Yes, as a covenant Christian... but have also studied the Hebrew roots of the covenant
That's why you try to make Yahweh one and the same with the Monad. They're different entities. And this distinction matters. Because the God of the Old Testament and the Monad are not two different interpretations of the same God. They are not two faces of the same coin. These are two completely different entities operating at opposite frequencies with opposite natures. The God of the OT is jealous. He admits it. He screams it. He demands exclusive worship and threatens violent punishment for acknowledging other gods. That is insecurity. That is an entity that fears competition because he knows he is not actually supreme. The Monad does not have jealousy. Jealousy requires separation. Jealousy requires a lack of something. But the Monad is everything. It is the Pleroma, the fullness.
I observed that the historical Jesus (Yeshua) was "so into the OT"
No he wasn't. Jesus came to expose Yahweh, not to worship him. Let me tell you a story. Late one evening in the quiet hills of Galilee, Jesus sat with his inner circle reading from the Torah. The fire light danced on the parchment illuminating the ancient Hebrew letters. They had just finished a passage in Exodus, a terrifying passage where Yahweh commands the Israelites to slaughter entire cities, men, women, children, livestock, everything that breathes. Leave nothing alive. "The words hung in the air like smoke. Peter looked up from the scroll, his face pale and disturbed. He asked in a low voice. Master, why is the god of our fathers so violent? Why is he so jealous? Why is he so angry? You teach us about a father of infinite love, a father of light, but this he gestured at the scroll with a trembling hand. This does not feel like love, this feels like rage. Jesus closed the scroll slowly. He looked at each of them in the eyes, Peter, John, Mary Magdalene, and he said something that would eventually get him killed. Something the church would spend 2,000 years trying to erase from human consciousness. He said, "That is not the Father. That is not the Monad. The god you are reading about, the one who demands blood sacrifices... the one who drowns the world in floods... the one who commands genocide and calls it holy. He has a name. Yaldaboath, the demiurge, the chief archon, and he has been pretending to be the most high since the beginning of this realm. This teaching never made it into the Bible.
When the church compiled the canonical texts in the 4th century, they removed every reference to Jesus exposing Yahweh as the Demiurge. They burned the Gnostic Gospels. They hunted the teachers who preserved the distinction because they knew the danger. If Christians knew that the God of the Old Testament, the God they have been worshipping, praying to, fearing for millennia, was actually the chief archon, the false god of the material prison, not the true father Jesus served. The entire religious system would collapse instantly. No more guilt, no more fear of divine punishment, no more sacrificial salvation. Because that angry, jealous God demanding obedience was never God. He was the impostor and Jesus came to expose him.
It seems like "evil with extra steps". Perfect creature commits horrible imperfection and repents but that's not evil, but it explains why other creature isn't perfect but is evil and ignorant
So, let me get this straight. Are you saying Sophia is evil because she wanted to have a child and conceived without approval of the Father? But, Yahweh is righteous and good when demands the first born of all Israelites? when Yahweh demands war? when Yahweh demands genocide? how about the story of Jericho or the Amalekites. The attackers killed every inhabitant in the city, men, women, and children. They killed all the oxen, sheep, and donkeys. They spared only a prostitute who had protected their spies, along with her family. "So Joshua... utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded." - Joshua 10:40
LORD God of Israel is Yahweh, the god of the Jews. The god of the OT. Is this what you honestly believe?
That's why you try to make Yahweh one and the same with the Monad. They're different entities. And this distinction matters.
Well, I appreciate you saying so. If Monad and Yahweh are different, we're pursuing two different things and can only find harmony in some deeper truth than either. If, however, we are both to pursue truth at all costs, then differences can be reconciled. If my attempts to reconcile disappoint you, I can only encourage you to keep pursuing the truth at all costs and we will get there in time.
For instance, you have Monad as all Consciousness, but you also have him apparently unable to communicate, yet still able to emanate. It seems that if all emanates from the Monad then all must be present in the Monad, both communication and silence, for instance. So that's why I encourage you to attribute more to the Monad than you do, because otherwise the core deity is deficient and overtaken by his emanation. E.g., you do imply Jesus taught the Monad was love; but love is usually regarded as relational and not monistic.
Now when it comes to the ordinary objections people have to Yahweh's depiction in Hebrew, I've found that it regularly amounts simply to reading the text from a very different cultural perspective. Your questions about Yahweh all have good answers if we are willing to give the Hebrew authors credit for seeking to teach good values in their own culture.
"Jealousy" is one of those words that can be rightly or wrongly practiced. It is right to be jealous for something worthy. The Monad is worthy of being the core emanator and you are "jealous" on its behalf that it be held there and not deprecated. You might not want to use that word for that practice, but that protectiveness is the same meaning intended in the original. "Jealousy requires separation"? That's needlessly philosophical and separate from how the word was used culturally (it was the same as "zealous" and originally referred to being red-hot).
Threats of consequences for doing wrong are normal no matter how righteous the speaker is. If I do wrong, in your wisdom you know things that can go wrong for you and would want to warn me of them, even if I hated and disbelieved your warnings. That's not insecurity or fear.
Violence and anger: Just as communication must be present in the Monad, judgment must be present as well, or nothing would be right or wrong. If some things are wrong, there are generally negative natural consequences for doing wrong, or else people would be emboldened to continue doing wrong. So the Monad must be emanating in such unique way that evil consequences befall those who commit evil deeds (even up to one full and wisely placed deluge). This why Paul says, if not so, how could the world be judged? Similarly, humans believe in righteous anger, so it had to come from somewhere; and both violent consequences and a responsive resistance to the one who resists are (monistic) attributes that are the same laws for everyone.
