The best book (epic poem) ever, Jungian shadowstuff both pleasurable and nightmarish, a 21st century history of 2nd century gnosticism, and the religion of UFOs and those who encounter them.
In my Youtube stumbling, I happened upon Justine Sledge, who runs a channel called Esoterica. I wasn't sure what to make of him and my first instincts are to hard reject because I usually assume anything centered on magic, offbeat 'hidden' religions (like gnosticism) etc. is just pure woo. But I was surprised to find he is a rather materialist centered (but a type of orthodox Jew) person who wants to approach the whole topic as a scholar who doesn't focus on judging either positive or negatively the validity. An example of his work:
In terms of gnosticism, one thing I find somewhat interesting is the Bible is rather coy in many places. Jesus returns but nothing is really said about the time the apostles spend with him. Instead he quickly leaves the narrative and much is concerned with how the apostles decide how they will run things...and, of course, Paul arrives and seems to quickly take a role equal to them even though he literally didn't know Jesus in life (of course since many suspect Paul wrote Acts, you have to wonder).
Going back a few thousand years there was:
1. No set of books known as 'the Bible' but a host of people telling stories and multiple manuscripts all over.
2. If you approach this from the POV of a fiction author, this is rather choppy writing. The decision of who was going to handle the money and how they were going to eat should be cut from any story and instead given to some of the conversations that must have happened. Odd that we don't get much of "ok so you really came back from the dead, what went down, who did you see, what did you do, what are we to make of all this?"
This hints to me there were probably quite a few texts out there that did cover those talks. They maybe just didn't make the cut because too many contradicted each other and no one could agree which ones came closer to being from 'real sources' or.....
There is a bit of fetish we have for 'hidden knowledge'. This manifests itself in schools of thought that tries to use the hook of 'you can't get to the good stuff till you prepare yourself by doing all this first' to initiate and keep its memberships. The downside of this is that it is hard to sustain in a hyper cynical information culture like we have now. Back then it could have also been fatal to the schools of thought because their instincts were to literally withhold their texts or even have texts that had acknowledged lies in them when debates were had over what would become the canon. You can esoteric yourself out of the conversation if you push it hard enough.
Today UFO adherents seem to exercise this same tactic. There's always some other truth that you can only reach by just another inch down the rabbit hole. Rarely is any back tracking done to correct obvious errors in their facts or reasoning nor is there any evidence that they have a system of error correction. Well there is a system, if someone is deemed to be a traitor to the group or cause, their stuff is then disparaged often using the tools provided by the enlightenment.
I’m one of those people who get pretty annoyed by mentions of quantum mechanics. But I guess in a modern world where everything has a scientific answer, it’s a refuge of sorts that there are seemingly mysterious things at the foundations.
As I mentioned, I have a call scheduled with Litwa (author of The Evil Creator on Wed.). He was just terminated from Boston College (Jesuit school) and is trying to thrive as an online influencer, down in Australia.
You're right that The Evil Creator book (which I love) focuses on John 8:44. Here are other textual hooks to support the demiurge hypothesis:
3. Inter-textual analysis: contrast 1 Chronicles 21:1 with 2 Samuel 24:1
4. Deuteronomy 32:8-9: suggests that YHWH is one among other gods
5. Psalm 82: again refers to a divine assembly
That's from Grok. Off the top of my head, here are some more:
6. The idea of a demiurge aligns with parallels in Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and other texts
7. Israel Anderson is my favorite Bible scholar (he's writing a book). He has dozens of videos providing additional hooks that are not widely covered in more academic literature. I linked the Garden of Eden video above. You can find others here: https://www.youtube.com/@IsraelAndersonShow/videos
These latter two also show how inter-textual between Jesus sayings and the Old Testament strongly indicates that Jesus contrasted himself and his Father with YHWH.
8. There is also the general philosophy of Marcion. Since you're Mormon and reject Catholicism, you might be interested to study why the Catholic Church rejected him as a heretic.
9. Similarly, there is an abundance of extra-canonical texts that the Church withheld from the catholic canon, including the Book of Enoch and the various gnostic texts, some of them only discovered in Egypt in the 1940s, and some of those late discoveries emphasizing the demiurge hypothesis much stronger than older-known gnostic texts like The Gospel of Thomas.
10. Lastly, given how seemingly prominent Satanism is in the modern world of elites, there is an aesthetic argument for the demiurge argument: it would be nice is all of our favorite celebrities and politicians had some good justification for engaging in practices that look optically Satanic or occult (think the Washington Monument).
