The Gnostic myth was a bold attempt to explain the origin and fate of the universe and to proclaim human salvation through a combination of the Jewish Scriptures, Platonist mythological speculation, and (it seems) revelatory meditations on the structure of the human mind ...
Several divine characters or structures appear in similar ways even within narrations of the myth that otherwise differ, suggesting that they lay at the heart of what Gnostics saw as distinctive about their teachings about God. For example, nearly all feature a triad of father, mother, and son at a very high level of the godhead.
In The Secret Book According to John, the Barbelo conceives by the gaze of the first principle and begets a spark, the Self-Originate or Christ. Unlike other aeons, which emanate by becoming "disclosed," Christ is "the only-begotten" of the Father and the Barbelo, who are then his father and mother (Ap. John 11 6:10-18) ...
In First Thought the aeons praise Christ, who is "the only-begotten" and "the perfect child" and who establishes four eternal realms and their luminaries (38:16-39:12) ... The Gospel of Judas calls the Self-Originate or Christ, as it does many of the divine beings, "a great angel" and "the god of light"; it is attended by four angels, and it brings into existence the lower aeons (47:16-48:21).
David Brakke, The Gnostics, 2010 (Kindle Locations 759-760, 797-801, 808-11)
Several divine characters or structures appear in similar ways even within narrations of the myth that otherwise differ, suggesting that they lay at the heart of what Gnostics saw as distinctive about their teachings about God. For example, nearly all feature a triad of father, mother, and son at a very high level of the godhead.
In The Secret Book According to John, the Barbelo conceives by the gaze of the first principle and begets a spark, the Self-Originate or Christ. Unlike other aeons, which emanate by becoming "disclosed," Christ is "the only-begotten" of the Father and the Barbelo, who are then his father and mother (Ap. John 11 6:10-18) ...
In First Thought the aeons praise Christ, who is "the only-begotten" and "the perfect child" and who establishes four eternal realms and their luminaries (38:16-39:12) ... The Gospel of Judas calls the Self-Originate or Christ, as it does many of the divine beings, "a great angel" and "the god of light"; it is attended by four angels, and it brings into existence the lower aeons (47:16-48:21).
David Brakke, The Gnostics, 2010 (Kindle Locations 759-760, 797-801, 808-11)
Brakke notes both Ephesians 6:12 and Hypostasis of the Archons, an exegesis on Genesis 1–6, have
"Our contest is not against flesh and blood; rather, the authorities of the world and the spiritual hosts of wickedness"
The beginning and conclusion to Hypostasis of the Archons are Christian Gnostic, but the rest of the material is a mythological narrative regarding the origin and nature of the archontic powers peopling the heavens between Earth and the Ogdoad, and how the destiny of man is affected by these primeval happenings.
The treatise begins with a fragment of cosmogony, which leads to what is framed as a "true history" of the events in the Genesis creation story, reflecting Gnostic distrust of the material world and the demiurge that created it. Within this narrative there is an "angelic revelation dialogue" where an angel repeats and elaborates the author's fragment of cosmogonic myth in much broader scope, concluding with historical prediction of the coming of the savior and the end of days.
Although the etymologies and puns on Semitic names suggest the author's close contact with Jewish legends and interpretive traditions, as well as knowledge of Greek mythology and Hellenistic cult practices, the myth is, according to Bentley Layton, purposefully anti-Judaic.