Blood sacrifice: Noah's account pointed out that sins that rise to the level of lifeblood are to be paid by lifeblood (Hammurabi later agreed). This is the universal testimony of human justice. Adam's account also says that the way to restore the fellowship of the Creator was by taking on the skins he provided: this was understood as identifying with the innocence of the sacrificial victim and as being one with innocence again. The meat was eaten as a (restoration) covenant meal. Nowadays we eat meat all the time without thinking of the blood shed at all, but its original meaning is identification as innocent. There is no sin in humane slaughter.
"Genocide": First, that word was coined by a Jewish lawyer so that it can mean anything and nothing. However, most nations have recognized a principle of just war that includes (1) self-defense and (2) defense of innocents that are being abused by a belligerent. The details are complex given the number of wars in Scripture, but they all fall under teaching the principles of just war. The nations killed by the Israelites (and those killed by several other Semitic and Japhetic tribes) had been killing innocents for generations and all the other peoples of the realm generally agreed that the Canaanites and their allies were subject to the death penalty; and the individual Canaanite cities proved this by their belligerence when terms were sought (with peace-making exceptions like Gibeon). In this cultural context the events are explicable; but for skeptics who aren't interested in learning Near East history or in judging beyond biased appearances, it wouldn't matter.
Let me tell you a story.
Thank you for taking the time to compose your thoughts into a winsome narrative, but that doesn't help me to judge the history as shown by all the evidences.
Evidence: (1) There is no passage in Exodus where God says slaughter everything that breathes, you may be thinking of Deut. 20:16, but it doesn't mention the rest. So your creative narrative is off factually from the start. (2) Exodus (34:5-7) actually says the name of Yahweh was "Merciful and Gracious", as well as just toward the guilty, resolving both poles of the spectrum in One; so that same scroll you mention does teach a God of infinite love. Exodus (13:21) teaches that Yahweh was a Light to his people; same scroll again. (3) Historically, the very doubts you attribute to Peter had already been stated and answered and regarded as moot for centuries by the readers of the prophets. Ezek. 18:25-28 is one example (whole chapter applies), Hab. 1:2-3 another (whole book applies). The answers are deep and require attention and not batting away; and the people were familiar with them, often alluding to the same as self-evident, as Rom. 3:5-6 shows. (4) I pointed out to you that Jesus regularly identified the Father with the I Am, such as by quoting Scriptures using that name, so he was not going to deny the I Am found in the scrolls; and he said not one letter or serif would depart from the scrolls. (5) Just as "Yahweh" would have meant "I Am" (the self-existent) to everyone, if "Yaldabaoth" had been a word it would have been understood as "Yah Sabaoth" to everyone (a title used explicitly by Paul and James) and would've referred to a positive attribute, not a negative deity. (6) I've pointed out that Paul uses the word Demiurge to mean his own Christian God and not Samael (Heb. 11:10). (7) Now that same Bible, as I said, shows a chief archon that does pretend to be the Most High, explicitly so in Is. 14:14, given the name Helel (Lucifer) and who is explicitly different from Yahweh Sabaoth who is contrasted in 14:22 ff. So they already knew of this archon and that he was not Yahweh.
For me to take your narrative as if Jesus taught the rejection of the thousands of references to Yahweh in the Hebrew Scripture when he was noted for being more strict with Scripture than the Pharisees, as if he affirmed Yahweh in public without variation but privately taught the rejection of that same Yahweh, would be contrary to so much evidence that it's staggering to imagine such a disconnected hypothetical. Even if we argued that suppression and manipulation change things they can't change thousands of years of history. If Jesus had taught rejection of Yahweh he would never have had the following of thousands of faithful Jews (and if he had taught contradiction he would not have been worth following either). The reason he was accepted by so many, and by so many more after his death, was that there was no contradiction: like other prophets he had no problem with the Biblical character of Yahweh. The recent imagination that the Hebrew Lord and the Greek Lord are different is exceptionally strained and distant from the evidence.
in the 4th century, they removed every reference to Jesus exposing Yahweh as the Demiurge.
Argument from silence, there is no reference to Jesus rejecting Yahweh. There were many texts circulating, disagreeing with each other, but there was no "removal" because there was no compiled "book" from which to remove something. All Scriptures began as ordinary scrolls and were only counted as Scriptures after centuries of the covenant people accepting them as such; any other ordinary scrolls had ordinary circulation and never achieved broad recognition of being Scripture (though many reached a secondary level of "deuterocanonical"). The idea that there was some event at which a holy text could be expurgated and all centuries of prior evidence removed is, frankly, inquisitorial.
They burned the Gnostic Gospels.
There is no evidence of this. The only books I find burned by these Christians were Arius and Priscillian, neither of which are anything like gnostic.
They hunted the teachers who preserved the distinction because they knew the danger.
I don't know who this could refer to because most gnostic schools were closed long before Nicea. I don't know of any pure gnostic systems that could have continued in their own logic; the only thing I know of were side movements that had moved on from gnosticism to incorporate other elements so as to stay relevant with the majority proto-orthodoxy.
If Christians knew that the God of the Old Testament, the God they have been worshiping, praying to, fearing for millennia, was actually the chief archon, the false god of the material prison, not the true father Jesus served. The entire religious system would collapse instantly.
If.
But this question is either settled by agreement on actual facts, or by disagreement (separation). You don't strike me as someone who wants to pursue his own conception of the Monad if it isn't an actual fact.
No more guilt, no more fear of divine punishment, no more sacrificial salvation.
