Are you interested in angels, demons, spirits, ghosts, and monsters? Are you curious about their origins, tales, and influence upon history and on the present day? If so, sit back, relax, and welcome to Southern Demonology, the podcast that explores all of this and more.
You've heard me talk about the movie The Prophecy before. While not an overwhelming movie, it did have moments of phenomenal greatness to it. And one of them did not even appear in the movie itself, but was represented by those shining examples, the research. This movie depicted angelic script that took me, who has a master's in ancient languages in theological studies, three years to track down and figure out where they came from. And for that alone, the prophecy will forever have my utmost respect and will continue to live rent-free in my head until I no longer have thoughts.
Much like the Highlander franchise, the Prophecy, unfortunately, had horrible, horrible sequels that were nothing more than cheaply made knockoffs that sought to capitalize on the first name recognition. Yet they too did have one thing that they did somewhat right. They made a definitive statement that the Nephilim, those entities that are the offspring of Angel and Mortal, were the most dangerous creations known. And that always struck me as curious. Why might that be so?
I realized years later that my studies had actually shown that not only were those two horrible sequels correct, but that is more than likely why first Enoch is not included in either the Hebrew Bible or the Christian New Testament today. Welcome back to season 3, episode 3 of Southern Demonology. As always, I'm your host, JJ. I've spoken about Enoch before in interviews and on this podcast, but today I want to get into the nitty-gritty of the text itself. I actually thought about reading some of this in Getas or a classical Ethiopic, but then I realized two things.
First, I would probably give native speakers of Amharic and Targinian a minor heart attack because of the fact that ancient Gaez had a heck of a lot more sounds, and my pronunciation is probably horrible in my thick southern accent to begin with. And two, you would just be here hearing me read some gibberish without me actually explaining what in the world is going on. If you are curious about some of that, please let me know. You can reach me at uh the website southerndemonology.com or on any of my other social media platforms, including Discord.
Anyway, with all that said, from book one, chapter six, verses one through six, and it came to pass after the children of men had increased in those days, beautiful and comely daughters were born to them, and the angels, the sons of the heavens, saw and lusted after them, and said one to another, Behold, we will choose for ourselves wives from among the children of men, and will beget for ourselves children, and Semyaza, who was their leader, said to them, I fear that perhaps you will not be willing to do this deed, and I alone shall suffer for this great sin.
And then all answered him and said, We all will swear an oath and bind ourselves mutually by a curse, that we will not give up this plan, but will make this plan a deed. Then they all swore together and bound themselves mutually by a curse. Book one, chapter seven, verses one through six continues detailing the watchers' activities.
And they took unto themselves wives, and each chose for himself one, and they began to go into them and mixed with them, and taught them charms and conjurations, and made them acquainted with the cutting of roots and of woods, and they became pregnant, and brought forth great giants whose stature were three hundred cubits, or three thousand Ls.
These devoured all the acquisitions of men, until men were unable to sustain themselves, and the giants turned themselves against mankind in order to devour them, and they began to sin against the birds and the beasts, and against the creeping things and the fish, and devoured their flesh among themselves, and drank the blood thereof, and the earth complained of the unjust ones. And by the way, when the text is talking about they began to sin against the birds and the beasts, that's not just eating them. That is actually talking about fornication.
So these giants were yes, they were eating everything they could get their hands on, but they were also screwing themselves silly across the world. Let that live in your head for a little bit. Chapter 8 tells of the areas of forbidden knowledge that specific angels have taught humanity. And chapter 9 features four of the archangels, Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel, standing before God, recounting all of the horrible things that have happened on earth and asking God what shall be done. It's chapter nine where we get the details of that plan.
To Uriel, actually, some of the texts replace Uriel with an angel named Arsaia Lalayor. He commanded the angel to go to the son of Lamech, Noah, and tell him my name, hide thyself, and reveal to him the end which is to come, for the whole earth sh will be destroyed, and the water of the deluge is about to come over the whole earth, and what is upon it will be destroyed. Also to instruct Noah on how to escape the deluge. Raphael had perhaps the greatest challenges as they were twofold.
First, he had to find Azazel hand in foot and put him in the darkness, make an opening in the desert which is in Dudael and put him there. We have spoken many a time about Dudael, so I will refrain from doing that here. Once that was done, Raphael had to live up to his name as the healing power of God, Raphael, and heal the earth which the angels have defiled, and announce the healing of the earth that I will heal it, and that not all the sons of men shall be destroyed through the mystery of all the things which the watchers have spoken and have taught their sons.
In this case, that healing was sending the deluge to wipe away all those things not defiled. To Gabriel, the mighty warrior of God, Gabriel, God commanded, Go against the bastards and those cast off and against the children of fornication, and destroy the children of fornication and the children of the watchers from among men. Lead them out, and let them loose, that they may destroy each other by murder, for their days shall not be long. How long you may ask? The next verse tells it very clearly.
And they will all supplicate thee, but their fathers will secure nothing for them, although they expect an everlasting life, and that each one of them will live five hundred years. Michael then had to order to announce the punishment of Semyazah and the rest of the watchers, and then bind them under the hills of the earth for seventy generations. The watchers, seeking mercy, called upon Enoch to create a petition on their behalf, but that was not to be.
