In Chains: Slaves and Angels

This week, we're really into bondage, but not in a fun way. First, we're talking about Hagar, the enslaved handmaiden of Sarai (and later of Sarah). Being enslaved is never a good thing, despite what some apologists might have you believe, but Hagar is done pretty dirty in a few ways. We'll explore not just her nonconsensual heir-making with Abraham, but also her ejection from their house leading to the almost-death of her and her... 17 year old toddler? Next it's something that is in your Bible... but isn't. Multiple books of the New Testament make explicit references to this, and even quote it, but because first Enoch didn't make the canonical cut (with one exception), most readers would never know it. And yet, the idea that certain angels got chained up seems to be out there. So who were these naughty angels? What did they do that was so bad that they deserved to be chained up? What kind of chains can even hold a divine being? And should we all be worried whenever the Euphrates river goes through a dry spell? ---- For early access to an ad-free version of every episode of Data Over Dogma, exclusive content, and the opportunity to support our work, please consider becoming a monthly patron at: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/DataOverDogma⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow us on the various social media places: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.facebook.com/DataOverDogmaPod⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/data_over_dogma⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Have you ordered Dan McClellan's New York Times bestselling book ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠The Bible Says So⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ yet??? Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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• 1:26Speaker 00

  And then it goes through and talks about all the things that the different angels taught them. Hermione taught sorcery for the loosening of spells and magic and skill. Hopefully, everybody was like, "Hermione's teaching spells!"

• 1:45Speaker 00

  Hey, everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

• 1:46Speaker 01

  And I'm Dan Beecher.

• 1:48Speaker 00

  And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How are things today, Dan?

• 1:58Speaker 01

  You know, we're, uh, it's, it's springtime. The, uh, the blossoms are out in Salt Lake City and it's lovely and.

• 2:06Speaker 00

  Those pear trees, man.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Oh, well, look, certain pear trees are fine. And then there's the, it's not the Bradford pear tree.

• 2:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:16Speaker 01

  Which, which gives you no fruit, but does have a certain smell.

• 2:21Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 2:21Speaker 01

  About it. And I am not a fan of that smell.

• 2:24Speaker 00

  Nobody is. Flies are evidently fans of that.

• 2:29Speaker 01

  But, uh, but yes, other than that, you know, I went for a walk recently at the, uh, the Utah State Capitol, which is surrounded by, uh.

• 2:39Speaker 00

  You got cherry blossoms.

• 2:39Speaker 01

  Cherry blossoms. Uh, they're only there for a few days and then they're gone. So you gotta, you gotta hit them just right.

• 2:45Speaker 00

  Get them while they're hot.

• 2:46Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. So that was, uh, by the time you hear this, they're gone. Forget about it. Don't try.

• 2:51Speaker 00

  It's too late.

• 2:52Speaker 01

  It's too late. Anyway, uh, I'm looking forward to today's show. We have some fun coming up. Uh, we're going to start with a who's that? And, and that's going to be Hagar and she is one, it's an interesting story. I have many questions for you.

• 3:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 3:10Speaker 01

  And then, speaking of questions, we're getting into some really interesting stuff. We're, we're gonna, we're, we're gonna talk about chaining up some angels.

• 3:20Speaker 00

  Yes, this is something that comes up every now and then. Anytime there's a drought, uh, in Iraq and, um, the Euphrates River, what level good gets low.

• 3:30Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 3:31Speaker 00

  You start to hear about these chained up angels.

• 3:33Speaker 01

  But also like the, I, they came up recently. Uh, I was on threads and I had posted something dumb that I post. I, I like to poke the bear over on threads and then somebody like came at me with a whole bunch of like, well, chained up angels. And I was like chained up angels. I remember about that, but what are we even talking about here?

• 3:54Speaker 00

  So we're gonna, we're gonna look at the source.

• 3:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll get to it. All right. So, uh, let's, that'll be our, our chapter and verse. But for now, let's dive into who's that?

• 4:07Speaker 01

  And today's who's that? I said Hagar.

• 4:11Speaker 00

  Can't turn back now.

• 4:13Speaker 01

  That's right. That's right. We already, we already said it. So Hagar is, is a slave woman. Let's, let's just sort of lay the groundwork for, for who she is and to whom she belongs, et cetera.

• 4:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. So she is named as, as an Egyptian.

• 4:32Speaker 00

  And she is, she pops up in Genesis 16. So Sarai and Abram are having trouble conceiving. And then the, the text, if I recall correctly, the text just says, uh, so anyway, she had this Egyptian slave whose name was Hagar. And I want to look at the word for slave. It should be, it's shifcha. Yeah. Shifcha. So like handmade female slave. She's from Egypt and her name is probably not Egyptian. Okay. Because her name in Hebrew is just Hagar. Now, this, if you look at the consonants, this could be Hager and Hager would mean the foreigner.

• 5:14Speaker 01

  Oh my gosh. Okay. A little on the nose.

• 5:18Speaker 00

  A little bit.

• 5:19Speaker 01

  Come on.

• 5:20Speaker 00

  So, um, so this is, she's probably a literary creation, uh, not an, an actual historical person, just like Abram and Sarai are probably literary creations. But anyway, um, Sarai realizes, you know, I can't have kids, but I possess property that is capable of procreation. And so Abram, why don't you, uh, go have intercourse with my slave girl? And, uh, and you know, it'll just count as our child. And Abram, you know, is like,

• 6:01Speaker 01

  Well, and we should be clear, this is after many years because they are old already. They, they, they live to ripe old, old, old ages, but like Abram's already in his eighties, right? At this point? I think it says he's eighties.

• 6:19Speaker 00

  Well, it says at the, at the end of the chapter, he was 86 years old when Hagar bore him Ishmael.