If it's a good thing that we have free will to choose right or wrong, then it follows that there is guilt and disorder for doing wrong and that it takes effort (sacrifice) to correct things that are wrong. If there's no guilt, then nothing is wrong and there's no morality.
Are you saying Sophia is evil because she wanted to have a child and conceived without approval of the Father?
Actually, we do consider that evil when humans do it, it's called eloping. But I'm not saying the narrative calls Sophia good or evil, I'm saying that imperfection entered the world somehow and I think it's silly to say one creature was imperfect and that caused another to be evil involuntarily when you could just say one creature chose of free will to be evil.
how about the story of Jericho or the Amalekites. The attackers killed every inhabitant in the city, men, women, and children. They killed all the oxen, sheep, and donkeys. They spared only a prostitute who had protected their spies, along with her family.
And Joshua sparing them proved that, if anyone else had accepted peace, they would have been spared too. The belligerents in the city were all to be killed; the animals were in this special case destroyed because of the centrality of the corruption. The passage is ambiguous (6:21, the word for youths) and might or might not imply that young children were also killed, but this only happens in one or two explicit passages out of all the Hebrew wars where it's stated that the children were knowing participants in the parents' rebellion.
You allude separately to Amalek, and to the southern campaign summarized in Josh. 10:40. Modern translations recognize that the word translated "utterly destroyed", haram, ultimately means "utterly dedicated" by whatever means (a modern equivalent is "neutralized", which can mean killed or merely incapacitated). It also appears in sources as "harem", dedicated women, who are obviously not destroyed. The kings were stated to be killed; everyone else was neutralized in the most effective way, whether they became casualties of war, or displaced refugees, or defectors like Gibeon.
So when you go to the original sources and culture, both Jewish and Christian review has hardly ever had problems with the righteousness of these wars. Only a recent skeptical view has separated itself from this testimony and invented a dichotomy. I doubt there are any actual gnostic texts that use these German arguments!
In sum, if we look at the divergences (rather than the convergences as I prefer), you'd have a Monad that has less power to create than its emanation does, you'd have a Yahwist culture for thousands of years that would have been walking in complete deception like every other culture, you'd have a Jesus that totally embodies that culture but that is also believed to be totally against it, and you'd have no power by this Monad to do anything about it except by random chance this Jesus happens to figure the Monad out (but still doesn't succeed in getting his message across). See why I don't focus on the divergences. I think it's more worthwhile to say, suspend for now the question of how this worked in history and just get the core points that anything we see in ourselves must be present in the Monad and anything we see in Jesus must have been consistent with the reality he lived in.
Monad as all Consciousness, but you also have him apparently unable to communicate, yet still able to emanate. It seems that if all emanates from the Monad then all must be present in the Monad, both communication and silence, for instance
This is a long reply from you and most has to do with you defending the jews and the church. At least that's my take at first glance. I'll attempt to reply to your first point, communication and silence. And it's an important point because most people think most important messages are communicated through words & speeches. They are not. In a world saturated with noise, constant notifications, opinions competing for attention, and an endless demand for expression, what if the greatest truth was never meant to be spoken aloud? Imagine that the most transformative teachings of Jesus were not delivered primarily through sermons, commandments, or even miracles, but through something far more demanding, subtle, and powerful. Silence.
Most people imagine Jesus as a teacher who spoke in parables, addressed crowds, and challenged religious authorities with words. Yet beneath the surface of the canonical narratives and echoed through mystical traditions passed from generation to generation, there exists another image of Jesus. Jesus, the silent mystic, a man who frequently withdrew from society, who chose silence at decisive moments and who embodied a wisdom that transcended language itself. The silence of Jesus was not passive. It was intentional, disciplined and deeply transformative. This dimension of his path has been preserved not only in scripture but also in esoteric Christianity, hermetic philosophy and the contemplative traditions that valued inner transformation over outward display. After his baptism, Jesus does not immediately begin teaching or gathering followers. He enters silence, 40 days and 40 nights away from distraction, identity, and social affirmation. In mystical symbolism, the desert represents the stripping away of illusion. It is where the false self dissolves and the essential self is revealed. Scholars such as Thomas Merton and Evelyn Underhill emphasize that genuine spiritual authority arises not from accumulation of knowledge but from the surrender of ego.
Why would Jesus choose silence when words could potentially save him? This question opens a doorway into mystical understanding. Silence in this context is alignment with a higher law. This alone affirms that the logos, the divine word, emerges from the eternal silence of the absolute. To return to silence is to return to the source of all creation, the Monad. Not Yahweh who could have saved him from being crucified. Jesus identified in the Gospel of John as the logos made flesh understood that speaking from ego fractures truth while silence preserves its integrity. You identify as a Covenant Christian, how often do you seek answers through noise, endless information and external voices? all these being sermons, songs and rituals performed in the church. What if the path you are searching for cannot be found through accumulation but through subtraction, through stillness rather than stimulation? Jesus did not merely recommend silence. He lived it as a spiritual technology, a method of awakening consciousness and aligning the human with the divine.
