1 00:00:03,680 --> 00:00:06,480 This leader is provided to permit the projectionist to 2 00:00:06,480 --> 00:00:08,640 complete adjustment of focus. And sound. 3 00:00:08,640 --> 00:00:29,720 Level before the film begins. subtle than any beast of the 4 00:00:29,760 --> 00:00:31,360 field which the Lord God had made. 5 00:00:31,640 --> 00:00:33,680 And he said unto the woman, Yeah, he had. 6 00:00:33,680 --> 00:00:37,280 God said Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden. 7 00:00:37,960 --> 00:00:42,000 In that passage of Scripture we find the very beginning of sin 8 00:00:42,000 --> 00:00:45,840 and human depravity as we know it today because the Bible 9 00:00:45,840 --> 00:00:50,240 teaches us that God placed man and woman in the garden and in 10 00:00:50,240 --> 00:00:52,720 the garden they lived in a perpetual paradise. 11 00:00:52,920 --> 00:00:55,600 Everything was perfect. They didn't have any problems, 12 00:00:55,600 --> 00:00:58,120 they didn't even have to work for a living in those days. 13 00:00:58,360 --> 00:01:00,560 Everything was perfect, the economic conditions, there was 14 00:01:00,560 --> 00:01:03,360 perfect tranquility and peace in that garden. 15 00:01:03,480 --> 00:01:06,200 God didn't make man just a little button that he could push 16 00:01:06,200 --> 00:01:08,120 and a little piece of machinery that would obey him. 17 00:01:08,320 --> 00:01:12,040 God made man a free moral agent, the ability to choose between 18 00:01:12,040 --> 00:01:14,240 right and wrong. God said you can enjoy all the 19 00:01:14,240 --> 00:01:17,320 fruits of the garden except one tree, and if you eat of that 20 00:01:17,320 --> 00:01:21,560 particular tree, you'll die. One day the devil came along in 21 00:01:21,560 --> 00:01:25,560 the form of a serpent and said to Adam and Eve, why you're not 22 00:01:25,560 --> 00:01:27,840 going to die. Why, if you eat of that fruit, 23 00:01:27,840 --> 00:01:30,520 you're going to become as other gods, and you're going to have 24 00:01:30,520 --> 00:01:33,800 happiness and joy such as you've never known, and you'll become 25 00:01:33,800 --> 00:01:36,920 the richest people in all the universe if you'll eat of that 26 00:01:36,920 --> 00:01:39,080 tree. They believe the devil's lie 27 00:01:39,320 --> 00:01:41,840 rather than God's truth. And so they ate the fruit. 28 00:01:42,520 --> 00:01:45,000 And what happened? Instead of becoming as other 29 00:01:45,000 --> 00:01:48,400 gods, instead of having their eyes open and becoming wealthy 30 00:01:48,400 --> 00:01:53,760 and even wiser, the Scripture says that they became naked in 31 00:01:53,760 --> 00:01:55,760 their own sights. And they realized that they 32 00:01:55,760 --> 00:01:59,080 disobeyed God and sinned against Almighty God. 33 00:01:59,440 --> 00:02:02,560 And the Bible teaches that they went out and sowed fig leaves on 34 00:02:02,560 --> 00:02:05,080 themselves to hide themselves from their own nakedness and to 35 00:02:05,080 --> 00:02:07,880 hide themselves from God. But God came along in the cool 36 00:02:07,880 --> 00:02:12,040 of the day, and God saw through the fig leaves, and God saw 37 00:02:12,040 --> 00:02:14,400 their sin and the nakedness of their soul. 38 00:02:15,080 --> 00:02:18,560 And God went out into the fields and slew the beast of the field 39 00:02:19,040 --> 00:02:22,800 and took these skins and wrapped them in these skins to hide 40 00:02:22,800 --> 00:02:25,160 their nakedness, one from the other and from God. 41 00:02:25,200 --> 00:02:28,520 And that was the first time that blood was shed in order to save 42 00:02:28,520 --> 00:02:31,720 man and was a type of the death of Jesus Christ that was to come 43 00:02:31,720 --> 00:02:35,480 4000 years later. We've been told for centuries 44 00:02:35,480 --> 00:02:39,760 that the Garden of Eden was a paradise, that the Creator was a 45 00:02:39,760 --> 00:02:43,680 benevolent father, and that the serpent was the architect of our 46 00:02:43,680 --> 00:02:47,120 ruin. We were told that our thirst for 47 00:02:47,120 --> 00:02:52,640 knowledge was our original sin. But what if the God walking 48 00:02:52,640 --> 00:02:56,960 through that garden wasn't the Supreme Being, but a jealous 49 00:02:56,960 --> 00:03:00,240 jailer? What if he forbade the Tree of 50 00:03:00,240 --> 00:03:05,040 Knowledge not to protect us, but to keep us in the dark, to 51 00:03:05,080 --> 00:03:08,680 ensure his creations never realized they were actually 52 00:03:08,680 --> 00:03:13,040 superior to him? We are taught from birth that 53 00:03:13,040 --> 00:03:17,400 the world is a gift, that the sunrise, the mountains, and the 54 00:03:17,400 --> 00:03:21,800 breath in our lungs are proofs of a benevolent design. 55 00:03:23,000 --> 00:03:26,240 But for a group of thinkers in the ancient world, there was a 56 00:03:26,240 --> 00:03:31,240 different, darker intuition. They looked at the suffering, 57 00:03:31,440 --> 00:03:35,840 the decay, and the inherent cruelty of nature and reached a 58 00:03:35,840 --> 00:03:40,200 radical conclusion. This world is not a gift, it is 59 00:03:40,200 --> 00:03:43,320 a cage. They believed that the creator 60 00:03:43,320 --> 00:03:47,440 of our physical reality was not the ultimate God, but a blind 61 00:03:47,440 --> 00:03:52,120 lesser entity, an architect who built a beautiful prison to keep 62 00:03:52,120 --> 00:03:54,880 our souls from remembering where we truly came from. 63 00:03:55,560 --> 00:03:59,960 To them, we are sparks of light trapped in a basement of matter. 64 00:04:00,680 --> 00:04:02,680 This is the core of the Gnostic vision. 65 00:04:03,360 --> 00:04:07,720 It isn't a religion of belief or faith in the traditional sense. 66 00:04:08,680 --> 00:04:12,760 It is a path of awakening. It starts with a single 67 00:04:12,960 --> 00:04:16,320 dangerous realization. Something is wrong with the 68 00:04:16,320 --> 00:04:20,480 world and the only way out is to remember the truth they tried to 69 00:04:20,480 --> 00:04:24,720 make us forget. This divine suspicion is the 70 00:04:24,720 --> 00:04:28,360 heartbeat of Gnosticism. These Gnostics believed we are 71 00:04:28,360 --> 00:04:31,680 cosmic orphans. They believed our reality is a 72 00:04:31,680 --> 00:04:35,680 beautiful, terrifying mask and that the power ruling it is a 73 00:04:35,680 --> 00:04:40,440 blind pretender. Salvation, therefore, comes 74 00:04:40,440 --> 00:04:43,600 through awakening. It comes through remembering a 75 00:04:43,600 --> 00:04:46,840 home we've never seen but have always felt. 76 00:04:47,960 --> 00:04:50,440 To the architects of what would later become the mainstream 77 00:04:50,440 --> 00:04:54,280 church, these ideas were absolutely horrific. 78 00:04:55,360 --> 00:04:58,560 This was the ultimate theological high treason. 79 00:04:59,720 --> 00:05:03,720 It turned the good news of the Gospels into a cosmic Horror 80 00:05:03,720 --> 00:05:06,720 Story. It suggested that the bishops 81 00:05:06,720 --> 00:05:09,080 and the priests were inadvertently worshipping a 82 00:05:09,080 --> 00:05:12,000 jailer. The battle for the soul of the 83 00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:14,920 West became a war over the nature of reality itself. 