Enoch had a vision where he went to the heavens, and before God had the sins of the Watchers spelled out in much greater, albeit much more troubling detail. Book 1, Chapter 15, verses 3 through 11, has God admonishing the watchers through Enoch when he says, Why have ye left the ProFootball is back, and so are the predictions.
And taking wives unto yourselves, and acted like the children of earth, and begotten giants as sons, while ye were spiritual, holy, having eternal life, ye defied yourselves with women, and with the blood of flesh have begotten children, and have lusted after the blood of men, and have produced flesh and blood, as they produce who die and are destroyed. Therefore I have given them wives that they might impregnate them and children be born by them, as it is done on earth. Ye were formerly spiritual, living an eternal life without death to all the generations of the world.
Therefore I have not made for you any wives, for spiritual beings have their home in heaven. And now the giants who have been begotten from body and flesh will be called evil spirits on earth, and their dwelling places will be upon the earth. Evil spirits proceed from their bodies, because they are created from above, their beginning and first basis being from the holy waters. They will be evil spirits upon the earth and will be called evil spirits.
But the spirits of heaven have their dwelling places in heaven, and the spirits of the earth who were born on the earth have their dwelling places on earth, and the spirits of the giants who cast themselves upon the clouds will be destroyed and fall, and will battle and cause destruction on the earth and do evil. They will take no kind of food, nor will they become thirsty, and they will be invisible, and these spirits will rise up against the children of men and against the women, because they have proceeded from them in the days of murder and destruction.
Have your jaws opened up as much as mine have, dear listener, because spirit and flesh have commingled and produced something that should not have been upon the face of the earth. Then these spirits of the giants will remain on the earth and trouble humanity as they came from them. So the horrible sequels of the prophecy were right in two regards, but horribly wrong on another. The Nephilim are abominations, as they should not exist, and that they are extremely dangerous. Those are the two that were correct. Yet that danger comes not from when they are alive.
After all, they can be killed like any other thing of the flesh. That danger comes from after they are killed as they remain eternally hungry, eternally thirsty, and continually committing the same sins they propagated while alive against their own human parents. There's more than a few things about this. Remember that first Enoch was considered a canonical book of the Hebrew Bible in Second Temple Judaism. As we have seen over and over again in history, the words of Scripture are studied, poured over, interpreted, and applied to daily life.
We see this most clearly in the Death Sea Scrolls and the life of the Essenes. In my favorite fragment, 4Q 510 and 11, the Mashkil or instructor invokes God's name and splendor to instill dread and to terrify the spirits of the angels of destruction and the spirits of the bastards, along with a host of other evils found in Dudael, as they pose an active threat to people. This prayer even sees the spirits of the giants elaborated upon, as it's not only them that are dangerous.
If they are not spirits in the atmosphere, then their spiritual parents who are also imprisoned in the earth must also be a continual danger as well. I have often posited that ancient Judaism developed a duality, or in other words, gained a devil or great enemy of God by contact with Zoroastrianism after the great Babylonian exile. And Zoroastrianism is the religion that had perhaps the most developed of all dualities. In a future episode, I'll even go over how Christian duality bears a lot of the same footprint as Zoroastrianism.
But coincidentally, I think that Judaism gained a bit of theological uncertainty along with this sudden addition. See, at the end of days, Akhramazda, the deity of Zoroastrianism, will cast Ahriman or the prime evil into the pit of darkness from which he originated, along with his devas or demons, and all the evil people, and then he will seal up hell with a portion of himself that has long troubled scholars and theologians, as that means a Khoramazda will be lesser after that act. He is actively sacrificing a part of himself to take away these evil entities.
Some have tried to explain that by saying taking away something from infinity still leaves infinity, while on the other hand, others have corrected them by noting that only applies to addition. That same inconsistency lies at the heart of first Enoch as well. God had Raphael send forth the deluge to wipe away the giants. Yet if they still remain, albeit in a different form, then that directly implies that the Nephilim cannot be rectified even by God. And that, my friends, opens up an entire can of theological worms that no one wants to deal with.
In the end, I think that this is the prime reason why only the Ethiopic Orthodox Church still considers first Enoch to be canonical. And to be honest, this type, not the same type of theological uncertainty, but others are introduced by a lot of the books of the pseudopigrapha. And that's why most of them, if not all, have been completely disregarded throughout the ages. And again, only the Ethiopic Orthodox Church considered them to be canon. The other thing that I find really interesting about this description of the Nephilim is what they sound like in modern-day parlance.
They are eternally hungry, eternally thirsty, yet neither of these things can be quenched. It sounds a terrific amount like how role-playing games and other types of myths have described the undead. They hate life because they want life, and yet that is always denied to them. I am also firmly of the opinion that just like Highlander, only the first prophecy movie was ever made, and that James Cameron tragically passed away after making Terminator 2 and never unleashed the evils of Titanic and Avatar upon the earth, sins almost as comparable to the Nephilim. But maybe that's just me.
Thank you for listening to Southern Demonology. Find us online at Southern Demonology.com where you can find all of our social and podcasting links. Also, if you have a moment, please feel free to rate this podcast and leave any encouraging feedbacks that you may have. As always, I am JJ and it has been a pleasure getting to talk to you today.