• 6:25Speaker 01

  Right.

• 6:26Speaker 00

  So 86, yeah. So, so he's already.

• 6:30Speaker 01

  Not a spring chicken.

• 6:31Speaker 00

  No, not by, by any stretch of the imagination.

• 6:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 6:35Speaker 00

  So she is, um, she is, belongs to Sarai and she becomes a wife of Abram. And not like a, not just you're my enslaved person that I'm going to sire children with, but an actual honest to goodness wife, which, and the intent here, the author was probably narrating it this way in order that her child would be a legitimate heir of Abraham. So, um, so we're keeping it all above board.

• 7:08Speaker 01

  So it's. Well, and, and it literally says that Sarai gave her to her husband as a wife. So like that was, he didn't, he didn't just take her as a wife. This was, this was, this was sort of an anniversary present or something.

• 7:28Speaker 00

  Yes, uh, he was given another wife and, uh, according to Genesis 16, four, he went in to Hagar, which is a euphemism, uh, and she conceived. And when she saw that she had conceived, she looked with contempt on her mistress. And this is kind of, uh, there, there are different thoughts on, on exactly why she would suddenly be. Contemptuous toward her, toward Sarai.

• 7:55Speaker 01

  Right.

• 7:56Speaker 00

  Uh, after having conceived, I mean, that's kind of the point.

• 7:59Speaker 01

  Right.

• 8:00Speaker 00

  Of, of what's going on here. And then at the same time, Sarai,

• 8:05Speaker 00

  gets upset. But, uh, Sarai says, hey, she looked on me with contempt. May the Lord judge between you and me. And, and Abram is, um, you know, he's in his post-coital, uh, whatever. And this is just like, hey, do what you gotta do. And, uh, the, from the NRSV UE verse six, he says, your slave is in your power due to your, due to her as you please. And then Sarai dealt harshly with her. So she up and runs away.

• 8:36Speaker 01

  It does not, it does not elaborate on what dealt harshly with means.

• 8:41Speaker 00

  Yeah, I'm gonna look what it says.

• 8:48Speaker 00

  Sure, sure, sure. And she, huh, yeah, oppressed her, humiliated her.

• 8:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 8:56Speaker 00

  Um, violated her is a potential translation, but I, I can't imagine that that's what's going on in the, in the narrative. Uh, but she runs away. And then we get this interesting story. She's out in the wilderness. She's by a spring of water. And it says, the angel of Adonai found her, the spring on the way to Shure.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  And, uh,

• 9:19Speaker 00

  and we're gonna, when we get to the end of this, I'll, I'll explain why I think it's actually supposed to be Adonai themselves.

• 9:25Speaker 01

  Yeah. You know, it's funny. I've been doing this show for long enough that I was like, I know what's going on. Somebody added the word angel later. This was, I know how this works. I've, we've seen this before. Because, because it stops being an angel partway through. Like it's, like they've, they forgot to do the full find and replace on that. And, and so the edit is not complete.

• 9:52Speaker 00

  You've got, yeah, you've got one twig it that shows up in the, um, but the, the angel says, "Hagar, slave of Sarai," and, and notice that even the angel's like, "You belong to this woman here. That's your identity. Where have you come from and where are you going?" As if God doesn't know.

• 10:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 10:15Speaker 00

  Uh, she said, "I'm running away from my mistress, Sarai." The angel said, "Return to your mistress and submit to her." And then, uh, we get this statement, which is the kind of statement that you would get from God themselves. "I will so greatly multiply your offspring that they cannot be counted for multitude."

• 10:32Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:32Speaker 00

  And then it says, "Now you have conceived and shall bear a son. You shall call him Ishmael, but the Lord has given heed to your affliction. He shall be a wild ass of a man with, with his hand against everyone and everyone's hand against him, and he shall live at odds with all his kin." And this is actually, there's actually a, an interpretive, uh, debate here among some scholars. What is, what is going on here with the?

• 10:59Speaker 01

  Okay. What's the debate?

• 11:01Speaker 00

  Well, the live at odds, because it, uh, literally the Hebrew is "Alpanay chol ach echav yishkon," which, which means, um, against the face of all his brethren, he will dwell. And so Alpanay, does that mean he's gonna dwell opposite them, like next to them, like they're on one side of the valley, he's on the other? Or is it more, he's going to live, um, in contention with them?

• 11:32Speaker 01

  Doing battle with them or whatever.

• 11:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so you have in the NRSVUE, "He shall live at odds with all his kin." If you look in the King James Version, "He shall dwell in the presence of all his brethren." If you look in the NET Bible, "He will live away from his brothers." So like, there are a bunch of different ways to interpret what's going on here. Literally the Hebrew is, Alpanay means over, uh, or against the face of all his brothers or brethren.

• 12:04Speaker 01

  I'm gonna say, I'm gonna say it means across the street. He's gonna live across the street from his brothers.

• 12:10Speaker 00

  It's a different development. They put up a wall because they didn't want any of his.

• 12:15Speaker 01

  But he's got a window. It looks directly at their lawn. So he's checking them out.

• 12:21Speaker 00

  They hit the baseball over the fence from time to time and he comes out and yells at them.

• 12:25Speaker 01

  Right. Tell me about the name Ishmael. What does it mean?

• 12:30Speaker 00

  So it seems to be based on the verbal root shama, which means to hear or to hearken. And so what happens, the, what does the, the angel say, or God? For the Lord God has given heed to your affliction in verse 11. Let me just look, ki shama aronai el an yiv. So yeah, shama means to, to hear or to heed. So give heed to. So it would be God has, has listened or God has heard or something like that. And so, and this is kind of how the folk etymology, oh, I started to say a very different word.