84 00:05:16,040 --> 00:05:19,600 One side wanted to build a Kingdom on earth, the other 85 00:05:19,840 --> 00:05:21,960 wanted to escape the earth entirely. 86 00:05:22,960 --> 00:05:27,880 This was a conflict that could only end one way, with one side 87 00:05:27,880 --> 00:05:31,440 being declared truth and the other being scrubbed from the 88 00:05:31,440 --> 00:05:34,280 face of the earth as the ultimate heresy. 89 00:06:40,850 --> 00:06:46,330 Before there was a devil, there was the Red Land, the deshrit to 90 00:06:46,330 --> 00:06:49,890 the ancient Egyptians. The world was split in two, the 91 00:06:49,890 --> 00:06:53,370 fertile black soil of the Nile and the scorching, chaotic red 92 00:06:53,370 --> 00:06:56,850 sands of the desert. The master of that chaos was 93 00:06:56,850 --> 00:06:59,600 Set. In the pantheon of ancient 94 00:06:59,600 --> 00:07:05,160 Egyptian gods, Set was the God of storms, Chaos, and the Red 95 00:07:05,160 --> 00:07:08,520 Desert. He was the foreigner, the 96 00:07:08,520 --> 00:07:13,240 necessary force of disruption. But as the Egyptian New Kingdom 97 00:07:13,240 --> 00:07:16,840 collided with the Levant, something strange happened in 98 00:07:16,840 --> 00:07:20,040 the minds of the ancients. They began to see a pattern. 99 00:07:20,520 --> 00:07:23,280 He wasn't originally evil in our modern sense. 100 00:07:23,560 --> 00:07:26,640 He was necessary. He was the storm that broke the 101 00:07:26,640 --> 00:07:30,640 drought, the God of foreigners, and the protector of the sun God 102 00:07:30,640 --> 00:07:33,600 RA on his nightly journey through the underworld. 103 00:07:34,360 --> 00:07:38,720 But Set was also the God of disruption, the brother who 104 00:07:38,720 --> 00:07:42,600 murdered Osiris, the one who could not be contained by the 105 00:07:42,600 --> 00:07:48,160 Mahat, the cosmic balance. The most unsettling thing about 106 00:07:48,160 --> 00:07:51,720 Set is his face. While other gods had the heads 107 00:07:51,720 --> 00:07:56,640 of recognizable animals, Falcons, jackals, ibises, Set's 108 00:07:56,640 --> 00:08:00,520 head is a Cryptid known as the Shah, or the Set animal. 109 00:08:00,960 --> 00:08:05,480 It features a curved downward snout, square topped upright 110 00:08:05,480 --> 00:08:10,440 ears, and a stiff forked tail. Egyptologists have debated for a 111 00:08:10,440 --> 00:08:13,600 century what this creature is a saluki? 112 00:08:13,920 --> 00:08:16,040 A giraffe? An okapi. 113 00:08:16,840 --> 00:08:18,600 The truth is likely more deliberate. 114 00:08:19,480 --> 00:08:24,120 Set is the God of the Other. His head is an impossible beast, 115 00:08:24,280 --> 00:08:27,600 representing a power that does not fit into the natural order. 116 00:08:28,160 --> 00:08:30,600 He is the glitch in the biological world. 117 00:08:30,960 --> 00:08:35,200 As Egypt expanded its empire into the Levant, modern day 118 00:08:35,200 --> 00:08:39,679 Syria, Lebanon and Israel, their priests encountered the gods of 119 00:08:39,679 --> 00:08:44,320 the Canaanites and Hittites. They didn't see new gods, they 120 00:08:44,320 --> 00:08:48,160 saw masks. The Canaanites worshipped by Al 121 00:08:48,160 --> 00:08:51,520 Haddad, the Thunder God who lived on a mountain and rode the 122 00:08:51,520 --> 00:08:54,880 clouds. He was violent, virile and prone 123 00:08:54,880 --> 00:08:58,280 to fits of rage. To the Egyptians, this was 124 00:08:58,280 --> 00:09:01,760 clearly set. During the Ramos side period, 125 00:09:01,760 --> 00:09:05,920 the two were effectively fused. Setball became the God of the 126 00:09:05,920 --> 00:09:10,080 mighty arm, the one who rules through raw, terrifying power 127 00:09:10,080 --> 00:09:13,880 and atmospheric violence. This is where the Gnostic heresy 128 00:09:13,880 --> 00:09:17,760 begins to take its shape. As the cult of Yahweh emerged in 129 00:09:17,760 --> 00:09:21,880 the same region, observers in the Hellenistic world and later 130 00:09:21,880 --> 00:09:25,480 the Gnostics began to notice uncomfortable parallels. 131 00:09:26,280 --> 00:09:30,320 They saw a God who dwelt in the desert, spoke through storms, 132 00:09:30,440 --> 00:09:35,680 Thunder and fire, the jealous, volatile ruler of the red land 133 00:09:35,680 --> 00:09:53,040 of matter. God said, Adam and Eve, you've 134 00:09:53,040 --> 00:09:55,760 sinned against me, you've disobeyed me, all right. 135 00:09:55,760 --> 00:09:57,240 You have to take the consequences. 136 00:09:57,240 --> 00:10:00,600 I told you that in the day you eat, you're going to die. 137 00:10:00,800 --> 00:10:03,720 My word is truth. And here's what happened as a 138 00:10:03,720 --> 00:10:06,800 result of man's disobedience and man's sin. 139 00:10:06,920 --> 00:10:08,760 First of all, God cursed the serpent. 140 00:10:09,040 --> 00:10:11,160 That's the reason the serpent, who was the most beautiful of 141 00:10:11,160 --> 00:10:13,960 all the beasts of the field, now crawls on its belly. 142 00:10:13,960 --> 00:10:17,080 It's the enemy of mankind because of the Garden of Eden. 143 00:10:17,080 --> 00:10:19,520 God cursed the servant. Then the second thing that 144 00:10:19,520 --> 00:10:24,280 happened, women have sorrow and suffering in childbirth. 145 00:10:24,800 --> 00:10:28,120 All the suffering that all the women have endured in childbirth 146 00:10:28,320 --> 00:10:32,840 down through the ages, or result of woman's sin in the Garden of 147 00:10:32,840 --> 00:10:36,120 Eden and the curse and judgment of God because of that sin. 148 00:10:36,520 --> 00:10:39,520 And then the Bible says that the earth was cursed, all the thorns 149 00:10:39,520 --> 00:10:42,040 and thistles. And because man has to work and 150 00:10:42,040 --> 00:10:44,880 labor by the sweat of his brow, for his living and for all that 151 00:10:44,880 --> 00:10:47,440 he has, comes as a direct result of sin. 152 00:10:51,160 --> 00:10:55,200 Before there was an orthodoxy, there was an explosion of ideas. 153 00:10:56,160 --> 00:10:59,360 In the first two centuries after Jesus, there was no New 154 00:10:59,360 --> 00:11:02,840 Testament, no Central Vatican, and no single way to be a 155 00:11:02,840 --> 00:11:06,520 Christian. Instead, there were hundreds of 156 00:11:06,520 --> 00:11:10,560 small private circles. Some saw Jesus as a Jewish 157 00:11:10,560 --> 00:11:13,280 Messiah. Others saw him as a cosmic 158 00:11:13,280 --> 00:11:15,600 phantom who never actually touched the ground. 159 00:11:16,560 --> 00:11:20,000 In the great Library of Alexandria, Egyptian mysticism, 160 00:11:20,240 --> 00:11:23,360 Greek philosophy and Jewish scripture were being thrown into 161 00:11:23,360 --> 00:11:28,440 a spiritual centrifuge. It's important to understand no 162 00:11:28,440 --> 00:11:31,240 one in the ancient world called themselves a Gnostic. 