CONTEXTUALIZING QANON: THE NEW AMERICAN MILLENARIANISM

 

QAnon’s cryptic predictions and counter-intuitive analysis of reality read like something from a Philip K. Dick novel. In the late author’s 1974 semi-autobiographical work, Valis, the protagonist experiences a series of visions which he along with his friends interpret to reveal hidden realities of alien intelligence, political scandal, and gnostic wisdom. In fact, Dick was inspired by his own revelatory experiences—which occurred after a visit to the dentist’s office—and which contained imagery and motifs from early Christian sectarian groups that claimed to possess a secret hermeneutical key to the true nature of the cosmos.[1]

For the acolytes of QAnon, an equally “gnostic” vision of reality has been unveiled by the obscure utterances of their original online oracle. Although much debated by modern scholars,[2] the basic premise of the “gnostic” worldview, of which there were many versions in antiquity, asserts that experiential reality is not what it appears. The world we perceive is, in fact, a prison constructed by demonic powers as a means to enslave the eternal essence of the soul. Only a small spiritual elite are blessed with special revealed knowledge—gnosis—that unmasks this monumental cosmic deception.

This sort of revisionist reading of reality is very much the basis of the QAnon gospel being carried by its missionaries through the furthest reaches of the digital world. It would appear that a not-insignificant number of people—predominately Trump supporters and conservative Christians—believe (among other things) that the “real” cause of the crisis of 2020 is a subterranean religious war being waged by US soldiers against legions of Illuminati demons who torture and abuse children for the purpose of producing a highly addictive drug called adrenochrome used by liberal and Hollywood elites, such as the Clintons and Tom Hanks. The current version of QAnon builds upon the Pizzagate conspiracy theory of 2016, which alleged that senior US Democrats operated a child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington DC pizzeria, although it has now morphed into a far more expansive and eschatological narrative.[3]

One YouTube video, posted by QAnon evangelist “Blessed To Teach” constitutes a kind of Credo or Confession of Faith, punctuated as it is by a series of “I believe” statements. What does “Blessed To Teach” believe? He believes that “a cabal of secret societies has controlled the world for over 200 years” and that a deep state/shadow government is working to destroy America. However, almighty God is now intervening in history, although this is being obscured by a world media that repeats the cabal’s talking points. By the way, all religions other than Christianity are false, since salvation comes “by faith alone.” Even though George Soros is funding socialists to destroy the great nation, God has raised up an army of “Red Pill Christian Patriots” to defeat the Deep State. Beware! Infidels, for military tribunals will be established once victory is achieved under “an anointed” Donald J. Trump. Yes, you read that right! An “anointed” Donald Trump. Such a statement explicitly cast Trump as a Messiah and Christ-figure.

President Donald Trump, for his part, is also cast as a kind of radical Christian caliph, deputized by the “One TRUE Living God” to wage war against the liberal infidels covertly destroying a once great and holy nation. In the case of Trump, things are also not what they seem. The President’s tweets, far from being the shambolic ramblings of an idiotic man-child, are in fact the encoded words of a Christian oracle, the meaning of which only true believers can divine. Numerous online message boards contain the QAnonners detailed exegesis and commentary on the President’s every fragmented utterance.  

The Gospel of QAnon is a curious amalgam of sex scandal, anti-government protest, survivalist mentality, science fiction, biblical religion, and military ethos. In fact, the so-called “Q” gains his authority by claiming to be a senior military officer, although the apocalyptic narrative that has evolved out of his encoded “Q-Drops” are about what you’d expect from an Evangelically funded Predator film. The “White Hat” forces are alleged to have access to advanced technologies such as “Magnetic Levitating Trains (MAGLEVS) and time travel. In combination, all of these ingredients make for a uniquely American brand of heresy and represents the “cult” of Trump in its most extreme form.