• 13:14Speaker 00

  The, a lot of these stories in Genesis are folk etymologies.

• 13:19Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:19Speaker 00

  Where it's like, oh, this person was named this and they tell a story that results in, so they named him that.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  Right.

• 13:27Speaker 00

  And here, yeah, the idea is the Lord has given heed to your affliction. So bam, Ishmael.

• 13:32Speaker 01

  Okay. I was hoping it meant something about wild ass of a man.

• 13:39Speaker 01

  But no, alas. Okay.

• 13:40Speaker 00

  Donkey. Yeah.

• 13:42Speaker 01

  Yeah. The wild ass thing was so weird to me, but okay. He's just, he's just. Don't worry, says the Lord. I'll, I'll make sure everything's great by giving you a son. Who is, who will be a jerk to everybody that he meets. Is that what that means? Wild ass of a man?

• 14:01Speaker 00

  Well, I think the idea is, wild ass is characterized by, you know, kind of recklessness is resistant to being restrained and contained and stuff like that. So I think that's probably the idea here. And, and these are supposed to be the, this is supposed to be an ideology for the Arab peoples. And so this is a way to characterize them in a particular way. Okay. And it's kind of, it's not quite as explicit. When, when you get down to Abraham and Lot, and Lot's two daughters become the ancestors

• 14:45Speaker 00

  of the Moabites and the, and the, is it Ammonites or Edomites? I think it's the Ammonites. But, you know, that's like, hey, look at you. You all descend from incest. Right. And, and here it's a, it's a way to say you descend from an enslaved person. Right. Uh, but there is, there is still kind of a positive aspect to this where, where God themselves is actually appearing to, to this ancestor. And, and here's where we get to that part in verse 13. So she named the Lord Adonai, who spoke to her. You are El-Roi, for she said, have I really seen God and remained alive after seeing him?

• 15:28Speaker 00

  Now there's something to note here as well is the NRSVUE, that's a pretty interpretive Oh, okay. Because the name that she gives, she calls it, uh, the, the well was, what did she say? Where's verse 13? Yeah. So, uh, but did you do? Yeah. Halom Raitei Acharei Roi. So there are different ways to interpret that. So the King James Version says, has I, have I also looked after him that seeth me?

• 16:02Speaker 00

  And, and then the NET says, "Here I have seen one who sees me." So it has something to do with seeing. And El-Roi could mean the God who sees, or it could mean the God who is seen, or something like that. It's confusing, and some scholars suggest that it has been corrupted, that the letters have changed somehow. We're not exactly sure what it is. But verse 13 says, "She has been speaking to Adonai themselves."

• 16:31Speaker 01

  Right.

• 16:32Speaker 00

  Not the angel.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  And she names, she names him, which is an interesting thing to do.

• 16:38Speaker 00

  Yeah, it gives, gives God a name. Which, you know, I mean, as the great poet said, "I got a name." Like the pun trees line in the winding road, "I got a name." And so, but, but this is just a feature of, of the literature of this time period. And, and it's probably also an attempt to account for a title for God that was in circulation in this time period.

• 17:03Speaker 01

  Oh, sure, sure.

• 17:04Speaker 00

  And so it's a way to say, "That's where that name came from." You know how they sometimes call God El-Roi? Well, that's where that came from. So there, and there's a great discussion, if you look in Ted Lewis's book, "The Origin and Character of God," which is over a thousand pages long. It's, um, yeah, it's a long book. But anyway, there's, there's a good discussion of what's going on here. So, and so I think that's, and, and the whole visiting someone and saying, "I will greatly multiply your offspring." Here, you've conceived a child. The announcement, the prophetic announcement of conception in the other literature from ancient West Asia, it's always the God themselves that does that. It's never a messenger.

• 17:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  And so.

• 17:47Speaker 01

  Well, and yeah, as you say, by the end here, she is saying, she is, she is naming God and saying, "I, you know, I, I saw God." She's talking to God. She's like, it's pretty clear what, what's happening at the end, even though it's an angel at the beginning.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  Yes. And, and so this is interesting because once we get out of the story of the Garden of Eden, the first person in the Bible to see God.

• 18:18Speaker 00

  Like that, that the narrative says saw God.

• 18:22Speaker 01

  Right.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Is a, an Egyptian enslaved woman.

• 18:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, that is fascinating.

• 18:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:29Speaker 01

  A woman, a foreigner, like all of these, all of these characteristics, you know, an enslaved person. Yeah. They seem like they would be, and also like, you know, when you say that this is sort of an explanatory story of where the Arab people came from. This feels like it really honors that story. Like, like you say, rather than the, the story of Lot and his daughters, this, this is like, this is some big honor to be bestowing on that lineage.

• 19:03Speaker 00

  Yes. And, and this is a reason that a lot of, for a long time now, like, black Christians, and particularly black Christian women have held up Hagar as a matriarch.

• 19:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 19:18Speaker 00

  Because she is someone who, who gets to talk with God and she is someone who's, who's watched over and, and was kind of done wrong in the story, but is still offered a blessing and becomes the, the matriarch of, of a large group of people.

• 19:41Speaker 00

  So Dan, you've heard me talk ad nauseam about the fact that we've got construction going on at the house. We are-

• 19:47Speaker 01

  I've heard the construction.

• 19:48Speaker 00

  Yeah, you heard the construction too. We're, we're finishing our basement. We're actually adding on to the house. We're, we're doing some stuff in the backyard. And I was thinking the other day about how nice it was to be able to do this because we, I wanted to get a new car and I wanted to do these, these improvements to the house, but we had to pay off our, our old car and that took actual planning, which you know, I hate. And so I really had to shift my thinking quite a bit when it came to my finances and we had to set dates and we had to create a budget and it was so- satisfying to actually make a plan.

