When the Babylonian exile ended, some Jews went back to their homeland In Palestine.  These became Judean Jews, and they followed Ezra’s interpretations.  Ezra compiled the Old Testament into its present form.  However, there were two other Jewish groups who did not live under Ezra’s jurisdiction.  They were free to continue ancient traditions which Ezra’s interpretations would not allow. 

     One group consisted of the Jews of the Diaspora, that is, those who lived abroad.  After Alexander the Great conquered the known world, the Hebrew Diaspora adopted many aspects of Greek thought and philosophy. 

     The other group consisted of a Hebrew-gentile mixture living in Samaria, which was the old northern kingdom of the Elohists.  The Samaritans continued Israelite traditions, which they claimed originated from very ancient times, and on the whole, they were friendlier toward Greek culture than were Ezra's Judean Jews to the south.

     Both groups preserved traditions that stood outside the culture of Ezra's second temple and its Priestly religion.  Over time, these traditions faded into apocryphal legends, and they mixed these traditions with Greek philosophy and myth, thus forming the foundation of what would later become known as Gnosticism.  Some very unorthodox interpretations resulted.  Among these was Apelles, who is said to have

 

Uttered slanders against the first five books of the Bible and against the prophets, alleging that the things which are written are of human origin and false.[1]

 

     Valentinus added that the prophets and the first five books of the Bible, and indeed the bulk of the Old Testament, was inspired by a stupid god who created the world – the demiurge.  And for this reason, Jesus declared in John 10:8, "All that ever came before me are thieves and robbers."[2]

     Another voice of antiquity, Justinus, taught that there exists a distinction between the God Elohim and another God called "The Good One."  This hearkens back to a time in Israel’s extreme antiquity, when a distinction existed between the Father-God El or Elyon, and his son the storm God, Baal or Yahweh.  Scholars understand this from textual criticism and from the archaeology excavations at Ugarit.  Justinus also taught that the prophets were sent by these Gods; however, the prophets were deceived by an evil angelic serpent named Naas.  Naas is a derivative of the Hebrew word nachash, meaning serpent.  The same word nachash occurs in Genesis 3, and refers to the serpent who deceived Adam and Eve.  According to Justinus, after the evil angel Naas had deceived the prophets, Jesus was selected to set the record straight.  Jesus was told, "All the prophets before you were led astray."  The prophets had been deceived because the serpent interfaced with the fallible human psychology of the prophets, thus causing them to misinterpret the Father's revelation.[3]

     In other words, Satan the Devil wrote a great deal of the Old Testament!  That’s the gist of it.  Irenaeus and Hippolytus put it quite bluntly, describing even more Gnostic opinions,

 

The followers of Saturninus… hold that some prophecies were uttered by the angels who made the cosmos, and some by Satan.[4]

 

Cerdon proposed that the god spoken of by Moses and the prophets was not the same as the Father of Jesus Christ.[5]

Irenaeus also recorded that when the Gnostics were confronted with passages from the New Testament which refuted their ideas that they dismissed the problem saying that "the Apostles intermingled the things of the Torah with the words of the Savior," because "the Apostles were still under the influence of Judean opinions," and that therefore on this point the New Testament falls short of the truth.[6]

          One has to wonder where the Gnostics got these opinions.  The history of the Samaritans and the Diaspora Jews must be considered here.  When Ezra finalized the Torah, certain factions among the Samaritans and Diaspora Jews must have had grave reservations.  Why should they accept this new redaction of the Bible?  What made it superior to the earlier traditions?  Unfortunately, Judaism worldwide entered a cultural dark age about this time, so we know very little about the arguments which must have transpired.  What we do know is that when the dark age ended about 200 BCE, there were deep divisions within Judaism – for they had already separated into Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Samaritans, and proto-Gnostics.  Over the centuries, these conflicts were remembered – first as history, then as legend, and finally as a faint memory that Ezra's Bible was not legitimate.  In the end, they attributed the textual corruption of the Old Testament to evil forces that allegedly deceived the prophets.  This is evidence that Ezra's Bible was distrusted, and that many ethnic Hebrews who honored traditions outside of Judean Judaism believed parts of the Old Testament had been falsified by Ezra and his Judean Jews.

Click to read more about how we know Genesis 1 is a forgery.

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.

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