In my Youtube stumbling, I happened upon Justine Sledge, who runs a channel called Esoterica. I wasn't sure what to make of him and my first instincts are to hard reject because I usually assume anything centered on magic, offbeat 'hidden' religions (like gnosticism) etc. is just pure woo. But I was surprised to find he is a rather materialist centered (but a type of orthodox Jew) person who wants to approach the whole topic as a scholar who doesn't focus on judging either positive or negatively the validity. An example of his work:
https://youtu.be/2WltsWVpZw0?si=wjWQyLiSliZpi19P
In terms of gnosticism, one thing I find somewhat interesting is the Bible is rather coy in many places. Jesus returns but nothing is really said about the time the apostles spend with him. Instead he quickly leaves the narrative and much is concerned with how the apostles decide how they will run things...and, of course, Paul arrives and seems to quickly take a role equal to them even though he literally didn't know Jesus in life (of course since many suspect Paul wrote Acts, you have to wonder).
Going back a few thousand years there was:
1. No set of books known as 'the Bible' but a host of people telling stories and multiple manuscripts all over.
2. If you approach this from the POV of a fiction author, this is rather choppy writing. The decision of who was going to handle the money and how they were going to eat should be cut from any story and instead given to some of the conversations that must have happened. Odd that we don't get much of "ok so you really came back from the dead, what went down, who did you see, what did you do, what are we to make of all this?"
This hints to me there were probably quite a few texts out there that did cover those talks. They maybe just didn't make the cut because too many contradicted each other and no one could agree which ones came closer to being from 'real sources' or.....
There is a bit of fetish we have for 'hidden knowledge'. This manifests itself in schools of thought that tries to use the hook of 'you can't get to the good stuff till you prepare yourself by doing all this first' to initiate and keep its memberships. The downside of this is that it is hard to sustain in a hyper cynical information culture like we have now. Back then it could have also been fatal to the schools of thought because their instincts were to literally withhold their texts or even have texts that had acknowledged lies in them when debates were had over what would become the canon. You can esoteric yourself out of the conversation if you push it hard enough.
Today UFO adherents seem to exercise this same tactic. There's always some other truth that you can only reach by just another inch down the rabbit hole. Rarely is any back tracking done to correct obvious errors in their facts or reasoning nor is there any evidence that they have a system of error correction. Well there is a system, if someone is deemed to be a traitor to the group or cause, their stuff is then disparaged often using the tools provided by the enlightenment.
I’m one of those people who get pretty annoyed by mentions of quantum mechanics. But I guess in a modern world where everything has a scientific answer, it’s a refuge of sorts that there are seemingly mysterious things at the foundations.
As I mentioned, I have a call scheduled with Litwa (author of The Evil Creator on Wed.). He was just terminated from Boston College (Jesuit school) and is trying to thrive as an online influencer, down in Australia.
You're right that The Evil Creator book (which I love) focuses on John 8:44. Here are other textual hooks to support the demiurge hypothesis:
1. Genesis 3: the serpent clearly tells the truth while YHWH lies (https://youtu.be/UoEorNACwmA?si=vwoX1fqxncOvHHc1)
2. Job 1-2: YHWH and Satan working together
3. Inter-textual analysis: contrast 1 Chronicles 21:1 with 2 Samuel 24:1
4. Deuteronomy 32:8-9: suggests that YHWH is one among other gods
5. Psalm 82: again refers to a divine assembly
That's from Grok. Off the top of my head, here are some more:
6. The idea of a demiurge aligns with parallels in Sumerian, Babylonian, Egyptian, and other texts
7. Israel Anderson is my favorite Bible scholar (he's writing a book). He has dozens of videos providing additional hooks that are not widely covered in more academic literature. I linked the Garden of Eden video above. You can find others here: https://www.youtube.com/@IsraelAndersonShow/videos
Two more examples:
The temptation of Jesus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IOl1TVFGnTM
The Good Father Discourse (Part 1 of 2): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jb1SAmTuAak
These latter two also show how inter-textual between Jesus sayings and the Old Testament strongly indicates that Jesus contrasted himself and his Father with YHWH.
8. There is also the general philosophy of Marcion. Since you're Mormon and reject Catholicism, you might be interested to study why the Catholic Church rejected him as a heretic.
9. Similarly, there is an abundance of extra-canonical texts that the Church withheld from the catholic canon, including the Book of Enoch and the various gnostic texts, some of them only discovered in Egypt in the 1940s, and some of those late discoveries emphasizing the demiurge hypothesis much stronger than older-known gnostic texts like The Gospel of Thomas.
10. Lastly, given how seemingly prominent Satanism is in the modern world of elites, there is an aesthetic argument for the demiurge argument: it would be nice is all of our favorite celebrities and politicians had some good justification for engaging in practices that look optically Satanic or occult (think the Washington Monument).