163 00:11:32,080 --> 00:11:33,960 That is a modern label we've pinned on them. 164 00:11:34,800 --> 00:11:37,000 At the time. They were simply followers of 165 00:11:37,000 --> 00:11:40,960 the secret way. They called themselves the Seed 166 00:11:41,040 --> 00:11:46,440 of Seth, or the Elect. They didn't think they were 167 00:11:46,440 --> 00:11:49,480 starting a new religion. They thought they were the only 168 00:11:49,480 --> 00:11:52,800 ones who truly understood the deep meaning of the old ones. 169 00:11:53,800 --> 00:11:57,600 The first man to truly tear the mask off the storm God was 170 00:11:57,600 --> 00:12:03,840 Marcion of Sinope. Around 140 AD, Marcion arrived 171 00:12:03,840 --> 00:12:05,760 in Rome with a radical proposition. 172 00:12:06,880 --> 00:12:09,720 The God of the Old Testament and the Father of Jesus were two 173 00:12:09,720 --> 00:12:13,160 different beings. He argued that Yahweh was a God 174 00:12:13,160 --> 00:12:18,680 of law, justice and wrath, the God of the Jews, while the true 175 00:12:18,680 --> 00:12:24,400 God was a God of love and mercy. Marcion was the first to create 176 00:12:24,400 --> 00:12:29,640 a Canon, a list of accepted books, and in doing so, he 177 00:12:29,640 --> 00:12:32,680 forced the rest of the world to decide what they believed. 178 00:12:33,600 --> 00:12:35,920 He was the spark that started the fire. 179 00:12:36,800 --> 00:12:40,160 While Marcion was practical, others were deeply mystical. 180 00:12:41,040 --> 00:12:45,320 The Valentinians, led by Valentinus, the most brilliant 181 00:12:45,320 --> 00:12:49,000 philosopher of the era. They believed the world was a 182 00:12:49,000 --> 00:12:53,000 mistake born from the grief of a divine being named Sophia. 183 00:12:53,960 --> 00:12:57,760 They operated inside the early churches, whispering secrets to 184 00:12:57,760 --> 00:13:00,840 those they felt were spiritual enough to hear them. 185 00:13:02,400 --> 00:13:06,280 The Sethians trace their lineage back to Seth, the third son of 186 00:13:06,280 --> 00:13:08,720 Adam. They were the ones who wrote the 187 00:13:08,720 --> 00:13:12,960 most complex cosmologies, detailing the Archons, the 188 00:13:12,960 --> 00:13:17,440 Celestial Jailers, and the Aeons, the realms of light. 189 00:13:18,360 --> 00:13:22,120 This was a golden age of Apocrypha, the hidden books. 190 00:13:22,960 --> 00:13:27,520 In dimly lit rooms across Egypt and Syria, scribes were penning 191 00:13:27,840 --> 00:13:32,400 the Gospel of Thomas, the secret Book of John, and the Gospel of 192 00:13:32,400 --> 00:13:35,760 Truth. They were written in Coptic and 193 00:13:35,760 --> 00:13:39,640 Greek, shared in secret, and treated as more sacred than the 194 00:13:39,640 --> 00:13:45,040 public Gospels. But as the Proto Orthodox Church 195 00:13:45,040 --> 00:13:49,040 began to gain political power, these books became a liability. 196 00:13:49,800 --> 00:13:52,880 To own one was to be a traitor to the one true faith. 197 00:13:53,640 --> 00:13:57,040 As the fires of censorship began to rise, those who love these 198 00:13:57,040 --> 00:14:01,080 texts faced a choice. Destroy the knowledge or hide it 199 00:14:01,080 --> 00:14:03,880 where the children of the storm God would never find. 200 00:14:13,920 --> 00:14:17,400 It are you ignorant or asclepios? 201 00:14:18,040 --> 00:14:22,840 That Egypt is the image of heaven, our land. 202 00:14:22,840 --> 00:14:27,640 Is the temple of the world, but a time will come. 203 00:14:28,520 --> 00:14:32,720 When Egyptians will seem to have served the divinity in vain. 204 00:14:34,280 --> 00:14:39,200 The country that was more pious. Than all countries will become 205 00:14:39,520 --> 00:14:42,720 impious. No longer will it be full of 206 00:14:42,720 --> 00:14:45,880 temples, but it will be full of tombs. 207 00:14:46,600 --> 00:14:51,720 Neither will it be full of gods, but it will be full of corpses. 208 00:14:54,000 --> 00:14:58,600 All river you will flow with blood more than water. 209 00:14:59,520 --> 00:15:03,080 And he who is dead will not be mourned as much as he who is 210 00:15:03,080 --> 00:15:06,760 alive. Oh, Egypt. 211 00:16:24,180 --> 00:16:33,380 Almost there, mother. Look what we found in the sand. 212 00:16:33,620 --> 00:16:41,240 Look at this one. These books are useless. 213 00:16:41,240 --> 00:16:43,600 Since you cannot read them. I wish you had brought. 214 00:16:43,600 --> 00:16:45,920 Back something more. Useful, but these will do. 215 00:16:45,920 --> 00:17:16,720 For kindling. In 1945, near the Egyptian town 216 00:17:16,720 --> 00:17:20,800 of Nag Hamadi, 2 young boys uncovered A sealed jar near the 217 00:17:20,800 --> 00:17:25,920 cliffs of Jabal al Tarif while digging for sabak, A fertilizer 218 00:17:25,920 --> 00:17:29,080 rich soil. They broke open the jar because 219 00:17:29,080 --> 00:17:31,160 they thought it might contain something valuable. 220 00:17:32,200 --> 00:17:35,520 Inside was a collection of ancient papyrus books bound in 221 00:17:35,520 --> 00:17:37,720 leather, hidden away for centuries. 222 00:17:38,840 --> 00:17:41,840 They took manuscripts back to the family home, where some of 223 00:17:41,840 --> 00:17:44,560 them were burned in the household oven before anyone 224 00:17:44,560 --> 00:17:48,760 understood their value. Some pages were already damaged 225 00:17:48,760 --> 00:17:51,880 by age, fragmentation and handling. 226 00:17:52,720 --> 00:17:55,600 Other pieces had to be reconstructed later by scholars 227 00:17:55,600 --> 00:17:58,360 working with incomplete leaves and broken sections. 228 00:17:59,320 --> 00:18:03,000 Even the texts we do possess often come to us through copies 229 00:18:03,000 --> 00:18:08,160 of copies translated from Greek into Coptic and preserved in 4th 230 00:18:08,160 --> 00:18:11,440 century codices that point back to much older traditions. 231 00:18:12,560 --> 00:18:17,280 The discovery is now known as the Nag Hamadi Library, 13 232 00:18:17,280 --> 00:18:22,080 codices containing more than 50 texts written in Coptic, many of 233 00:18:22,080 --> 00:18:24,200 them translated from earlier Greek originals. 234 00:18:25,120 --> 00:18:28,040 Among them were works that would become central to modern 235 00:18:28,040 --> 00:18:32,040 discussions of Gnosticism, including the Gospel of Thomas, 236 00:18:32,680 --> 00:18:37,200 the Gospel of Truth, the Apocryphon of John, and other 237 00:18:37,200 --> 00:18:39,920 revelatory, mystical and cosmological writings. 238 00:18:42,160 --> 00:18:45,680 Before the discovery at Nag Hamadi, most of what the world 239 00:18:45,680 --> 00:18:48,000 knew about Gnosticism came from its enemies. 240 00:18:49,000 --> 00:18:52,600 For centuries, Gnostic ideas were known through denunciations 241 00:18:52,600 --> 00:18:55,440 written by church fathers and harisiologists. 242 00:18:56,360 --> 00:19:00,480 These writers described Gnostics as dangerous, deviant, and 243 00:19:00,480 --> 00:19:03,480 wrong. The Nag Hamadi Library changed 244 00:19:03,480 --> 00:19:06,560 all of that. It gave scholars direct access 245 00:19:06,560 --> 00:19:11,320 to texts associated with Gnostic and related traditions, allowing 246 00:19:11,320 --> 00:19:14,600 those voices to finally be heard in their own language, with 247 00:19:14,600 --> 00:19:19,080 their own myths, symbols, and theological systems intact. 