Old Testament God, Friend, or Foe?
Credit William Blake, Illustration: Europe a Prophecy — image is in the public domain.
As I have mentioned in a previous article I grew up in various church denominations in the United States. Over the years in church, I began to have certain questions about the stories we were taught. This feeling was heightened during the 90s with the WWJD (What would Jesus Do?) bracelets and various cash-grab trinkets and shirts that were being sold during those years.
As Christians, you are taught that Jesus and God are one and the same, but also separate, and in most lessons, Christians are taught to push themselves toward being more Christ-like. So how is Jesus portrayed in the Bible? He teaches us to turn the other cheek, and love our enemy. We see him providing food to the hungry, healing the sick, and forgiving even those who end up crucifying and killing him. So charity, compassion, forgiveness, kindness, and unconditional love.
Luke 6:27 But I say unto you which hear, Love your enemies, do good to them which hate you,
John 15:12 This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you.
John 4:8 He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love.
But now let’s take a look at the Old Testament God, how is he portrayed? Angry, jealous, spiteful, vengeful, murderous, and even genocidal at times. We see this as evidenced by his treatment of Adam and Eve after essentially an entrapment scenario in the Garden of Eden, then his mass genocide with the great flood and plagues of Egypt. Committing this act after he personally hardened the Pharaoh's heart, essentially forcing his hand to not release the Israelites from slavery.
Exodus 9:12 And the LORD hardened the heart of Pharaoh, and he hearkened not unto them; as the LORD had spoken unto Moses.
So how can these two entities be the same person? Sure we could go with a split personality scenario but isn’t God supposed to be perfect, and in him is no darkness at all?
1 John 1:5 This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all.
Beyond even the comparison to Christ, this is supposed to be an all-knowing, all-seeing, perfect entity, yet even as a mere mortal, I can see so many flaws in his character. Reading the Bible without blinders of faith on you can see that the Old Testament god seems thin-skinned, easily provoked to anger, wrathful, and jealous (even bragging on this point). If we saw these traits in a friend or coworker we wouldn’t think of them as being “perfect”, or an enlightened being, but the exact opposite.
Isaiah 45:7 I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.
Deuteronomy 4:24 For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God.
Then how does this make sense? The only answer I ever get from Christians is that it’s a “mystery” of God, or that “God works in mysterious ways”. So essentially they have no idea and have been taught not to question their own holy book lest they be cast into hell by this vengeful God that loves them so much. (Hearing echoes of people I’ve known who were living in abusive relationships and kept returning to the abuser)
The Early Church’s Answer
Well, it turns out the early Christian church also had an issue with this contradiction. Let’s not forget that the Bible wasn’t compiled yet during the early centuries of the church.
During the First Council of Nicaea in 325AD, the early catholic church looked at all of the books of what could end up being the Bible and decided which ones added up to the story they wanted to put forth, and which didn’t. Obviously many books didn’t make the cut, although the catholic bible actually includes a number of books that the common protestant American bible doesn’t. These books are normally included in the center of the bible, between the old and New Testaments, and are called the Apocrypha. They include the books of Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Maccabees, 1st and 2nd Esdras, Prayer of Manasses, Enoch, Jubilees, Jasher, Psalm 151, as well as additions to Daniel and Esther.
Catholics see the Apocryphal books as being important, but not entirely holy inspired, so much as to be considered canon. In addition to these books that they allowed to be somewhat added, they excluded many books for being too “heretical”. These books include the Secret Book of James, the Gospel of Thomas, the Book of Thomas, and the Secret Book of John among other works that were discovered in the Nag Hamadi Library.
In these scriptures, we learn that many early Christians had a much different view than today’s Christians on the nature of Christ and God.
They believed that the god of the Old Testament wasn’t actually the true God, but something they called the Demiurge which roughly translates to architect.
They believed this entity was created by a female aspect of God named Sophia aka Wisdom, which there is actually a reference to in the Bible still in Proverbs, known as the Song of Sophia.
Proverbs 8:22–31 22 The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way, before his works of old.