Academics, however, are not supposed to use words like “heresy” and “cult.” QAnon would more aptly be characterized as a new religious movement or millenarian sect.[4] In fact, the eschatological dimensions of QAnon are not to be underestimated. Its adherents believe themselves to be on the cusp of a pivot point in cosmic history—a “Great Awakening”—when the powerful forces of White, Christian purity (the “Red Pill Christian Patriots”) will save the great “shining city on a hill” from the dark, demonic masses that threaten to overwhelm it, also known as “the Satanics” or the “Ancient Evil Nephilim Bloodlines of Cain.” After all, are there not riots in the streets? Are people not dying in droves? Are there not earthquakes, fires, and famines? Indeed, “wars and rumours of wars”[5] is what is alleged, while the realities of climate change, mass migration, and political upheaval are all fit into a complex theological framework.

Early Christians also speculated about an overturning of their contemporary cosmo-political order using imagery of fantastic beasts, demons, and holy war. Just look at the Apocalypse of John, the final book of the New Testament. Biblical scholars have long understood that this work, like many texts written in the same genre, is more a critique of the author’s contemporary political context than a prediction of some future End of Days. It is an encoded, first-century CE critique of Roman imperial power. Nonetheless, John’s apocalypse (also popularly known as Revelations) has often been interpreted as a scriptural key to how the world will end. Early Christian readers of the work thought that the End Times were eminent, and ever since Christian groups have periodically arisen to proclaim that the Hour is at hand. Usually, these millenarian sects appear in times of crisis, and times of crisis these certainly are. In fact, the Apocalypse of John was not widely accepted into the emerging New Testament canon until well into the 4th century CE. Many early Christian leaders thought the text encouraged worrisome eschatological impulses that the institutional church found difficult to control. QAnon, for its part, is not so much a “church” (in a sociological sense) but a loosely connected network of online commentators. Even though it was birthed in a matrix of Evangelical fundamentalism[6] and Republican extremism (a phenomenon one might well describe as “American Liberty Religion”) QAnonners are under no recognizable institutional framework. Even though they themselves might assert that their so-called “White Hats” represent a finely tuned crusader force carrying out complex operations in an underground hellscape.

In a sense, the QAnon vision represents an act of imaginary insurrection, except for the fact that it has inspired real acts of violence.[7] For most believers, presumably, it is a discursive universe in which panicked conservative Christians can live out their most violent fantasies of overthrowing a tyrannical government, unmasking the Deep State, restoring white supremacy, “saving the children,” and “owning the Libs,” all while doing God’s holy work. 

It is no surprise that so much of the QAnon narrative relies upon rumors of sexual abuse and misconduct. This rhetorical strategy also has a long history. In the 2nd century BCE, Roman Republican authorities sought to suppress the celebration of the bacchanalia festival due to reports that the revelers practiced incest, ritual murder, and cannibalism. What conservative Romans were likely more worried about was the fact that the participants transgressed traditional social hierarchies around class, status, and gender. Slaves ordered around their masters, while women behaved like men. Such subversion simply would not do. So, the whole proceedings were caste in the rhetorical trappings of a proto-satanic cult. Similarly, early Christians themselves faced the same sorts of accusations as their Roman neighbors caught wind of their eucharistic language of body and blood. Such horrific tropes have been routinely applied countless times in moments of historical crisis and change as a means to undermine the Other and maintain the status quo.

Another aspect of QAnon that is worthy of considering has to do with the nature of mythmaking itself. Many ancient myth stories have what is known as an “aetiological” agenda. That is, they are intended to explain aspects of the world that the storytellers and their hearers find otherwise inexplainable. One well known example is the story of Demeter and Persephone. According to Graeco-Roman tradition, when Persephone, the daughter of Demeter (the “Earth Mother”) was lured away to the Underworld by Hades, the earth became infertile as her mother mourned. Eventually, an arrangement is worked out whereby Persephone can split her time between the upper and lower worlds, thereby allowing the crops to grow. This story has often been interpreted as a pre-scientific attempt to explain the cycle of the seasons.