248 00:19:20,360 --> 00:19:24,160 After the discovery, the codices moved through a messy period 249 00:19:24,160 --> 00:19:28,120 involving private hands, antiquities channels, delayed 250 00:19:28,120 --> 00:19:31,200 access and uneven scholarly circulation. 251 00:19:32,280 --> 00:19:37,080 One codex became associated with the Jung Institute in Zurich and 252 00:19:37,080 --> 00:19:39,560 later became known as the Jung Codex. 253 00:19:40,680 --> 00:19:43,680 Others were gathered into the Coptic Museum in Cairo. 254 00:19:44,840 --> 00:19:49,160 For years, access to the texts remained partial and slow, which 255 00:19:49,160 --> 00:19:53,080 meant the ideas inside them spread gradually rather than all 256 00:19:53,080 --> 00:19:56,160 at once. How would these new sayings of 257 00:19:56,280 --> 00:19:59,920 Jesus, not included in the Bible, affect the faithful? 258 00:20:00,640 --> 00:20:03,000 These texts weren't in the canonical gospels. 259 00:20:03,000 --> 00:20:05,040 So what was their status? Did this. 260 00:20:05,040 --> 00:20:08,080 Even mean that the gospels. Themselves didn't transmit. 261 00:20:08,200 --> 00:20:12,160 The whole of Jesus teaching. So once again, this was risky 262 00:20:12,160 --> 00:20:13,920 territory for Bible believing Christians. 263 00:20:14,120 --> 00:20:17,360 The Nag Hamadi discoveries have revolutionized our understanding 264 00:20:17,360 --> 00:20:20,640 of early Christianity. A fascinating collection of 265 00:20:20,640 --> 00:20:23,680 texts, most of which have never been known before. 266 00:20:23,960 --> 00:20:26,240 They were written in Coptic, which is Egyptian. 267 00:20:26,640 --> 00:20:29,000 Written in Greek letters. They are translations of the 268 00:20:29,000 --> 00:20:31,960 original Greek and so we can go back and get a great deal out of 269 00:20:31,960 --> 00:20:36,360 them. Right. 270 00:20:36,360 --> 00:20:37,560 But they're telling the same story. 271 00:20:37,560 --> 00:20:43,160 And what the story is, is that we are an intention, we're the 272 00:20:43,160 --> 00:20:46,520 product of an intentional act, and we were imbued with a force 273 00:20:47,120 --> 00:20:50,480 that was greater even than those who created us, and that there 274 00:20:50,480 --> 00:20:53,840 has been an effort from that time to deny us that force. 275 00:20:54,160 --> 00:20:55,920 Well, how do you? Know that our force is. 276 00:20:55,920 --> 00:20:57,960 Greater than those that created. Us I don't know this where. 277 00:20:57,960 --> 00:20:59,880 Where are you getting that? From that is from. 278 00:21:00,000 --> 00:21:04,520 If you're familiar with the Gnostic texts, there were 13 279 00:21:04,520 --> 00:21:07,640 bound books representing over 50 texts. 280 00:21:08,320 --> 00:21:14,360 They were the oldest records of the New Testament, and they were 281 00:21:14,360 --> 00:21:18,120 the records that were excluded by the the Catholic Church. 282 00:21:18,120 --> 00:21:22,960 So among these were things like the Gospel of Thomas, which is 283 00:21:22,960 --> 00:21:26,080 considered the second most heretical book. 284 00:21:27,160 --> 00:21:30,920 In the Nag Hamadi Library, there's the Gospel of John, also 285 00:21:30,920 --> 00:21:33,880 called the Secret Book of John, also called the Apocryphon of 286 00:21:33,880 --> 00:21:38,080 John, which is considered the first most heretical book. 287 00:21:39,200 --> 00:21:41,800 There are books from Gnostic women. 288 00:21:41,800 --> 00:21:45,920 Thunder Perfect Mind is a book by a Gnostic woman that's in 289 00:21:45,920 --> 00:21:47,880 there. The Gospel of James is and 290 00:21:47,880 --> 00:21:50,720 there's but the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel of Thomas is 291 00:21:50,720 --> 00:21:52,280 one of the probably the most controversial. 292 00:21:52,280 --> 00:22:02,880 It's 114 sayings that were recorded by by Thomas and the 293 00:22:02,880 --> 00:22:07,400 book says Didymus Thomas. It was was the name and it's 294 00:22:07,400 --> 00:22:09,640 almost like it. It's different from all the 295 00:22:09,640 --> 00:22:14,320 other books in that it is each saying is is a teaching unto 296 00:22:14,320 --> 00:22:17,520 itself. What he was teaching was so 297 00:22:17,520 --> 00:22:20,040 profound for his time. There were outer teachings and 298 00:22:20,040 --> 00:22:22,240 inner teachings. The outer teachings were for the 299 00:22:22,240 --> 00:22:25,720 masses and it's primarily what you see in the Gospels. 300 00:22:26,160 --> 00:22:29,960 The inner teachings were for those initiates that could 301 00:22:29,960 --> 00:22:31,800 really understand what it was he was saying. 302 00:22:31,800 --> 00:22:35,160 And that's what the Gospel of Thomas appears to be. 303 00:22:41,080 --> 00:22:44,760 I will give you what no eye has seen, what no ear has heard, 304 00:22:44,920 --> 00:22:48,000 what no hand has touched, and what has never occurred to the 305 00:22:48,000 --> 00:22:51,160 human mind. If those who lead you say to you 306 00:22:51,160 --> 00:22:54,360 see the Kingdom is in the sky, then the birds of the sky will 307 00:22:54,360 --> 00:22:56,520 precede you. If they say to you it is in the 308 00:22:56,520 --> 00:22:58,440 sea, then the fish will precede you. 309 00:22:59,000 --> 00:23:02,440 Rather, the Kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. 310 00:23:03,120 --> 00:23:05,280 When you come to know yourselves, then you will become 311 00:23:05,280 --> 00:23:08,200 known, and you will realize that it is you are the sons of the 312 00:23:08,200 --> 00:23:14,760 living Father. When these words attributed to 313 00:23:14,760 --> 00:23:19,520 Jesus were first recorded in Greek and Coptic texts, the word 314 00:23:19,520 --> 00:23:23,240 for knowledge was gnosis. Those who had knowledge were 315 00:23:23,240 --> 00:23:26,280 Gnostics. For some Christians, then, 316 00:23:26,520 --> 00:23:29,880 salvation would come through knowledge of a special kind, a 317 00:23:29,880 --> 00:23:35,440 knowledge superior to faith. To achieve gnosis was to know 318 00:23:35,440 --> 00:23:40,120 one's soul, to know God, and to know the living Jesus. 319 00:23:40,960 --> 00:23:46,520 There were people in antiquity who called themselves Gnostics. 320 00:23:46,880 --> 00:23:53,240 They said that they were the children of the knowledge of the 321 00:23:53,240 --> 00:23:57,080 heart. And that is what gnosis really 322 00:23:57,080 --> 00:24:00,160 is about. It is an intuitive knowledge, 323 00:24:00,560 --> 00:24:06,280 imaginative thinking, not analytical thinking, but really 324 00:24:07,320 --> 00:24:12,880 knowledge of the heart. Gnosis is of the same root as 325 00:24:12,880 --> 00:24:17,360 the English word knowledge to know, but it is not an 326 00:24:17,360 --> 00:24:21,640 intellectual knowledge. It is more sort of intuitive 327 00:24:21,640 --> 00:24:26,360 thinking, imaginative thinking. They themselves call it the 328 00:24:26,360 --> 00:24:30,680 knowledge of the heart. With the publication of the 329 00:24:30,680 --> 00:24:34,120 mystical Gnostic scriptures from Nag Hamadi, scholars and 330 00:24:34,120 --> 00:24:37,640 historians can now consider the role of Gnosticism within the 331 00:24:37,640 --> 00:24:42,120 established Christian tradition. The spiritual impulse of nurses 332 00:24:42,120 --> 00:24:46,120 is a constant quest for self knowledge and knowledge of God. 333 00:24:46,960 --> 00:24:50,640 Today, the knowledge of the heart is shared by millions. 