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HELL WALKS AND STAR TREKS
active in Alexandria and combating the Gnostic interpretation of the Bible
with his own commentaries.
But the Sethians did not remain Gnostic Jews interpreting the Bible.
Their transgressive move to identify YHWH with demonic figures like
Samael, Nebruel, and Saklas left them vulnerable and unwelcome within
typical Jewish circles. This may be why the movement rapidly took on a
Christian identity, so that almost all of our Sethian texts now are framed
with Christian narrative and references.
Some Sethian communities, like the one that produced the infamous
Gospel of Judas, actually identified themselves as Christians—and as the
only true Christians, at that. They saw all other Christians as Jews living
under the deceitful rule of YHWH, who the Sethians call Ialdabaoth.
They thought it tragic that the false Christians centered their worship
around the actions of the demon Judas, who had been responsible for
the sacrifice of Jesus to YHWH, just as the New Testament Gospel stories
record. As my previous work on the Gospel of Judas (2009) supports they
thought that Judas’s evil deed had become the focus of a new sacrificial
cult that empowered Ialdabaoth. Because this cult centered its worship on
YHWH as Ialdabaoth, the Sethians considered it a false Christian cult that
was actually Jewish. As we will see in chapter 10, the Sethians argue that
the false Christians followed Judas as the leader of their new kingdom,
which was a new tribe of Israel, the thirteenth.
This understanding of Christianity is implicit in the Sethian book the
Apocalypse of Adam, which contains a very old hymn about the descent
of a redeemer angel to thirteen kingdoms (NHC V.5 77.27–82.20). In the
Jewish tradition, the angel Wisdom descends to earth and looks among
the nations for a place to lodge. Similarly, in this text a transcendent divinity
descends to thirteen kingdoms—the twelve tribes of Israel plus
Christianity, the thirteenth kingdom or New Israel—looking to select one
kingdom as his own. But he finds all of them inadequate. This powerful
divinity is born in each kingdom and brings with him water baptism for
their redemption, but none of the kingdoms responds.
Because of their unresponsiveness, the divinity elects another people as
his own: the kingless generation. These are the sons of Seth who accept
baptism from the great Sethian angels Micheu, Michar, and Mnesinous
in the name of the redeemer, Jesus of Nazareth, who is also known as
Jesus on the Right Hand. The Sethians who wrote this apocalypse clearly