Many early Gnostics, some were Greeks but most were not, understood that Jesus taught on two levels simultaneously. One level was accessible through words, parables, and moral instruction. The other level was transmitted through presence, gesture, withdrawal, and silence. This deeper level was not meant to be explained openly because it could only be realized inwardly. Consider how often Jesus speaks in ways that conceals as much as it reveals. He tells his disciples that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not hear. This is not cruelty but precision. Silence functions as a veil that protects sacred knowledge from being reduced to concepts. Silence safeguards mystery so it can ripen within the soul. Available to everyone not just the elites. In the gospel accounts, there are moments when Jesus deliberately withdraws after performing miracles. He does not allow crowds to cling to the spectacle. Instead, he disappears into solitude. The Monad is found not in multiplicity, but in the ground of the soul, a place beyond images, beyond words, beyond form. Jesus lived from this ground. There is a profound teaching hidden in the way Jesus listens. He listens to the accused, to the sick, to those rejected by society. He does not rush to answer. His pauses are deliberate. Silence creates space and space allows truth to surface organically. This space is where transformation occurs. Jesus speaks only when speech serves alignment, never when it serves ego. This is why his words carry such enduring power. They are not reactions. They are emanations. Silence reveals what noise conceals. It exposes fear, attachment, and illusion. But it also reveals intuition, presence, and divine guidance.
Jesus's silent authority was more revolutionary than his spoken words. The silence embodied by Jesus was not only a personal spiritual discipline. It was a radical force that unsettled every structure built on fear, hierarchy, and control. Religious systems depend on interpretation, on authority mediated through words, laws, and rituals. Silence bypasses all of that. It cannot be regulated, taxed, or owned. This is why the silent presence of Jesus was far more threatening than his teachings. His stillness exposed the emptiness behind performative piety and external obedience. When Jesus retreats from public life, he is not escaping responsibility. He is reclaiming sovereignty of consciousness. In silence, Jesus remained inwardly free. This inner freedom made him immune to manipulation, praise or intimidation. Authorities could not negotiate with silence. They could not trap it in doctrine. they could only attempt to eliminate it. This explains why Jesus often instructed those he healed not to speak of it. When Jesus remains silent in moments of accusation or chaos, he is allowing the unconscious material of others to surface. People reveal themselves when no one rushes to fill the gap. Notice how silence shifts power. The one who speaks is often reacting. The one who remains silent observes. Jesus's silence was never avoidance. It was mastery of inner center, the divine spark. This is why his presence alone unsettled those around him. He did not need to dominate conversations or defend his identity. His authority came from alignment, not assertion. This path of silence is deeply connected to the supreme consciousness. Yet the path Jesus walked demands courage because silence dismantles illusion. It strips away borrowed identities and inherited beliefs. What remains is raw presence. This is why silence was transmitted only to those prepared. Not everyone wants truth. Many want reassurance. Silence offers neither comfort nor certainty. It offers reality. Jesus never forced this path. He invited, and withdrew when crowds misunderstood. He spoke plainly only to those who had tasted stillness.
I don't think of it as defending Jews and church, I think of it as seeking to understand each tradition in its context. Some gnostics hold that all traditions have truths in them, so I would presume that finding the true points in the Yahwist tradition would be just as appropriate as in any other tradition. (If people misrepresent Yahwists disproportionately, that actually indicates likelihood that they may have disproportionate amount of truth. If everyone has part of the truth there's no need to misrepresent anyone.) Since I've found reasons why these documents survive for millennia without people concluding they are hopelessly contradictory as atheists tend to decide on snap judgment, I share those reasons; I do the same with the Quran when it's misinterpreted the same way.
Now, your fine essay about silence makes decent points, which I'll interact with separately, but they seem consistent with my point that the Monad resolves all spectra such as the volume spectrum. Jesus, like the Monad, is master of speech and silence both, and both have purpose, so much so that they are one. Which is why I say the Monad has attributes. If we want to call the attributes emanations, that's possible, but then monism itself is also an attribute and so the name "Monad" should be demoted to being just another attribute of the Indescribable. (And by "Indescribable" and other negating or apophatic words I don't create further regress, I only point out that the unknowable cannot be approximated with any word but can only be negated as to its application to any word.) Calling it "Monad" is already attributing monism or unity to it. So I have no problem with other attributes.
most people think most important messages are communicated through words & speeches. They are not. In a world saturated with noise, constant notifications, opinions competing for attention, and an endless demand for expression, what if the greatest truth was never meant to be spoken aloud?
Yes, the greatest Truth is not a secondary message but a primary entity to be communed with by our secondary experiences. All words and speeches are reflections on this one Word of Truth. (Truth, Word, Entity are attributes of course.)
Silence in this context is alignment with a higher law. This alone affirms that the logos, the divine word, emerges from the eternal silence of the absolute. To return to silence is to return to the source of all creation, the Monad.
Fine. But you contrast this with a counterfactual hypothetical, one "who could have saved him from being crucified." We are told he prayed aloud (and also sometimes wordlessly) about the hypothetical, and note Matthew's words: "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt .... O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done." First, if these words are accurate, he did pray to his Father as one by whom the cup could pass. Second, his resolution of the counterfactual was his realization that the cup would not pass unless he drank it. Not about being saved from being crucified (the false notion ascribed to his mockers), but about the suffering being over, which was to be accomplished by drinking it in.
Jesus identified in the Gospel of John as the logos made flesh understood that speaking from ego fractures truth while silence preserves its integrity.
Not sure what this means because to me "Ego" and "I Am" are the same thing and Jesus constantly uses the latter.
You identify as a Covenant Christian, how often do you seek answers through noise, endless information and external voices?
I seek answers in everything. For words I often answer in words; but Francis said, preach the gospel at all times, with words if necessary.
What if the path you are searching for cannot be found through accumulation but through subtraction, through stillness rather than stimulation?
Generically I regularly subtract (it's called fasting from things). Specifically feel free to make a recommendation.
