Documented: Codex II, tractate 4, Coptic, a second or third-century work drawing on Jewish apocalyptic and Platonic materials. It gives the archons' origin from Sophia's shadow, their lion-faced chief Yaldabaoth, the assault foiled by Eve's withdrawal into the Tree of Knowledge, the interrogation of Adam's descendants, and the angel Eleleth's prophecy to Norea, Noah's daughter-figure, that the rulers will be destroyed.
The treatise's documented inversion: every beat of Genesis 1-6 is preserved and reversed, the spirit moves in the waters against the darkness, the prohibition is the archons' lie, the expulsion is a rescue. Scholars read it as a school commentary demonstrating how thoroughly gnostic exegesis could rewire scripture while quoting it faithfully.
The political reading: archon means ruler, the standard Greek word for magistrate, and calling the cosmic powers archons made the theology a jurisprudence. The rulers of this age in Paul become, here, literal police of a prison cosmos. The tract's survival in full suggests the metaphor landed with its first readers.
When the villain of Genesis narrates the story, who is the serpent?