thumb|A lion-faced, [[Snakes in mythology|serpentine deity found on a Gnostic gem in Bernard de Montfaucon's L'antiquité expliquée et représentée en figures, a depiction of Yaldabaoth.]]
Yaldabaoth, otherwise known as Jaldabaoth or Ialdabaoth (; ; ; Ialtabaôth), is a malevolent god and demiurge (creator of the material world) according to various Gnostic sects, represented sometimes as a theriomorphic, lion-headed serpent. He is identified as a false god who keeps souls trapped in physical bodies, imprisoned in the material universe. A theory proposed by Jacques Matter in 1828 identified the name as descending from and , a supposed plural form of . Matter, however, interpreted it to mean 'chaos', thus translating Yaldaboath as "child of darkness [...] an element of chaos".
This etymology was popular due to its perceived literary merits. It inspired Adolf Bernhard Christoph Hilgenfeld to keep Matter's proposed 'chaos' translation, while fabulating a more plausible sounding, but unattested second noun: , deriving the name from , supposedly meaning 'child of chaos', in 1884. This and its variants became the majority opinion from the late 19th to the mid-20th century, and were endorsed by Hans-Martin Schenke, :de:Alexander Böhlig, and Pahor Labib.
This analysis was convincingly deconstructed by Jewish historian of religion Gershom Scholem in 1974, who showed the unattested Aramaic term to have been fabulated and attested only in a single corrupted text from 1859, with its listed translation having been transposed from the reading of an earlier etymology, whose explanation seemingly equated "darkness" and "chaos" when translating an unattested supposed plural form of . Consequently, most scholars retracted their endorsement (for example, Gilles Quispel did so by lamenting humorously that due to its literary merits he believes the originator of the name Yaldabaoth had made the same erroneous association between baoth and tohuwabohu as the former majority opinion). Additionally, Scholem argued that based on the earliest textual data, which termed Yaldabaoth "the King of Chaos", he was the progenitor of chaos, not its progeny.
In his proposed 1967 etymology, Alfred Adam already diverged from the then-majority opinion and translated yaldā similarly to Scholem, as . He believed the name's second part to derive from . This he interpreted, however, to describe more broadly 'the power of generation'; thus suggesting the name to mean 'the bringing forth of the power of generation'. He notes that the change from the tsade to a dalet or a teth is sometimes seen in Aramaic.
Historical origins
After the Assyrian conquest of Egypt in the 7th century BCE, Set was considered an evil deity by the ancient Egyptians and not commonly worshipped, in large part due to his role as the god of foreigners. From at least 200 BCE onward, a tradition developed in the Ptolemaic Kingdom that identified Yahweh, the God of the Jews, with the Egyptian god Set. Diverging from previous zoologically multiplicitous depictions, Seth's appearance during the Hellenistic period onwards was depicted as resembling a man with a donkey's head.
The Greek practice of interpretatio graeca, ascribing the gods of another people's pantheon to corresponding ones in one's own, had been adopted by the Egyptians after their Hellenization; during the process of which they had identified Set with Typhon, a snake-monster that roars like a lion.
The story of the Exodus, featured in the Hebrew Bible, speaks of the ancestors of the Israelites as a nation betrayed and subjugated by the Pharaoh, for whom Yahweh subjects Egyptians to Plagues of Egypt, including destroying their country, defiling the Nile, and killing all their first-born sons. Jewish migration within the Ptolemaic Kingdom to Greek-speaking Egyptian cities such as Alexandria led to the creation of the Septuagint, a translation of the Hebrew Bible into Koine Greek. Furthermore, the story of the Exodus was adapted by Ezekiel the Tragedian as the , a play performed in Alexandria and seen by Egyptians and Jews. Egyptian receptions of the Exodus story were widely negative because it insulted their gods and praised their suffering. It inspired Egyptian works that retold the story, but altered its details to mock the Jews and exalt Egypt and its gods.
In this context, some Egyptians discerned similarities between Yahweh's in-narrative actions and attributes and those of Seth (such as being associated with foreigners, deserts, and storms), in addition to a phonetic resemblance between , Yahweh's name as used by hellenised Jews, and , then considered as the animal of Seth. From this arose a popular response to the Jewish accusation that Egyptians were merely worshipping beasts, namely that, in truth, the Jews themselves worshipped a beast, a donkey or a donkey-headed man, i.e., Set.
Accusations of onolatry against the Jews spread from the Egyptian milieu, with its understanding of the donkey's Set-related importance, to the rest of the Graeco-Roman world, which was largely ignorant of this context. In the most famous variations of narratives alleging Jewish onolatry, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, a Seleucid emperor famous for raiding the Temple in Jerusalem, supposedly discovered that its Holy of Holies was not empty, but instead contained a donkey idol, and Tacitus (early second century CE) claimed that the Jews dedicated in their holiest shrine a statue of a wild ass. After the emergence of Christianity, the same charge was also repeated against its devotees. Most famously so in the earliest known depiction of the crucifixion of Jesus, the Alexamenos graffito, where a Christian by the name of Alexamenos is shown worshipping a donkey-headed crucified god.
According to Litwa, this tradition forms the basis for the development of Gnostic beliefs about Yaldabaoth.
Role in Gnosticism
The origins of Gnosticism are obscure and still disputed. Gnostics emphasised spiritual knowledge (gnosis) of the divine spark within, over faith (pistis) in the teachings and traditions of the various communities of Christians. Gnosticism presents a distinction between the highest, unknowable God, and the Demiurge, "creator" of the material universe. Gnostics considered the most essential part of the process of salvation to be this personal knowledge, in contrast to faith as an outlook in their worldview along with faith in the ecclesiastical authority. Some Gnostic Christians (such as Marcionites) considered the Hebrew God of the Old Testament as the evil, false god and creator of the material universe, and the Unknown God of the Gospel, the father of Jesus Christ and creator of the spiritual world, as the true, good God. For instance, Valentinians believed that the Demiurge is merely an ignorant and incompetent creator, trying to fashion the world as well as he can, but lacking the proper power to maintain its goodness. The angels he created rebelled against Yaldabaoth. To keep the angels in subjection, Yaldabaoth generated the material universe.
In the act of creation, however, Yaldabaoth emptied himself of his supreme power. When Yaldabaoth breathed the soul into the first man, Adam, Sophia instilled in him the divine spark of the spirit. After matter, Yaldabaoth produced the serpent spirit (Ophiomorphos), which is the origin of all evil. The light being Sophia caused the fall of man through the serpent. By eating the forbidden fruit, Adam and Eve became wise and rejected Yaldabaoth. Eventually, Yaldabaoth expelled them from the ethereal region, the Paradise, as punishment.
Yaldabaoth continuously attempted to deprive human beings of the gift of the spark of light which he had unwittingly lost to them, or to keep them in bondage. As punishments, he tried to make humanity acknowledge him as God. (Providence) rescued Noah.