• 20:30Speaker 00

  And then even though it took some discipline and there were some bumps in the road, we actually succeeded and we're able to pay off a car, got a brand new car. And it feels so relieving to know that if we actually set these goals and plan for them and stick to them. It goes from, oh, this will never end, actually feeling like you have control over stuff. And that has made a huge difference to me and to my family.

• 20:57Speaker 01

  Well, you know, you can try to do that on your own. Or you can use a phenomenally useful tool like Monarch to do something like that. Uh, Monarch is set up exactly for that kind of financial planning. They have things like their debt pay down simulator and visualizer to help you track your progress. Which I, this is brilliant. I, the, the fact of the matter is that all of these concepts are so ethereal. It's hard to sort of wrap your head around it a lot of the time. And with this visualizer, you can see how that debt is going to go down. You can actually simulate your freedom occurring in front of your very eyes. And I think that is an amazing thing.

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• 22:29Speaker 02

  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

• 22:31Speaker 03

  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

• 22:33Speaker 02

  Hey Mitch, you've been trying to take down these games from the start.

• 22:36Speaker 03

  Filmed for IMAX.

• 22:38Speaker 02

  Make them remember you.

• 22:40Speaker 03

  The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Leaping, November 20th, rated PG 13.

• 22:45Speaker 01

  Well, we've only done, we've only gotten to half of the done wrong part of the

• 22:49Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 22:49Speaker 01

  Hagar story. So we should jump to chapter 21 and, and, and get to the other half. And this, this, this, so, so yeah, jumping from chapter 16 to chapter 21, a lot happens in, in the midst of those.

• 23:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:07Speaker 01

  Not the least of which being that Abraham is now Abraham instead of Abram and

• 23:11Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Sarai has become Sarah. And, you know, again, I've done this show long enough to know that probably what we have here, and I'm going to, you, you can confirm or deny, is that there, these are different, very different stories that have all been sort of mushed and squished and, and pushed together.

• 23:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:33Speaker 01

  Uh, which is why different names are coming up and which is why later we're going to have a very confusing moment, a timeline thing that took me a long time to sort of parse out. But before we do that, let's, uh, let's just tell the story.

• 23:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 23:50Speaker 01

  Because Abraham and Sarah now, uh, have conceived.

• 23:56Speaker 00

  Mm hmm.

• 23:57Speaker 01

  So it's the thing that wasn't, that, that seemed impossible has now happened. They are older by a lot. This, do we, do you have a sense, what's your sense of how much older everybody is now?

• 24:09Speaker 00

  Oh, gosh.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  How much time has passed?

• 24:11Speaker 00

  Well, um, at the, uh, let's see, we're chapter 21, it's the beginning of chapter 17, it says, when Abram was 99 years old, God appeared.

• 24:24Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:24Speaker 00

  Um, and so it's that, what's that, 13 years later? Um, and then ver, chapter 21, uh, the child grew and was weaned. And so Abraham made a great feast on the day that Isaac was weaned. So this is, this is a couple of years after that. I

• 24:43Speaker 01

  Oh, this, this is, uh, chapter 21, verse 5 says Abraham was 100 years old when his son Isaac was born. So

• 24:50Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 24:51Speaker 01

  And he was 86 when Ishmael was born.

• 24:54Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, but then in verse, chapter 21, verse nine, Hagar's son Ishmael is playing with Isaac.

• 25:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 25:06Speaker 00

  And suddenly Sarah's like, this won't do.

• 25:11Speaker 01

  And this means that Isaac is, is very, very young, a baby.

• 25:17Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:18Speaker 01

  Or he's weaned, which means, and, and probably that was a couple of years, right?

• 25:23Speaker 00

  Yeah. If, if, but yeah, probably, I don't know how old a weaned child would be in this time period, or if they imagined that Isaac was a quick learner or a slow learner.

• 25:37Speaker 01

  Right.

• 25:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. Ishmael is, is a teenager.

• 25:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. By this point, this is, this is what I, in my mind, you know, I thought, you know, he's playing with the, the kid. He's an, he's a teenager, late teens or whatever. And he's playing with the baby and that's fine in my mind. It's later that that becomes weird and problematic.

• 25:58Speaker 00

  Yes. Because Sarah, Sarah gets upset with Hagar.

• 26:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:01Speaker 00

  And is, is like, get rid of her.

• 26:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:03Speaker 00

  And this was, and Abraham was upset about this. Abraham loves his son Ishmael. And God says, eh.

• 26:12Speaker 01

  But Sarah gets very sort of Melania about the whole thing and is like, I want him to go away because I want only my son to have an inheritance.

• 26:21Speaker 00

  Yeah. And God tells Abraham, whatever Sarah says to you do, as she tells you for it is through Isaac, that offspring shall be named for you. As for the son of the slave woman. Oh, you mean Ishmael? You know, he has a name. So does Hagar. I will make a nation of him also because he is your offspring. And then we get the story. Abraham gets up in the morning, took some bread, skin of water, gave it to Hagar and then puts, it says, putting it on her shoulder along with the child.

• 26:54Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  So. This is, this is like a 16 year old kid.

• 27:00Speaker 01

  Here, you climb up on your mom and uh.

• 27:04Speaker 00

  And then she departs and goes into the wilderness of Bir Shabbat. I have been to this wilderness. It is not hospitable.

• 27:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 27:15Speaker 00

  Particularly the, the wildery part of the wilderness. I mean, once you get into where there are homes and stuff, great, but.

• 27:23Speaker 00

  Runs out of water and then it says she cast the child under one of the bushes.