23 I was set up from everlasting, from the beginning, or ever the earth was.
24 When there were no depths, I was brought forth; when there were no fountains abounding with water.
25 Before the mountains were settled, before the hills was I brought forth:
26 While as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the highest part of the dust of the world.
27 When he prepared the heavens, I was there: when he set a compass upon the face of the depth:
28 When he established the clouds above: when he strengthened the fountains of the deep:
29 When he gave to the sea his decree, that the waters should not pass his commandment: when he appointed the foundations of the earth:
30 Then I was by him, as one brought up with him: and I was daily his delight, rejoicing always before him;
31 Rejoicing in the habitable part of his earth; and my delights were with the sons of men.
Although there is much more mention of her in non-canonical scriptures in the Nag Hamadi Library.
The story goes that she created this being unbeknownst to her male counterpart, and when she realized it was imperfect she hid it away from the rest of the true God. Once her creation realized its own existence, it began to try to remake the reality it knew at its core existed, since it had a spark of the divine within it. But the reality it made was imperfect, so out of frustration it repeatedly would destroy and reset it, and punish its own creations.
What hit me so hard when I read this, is that this story actually makes a lot more sense than the one being told in church. The pastor tells you that God is perfect, yet when you read the Biblical stories you see a deity having what amounts to temper tantrums every few chapters and bringing down horrible pain, agony, and death on legions of people. Often times some of his “favorites”. A God that demands blood sacrifices and to go to war and slay women and children.
1 Samuel 15:3 Now go and smite Amalek, and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not; but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass.
Isaiah 13:16 Their children also shall be dashed to pieces before their eyes; their houses shall be spoiled, and their wives ravished.
Psalms 137:9 Happy shall he be, that taketh and dasheth thy little ones against the stones.
Sometimes even demanding child sacrifices, and then if he can’t figure it out he just sends down a flood to reset the whole thing.
Ezekiel 20:24–26 because they had not obeyed my laws but had rejected my decrees and desecrated my Sabbaths, and their eyes lusted after their parents’ idols. 25 So I gave them other statutes that were not good and laws through which they could not live; 26 I defiled them through their gifts — the sacrifice of every firstborn — that I might fill them with horror so they would know that I am the Lord.’
This group of early Christians actually thought the Old Testament God was malevolent and equated him with the devil, which would make the reference of satan being the “god of this world” actually make sense. This also would make the fact that when you look at who committed genocide, routinely killed children, and demanded blood and at times child sacrifices in the bible…it wasn’t the devil, but the Old Testament god.
2 Corinthians 4:4 4 In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them.
These early Christians believed that Christ came in the New Testament as an avatar of the real, unknowable good, unconditionally loving God, in an attempt to salvage souls from this reality in essence, due to humans having a spark of the divine in them, but being trapped in a reality created by a false god. Ask yourself, if Jesus is the image of God, as the above scripture says, does that line up with the god of the Old Testament?
Here is an excerpt from both the Old Testament and from the Nag Hamadi Library.
Isaiah 45:5 5 I am the Lord, and there is none else, there is no God beside me: I girded thee, though thou hast not known me:
Nag Hamadi — Yaldabaoth (the demiurge) Boast: He said, “I am God, and there is no other but me.”
The verse in the Bible is longer, yet the gnostic version is thought by many scholars to actually be older. Why would “the only god” need to keep reminding everyone that he is the only one?
The demiurge realizes that the true higher God is trying to take his playthings away and tries to keep people in this material reality, thus all the stories we’ve heard of the devil trying to entice people with the love of money and physical things. This all starts to make more sense if you think of it from a reincarnation perspective, and this reality is hell. Obviously not a place of eternal fire and torture, but when you look at all of the sufferings in this world and then think about the grief and pain anyone feels in a lifetime, even with a fairly decent life, then the idea of being born over and over and repeating that cycle for eternity starts to seem like hell. This of course aligns with what Hindus and Buddhists believe, they refer to this process as the samsara cycle.
The more I’ve looked into non-canonical books, and actually studied the incongruencies of the canonical Bible, the more I see where the council who composed the Bible seems to have accidentally left bits of the original, larger story in there. I feel they have done Christians and in relation to the rest of the world, a huge disservice by trying to hide and suppress the full story of Christianity from all of us.