Many early Gnostics, some were Greeks but most were not, understood that Jesus taught on two levels simultaneously. One level was accessible through words, parables, and moral instruction. The other level was transmitted through presence, gesture, withdrawal, and silence.
That's understood by many.
This deeper level was not meant to be explained openly because it could only be realized inwardly.
That's not the usual understanding. Most recognized that nonverbal communication can be further explained openly (as Jesus said about what is whispered being shouted). Paul gives a detailed theology of mystery in which what is realized inwardly has a destiny of being shared in words outwardly, while more mystery always remains. Your statement only applies to those mystics who refer to an "indescribable" (using only negative terms like this, apophatically), but they are not referring to the arcane but only to the concept that there is something in God beyond description. Those gnostics who acted like arcane wisdom exists that should be hidden because it contradicts the lower-level description were doing something different from all other communication of the period.
Consider how often Jesus speaks in ways that conceals as much as it reveals. He tells his disciples that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not hear.
That's paradox, driving someone deeper for the resolution.
This is not cruelty but precision. Silence functions as a veil that protects sacred knowledge from being reduced to concepts.
Perhaps, but then what is known is the "indescribable", not a verbal message that should remain hidden.
Jesus speaks only when speech serves alignment, never when it serves ego. This is why his words carry such enduring power. They are not reactions. They are emanations.
That's why you try to make Yahweh one and the same with the Monad. They're different entities. And this distinction matters. Because the God of the Old Testament and the Monad are not two different interpretations of the same God. They are not two faces of the same coin. These are two completely different entities operating at opposite frequencies with opposite natures. The God of the OT is jealous. He admits it. He screams it. He demands exclusive worship and threatens violent punishment for acknowledging other gods. That is insecurity. That is an entity that fears competition because he knows he is not actually supreme. The Monad does not have jealousy. Jealousy requires separation. Jealousy requires a lack of something. But the Monad is everything. It is the Pleroma, the fullness.
No he wasn't. Jesus came to expose Yahweh, not to worship him. Let me tell you a story. Late one evening in the quiet hills of Galilee, Jesus sat with his inner circle reading from the Torah. The fire light danced on the parchment illuminating the ancient Hebrew letters. They had just finished a passage in Exodus, a terrifying passage where Yahweh commands the Israelites to slaughter entire cities, men, women, children, livestock, everything that breathes. Leave nothing alive. "The words hung in the air like smoke. Peter looked up from the scroll, his face pale and disturbed. He asked in a low voice. Master, why is the god of our fathers so violent? Why is he so jealous? Why is he so angry? You teach us about a father of infinite love, a father of light, but this he gestured at the scroll with a trembling hand. This does not feel like love, this feels like rage. Jesus closed the scroll slowly. He looked at each of them in the eyes, Peter, John, Mary Magdalene, and he said something that would eventually get him killed. Something the church would spend 2,000 years trying to erase from human consciousness. He said, "That is not the Father. That is not the Monad. The god you are reading about, the one who demands blood sacrifices... the one who drowns the world in floods... the one who commands genocide and calls it holy. He has a name. Yaldaboath, the demiurge, the chief archon, and he has been pretending to be the most high since the beginning of this realm. This teaching never made it into the Bible.
When the church compiled the canonical texts in the 4th century, they removed every reference to Jesus exposing Yahweh as the Demiurge. They burned the Gnostic Gospels. They hunted the teachers who preserved the distinction because they knew the danger. If Christians knew that the God of the Old Testament, the God they have been worshipping, praying to, fearing for millennia, was actually the chief archon, the false god of the material prison, not the true father Jesus served. The entire religious system would collapse instantly. No more guilt, no more fear of divine punishment, no more sacrificial salvation. Because that angry, jealous God demanding obedience was never God. He was the impostor and Jesus came to expose him.
So, let me get this straight. Are you saying Sophia is evil because she wanted to have a child and conceived without approval of the Father? But, Yahweh is righteous and good when demands the first born of all Israelites? when Yahweh demands war? when Yahweh demands genocide? how about the story of Jericho or the Amalekites. The attackers killed every inhabitant in the city, men, women, and children. They killed all the oxen, sheep, and donkeys. They spared only a prostitute who had protected their spies, along with her family. "So Joshua... utterly destroyed all that breathed, as the LORD God of Israel commanded." - Joshua 10:40
LORD God of Israel is Yahweh, the god of the Jews. The god of the OT. Is this what you honestly believe?
Well, I appreciate you saying so. If Monad and Yahweh are different, we're pursuing two different things and can only find harmony in some deeper truth than either. If, however, we are both to pursue truth at all costs, then differences can be reconciled. If my attempts to reconcile disappoint you, I can only encourage you to keep pursuing the truth at all costs and we will get there in time.
For instance, you have Monad as all Consciousness, but you also have him apparently unable to communicate, yet still able to emanate. It seems that if all emanates from the Monad then all must be present in the Monad, both communication and silence, for instance. So that's why I encourage you to attribute more to the Monad than you do, because otherwise the core deity is deficient and overtaken by his emanation. E.g., you do imply Jesus taught the Monad was love; but love is usually regarded as relational and not monistic.
Now when it comes to the ordinary objections people have to Yahweh's depiction in Hebrew, I've found that it regularly amounts simply to reading the text from a very different cultural perspective. Your questions about Yahweh all have good answers if we are willing to give the Hebrew authors credit for seeking to teach good values in their own culture.
"Jealousy" is one of those words that can be rightly or wrongly practiced. It is right to be jealous for something worthy. The Monad is worthy of being the core emanator and you are "jealous" on its behalf that it be held there and not deprecated. You might not want to use that word for that practice, but that protectiveness is the same meaning intended in the original. "Jealousy requires separation"? That's needlessly philosophical and separate from how the word was used culturally (it was the same as "zealous" and originally referred to being red-hot).
