The Reality of the Rulers: Genesis Told From Inside the Garden
Somewhere in Egypt, probably in the second or third century, a person sat down to answer a friend’s question. The friend wanted to know who the powers that run this world actually are. The answer that came back was the first six chapters of Genesis, retold by someone who sounds like they were standing in the garden the whole time. That letter survived in Nag Hammadi Codex II, copied in right before On the Origin of the World. Bentley Layton titled it The Reality of the Rulers, Marvin Meyer went with The Nature of the Rulers, and older books call it The Hypostasis of the Archons. All three are attempts at one slippery Greek word, hypostasis. Meyer’s introduction says that whichever you pick, the point of the text is that the rulers are real, and that they can be beaten. ...