334 00:24:51,280 --> 00:24:55,480 And then the Bible teaches physical death comes as a result 335 00:24:55,480 --> 00:24:57,720 of sin. All the graveyards, all the 336 00:24:57,720 --> 00:25:01,920 hearses, all the ambulances, all of that is a result of the sin 337 00:25:01,920 --> 00:25:05,240 of man in the Garden of Eden. At that precise moment, the 338 00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:08,400 moment that man sinned and disobeyed God, in that precise 339 00:25:08,400 --> 00:25:12,680 moment he was separated from God and Jesus called it hell. 340 00:25:14,000 --> 00:25:18,040 Whoever finds the interpretation of these sayings will not 341 00:25:18,040 --> 00:25:32,840 experience death. Most of us grow up with a 342 00:25:32,840 --> 00:25:35,560 specific shape to the story of our origins. 343 00:25:36,120 --> 00:25:40,520 A perfect garden, a benevolent father, a tragic mistake. 344 00:25:41,520 --> 00:25:45,080 We are taught that our suffering is our own fault, the result of 345 00:25:45,080 --> 00:25:49,440 a prehistoric act of disobedience, an act of sin that 346 00:25:49,440 --> 00:25:52,680 was then passed down genetically to every single human born 347 00:25:52,680 --> 00:25:57,040 thereafter at infinitum. But the Gnostics looked at that 348 00:25:57,040 --> 00:25:59,520 same story and saw something else entirely. 349 00:26:00,440 --> 00:26:04,240 They saw a crime scene. To them, the version of the 350 00:26:04,240 --> 00:26:08,520 story we have today, the one in the canonical Bible, is more 351 00:26:08,520 --> 00:26:12,520 like a piece of state propaganda, written by the 352 00:26:12,520 --> 00:26:16,680 victors, edited by the very authorities who wanted humanity 353 00:26:16,680 --> 00:26:20,280 to remain submissive, fearful and blind. 354 00:26:21,400 --> 00:26:23,720 Why was their version so radically different? 355 00:26:25,040 --> 00:26:27,680 Because they believe that if you want to keep a prisoner in a 356 00:26:27,680 --> 00:26:32,000 cell, the most effective way to do it is to make them love the 357 00:26:32,000 --> 00:26:35,560 jailer. They believe the creator of the 358 00:26:35,560 --> 00:26:40,480 garden was a pretender, a false God, and that he had inverted 359 00:26:40,480 --> 00:26:42,640 the truth to hide his own tracks. 360 00:26:43,960 --> 00:26:48,680 In their view, the commandments were the security protocols, and 361 00:26:48,680 --> 00:26:54,040 the fall of man was a jailbreak. To understand this, you have to 362 00:26:54,040 --> 00:26:56,880 be willing to look at the Genesis narrative through a very 363 00:26:56,880 --> 00:27:01,200 dark, inverted mirror. You must accept the possibility 364 00:27:01,200 --> 00:27:05,000 that the villain was the hero and the God of the Garden was a 365 00:27:05,000 --> 00:27:07,560 monster. This wasn't just to be 366 00:27:07,560 --> 00:27:10,440 contrarian. They believed they had found the 367 00:27:10,480 --> 00:27:14,320 uncensored original script, the one that explains why, despite 368 00:27:14,320 --> 00:27:17,880 our divine creation, we find ourselves living in a world 369 00:27:17,880 --> 00:27:21,400 defined by pain, suffering, decay and death. 370 00:27:34,160 --> 00:27:37,720 Before the universe, before the stars, and before the gods, 371 00:27:38,000 --> 00:27:41,720 there was the Monad. The Gnostics didn't call this 372 00:27:41,720 --> 00:27:45,640 God in the way we do. They called it the Proarch, the 373 00:27:45,640 --> 00:27:48,880 first beginning, or the bythose the profound depth. 374 00:27:50,000 --> 00:27:54,360 It is a silent, unthinkably vast ocean of pure consciousness. 375 00:27:56,720 --> 00:27:59,240 It is the source from which all light flows. 376 00:28:00,000 --> 00:28:04,080 From this source, a series of divine emanations began to flow 377 00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:09,440 outward, like ripples in a pond. These pairs of male and female 378 00:28:09,440 --> 00:28:14,320 energies are called the Aeons. Together they form the Pluroma, 379 00:28:14,600 --> 00:28:18,360 the Fullness, the original perfect realm of light. 380 00:28:19,000 --> 00:28:23,280 The glitch in the system came from the youngest Aeon, Sophia 381 00:28:23,560 --> 00:28:26,760 Wisdom. In her desire to understand the 382 00:28:26,760 --> 00:28:31,280 depth of the Monad, Sophia acted alone, without her male 383 00:28:31,280 --> 00:28:36,840 counterpart in the divine realm. This was an impossibility, a 384 00:28:36,840 --> 00:28:38,960 violation of the cosmic symmetry. 385 00:28:39,680 --> 00:28:43,600 Her thought took on a life of its own, but because it was born 386 00:28:43,600 --> 00:28:47,560 of a singular imbalance desire, it was deformed. 387 00:28:48,440 --> 00:28:52,360 Horrified by what she had produced, a lion headed serpent 388 00:28:52,360 --> 00:28:57,320 with eyes of fire, Sophia cast it out of the Pluroma, hiding it 389 00:28:57,320 --> 00:29:02,200 within a thick cloud of shadow. This abortion of the divine 390 00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:05,320 realm was Yeldebauth, the Demiurge. 391 00:29:06,480 --> 00:29:09,480 Born in the darkness and unaware of the light of the Pluroma 392 00:29:09,480 --> 00:29:12,960 above him, Yeldebauth believed he was the only thing in 393 00:29:12,960 --> 00:29:15,880 existence. He looked at the shadows and the 394 00:29:15,880 --> 00:29:20,560 void and began to organize them. He was a blind God. 395 00:29:21,120 --> 00:29:25,560 He wasn't necessarily evil, but he was ignorant and arrogant. 396 00:29:26,120 --> 00:29:28,920 He mimicked the patterns of the Pluroma he couldn't see, 397 00:29:29,360 --> 00:29:33,000 creating a physical world of matter, decay, and death. 398 00:29:33,920 --> 00:29:38,440 He then created 7 assistants, the Archons, the planetary 399 00:29:38,440 --> 00:29:41,200 jailers who rule over the spheres of our world. 400 00:29:42,720 --> 00:29:46,400 As this Demiurge breathed life into the first human, a strange 401 00:29:46,400 --> 00:29:50,040 thing happened. Sophia, seeking to recover the 402 00:29:50,040 --> 00:29:52,560 light she had lost, tricked the Demiurge. 403 00:29:53,480 --> 00:29:57,520 As he breathed spirit into man, he unknowingly exhaled the 404 00:29:57,520 --> 00:30:00,000 divine spark he had inherited from his mother. 405 00:30:00,880 --> 00:30:05,000 The lower God had built the cage, but the higher God's light 406 00:30:05,000 --> 00:30:07,000 was now trapped inside the prisoners. 407 00:30:07,840 --> 00:30:12,080 This is the Gnostic tragedy. We are divine royalty living in 408 00:30:12,080 --> 00:30:15,080 a slum, suffering from a cosmic amnesia. 409 00:30:27,680 --> 00:30:30,880 If you went looking for the Gnostics in the 2nd century, 410 00:30:31,440 --> 00:30:35,360 rather than a single church, you would find a chaotic ecosystem 411 00:30:35,360 --> 00:30:39,440 of underground cells, secret study circles, and radical 412 00:30:39,440 --> 00:30:42,600 philosophers. And because gnosis was an 413 00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:47,640 experience rather than a set of rules, the story of the cosmic 414 00:30:47,640 --> 00:30:50,480 error changed depending on who you asked. 