Threats of consequences for doing wrong are normal no matter how righteous the speaker is. If I do wrong, in your wisdom you know things that can go wrong for you and would want to warn me of them, even if I hated and disbelieved your warnings. That's not insecurity or fear.
Violence and anger: Just as communication must be present in the Monad, judgment must be present as well, or nothing would be right or wrong. If some things are wrong, there are generally negative natural consequences for doing wrong, or else people would be emboldened to continue doing wrong. So the Monad must be emanating in such unique way that evil consequences befall those who commit evil deeds (even up to one full and wisely placed deluge). This why Paul says, if not so, how could the world be judged? Similarly, humans believe in righteous anger, so it had to come from somewhere; and both violent consequences and a responsive resistance to the one who resists are (monistic) attributes that are the same laws for everyone.
Blood sacrifice: Noah's account pointed out that sins that rise to the level of lifeblood are to be paid by lifeblood (Hammurabi later agreed). This is the universal testimony of human justice. Adam's account also says that the way to restore the fellowship of the Creator was by taking on the skins he provided: this was understood as identifying with the innocence of the sacrificial victim and as being one with innocence again. The meat was eaten as a (restoration) covenant meal. Nowadays we eat meat all the time without thinking of the blood shed at all, but its original meaning is identification as innocent. There is no sin in humane slaughter.
"Genocide": First, that word was coined by a Jewish lawyer so that it can mean anything and nothing. However, most nations have recognized a principle of just war that includes (1) self-defense and (2) defense of innocents that are being abused by a belligerent. The details are complex given the number of wars in Scripture, but they all fall under teaching the principles of just war. The nations killed by the Israelites (and those killed by several other Semitic and Japhetic tribes) had been killing innocents for generations and all the other peoples of the realm generally agreed that the Canaanites and their allies were subject to the death penalty; and the individual Canaanite cities proved this by their belligerence when terms were sought (with peace-making exceptions like Gibeon). In this cultural context the events are explicable; but for skeptics who aren't interested in learning Near East history or in judging beyond biased appearances, it wouldn't matter.
Thank you for taking the time to compose your thoughts into a winsome narrative, but that doesn't help me to judge the history as shown by all the evidences.
Evidence: (1) There is no passage in Exodus where God says slaughter everything that breathes, you may be thinking of Deut. 20:16, but it doesn't mention the rest. So your creative narrative is off factually from the start. (2) Exodus (34:5-7) actually says the name of Yahweh was "Merciful and Gracious", as well as just toward the guilty, resolving both poles of the spectrum in One; so that same scroll you mention does teach a God of infinite love. Exodus (13:21) teaches that Yahweh was a Light to his people; same scroll again. (3) Historically, the very doubts you attribute to Peter had already been stated and answered and regarded as moot for centuries by the readers of the prophets. Ezek. 18:25-28 is one example (whole chapter applies), Hab. 1:2-3 another (whole book applies). The answers are deep and require attention and not batting away; and the people were familiar with them, often alluding to the same as self-evident, as Rom. 3:5-6 shows. (4) I pointed out to you that Jesus regularly identified the Father with the I Am, such as by quoting Scriptures using that name, so he was not going to deny the I Am found in the scrolls; and he said not one letter or serif would depart from the scrolls. (5) Just as "Yahweh" would have meant "I Am" (the self-existent) to everyone, if "Yaldabaoth" had been a word it would have been understood as "Yah Sabaoth" to everyone (a title used explicitly by Paul and James) and would've referred to a positive attribute, not a negative deity. (6) I've pointed out that Paul uses the word Demiurge to mean his own Christian God and not Samael (Heb. 11:10). (7) Now that same Bible, as I said, shows a chief archon that does pretend to be the Most High, explicitly so in Is. 14:14, given the name Helel (Lucifer) and who is explicitly different from Yahweh Sabaoth who is contrasted in 14:22 ff. So they already knew of this archon and that he was not Yahweh.
For me to take your narrative as if Jesus taught the rejection of the thousands of references to Yahweh in the Hebrew Scripture when he was noted for being more strict with Scripture than the Pharisees, as if he affirmed Yahweh in public without variation but privately taught the rejection of that same Yahweh, would be contrary to so much evidence that it's staggering to imagine such a disconnected hypothetical. Even if we argued that suppression and manipulation change things they can't change thousands of years of history. If Jesus had taught rejection of Yahweh he would never have had the following of thousands of faithful Jews (and if he had taught contradiction he would not have been worth following either). The reason he was accepted by so many, and by so many more after his death, was that there was no contradiction: like other prophets he had no problem with the Biblical character of Yahweh. The recent imagination that the Hebrew Lord and the Greek Lord are different is exceptionally strained and distant from the evidence.
Argument from silence, there is no reference to Jesus rejecting Yahweh. There were many texts circulating, disagreeing with each other, but there was no "removal" because there was no compiled "book" from which to remove something. All Scriptures began as ordinary scrolls and were only counted as Scriptures after centuries of the covenant people accepting them as such; any other ordinary scrolls had ordinary circulation and never achieved broad recognition of being Scripture (though many reached a secondary level of "deuterocanonical"). The idea that there was some event at which a holy text could be expurgated and all centuries of prior evidence removed is, frankly, inquisitorial.
There is no evidence of this. The only books I find burned by these Christians were Arius and Priscillian, neither of which are anything like gnostic.