• 27:28Speaker 01

  Which is just like, like, like all of this story makes sense as long as Ishmael is little, is a baby, but he's not, he's big.

• 27:40Speaker 00

  Not according to the way the stories have been woven together.

• 27:43Speaker 01

  Right, exactly.

• 27:44Speaker 00

  But it, you know, when you, when you read verse nine, where, where Ishmael is playing with, with Isaac, like decontextualized, they make it kind of sound like Isaac and, and Ishmael are about the same age.

• 27:59Speaker 01

  Right, 100%. That's how, that's how it sounds like this entire story. You can tell that the author is thinking of a, of a baby, of a, you know, maybe a two year old, a toddler. Because yeah, she, she chucks him under the bush and it's just like, you don't, this guy, this dude's bigger than you at this point, like this kid is, he's gonna last longer than you are.

• 28:24Speaker 00

  Okay, now hang on a second. I do want to come back to verse nine because I wanted to look in the Hebrew to see what it said about,

• 28:33Speaker 00

  about Ishmael playing with Isaac.

• 28:35Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 28:36Speaker 00

  And it doesn't say play, uh, with her son Isaac. That is something that the NRSVUE has interpreted into the text.

• 28:46Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 28:47Speaker 00

  Because the verb that we have there, is that a participle? Yeah, that's a participle, um, is based on the verbal roots. It's close to the, the verbal roots, um, for yitzchak, it's zachak, which means to laugh or to joke.

• 29:05Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  And so it looks like, is that a, it's a PL participle. So there are other, there, it looks like, um, it can mean to joke, to play. It can also mean to dally with or fondle.

• 29:19Speaker 01

  Oh.

• 29:20Speaker 00

  So the, I don't know if you remember the story where, uh. It's both Abraham and Jacob show up and they say, this is not my wife. This is my sister. And then and then somebody sees out the window and it says that, that he's, it uses this verb.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  He's dallying with or fondling?

• 29:39Speaker 00

  Yes. So I'm looking at other translations. The King James Version says Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian mocking. And that's what the NET has as well.

• 29:51Speaker 01

  Just mocking, not with, with no object of the

• 29:54Speaker 00

  There's no object to, yeah.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 29:56Speaker 00

  Um, and I'm looking at a, the NET footnote, I have criticized heavily the NET footnotes, but sometimes they, they have some good contextual stuff to say. The PL participle used here is from the same root as the name Isaac. In the PL STEM, the verb means to jest, to make sport of, to play with, not simply to laugh, which is the meaning of the verb in the call. What exactly Ishmael was doing is not clear. Interpreters have generally concluded that the boy was either one, mocking Isaac, or two, merely playing with Isaac as if on equal footing. In either case, Sarah saw it as a threat. The same participle form was used in Genesis 1914 to describe how some in Lot's family viewed his attempt to warn them of impending doom.

• 30:40Speaker 00

  It also appears later in Genesis 39, where Potipher accuses Joseph of mocking them.

• 30:46Speaker 01

  Huh.

• 30:47Speaker 00

  So, so

• 30:48Speaker 01

  It is interesting. The NRSVUE does have a footnote that says, that just mentions Hebrew lacks with her son Isaac, which is, that, that's a lot to add and, and have that be the only footnote.

• 31:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, that's a, that's a load bearing addition.

• 31:05Speaker 01

  We just, we just chunked that one in. That was just fun for us.

• 31:09Speaker 00

  But I think that, and that's probably based on the notion that, well, the verbal root is the same, it can mean playing. So maybe that's, that's the idea. And, and they might, the editors might've thought, oh, this is probably

• 31:23Speaker 00

  haplography based on homoyo taleuton, where it said that and then said with Isaac, but the copyist saw the end of the verb and the end of the Verb looks the same as the name Isaac and so skipped over it or something. So a lot of, a lot of possibilities there, but I think the idea is still the same. It sure seems like these two kids are about the same age and, and so the, the competition is a little more direct.

• 31:50Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:50Speaker 00

  It's, it's, um, Sarah is like, don't like having this kid around. Don't like that kid.

• 31:57Speaker 01

  Yeah. Even if you don't have that part being, you know, being about him being a kid, the, it sure does seem like when Abraham puts the kid on Hagar's shoulder, or when, when Abraham, yeah, goes and when, when Hagar is in the wilderness. And by the way, we should mention that the reason that she throws him under the bushes is just, and then she walks away, the distance of a bow shot, it's just so that she doesn't have to watch him die.

• 32:26Speaker 00

  Right.

• 32:26Speaker 01

  There, she feels like they're about to die. She doesn't, she feels like she can't, she can't bear to watch the child die. Which again, not a teenager, cause a teenager is gonna outlast a middle aged lady. Uh, in terms of, in terms of, you know,

• 32:44Speaker 01

  thirsting to death. How do you, how do you phrase that? Whatever. Anyway.

• 32:50Speaker 00

  And yeah, she doesn't wanna, uh, see him die. The angel shows up again. And, uh, says, what's going on?

• 33:01Speaker 01

  But says, why are you mad? What's happening? What troubles you?

• 33:05Speaker 00

  Uh, don't be afraid for God has heard the voice of the boy where he is. Come lift up the boy and hold him fast with your hand. For I will make a great nation of him. Again, sure, sure sounds like a kid, like a toddler.

• 33:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:19Speaker 00

  Um, then God opened her eyes and she saw a well of water. So she went and filled the skin with water and gave the boy a drink. God was with the boy and he grew up. He lived in the wilderness and came and became an expert with the bow. He lived in the wilderness of Paran and his mother got a wife for him from the land of Egypt. So.

• 33:38Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 33:40Speaker 00

  What'd you bring me, Mom? Got you a wife.

