Saint Paul the Apostle used a lot of Gnostic vocabulary.  He used words like aeons for elements, pleroma for fullness, Sophia for the female side of divinity, apocryphon for hidden mysteries, as well as various words to distinguish between categories of heavenly entities such as archons and cosmocrators.  The Gnostics liked Paul, and quoted him frequently.

 

     The beliefs of most Gnostics were as follows:  There exist high above us generations of primordial elements called aeons, the primordial male aeon being the Father, and the primordial female being called Sige.  After many generations of aeons, a derived female aeon named Sophia accidentally gave birth to the demiurge.  The demiurge fashioned angels that are called archons, who live in the air, and these archons were the blundering fools who created the universe.  Therefore, we have become hopelessly removed from the aeons and are ignorant of them.  This ignorance keeps us in bondage to the demiurge and to his archons.  Christ came as the pleroma of the aeons, which means the "fullness" of the "primordial elements," in order to save us from this foolish system. 

     Paul’s New Testament letters, when left un-translated in the Greek, often seem to take for granted the truth of these beliefs.  For example, Paul says in the New Testament:

 

When we were children, we were in bondage under the elements of the cosmos.  But when the pleroma of the time was come,

God sent forth his Son.[1]

 

To bring the pleroma of God's word, a mysterious hidden secret from generations of aeons, now made known to the saints.[2]

 

We preach that Jesus Christ is the revelation of a mystery, who was hidden in Sige since the times of the aeons.[3]

 

We tell of Sophia, of those who are perfect, yet not the Sophia of this aeon, nor the archons of this aeon who amount to nothing.  We tell of the Sophia of God, in a mysterious apocryphon, whom God determined from before the aeons, for our glory, and the archons of this aeon were ignorant of her.[4]

 

You walked in the way of the aeon of this cosmos, in the way of the powerful archon of the air.[5]

 

Generations of aeons and aeons.[6]

 

In him (Christ) is contained the pleroma of divinity in bodily form… who is over all archons and authorities… and having neutralized the archons and authorities, he exposed and defeated them.[7]

 

The pleroma was happy to live within him, and to redeem everything to him.[8]

 

If it is true that Paul was a Gnostic, it has far reaching implications with regard to the evolution vs. creation debate.   The Gnostics rejected creationism, and had beliefs more compatible with evolution.

Click to read more about how ancient Christian Gnosticism is compatible with evolution.

The creationist narrative in Genesis 1 is contradicted by many ancient Christian texts.  Instead of an Almighty Creator God, ancient Christian texts espouse that the universe is born from blind arrogance and stupidity.  The angels caused evolution to occur from species to species.  There are many gods, (or aliens?), and the Christian God is just one among them.  Satan the Devil writes scripture, and thus the Bible was polluted with Genesis 1.  Archaeology and modern scholarship demonstrate that Genesis is indeed corrupted.  Cavemen walk with Adam and Eve.  Esoteric prophecies reveal the coming of Christ, and also reveal the dark forces that govern the cosmos.  Such are the ancient Christian writings.

Science vindicates the truth of these ideas.  Evolution often happens too fast for Darwin’s theory.  Gaps in the fossil record indicate that some kind of unnatural force acts together with natural selection.  Astrobiology reveals that intelligent life probably evolved long before us.  The fossil record reveals strange clues that aliens abducted species and transported them across oceans, and that DNA from diverse lineages was combined to spawn hybrid species.  Evidently, aliens influence evolution, and they are the gods of the world’s religions. 

This is not fiction.  All these facts are thoroughly documented in the links above.