I don't know who this could refer to because most gnostic schools were closed long before Nicea. I don't know of any pure gnostic systems that could have continued in their own logic; the only thing I know of were side movements that had moved on from gnosticism to incorporate other elements so as to stay relevant with the majority proto-orthodoxy.
If.
But this question is either settled by agreement on actual facts, or by disagreement (separation). You don't strike me as someone who wants to pursue his own conception of the Monad if it isn't an actual fact.
If it's a good thing that we have free will to choose right or wrong, then it follows that there is guilt and disorder for doing wrong and that it takes effort (sacrifice) to correct things that are wrong. If there's no guilt, then nothing is wrong and there's no morality.
Actually, we do consider that evil when humans do it, it's called eloping. But I'm not saying the narrative calls Sophia good or evil, I'm saying that imperfection entered the world somehow and I think it's silly to say one creature was imperfect and that caused another to be evil involuntarily when you could just say one creature chose of free will to be evil.
And Joshua sparing them proved that, if anyone else had accepted peace, they would have been spared too. The belligerents in the city were all to be killed; the animals were in this special case destroyed because of the centrality of the corruption. The passage is ambiguous (6:21, the word for youths) and might or might not imply that young children were also killed, but this only happens in one or two explicit passages out of all the Hebrew wars where it's stated that the children were knowing participants in the parents' rebellion.
You allude separately to Amalek, and to the southern campaign summarized in Josh. 10:40. Modern translations recognize that the word translated "utterly destroyed", haram, ultimately means "utterly dedicated" by whatever means (a modern equivalent is "neutralized", which can mean killed or merely incapacitated). It also appears in sources as "harem", dedicated women, who are obviously not destroyed. The kings were stated to be killed; everyone else was neutralized in the most effective way, whether they became casualties of war, or displaced refugees, or defectors like Gibeon.
So when you go to the original sources and culture, both Jewish and Christian review has hardly ever had problems with the righteousness of these wars. Only a recent skeptical view has separated itself from this testimony and invented a dichotomy. I doubt there are any actual gnostic texts that use these German arguments!
In sum, if we look at the divergences (rather than the convergences as I prefer), you'd have a Monad that has less power to create than its emanation does, you'd have a Yahwist culture for thousands of years that would have been walking in complete deception like every other culture, you'd have a Jesus that totally embodies that culture but that is also believed to be totally against it, and you'd have no power by this Monad to do anything about it except by random chance this Jesus happens to figure the Monad out (but still doesn't succeed in getting his message across). See why I don't focus on the divergences. I think it's more worthwhile to say, suspend for now the question of how this worked in history and just get the core points that anything we see in ourselves must be present in the Monad and anything we see in Jesus must have been consistent with the reality he lived in.
This is a long reply from you and most has to do with you defending the jews and the church. At least that's my take at first glance. I'll attempt to reply to your first point, communication and silence. And it's an important point because most people think most important messages are communicated through words & speeches. They are not. In a world saturated with noise, constant notifications, opinions competing for attention, and an endless demand for expression, what if the greatest truth was never meant to be spoken aloud? Imagine that the most transformative teachings of Jesus were not delivered primarily through sermons, commandments, or even miracles, but through something far more demanding, subtle, and powerful. Silence.
Most people imagine Jesus as a teacher who spoke in parables, addressed crowds, and challenged religious authorities with words. Yet beneath the surface of the canonical narratives and echoed through mystical traditions passed from generation to generation, there exists another image of Jesus. Jesus, the silent mystic, a man who frequently withdrew from society, who chose silence at decisive moments and who embodied a wisdom that transcended language itself. The silence of Jesus was not passive. It was intentional, disciplined and deeply transformative. This dimension of his path has been preserved not only in scripture but also in esoteric Christianity, hermetic philosophy and the contemplative traditions that valued inner transformation over outward display. After his baptism, Jesus does not immediately begin teaching or gathering followers. He enters silence, 40 days and 40 nights away from distraction, identity, and social affirmation. In mystical symbolism, the desert represents the stripping away of illusion. It is where the false self dissolves and the essential self is revealed. Scholars such as Thomas Merton and Evelyn Underhill emphasize that genuine spiritual authority arises not from accumulation of knowledge but from the surrender of ego.
Why would Jesus choose silence when words could potentially save him? This question opens a doorway into mystical understanding. Silence in this context is alignment with a higher law. This alone affirms that the logos, the divine word, emerges from the eternal silence of the absolute. To return to silence is to return to the source of all creation, the Monad. Not Yahweh who could have saved him from being crucified. Jesus identified in the Gospel of John as the logos made flesh understood that speaking from ego fractures truth while silence preserves its integrity. You identify as a Covenant Christian, how often do you seek answers through noise, endless information and external voices? all these being sermons, songs and rituals performed in the church. What if the path you are searching for cannot be found through accumulation but through subtraction, through stillness rather than stimulation? Jesus did not merely recommend silence. He lived it as a spiritual technology, a method of awakening consciousness and aligning the human with the divine.