• 33:43Speaker 01

  Got you a wife. So there you go. And that is, that is where Arab people come from, I guess. At least according to this. I think it's a fascinating story. I love the fact that, like you point out, this is, this is the first person after Eden to talk to God directly, face to face.

• 34:08Speaker 01

  Just a really interesting.

• 34:11Speaker 01

  Though, like, non-consequential to any story.

• 34:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 01

  It's just, it's just sort of a side, a side note story.

• 34:19Speaker 00

  And ideology, I think that's an awful lot of what Genesis is doing is saying, hey, you know, this thing or these people, here's where it came from.

• 34:27Speaker 01

  Right.

• 34:27Speaker 00

  Moving on. And, and they just cruise on past. Yeah. So trying to explain how the world got to be the way it is.

• 34:35Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 34:36Speaker 00

  And, and something interesting is some of the words that are used in here.

• 34:42Speaker 00

  In reference to like the way that Sarah treats, Sarai treats Hagar and, and stuff like that. Parallel to how it describes the Egyptians treating the Hebrews in the book of Exodus. And so. Some scholars would suggest that this, this was composed maybe after Exodus and in light of Exodus. So, so putting the two things parallel, an Egyptian who is enslaved to the Hebrews over and against the story where the Hebrews are enslaved to the Egyptians.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  Right.

• 35:15Speaker 00

  And maybe God treating one better than the, in the other story. Maybe that's a way of, of saying, see things go better on our end. Maybe there's something going on there with the, with those parallels. Maybe that's just us hallucinating stuff like some kind of chatbot. I don't know.

• 35:39Speaker 01

  Fair enough. Well, I think that is crazy fascinating. I really enjoy it. Let's move on though, to our chapter and verse.

• 35:53Speaker 01

  So angels getting chained up. What are we talking about? It's something that if you look for it in your standard non-Ethiopic Bible, you're gonna find a couple of very cryptic weird mentions of it, just the briefest things. You're not gonna find anything explaining anything.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, you have, you have the idea in Revelation of angels bound at the Euphrates River. People are always saying they're under the Euphrates River, but the preposition is epi, which literally means upon, but can also mean at.

• 36:34Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 36:35Speaker 00

  So anyway, that's in the book of Revelation.

• 36:37Speaker 01

  I like the idea that they're floating. If it's, if it's upon, then, then I want to think of them floating.

• 36:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think of them hanging from a, you know, a big thing over the water with the, with the alligators snapping. Or if you've, if you've been to the Guardians of the Galaxy ride at Disneyland, how they, they have them dangling in the little line, the video you watch when you're in line where they're dangling from the, the thing over the pit. I think that works better, but also you do have a reference to this in the Epistle of Jude or the Letter of Jude, which in verse six says, "And the angels who did not keep their own position but deserted their proper dwelling,

• 37:27Speaker 00

  he has kept in eternal chains in deepest darkness for the judgment of the great day." And what's going on here?

• 37:38Speaker 01

  Yeah, it, it seems out of the blue. When you're, when you're looking at it in, in the context of Jude, it's just like, what are you talking about, man?

• 37:47Speaker 00

  Yeah, and. The, the origin of this tradition is not in the Bible. It is actually in the Book of Enoch. So Yeah, I was gonna say, point of order, it's in some Bibles. Okay, touche. Yes, it is in the, uh, the Book of Enoch in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawakhado Church's canon. It's very expansive canon. But, um, the story, and, and we've talked about the Book of Enoch a bit here and there before. But in, in chapters six through 11, we basically have, uh, what some people will call fanfic of Genesis six through nine. Okay.

• 38:29Speaker 00

  And, uh, here we have, in, uh, chapter six, you have the angels who decide to, to come down and they're going to, uh, have intercourse with human women. Yeah. And Shemi Haza or Shemi Haza is the chief angel in this telling of the story. There are actually, there's actually a, a different telling of the story later, and the angels are different. But, um, it's Shemi Haza with a bunch of leaders like Artikoff and Remashel and Kokabel and Armumahel and Romel and Daniel. Wait a minute. And Tim, um, and Zekiel. Who called me Tim?

• 39:15Speaker 00

  And the 10th one is Azael or Asael. And Asael, uh, becomes a big deal, uh, a little later in chapter eight. Asael taught men to make swords of iron and weapons and shields and breastplates and every instrument of war. He showed them metals of the earth and how they should work gold to fashion it suitably and concerning silver to fashion it for breastplates and ornaments for women. And he showed them concerning antimony and eye paint and all manner of precious stones and dyes. So we're talking the lowest of the low. Yeah, what, what a jerk. Yeah. Teaching people how to arm themselves and defend themselves. And then it goes through and talks about all the things that the different angels taught them.

• 39:58Speaker 00

  Shemi Haza taught spells and the cutting of roots. Hermione taught sorcery for the loosening of spells and magic and skill. I've, I've, hopefully everybody was like Hermione's teaching spells.

• 40:14Speaker 01

  Not Hermione. Hermione. It's the fashion designer, not the.

• 40:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. Barakel taught the signs of the lightning flashes and on and on.

• 40:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 40:28Speaker 00

  And then, then we get to chapter nine and then we get the four archangels. And you brought this up, you were like, what's going on in these, these four names? Cause in the, in the translation we're looking at, which is Nicholsburg and Vanderkam's Hermenea translation, they're named as Michael, Sariel and Raphael and Gabriel.

• 40:48Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 40:49Speaker 00

  And because Donatello and Michelangelo are still, they, the ooze hasn't gotten to them yet.

• 40:57Speaker 01

  No, Michelangelo is there.

