VLA Comment: I have read (not all) of the Nag Hammadi documents found in 1945 in Quorum, Egypt. This is a great video to understand Gnosticism and how Jesus and the antithesis of liberation, the Archons, fit into the Gnostic pedagogy.
It is interesting to note that the never ending jealous, wrathful God of the Old Testament Bible and authoritarian God of the Jews, Yahweh, is not “the Father”, the Monad, nor the Pleroma, not even a lesser God…The God of the Jews is an Archon…the Chief Archon. No wonder the earth plane is so full of suffering. And no wonder the Jews keep on suffering…their God is an Archon who traps them by codes and perpetuates their apparent endless suffering.
In several Gnostic systems — especially Sethian texts from the Apocryphon of John and Hypostasis of the Archons — Yahweh is commonly identified not merely as one Archon among many, but as the chief Archon or Demiurge-Yaldabaoth, Yahweh.
Yahweh is the Demiurge, the supreme and only God of the Jews. Perhaps praying to the Chief Archon is what causes continuous suffering for the Jews…VLA comment
Some Gnostic cosmologies list seven planetary Archons ruled by Yaldabaoth.
- Yaldabaoth (chief ruler-yahweh)
- Iao
- Sabaoth
- Adonaios
- Astaphanos
- Elaios
- Horaios
Interestingly,names like Iao, Adonaios, and Sabaoth appear derived from Hebrew divine titles:
-
- Yah/Iao,
- Adonai,
- Yahweh Sabaoth (“Lord of Hosts”).
This reflects how some Gnostic sects reinterpreted Jewish sacred names within their own cosmology.