Many early Gnostics, some were Greeks but most were not, understood that Jesus taught on two levels simultaneously. One level was accessible through words, parables, and moral instruction. The other level was transmitted through presence, gesture, withdrawal, and silence. This deeper level was not meant to be explained openly because it could only be realized inwardly. Consider how often Jesus speaks in ways that conceals as much as it reveals. He tells his disciples that seeing they may not see and hearing they may not hear. This is not cruelty but precision. Silence functions as a veil that protects sacred knowledge from being reduced to concepts. Silence safeguards mystery so it can ripen within the soul. Available to everyone not just the elites. In the gospel accounts, there are moments when Jesus deliberately withdraws after performing miracles. He does not allow crowds to cling to the spectacle. Instead, he disappears into solitude. The Monad is found not in multiplicity, but in the ground of the soul, a place beyond images, beyond words, beyond form. Jesus lived from this ground. There is a profound teaching hidden in the way Jesus listens. He listens to the accused, to the sick, to those rejected by society. He does not rush to answer. His pauses are deliberate. Silence creates space and space allows truth to surface organically. This space is where transformation occurs. Jesus speaks only when speech serves alignment, never when it serves ego. This is why his words carry such enduring power. They are not reactions. They are emanations. Silence reveals what noise conceals. It exposes fear, attachment, and illusion. But it also reveals intuition, presence, and divine guidance.
Jesus's silent authority was more revolutionary than his spoken words. The silence embodied by Jesus was not only a personal spiritual discipline. It was a radical force that unsettled every structure built on fear, hierarchy, and control. Religious systems depend on interpretation, on authority mediated through words, laws, and rituals. Silence bypasses all of that. It cannot be regulated, taxed, or owned. This is why the silent presence of Jesus was far more threatening than his teachings. His stillness exposed the emptiness behind performative piety and external obedience. When Jesus retreats from public life, he is not escaping responsibility. He is reclaiming sovereignty of consciousness. In silence, Jesus remained inwardly free. This inner freedom made him immune to manipulation, praise or intimidation. Authorities could not negotiate with silence. They could not trap it in doctrine. they could only attempt to eliminate it. This explains why Jesus often instructed those he healed not to speak of it. When Jesus remains silent in moments of accusation or chaos, he is allowing the unconscious material of others to surface. People reveal themselves when no one rushes to fill the gap. Notice how silence shifts power. The one who speaks is often reacting. The one who remains silent observes. Jesus's silence was never avoidance. It was mastery of inner center, the divine spark. This is why his presence alone unsettled those around him. He did not need to dominate conversations or defend his identity. His authority came from alignment, not assertion. This path of silence is deeply connected to the supreme consciousness. Yet the path Jesus walked demands courage because silence dismantles illusion. It strips away borrowed identities and inherited beliefs. What remains is raw presence. This is why silence was transmitted only to those prepared. Not everyone wants truth. Many want reassurance. Silence offers neither comfort nor certainty. It offers reality. Jesus never forced this path. He invited, and withdrew when crowds misunderstood. He spoke plainly only to those who had tasted stillness.
I don't think of it as defending Jews and church, I think of it as seeking to understand each tradition in its context. Some gnostics hold that all traditions have truths in them, so I would presume that finding the true points in the Yahwist tradition would be just as appropriate as in any other tradition. (If people misrepresent Yahwists disproportionately, that actually indicates likelihood that they may have disproportionate amount of truth. If everyone has part of the truth there's no need to misrepresent anyone.) Since I've found reasons why these documents survive for millennia without people concluding they are hopelessly contradictory as atheists tend to decide on snap judgment, I share those reasons; I do the same with the Quran when it's misinterpreted the same way.
Now, your fine essay about silence makes decent points, which I'll interact with separately, but they seem consistent with my point that the Monad resolves all spectra such as the volume spectrum. Jesus, like the Monad, is master of speech and silence both, and both have purpose, so much so that they are one. Which is why I say the Monad has attributes. If we want to call the attributes emanations, that's possible, but then monism itself is also an attribute and so the name "Monad" should be demoted to being just another attribute of the Indescribable. (And by "Indescribable" and other negating or apophatic words I don't create further regress, I only point out that the unknowable cannot be approximated with any word but can only be negated as to its application to any word.) Calling it "Monad" is already attributing monism or unity to it. So I have no problem with other attributes.
Yes, the greatest Truth is not a secondary message but a primary entity to be communed with by our secondary experiences. All words and speeches are reflections on this one Word of Truth. (Truth, Word, Entity are attributes of course.)
Fine. But you contrast this with a counterfactual hypothetical, one "who could have saved him from being crucified." We are told he prayed aloud (and also sometimes wordlessly) about the hypothetical, and note Matthew's words: "O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt .... O my Father, if this cup may not pass away from me, except I drink it, thy will be done." First, if these words are accurate, he did pray to his Father as one by whom the cup could pass. Second, his resolution of the counterfactual was his realization that the cup would not pass unless he drank it. Not about being saved from being crucified (the false notion ascribed to his mockers), but about the suffering being over, which was to be accomplished by drinking it in.
Not sure what this means because to me "Ego" and "I Am" are the same thing and Jesus constantly uses the latter.
I seek answers in everything. For words I often answer in words; but Francis said, preach the gospel at all times, with words if necessary.
Generically I regularly subtract (it's called fasting from things). Specifically feel free to make a recommendation.
That's understood by many.
That's not the usual understanding. Most recognized that nonverbal communication can be further explained openly (as Jesus said about what is whispered being shouted). Paul gives a detailed theology of mystery in which what is realized inwardly has a destiny of being shared in words outwardly, while more mystery always remains. Your statement only applies to those mystics who refer to an "indescribable" (using only negative terms like this, apophatically), but they are not referring to the arcane but only to the concept that there is something in God beyond description. Those gnostics who acted like arcane wisdom exists that should be hidden because it contradicts the lower-level description were doing something different from all other communication of the period.
That's paradox, driving someone deeper for the resolution.
Perhaps, but then what is known is the "indescribable", not a verbal message that should remain hidden.
Perhaps; that would make him the Logos ....
SwampRangers is a jew