• 41:00Speaker 00

  Oh, Michael. Oh gosh, I totally screwed it up. Yeah. But Donatello, anyway, has not yet transformed from the norm by the nuclear goop. But, and then there's a, there's a footnote for Sariel. Which says, this is, this name is attested in Aramaic, or for this name attested in Aramaic and Greek, attested in Aramaic, Greek has forms of Uriel and Ethiopian or Ethiopic has Suriel. So it's, and they suggest this is a confusion of the Greek Sigma and the Greek Omicron, because they can both have circles associated with them. But anyway, so, so these are the four archangels and, and this text is being written in a time period when you're getting all this, this explosion of literature that is kind of looking

• 41:45Speaker 00

  at the hierarchy of the heavens and all the roles and the names and who you pray to who for and what they do and for God and all that kind of stuff.

• 41:53Speaker 01

  What, when was this written? What, what's the time period? What are, what are we thinking?

• 41:57Speaker 00

  This, this is probably late 300s, more likely 200s BCE. So this is Greco-Roman period Judaism.

• 42:07Speaker 01

  Similar to the, in timeframe to when Daniel was written?

• 42:10Speaker 00

  Probably a little before Daniel.

• 42:12Speaker 01

  Oh, okay.

• 42:13Speaker 00

  But, but you do have, notice you do have Michael listed as the, as the chief prince in, in the book of Daniel. So, so the, the tradition is related. But yeah, I think this is probably slightly before, at least when Daniel reaches its final form, the apocalyptic chapters, there might be some parts of Daniel that are roughly contemporaneous with this.

• 42:37Speaker 01

  But most of the Hebrew Bible was written before this. This is very late literature in terms of Hebrew Bible.

• 42:46Speaker 00

  Yes, but there is, there are scholars out there who think that at least parts of the Book of Enoch might actually predate what's going on in Genesis. Or there might be traditions from before the finalization of the Pentateuch that were part of the text before they, for whatever reason, they fell out of favor but are preserved in First Enoch. So that's an ongoing debate.

• 43:15Speaker 01

  Interesting. But we do know that like, this was, this was not a niche book. I believe, I remember you saying that this, that there are bits of First Enoch that were found with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Is that correct?

• 43:30Speaker 00

  There were more copies of First Enoch discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls than there were of any other books of the Bible apart from Psalms, Isaiah, Deuteronomy, Genesis, and Exodus. I think those are the five that outnumber Enoch. But there were like 12 to 14 copies of Enoch found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. So yes, it was very clearly a popular text.

• 43:59Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 44:49Speaker 04

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• 45:19Speaker 00

  And we get down in chapter nine, verse six.

• 45:24Speaker 00

  "They said to the Lord of ages, 'You are the God of gods, Lord of lords, blah, blah, blah. You see what Asael has done, who has taught all iniquity on the earth. And he has revealed the eternal mysteries that are in heaven, which the sons of men were striving to learn, and what Shemihazah has done, to whom you gave authority to rule over them who are with him." And so this is, a lot of scholars would suggest this is a theory of the origin of evil. So you've got the, you've got the Garden of Eden story and the fall. And then you've got Enoch and the angels coming down and teaching evil to humanity. So evil either came from eating a piece of fruit or it came from angels teaching women how to wear makeup.

• 46:09Speaker 01

  And men how to have, how to make swords.

• 46:13Speaker 00

  Right. So then, then we get down to chapter 10, and this is where the Most High responds. "Then the Most High declared, and the Great Holy One spoke, and he sent Sariel slash Uriel to the son of Lamech, saying, 'Go to Noah and say to him in my name, 'Hide yourself,' and reveal to him that the end is coming, that the whole earth will perish, and tell him that a deluge is about to come on the whole earth and destroy everything on the earth. Teach the righteous one.'" Now, by the way, later on, there's a story about how when Noah was born, like he was shiny and had white hair and all this kind of stuff. So, "Teach the righteous one what he should do, the son of Lamech, how he may preserve

• 46:57Speaker 00

  himself alive and escape forever." And it's a great story because Lamech goes to Methuselah, I think it's Methuselah, and is like, "Hey, what's going on with this weird kid?"

• 47:10Speaker 00

  Methuselah like, oh yeah, this is cool. From him a plant will be planted and his seed will endure for all the generations of eternity. And then God turns to Raphael and says, go Raphael and bind Asael hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness and make an opening in the wilderness that is in, and then Dudael or something like that is some weird name that we don't know what that means. Throw him there and lay beneath him sharp and jagged stones and cover him with darkness and let him dwell there for an exceedingly long time. Cover up his face and let him not see the light.

• 47:51Speaker 00

  And on the day of the great judgment, he will be led away to the burning conflagration. And then we have a little heal the earth discussion.

• 48:03Speaker 01

  We should mention that this continually talks about the watchers.

• 48:07Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  And those are the, those are the bad angels. The bad angels that came down are nicknamed the watchers.

• 48:15Speaker 00

  Yes, and they were supposed to watch over things. And instead they inserted themselves in the story, literally.

• 48:23Speaker 01

  They watched as the ladies of humanity got hot and decided, okay, well, I'm gonna have to get me some of that.

• 48:32Speaker 00

  And here's a weird, here's a weird part of this particular passage. And to Gabriel, he said, go Gabriel to the bastards, to the half breeds, to the sons of miscegenation.

• 48:46Speaker 01

  Uh huh.

• 48:47Speaker 00

  And destroy the sons of the watchers from among the sons of men. Send them against one another in a war of destruction, length of days they will not have, and no petition will be granted to their fathers in their behalf, that they should expect to live an everlasting life, nor even that each of them should live 500 years. So I think this is getting close to what's going on with Genesis 6 with the whole, my spirit will not stay with man, their, you know, their life will be 120 years. Here we got something similar where kill all the, kill all the kids from this inappropriates union of angel and human. And then when we get back to Jude and Jude talks about Sodom and Gomorrah. And says, "In like manner as they," specifically these angels.

