Analysis of information sources in references of the Wikipedia article "Set (deity)" in English language version.
Last modified:
From the Greco-Egyptian perspective, Yahweh and Seth shared several traits: they were both gods of foreigners, of the desert, and of frightening storms. They both sent calamities. Indeed, Egyptians could not help but notice that some of the plagues unleashed by Yahweh resembled disasters customarily inflicted by Seth: darkness, eclipse, and pestilence. Red was the distinctive hue of Seth, and Yahweh turned the Nile crimson before ordering the Hebrews to paint their lintels with blood. Mount Sinai, the desert crag from which Yahweh revealed his Law, quaked as it was enveloped in thunder, lightning, and fire—all phenomena associated with Seth. Finally, the Greek word for Yahweh (Iaō)—with a perverse twist of the tongue—sounded like the native Egyptian word for donkey (eiō or simply iō). These factors, even if judged artificial today, were more than enough for Hellenized Egyptians to portray Yahweh as a form of Seth.
For centuries, Jews had scorned the religion of Egypt as the worship of dumb beasts. One way for learned Egyptians to fight back was to depict the Jewish deity as himself the most vile and ridiculous beast. If Yahweh was a form of Seth, then he could be portrayed in Seth's ass-like shape. Thus there arose the tradition that the Jews (secretly) worshiped Yahweh as a donkey or as a man standing upright with an ass's head.
Sabaoth, sometimes identified with Yaldabaoth, was identical to the Judean creator. After the souls of the redeemed depart from this world, they make their way past every ruler. The last and most difficult ruler to evade is the creator, who cannot be passed apart from the attainment of full knowledge (gnosis). These Christians believed that Sabaoth had either the shape of a donkey or of a pig.
One copy of the shorter version of the Secret Book reports that the chief creator Yaldabaoth "had the face of a snake and the face of a lion." In the longer version, he is described as "a lion-faced serpent."91 These traits were reminiscent of Seth-Typhon's snake heads and lionlike roar—not to mention his eyes, "flashing like fires of lightning.[...] When it comes to donkey features, however, one must attend to Yaldabaoth's offspring. These include the seven planetary rulers. The second of these, called Eloaios, had the face of a donkey. In one manuscript, Eloaios's donkey face is explicitly called "the face of Typhon." The notion of "like father, like son" seems to be implied. Eloaios activated the typhonic potential embedded in the chief creator, Yaldabaoth. "Evidence for this view is Yaldabaoth's shape-shifting character. As a being expressing chaos, he had a "crowd of faces"—innumerable appearances that he could manifest at will. Whenever he desired, apparently, Yaldabaoth could manifest donkey features. Eloaios was the child of the creator, and his donkey visage realized one of Yaldabaoth's many forms."
Seth-Yahweh was a donkey-shaped god of evil established in pre-Christian cultural memory and adapted by alternative Christian groups to express a hostility toward the Judean creator that had been voiced for centuries. This means that so-called Phibionite, Sethian, and Ophite Christians did not have to invent Yahweh as an evil character out of whole cloth. The wicked creator was already available, and his symbolic value was cashed out in new mythmaking practices that could be aimed not (or not only) at Jews but also at other Christian opponents who had adopted the Jewish creator as their chief deity.
We see this tradition recounted by several writers. Around 200 BCE, a man called Mnaseas (an Alexandrian originally from what is now southern Turkey), told a story of an Idumean (southern Palestinian) who entered the Judean temple and tore off the golden head of a pack ass from the inner sanctuary. This head was evidently attached to a body, whether human or donkey. The reader would have understood that the Jews (secretly) worshiped Yahweh as a donkey in the Jerusalem temple, since gold was characteristically used for cult statues of gods. Egyptians knew only one other deity in ass-like form: Seth.