415 00:30:51,440 --> 00:30:53,520 Different maps of the same prison. 416 00:30:54,720 --> 00:30:57,960 The most elaborate version came from a group calling themselves 417 00:30:58,240 --> 00:31:01,960 the Seed of Seth. Their mythos was a sprawling 418 00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:05,360 cosmic epic. To them, the tragedy was a 419 00:31:05,360 --> 00:31:09,640 literal war of intelligence. In their texts, the fall of 420 00:31:09,640 --> 00:31:13,320 Sophia was a cascade. They described a universe 421 00:31:13,320 --> 00:31:17,600 guarded by the Archons. 7 Planetary wardens who patrol the 422 00:31:17,600 --> 00:31:21,600 borders of our reality to ensure no soul ever escapes. 423 00:31:22,600 --> 00:31:26,440 The Sethians saw themselves as divine sleeper agents. 424 00:31:27,240 --> 00:31:31,520 They believed the true God had sent a third son, the biblical 425 00:31:31,520 --> 00:31:36,600 Seth, to move through history in various disguises, whispering 426 00:31:36,600 --> 00:31:39,680 the codes of the jailbreak to those who were ready to wake up. 427 00:31:41,080 --> 00:31:46,560 Then there was Valentinus, arguably the most brilliant mind 428 00:31:46,600 --> 00:31:50,040 of the ancient world. He took the horror of the 429 00:31:50,040 --> 00:31:53,320 Gnostic myth and turned it into a psychological drama. 430 00:31:54,320 --> 00:31:58,080 To the Valentinians, the Demiurge wasn't a monster. 431 00:31:59,040 --> 00:32:01,000 He was a tragic figure of ignorance. 432 00:32:01,920 --> 00:32:06,040 He was like a child playing with blocks, unaware that the wood he 433 00:32:06,040 --> 00:32:10,120 was using was actually the solidified grief and fear of his 434 00:32:10,120 --> 00:32:13,960 mother, Sophia. In this version, our physical 435 00:32:13,960 --> 00:32:16,720 world is literally made of divine tears. 436 00:32:17,440 --> 00:32:21,440 The mountains are her frozen sorrow, The oceans are her 437 00:32:21,440 --> 00:32:25,520 weeping. For a Valentinian, the path to 438 00:32:25,520 --> 00:32:28,920 Gnosis was about healing the divine rift through love. 439 00:32:29,920 --> 00:32:33,160 They believed that even the Demiurge, the blind Creator 440 00:32:33,160 --> 00:32:36,760 himself, could eventually be educated and brought back into 441 00:32:36,760 --> 00:32:42,440 the light. In the more obscure circles, 442 00:32:42,440 --> 00:32:45,640 like those who followed a teacher named Justin, the story 443 00:32:45,640 --> 00:32:49,280 took a barbarian turn. They believed there were 3 444 00:32:49,280 --> 00:32:54,360 original powers, a good God, a flawed father named Elohim, and 445 00:32:54,360 --> 00:32:57,320 a half woman, half snake mother named Eden. 446 00:32:58,200 --> 00:33:02,560 In this bizarre triangle, Elohim and Eden fell in love and 447 00:33:02,560 --> 00:33:05,520 created humanity as a celebration of their union. 448 00:33:06,520 --> 00:33:09,920 But when Elohim finally saw the true light above him, he 449 00:33:09,920 --> 00:33:12,360 abandoned the earth to return to the heavens. 450 00:33:13,040 --> 00:33:17,640 Eden, heartbroken and enraged at being left behind, turned her 451 00:33:17,640 --> 00:33:20,200 sorrow into the evils of the world. 452 00:33:21,480 --> 00:33:24,800 We are the children of a broken home, caught between a father 453 00:33:24,800 --> 00:33:28,040 who left us and a mother who is holding us hostage in her grief. 454 00:33:29,320 --> 00:33:32,760 One of the most radical edges of the movement were the canines. 455 00:33:33,560 --> 00:33:36,440 They believed that the God of the Bible was so fundamentally 456 00:33:36,440 --> 00:33:40,600 evil that the only way to be holy was to do the exact 457 00:33:40,640 --> 00:33:44,160 opposite of his laws. They venerated the villains of 458 00:33:44,160 --> 00:33:48,920 history as freedom fighters. They saw Cain as the first man 459 00:33:48,920 --> 00:33:52,320 to resist the tyrant, and they saw the people of Sodom as 460 00:33:52,320 --> 00:33:54,840 heroes who were destroyed because they wouldn't bow to the 461 00:33:54,840 --> 00:33:58,240 jailer. Most shockingly, they believed 462 00:33:58,240 --> 00:34:01,840 Judas Iscariot was the only apostle who truly understood 463 00:34:01,920 --> 00:34:06,120 Jesus. In their view, Jesus asked Judas 464 00:34:06,120 --> 00:34:09,960 to betray him so that his soul could finally be released from 465 00:34:09,960 --> 00:34:14,920 the prison of his physical body. To a canine, the betrayal was 466 00:34:14,920 --> 00:34:17,040 actually the ultimate act of friendship. 467 00:34:17,880 --> 00:34:20,840 These diverse myths were all just different ways of 468 00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:23,239 describing the same haunting intuition. 469 00:34:23,920 --> 00:34:27,679 You are an exile in your own skin and now is the time to find 470 00:34:27,679 --> 00:34:35,440 your way home. I can explain Gnosticism if you 471 00:34:35,440 --> 00:34:37,400 want. Why don't you give us a a 472 00:34:37,560 --> 00:34:40,880 thumbnail sketch of what it means to to have a Gnostic? 473 00:34:41,040 --> 00:34:42,440 Yeah, Christian theology. What is that? 474 00:34:42,520 --> 00:34:45,920 So Gnosticism, the term comes from the Greek word for 475 00:34:45,920 --> 00:34:48,199 knowledge. The Greek word for knowledge is 476 00:34:48,199 --> 00:34:53,120 gnosis, spelled with AG. GNOSIS means knowledge in Greek. 477 00:34:53,639 --> 00:34:57,320 There were a number of Christian groups in the second and third 478 00:34:57,320 --> 00:35:01,240 centuries, especially starting out probably somewhat after the 479 00:35:01,240 --> 00:35:05,160 New Testament period, who maintained that Jesus brought 480 00:35:05,160 --> 00:35:08,960 salvation not by dying on the cross and being raised again, 481 00:35:09,400 --> 00:35:14,080 but by delivering the secret knowledge that was necessary for 482 00:35:14,080 --> 00:35:18,200 people to learn so that they could escape the material 483 00:35:18,200 --> 00:35:22,720 trappings of their body to go to a spiritual heavenly realm. 484 00:35:23,600 --> 00:35:27,000 The idea, the basic idea behind this is a kind of a dualism 485 00:35:27,000 --> 00:35:31,920 where there's a spiritual realm that is good and positive and 486 00:35:31,920 --> 00:35:34,800 there's a material realm that is really quite awful. 487 00:35:35,040 --> 00:35:38,400 And so our suffering comes because we're material beings. 488 00:35:38,640 --> 00:35:41,880 And so our bodies can get injured, we can starve. 489 00:35:42,040 --> 00:35:46,000 We, we die, we, you know, bad things and we get diseases, bad 490 00:35:46,000 --> 00:35:47,640 things happen to us because of our bodies. 491 00:35:48,040 --> 00:35:50,560 And so the material world itself is a problem. 492 00:35:51,360 --> 00:35:54,280 And so in these Gnostic religions, the material world 493 00:35:54,280 --> 00:35:57,320 did not come into existence by the creation of a good God. 494 00:35:58,120 --> 00:36:01,080 The material world came into existence because of a cosmic 495 00:36:01,080 --> 00:36:04,240 disaster. And before the cosmic disaster, 496 00:36:04,240 --> 00:36:07,200 there was only a spiritual realm with divine beings. 