There is a decidedly aetiological dimension to much of the QAnon conspiracy. Promoters such as “Gene Decode” create YouTube videos filled with images of vast military installations and pieces of infrastructure, correlated with natural disasters and climatic events. All this information is then fit into the explanatory model of the “Under Earth War.” As such, QAnonners, who appear otherwise ill-equipped to makes sense of the world around them, rely on an aetiological interpretation based on a hybrid set of conspiratorial constructs.  

All of this reminds me of another ancient aetiology, as a somewhat similar apocalyptic narrative is attested during Late Antiquity. Drawing on legends that widely circulated about Alexander of Great, it was believed that the Macedonian king had imprisoned the demonic, biblical tribes of Gog and Magog behind the “Gates of the North.” These gates, it was thought, would be opened at the end of time as part of a great eschatological battle. Some historians have wondered if this idea of the “Gates of the North” was based on an imaginative aetiological explanation for the remains of Sassanian fortification structures, such as those still present at Derbent, whose purpose people at the time could no longer explain. 

QAnon’s sudden resurgence may seem surprising, but, given the likelihood that the crisis of 2020 seems set to intensify especially as the US election nears and the pandemic spirals out of control. Just what role the acolytes of Q will play remains to be seen. Few religious sects transition to stabilized religions. Most burn themselves out. Unfortunately, the nearly inevitable immolation that occurs consumes more than just the believers themselves. 

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2007/08/20/blows-against-the-empire

[2]M. Williams, Rethinking "Gnosticism" An Argument for Dismantling a Dubious Category (Princeton UP, 1999); K. King, What is Gnosticism? (Harvard UP, 2003) are just two of the major re-assessments of the “gnostic” rubric. Others, such as A. De Conick continue to take a more expansive approach, see The gnostic new age : how a countercultural spirituality revolutionized religion from antiquity to today (Columbia UP, 2016).

[3] https://www.salon.com/2020/08/16/what-is-qanon-a-not-so-brief-introduction-to-the-conspiracy-theory-thats-eating-america

[4] https://theconversation.com/the-church-of-qanon-will-conspiracy-theories-form-the-basis-of-a-new-religious-movement-137859

[5] A reference to Matthew 24, no doubt meaningful to QAnon interpreters: “Jesus answered them, “Beware that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Messiah!’ and they will lead many astray. And you will hear of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not alarmed; for this must take place, but the end is not yet. For nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom, and there will be famines and earthquakes in various places: all this is but the beginning of the birth pangs.”

[6] https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/libertarian-journalist-explains-the-links-between-qanon-and-fundamentalist-christianity/

[7] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/us/pizzagate-attack-sentence.html

REVIEW of The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices

RBL REVIEW (forthcoming)

Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott, The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices (Studien und Texte zu Antike und Christentum 97; Mohr Siebeck, 2015) 332p.

In The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices Hugo Lundhaug and Lance Jenott set out to answer a rather straightforward question—Who produced and read the actual books collectively known as the Nag Hammadi Codices? This question, when it has been considered at all, has often been obscured by the preconceptions of scholars about what the terms “gnostic” and “monastic” mean. The authors, however, are not concerned with who originally might have composed the texts or their pre-codex literary history. These are separate questions that are not directly relevant to the books’ terminal users, who the authors seek to identify.

