all of religion.    

*references are the KJV, The Oxford version, Contemporary English Version (CEV), Asimovs interpretations of the KJV, and Gnostic texts to include the Book of Enoch.   I am awaiting a copy of the Ethiopian Coptic version.  (Apparently they have to hand copy it since its been on order for three months 😛 ). Admittedly, My sources are not as extensive as other researchers:  They are what I have in physical form, all others are sourced in e-form, and those will have links provided.

———-  All of the above is an example that there are other perspectives of the same events.   Use your own judgement as to what makes sense to you.  My words are biased by simple fact that I am the one writing them and I do have a bias.   YMMV in otherwords.

I am going to shift gears on the next page and start a very small lesson in how the Gnostics looked at the OT as a whole, God in General, and what they thought of the New Testament. (that last is a positive, so don’t go getting uptight on me yet.)  

More to come