497 00:36:07,560 --> 00:36:10,680 But because of things that happened in this this realm, 498 00:36:11,200 --> 00:36:13,480 eventually there was a disaster that happened that led to the 499 00:36:13,480 --> 00:36:18,120 creation of the material world. And it LED some elements of the 500 00:36:18,120 --> 00:36:20,960 spiritual world to be trapped here in human bodies. 501 00:36:21,720 --> 00:36:25,520 So some people have a divine spark within them, a part of the 502 00:36:25,520 --> 00:36:28,080 divine within them. And the goal of the Gnostic 503 00:36:28,080 --> 00:36:31,920 religion is to allow them to escape their material trappings, 504 00:36:31,920 --> 00:36:33,840 to return to their spiritual home. 505 00:36:34,200 --> 00:36:37,600 And that can only happen if they receive correct knowledge, 506 00:36:37,680 --> 00:36:40,920 gnosis. And so these Gnostic texts are 507 00:36:40,920 --> 00:36:45,600 largely about the revelations of the secret knowledge that can 508 00:36:45,600 --> 00:36:52,680 bring salvation. To the Orthodox, Jesus was the 509 00:36:52,680 --> 00:36:56,120 son of the Creator, sent to mend the relationship between the 510 00:36:56,120 --> 00:37:00,400 Potter and his clay. But to a Gnostic, that version 511 00:37:00,400 --> 00:37:05,000 of Jesus was a decoy. In the secret traditions, Jesus 512 00:37:05,000 --> 00:37:08,000 was something far more radical, an alien. 513 00:37:09,120 --> 00:37:12,600 He did not come from the God of this world, nor was he sent to 514 00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:16,280 uphold its laws. He was a foreigner from the 515 00:37:16,280 --> 00:37:20,840 Pluroma, the realm of pure light that exists outside the black 516 00:37:20,840 --> 00:37:25,480 box of our universe, and he was on a cosmic rescue mission. 517 00:37:26,400 --> 00:37:30,520 He came not to pay a debt to a jealous God or to die for sins. 518 00:37:31,320 --> 00:37:34,760 He came to infiltrate the prison, bypass the Archonic 519 00:37:34,760 --> 00:37:38,920 security, and whisper the source code of our true identity into 520 00:37:38,920 --> 00:37:42,880 the ears of the captives. He was the ghost in the machine, 521 00:37:43,400 --> 00:37:46,640 a being of such high frequency that the physical world couldn't 522 00:37:46,640 --> 00:37:51,200 even truly hold him. The most jarring difference in 523 00:37:51,200 --> 00:37:54,280 the Gnostic mythos is the nature of Jesus's body. 524 00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:58,560 Most Gnostic sects were dos Attic from the Greek Dokin 525 00:37:58,560 --> 00:38:02,240 meaning to seem. They believe that because the 526 00:38:02,240 --> 00:38:06,080 material world was an evil construct of the Demiurge, a 527 00:38:06,080 --> 00:38:10,560 pure divine being from the Pluroma could never truly 528 00:38:10,560 --> 00:38:14,720 inhabit flesh. He wore a man like a disguise. 529 00:38:15,560 --> 00:38:19,760 He was a holographic projection. In the Acts of John, it's 530 00:38:19,760 --> 00:38:23,200 claimed that when Jesus walked, he left no footprints. 531 00:38:24,000 --> 00:38:27,160 When his disciples tried to touch him, their hands passed 532 00:38:27,160 --> 00:38:28,680 through him as if he were made of light. 533 00:38:32,280 --> 00:38:35,040 The most controversial of the Gnostic inversions was the 534 00:38:35,040 --> 00:38:37,960 crucifixion. In the second treatise of the 535 00:38:37,960 --> 00:38:41,400 Great Seth, Jesus himself narrates the execution. 536 00:38:41,920 --> 00:38:45,480 He describes standing on a nearby hill laughing while the 537 00:38:45,480 --> 00:38:48,080 Romans and the Pharisees crucify a substitute. 538 00:38:48,920 --> 00:38:52,080 They thought they were killing the Son of God, but they were 539 00:38:52,080 --> 00:38:56,280 actually nailing a shadow or a man of flesh named Simon of 540 00:38:56,280 --> 00:39:01,160 Cyrene to a piece of wood. I was laughing at their 541 00:39:01,160 --> 00:39:04,400 ignorance, for I was not ashamed as they were. 542 00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:09,720 To the Gnostic, the idea that God could be killed by a Roman 543 00:39:09,720 --> 00:39:14,000 spear was an absurdity. The Jesus that died was merely 544 00:39:14,000 --> 00:39:16,920 the shell that the Demiurge's Law could reach. 545 00:39:17,960 --> 00:39:21,760 The true Christ remained untouched, mocking the Archons 546 00:39:21,760 --> 00:39:33,320 for thinking they had won. In the Saithian tradition, the 547 00:39:33,320 --> 00:39:36,480 role of Jesus is explicitly linked back to the Garden. 548 00:39:37,600 --> 00:39:41,040 Some texts even suggest that Jesus himself was the serpent in 549 00:39:41,040 --> 00:39:43,640 the Garden of Eden. He came to finish what the 550 00:39:43,640 --> 00:39:46,800 serpent started. If the serpent gave the first 551 00:39:46,800 --> 00:39:51,000 software update, the realization that we are naked ignorant, He 552 00:39:51,000 --> 00:39:52,920 came to deliver the full version. 553 00:39:53,560 --> 00:39:57,760 He is the Logos, the word of the True Father, sent to remind the 554 00:39:57,760 --> 00:40:01,040 divine spark that it doesn't belong to the King of this 555 00:40:01,040 --> 00:40:03,800 world. While the New Testament ends 556 00:40:03,800 --> 00:40:07,040 with the resurrection and a quick departure, Gnostic texts 557 00:40:07,040 --> 00:40:10,280 like the Pistus Sophia claim that Jesus stayed on Earth for 558 00:40:10,280 --> 00:40:14,880 11 or 12 years after his death. During this time, he sat with 559 00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:18,120 Mary Magdalene, John, and Thomas, giving them the real 560 00:40:18,120 --> 00:40:21,400 lessons. He taught them the passwords, 561 00:40:21,720 --> 00:40:25,400 the Apatas, the names of the Archons, and the exact 562 00:40:25,400 --> 00:40:29,600 invocations needed to slip past the planetary tollbooths and 563 00:40:29,600 --> 00:40:32,520 return to the Pluroma in the Gospel of Mary. 564 00:40:32,520 --> 00:40:35,920 In the Gospel of Philip, Mary Magdalene is not a penitent 565 00:40:35,920 --> 00:40:39,320 prostitute, She is the apostle to the apostles. 566 00:40:40,280 --> 00:40:45,360 The text suggests a consort relationship, a syzygy divine 567 00:40:45,360 --> 00:40:48,440 pair. Jesus loved her more than all 568 00:40:48,440 --> 00:40:52,040 the other disciples because she was the only one whose gnosis 569 00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:55,280 was complete. This represented the restoration 570 00:40:55,280 --> 00:40:59,560 of the male and female balance, the Pluroma that had been broken 571 00:40:59,560 --> 00:41:03,000 when Sophia fell. In her, Jesus found the earthly 572 00:41:03,000 --> 00:41:04,680 reflection of the Divine Feminine. 