            Chapter 1 (“The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics?”) addresses the history of the question and debate around the circumstances of the discovery. In this context the early work of Jean Doresse has cast a long shadow, since he famously asserted that “whoever may have possessed (the books), they cannot have been monks” (p. 1). Others who have looked at the question, such as Khosroyev, insisted that the codices contained theologies that would have been incompatible with a monastic setting, particularly a Pachomian one (p. 2). In fact, many scholars have seen the Nag Hammadi texts as too “bizarre,” “esoteric,” or “untraditional” to have come from a monastery (p. 2-3). As a result, a variety of alternatives have been proposed, from a group of urban intellectuals, to a “gnostic” sect, to a wealthy collector of esoterica. It has also been argued that the manuscripts served as Christian “books of the dead” (p. 3-5). In spite of all this, a few things are relatively clear: 1) the books can be dated to the 4^th-5^th centuries CE (p. 10-11), 2) they were found near a cliff at Jabal al-Tarif, near the Hamra Dum village (NB: the question of whether the site was a “cemetery” is open to interpretation, although there are certainly tombs nearby) (p. 17-19), and 3) Christian monks were active in the area as early as the 4^th and 5^th centuries CE (p. 17-19).

            Chapter 2 concerns “Monastic Diversity in Upper Egypt,” a region known to have been inhabited by male and female ascetics who lived both solitary and communal lives (p. 22). Recent studies have shown that there was more interaction between monks (not all Pachomian) and villagers than has normally been assumed (p. 24-25). Moreover, some of the monks were highly educated (p. 25) and held a diversity of theological opinions (p. 34-38). In fact, and this is key, the cartonnage material from the covers of the Nag Hammadi codices does contain a substantial amount of monastic material (p. 47-49).  

            Chapter 3 briefly addresses the vexing question of “The Gnostics?” Once again, the authors assert that their interest lies in determining the origin of the actual codices themselves, not with speculating about what persons or theological factions might have authored the texts they contain (p. 77). Still, Lundhaug and Jenott underline the degree to which scholarly theories about “Gnosticism” have and continue to obscure a “clear analysis” of the codices (p. 73). While this is certainly a pertinent point, the chapter puts an overwhelming emphasis on the work of Alastair Logan as representative of gnostic studies as a whole. This seems like a rather narrow assessment of the field.

            In Chapter 4 (“Contrasting Mentalities?”) the authors continue to unpack the many preconceptions that interpreters have imposed on the codices. Often, assumptions are made about what people at the time, particularly monks, would or would not have read. The content of the Nag Hammadi manuscripts has been labelled as “anti-biblical” and “syncretistic” material meant for the weak minded (p. 74-75). Ideas about what constitutes the “monastic” (i.e. orthodox) perspective abound (p. 75). Khosroyev serves as a particularly egregious example of this, when he referred to the “bizarre mentality” contained in the codices (p. 75). Attached to such assumptions is the equally stereotypical corollary that such speculative literature couldn’t possibly have interested the poor, ignorant Copts (p. 76, 78, 91). While there are certainly allusions to Greek culture and philosophy in the texts, one need not assume that these elements would have been of primary interest to the readers of the codices (p. 92). Here the authors emphasize an often overlooked point. If the readers of the codices are imagined as sophisticated urban intellectuals (as some have proposed), steeped in Greek philosophical culture, why render them into Coptic? (p. 94). Greek continued to be used in Egypt well into the Byzantine period (p. 96). Therefore, the books must have been intended for a Coptic-speaking audience (p. 100-101).

            Chapter 5 (“The Cartonnage”) explores what material from the codex coverings may or may not tell us about their creators and users. Once again, previous scholars have gone to extraordinary lengths to disassociate these supposedly “heretical” books from their notions of Pachomian orthodoxy (p. 132). Many have assumed that early Egyptian monks existed in total isolation, although this stereotype has proven to be a hagiographic fiction. Monks and monasteries did have many (often necessary) contacts with “the world” of the local villages (p. 132-3). Thus, it would not be surprising if some of the cartonnage material consisted of receipts and official documents. Such material has been used to suggest that the books were owned by soldiers, bored bureaucrats, or an esoteric “underground.” A bit of Ockham’s Razor might well be applied here. What is more likely, that a group of religious books containing largely Christian material was produced by local Christians known to produce books (i.e. monks), or some imagined hypothetical alternative? What’s more, a letter from the cartonnage of Codex VII is addressed to “father Pachomius” himself (p. 136-137). Though such concrete evidence has often been ignored or dismissed as co-incidental.

            Chapter 6 makes clear that some Christians at the time did, in fact, approve of the reading of “Apocryphal Books,” while repeated denunciations of such works by monastic authorities well into the 6^th century CE surely speaks to their continued use (p. 176-177). Chapter 7, for its part, explains that the language of “The Colophons” also fits comfortably within a monastic milieu and provide useful information about the book exchange networks employed by the creators (p. 178-206).

            Chapter 8 looks at “The Codices” themselves. Here the authors argue that given the diverse character of the Pachomian federation, it should not be surprising that multiple book production practices co-existed (p. 212). Moreover, biblical manuscripts from the Dishna Papers closely resemble the Nag Hammadi codices and themselves are associated with local Pachomian communities (p. 231-233). Here again, it is startling the length that scholars have gone and continue to go in an effort to insulate their perceived notions of orthodoxy from their perceived notions of heresy. Cornelia Römer is a case in point. As the authors point out, in a recent study she has argued that Coptic manuscripts containing both canonical and non-canonical material emerged during the same period and evidence the same scribal and codicological techniques. Yet, instead of entertaining the possibility that the same group of people might be responsible for both groups of books, the existence of a separate class of commercial, freelance scribes is postulated (p. 207).   

            After a systematic appraisal of both internal and external evidence pointing to a monastic origin of the codices, Chapters 9 and 10 turn to the question of what sort of “Monks” might have been responsible and what are the implications of such a conclusion. As the authors point out, there is plenty of material in the codices that might have interested monks (p. 234) and that the monastic milieu of 4^th-5^th century Egypt was far from homogeneous. One could find Melitians and “Origenists” in addition to Pachomians (p. 235). In fact, much of the textual material might have appealed to those with an enduring interest in Origenist theology (p. 244-6). Some such people were certainly part of the Pachomian scene (p. 247). The monastic interest in demonology is well-known (p. 259-260), as is an interest in heavenly ascents (p. 260-261). The so-called “gnostic” themes, which certainly aren’t present in all the texts, may not have interested the monks at all (p. 264). We should be wary of assuming that any ancient reader would have shared our thematic interests, or that they were incapable of reading selectively and with discernment. After all, Christians have always read even their Bibles in a highly selective fashion—highlighting some parts, ignoring others. Why would the monastic readers of the Nag Hammadi codices be any different? In the end, the authors assert that the preponderance of evidence points to a “cenobitic monastic community” (p. 256), probably Pachomian (especially in light of the letter from Codex VII cartonnage [p. 238]).

            Based on the evidence, who else could reasonably be said to have produced and read them? As Tito Orlandi has remarked, all manner of hypothetical groups and sects have been invoked to explain the Nag Hammadi Codices, except the ones we know actually existed in the Nile Valley during the 4^th and 5^th centuries CE (p. 262). Resistance to this seemingly obvious conclusion has been remarkably resilient. Although the authors don’t say so explicitly, I suspect that there has been a persistent and latent tendency to want to insulate and protect “orthodox” Pachomians from the perceived contagion of the “gnostic heresy.” Moreover, there has been a parallel tendency to segregate the various corpora of Coptic literature instead of studying them in conjunction (p. 262). It is, after all, completely normal for people in antiquity, as today, to entertain conflicting and even contradictory opinions (p. 266). Unfortunately, deeply rooted theological biases have impeded an honest historical assessment of this material. An impediment that Lundhaug and Jenott’s book goes a long way toward overcoming.

            In closing, I would like to note that The Monastic Origins of the Nag Hammadi Codices is a model of clarity, careful research, and well-articulated argument. It is entirely free from the academic jargon and theoretical mirages that cloud so much work being done in the field. It was a pleasurable and rewarding read. In addition, the book contains a number of helpful images, maps, and tables, as well as a comprehensive bibliography and an excellent set of indices. It is highly recommended.