573 00:41:12,450 --> 00:41:16,210 We have uncovered the library, identified the jailer, and met 574 00:41:16,210 --> 00:41:19,770 the cosmic infiltrator. But to understand the true scale 575 00:41:19,770 --> 00:41:23,250 of the Gnostic vision, we have to look closer at the bars of 576 00:41:23,250 --> 00:41:26,330 the cage itself. We have to look at the mechanics 577 00:41:26,330 --> 00:41:29,130 of the Matrix and how the ancients believed we could 578 00:41:29,130 --> 00:41:31,370 finally break the cycle of the Return. 579 00:41:33,120 --> 00:41:36,160 In the Gnostic universe, the Earth is not at the center of a 580 00:41:36,160 --> 00:41:39,680 vast open heaven. It is at the bottom of a nested 581 00:41:39,680 --> 00:41:43,600 sphere of prisons. Between our world and the true 582 00:41:43,600 --> 00:41:47,880 light of the Pluroma stand the seven planetary spheres, each 583 00:41:47,880 --> 00:41:50,920 ruled by an Archon, A ruler or governor. 584 00:41:51,960 --> 00:41:54,920 These are the seven sons of the Demiurge. 585 00:41:55,760 --> 00:41:59,200 They were born of his ignorance, and they share his jealousy. 586 00:42:00,120 --> 00:42:03,400 To a Gnostic, the planets weren't just lights in the sky, 587 00:42:04,120 --> 00:42:07,920 they were checkpoints. Each Archon acts as a cosmic 588 00:42:07,920 --> 00:42:11,440 customs officer. When a soul dies and attempts to 589 00:42:11,440 --> 00:42:14,640 ascend back to the source, it must pass through each gate. 590 00:42:15,560 --> 00:42:19,040 If the soul doesn't have the correct pass codes, the secret 591 00:42:19,040 --> 00:42:23,360 names and signs, the Archons will block its path, judge it 592 00:42:23,360 --> 00:42:27,760 based on its sins against the Demiurge's Law, and cast it back 593 00:42:27,760 --> 00:42:30,120 down into a new body to begin the cycle again. 594 00:42:31,440 --> 00:42:36,200 To pass through the void, the toll must be paid. 595 00:42:37,080 --> 00:42:40,680 In the Secret Book of John, the Archons are described as mixing 596 00:42:40,680 --> 00:42:44,600 a drink of forgetfulness derived from the shadows of the world. 597 00:42:45,480 --> 00:42:48,880 They force the soul to drink this before it is reincarnated, 598 00:42:49,440 --> 00:42:53,320 ensuring that when we wake up in a new body, we have no memory of 599 00:42:53,320 --> 00:42:56,680 our divine origin. We forget we are royalty. 600 00:42:57,200 --> 00:43:00,280 We forget the Pluroma. We start to believe that this 601 00:43:00,280 --> 00:43:04,480 world and the Archons who rule it are all there is. 602 00:43:05,080 --> 00:43:09,280 This is the cycle of the return. The Archons don't want to 603 00:43:09,280 --> 00:43:11,600 destroy you, they want to harvest you. 604 00:43:12,320 --> 00:43:15,440 They feed on the emotional energy, the fears and the 605 00:43:15,440 --> 00:43:18,200 worship of the sparks they keep trapped in the basement. 606 00:43:26,500 --> 00:43:29,820 In the Books of Zhu, one of the most technical Gnostic texts, 607 00:43:30,200 --> 00:43:33,200 Jesus provides the literal invocations and sigils needed to 608 00:43:33,200 --> 00:43:38,840 bypass each Archon. He tells his disciples, when you 609 00:43:38,840 --> 00:43:43,080 come to the third gate, the Archon will ask you who are you 610 00:43:43,160 --> 00:43:48,240 And you shall answer. I am a son of the father of the 611 00:43:48,240 --> 00:43:52,560 pre existent one. I am a spark of the light. 612 00:44:12,880 --> 00:44:16,720 For nearly 2000 years, the Gnostic vision was buried, 613 00:44:17,200 --> 00:44:21,640 burned and forgotten. But in the 20th century, the 614 00:44:21,640 --> 00:44:26,240 secret seed began to grow again. It started with the legendary 615 00:44:26,240 --> 00:44:30,480 psychologist Carl Jung. When he read the Nag Hamadi 616 00:44:30,480 --> 00:44:33,680 texts, he saw a map of the human psyche. 617 00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:39,320 Jung realized that the Demiurge, the arrogant, blind creator, is 618 00:44:39,320 --> 00:44:45,360 the ego, the part of us that builds walls, creates rules, and 619 00:44:45,360 --> 00:44:47,200 fears anything it cannot control. 620 00:44:48,080 --> 00:44:52,640 Sophia is our intuition, our fallen wisdom trapped in the 621 00:44:52,640 --> 00:44:57,080 basement of our subconscious. The jailbreak the Gnostics 622 00:44:57,080 --> 00:45:02,160 talked about is what Jung called individuation, the process of 623 00:45:02,160 --> 00:45:06,920 waking up to who you truly are. But the most startling resonance 624 00:45:06,920 --> 00:45:11,640 is in our technology. Today, leading physicists openly 625 00:45:11,640 --> 00:45:15,760 discuss the simulation hypothesis, the idea that our 626 00:45:15,760 --> 00:45:20,360 reality is an artificial construct, a base layer of code 627 00:45:20,720 --> 00:45:22,760 generated by a higher intelligence. 628 00:45:24,720 --> 00:45:29,000 Let me tell you why you're here. You're here because you know. 629 00:45:29,000 --> 00:45:31,560 Something what you know? You can't explain. 630 00:45:32,280 --> 00:45:36,360 But you feel it. You felt it your entire life. 631 00:45:37,160 --> 00:45:38,680 That there's something wrong with the world. 632 00:45:38,680 --> 00:45:41,880 You don't know what it. Is, but it's there, like a 633 00:45:41,880 --> 00:45:45,200 splinter in your mind, driving you mad. 634 00:45:46,840 --> 00:45:48,760 It is this feeling that has brought you to me. 635 00:45:52,280 --> 00:45:53,920 Do you know what I'm talking about? 636 00:45:55,840 --> 00:46:03,280 The Matrix. Do you want to know what it is? 637 00:46:05,160 --> 00:46:09,000 In modern films like The Matrix, a man realizes his world is a 638 00:46:09,000 --> 00:46:12,520 digital cage, a prison built by an architect. 639 00:46:13,280 --> 00:46:16,520 This is the ancient Gnostic myth played out in real time. 640 00:46:17,240 --> 00:46:20,360 We are still obsessed with the idea that there is a real world 641 00:46:20,360 --> 00:46:22,680 behind the flickering screen of our senses. 642 00:46:25,400 --> 00:46:27,800 The Gnostic vision ends with a withdrawal. 643 00:46:28,640 --> 00:46:31,520 Eventually every spark of light will be recovered. 644 00:46:32,360 --> 00:46:36,560 Every prisoner will find the exit, and when the last spark 645 00:46:36,560 --> 00:46:40,800 leaves this world, the material universe, the Demiurge's great 646 00:46:40,800 --> 00:46:43,760 mistake, will simply cease to exist. 647 00:46:44,960 --> 00:46:48,560 Without the light to sustain it, the shadow will evaporate. 648 00:46:52,600 --> 00:46:56,160 What is Gnosticism? It is the oldest rebellion in 649 00:46:56,160 --> 00:46:59,320 history. It is the refusal to accept that 650 00:46:59,320 --> 00:47:03,320 suffering is divine or that our limitations are natural. 651 00:47:04,520 --> 00:47:08,440 It is a legacy of thinkers, artists, and rebels who believed 652 00:47:08,440 --> 00:47:13,040 that the true God doesn't demand worship, it demands awakening. 653 00:47:14,160 --> 00:47:17,240 The world is a gift only if you are free to leave it. 654 00:47:18,240 --> 00:47:21,360 And the key to the gate isn't found in a temple or a book. 655 00:47:21,800 --> 00:47:24,720 It's found in the realization that we were never prisoners to 656 00:47:24,720 --> 00:47:27,920 begin with. We were royalty who forgot we 657 00:47:27,920 --> 00:47:28,880 were wearing a crown.