• 49:32Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:33Speaker 00

  "They pursued other flesh." Like, it's very clear that Jude is talking about angelic/human intercourse, since it was angels that they wanted to sexually assault in Genesis 19.

• 49:46Speaker 01

  Right.

• 49:47Speaker 00

  And then, and then to Michael, he said, "Go, Michael, bind Shemihazah and the others with him, who have mated with the daughters of men, so that they were defiled by them in their uncleanness." And then talks about how their sons will perish. They'll see the destruction of their beloved ones. But, but this is the origin of the notion that there are angels that are bound in darkness for eternity.

• 50:09Speaker 01

  Right.

• 50:10Speaker 00

  And I think the story is actually the spark, the catalyst for the notion of postmortem divine punishment. Because they're being kept, and later on in the story, it's going to talk about how

• 50:27Speaker 00

  they are kept in the, is this, yeah, it's still in chapter 10. "Bind them for seventy generations in the valleys of the earth, until the day of their judgment and consummation, until the everlasting judgment is consummated." And later on, the valleys of the earth are going to kind of conceptually merge with the idea of the Valley of Hinnom, which is the valley on the south of Jerusalem, which becomes the location of postmortem divine punishment, Gehenna.

• 51:03Speaker 01

  Gehenna, right.

• 51:04Speaker 00

  Gehenna, exactly. Which becomes a word that, in the New Testament, that gets translated to hell.

• 51:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:11Speaker 00

  So, and, and later on, when Enoch is having these visions of,

• 51:16Speaker 00

  of the, this punishment. It's kind of funny, because the vision, well, not funny, not funny, ha ha, anyway. But the visions kind of toggle back and forth between eternal conscious torment being in darkness versus eternal conscious torment being in fire.

• 51:34Speaker 01

  I was wondering about that, because I saw the great conflagration. You just read that a few, a few verses ago. And I wondered if that meant burning for eternity, or if it just meant, okay, judgment has been given, and now we're going to burn you, and then you're gone.

• 51:49Speaker 00

  Like, you know. The, uh, the, uh, temporary conscious torment followed by annihilation.

• 51:56Speaker 01

  Right.

• 51:57Speaker 00

  Uh, method. Yeah, I, I think that's, that's probably what's understood by the great conflagration. Cause I don't think you have this notion of, uh, eternal conscious torment yet. At least it's, it's certainly not systematic at this point. And, and again, we've got, we've got the punishment of the angels versus the punishment of, of humans. And, and there's definitely a parallel going on, but these are the results of, of two very different sets of circumstances. Uh, even though the punishments, uh, seem to be quite parallel. So it's like, it's, it's cold and dark versus hot and fiery.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  But, and, and again, because you have multiple different tellings of this story and the details change from time to time. That might have to do with, with why you, you, uh, have that distinction between the types of punishment. And I, and I don't think it's as simple as just saying, well, one is, is where they're being kept until the final judgment. And then the other is what happens for eternity after the final judgment. I don't think the, the punishment is that systematic. I think we've got some inconsistency going on here.

• 53:02Speaker 01

  Well, speaking of punishment.

• 53:04Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 53:05Speaker 01

  I'm going to take us to chapter 53 of first Enoch where.

• 53:10Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 53:10Speaker 01

  Uh, it says, and on your, on, on the PDF, it's, it's, uh, page 67, just to get you there.

• 53:18Speaker 00

  I, I can, I can find chapter 53.

• 53:20Speaker 01

  Okay. Anyway, uh, it, it was hard for me to, to, to track down the, the different chapters. Anyway, that's where we get the valley of punishment for the kings, for the kings and the mighty.

• 53:33Speaker 00

  Mm-hmm.

• 53:33Speaker 01

  Uh, and you get down a little bit in there, uh, to 54 and it says, uh, and I asked the angel of peace who went with me, for whom are these chains being prepared? Apparently there were, they were, they were, they were building chains. They were making chains. And that's when, and he said to me, these are being prepared for the host of Azazel, which I had to ask you, is Azazel the same as Azazel or Asael?

• 54:01Speaker 00

  Azael.

• 54:02Speaker 01

  Azael, whatever, because that's a different name.

• 54:06Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 54:07Speaker 01

  But we've been doing a lot of that lately, the different names.

• 54:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. Well, and the, and the angels are different as well. Michael, Raphael, Gabriel and Fenwell.

• 54:17Speaker 01

  Oh, that's right. That's right. The archangels have, have switched up too.

• 54:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. So, so this is a different, this is a different telling of the story. But yeah, the, I think we have here kind of the merging of the, of the two different punishments. We got a different telling of the story. And, and yeah, I think if we get to, is it 54? Oh, shoot. I think when we get to like 64, it, it talks about the, the punishment even more. And the, and the fact that they are kept in chains. Yeah. The other figures I saw hidden in that place, I heard the voice of the angels saying, these are the angels who descended upon the earth and what was hidden, they revealed to human beings and they led human beings astray so that they committed sin.

• 55:05Speaker 00

  And then, um, yeah, they get, they get the chains.

• 55:09Speaker 01

  Yeah. Well, back in, in, in chapter 54, they get, it says, the, these are being prepared for the host of Azazel, that they might take them and throw them into the, the abyss of complete judgment. And with jagged rocks, they will cover their jaws. Presumably that means that they're just buried up to their, up to their nose or something.

• 55:33Speaker 01

  And the Lord of Spirits, as the Lord of Spirits commanded.

• 55:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. It, it, yeah, it's, it's very interesting, the different forms that, that the punishment of these angels takes.

• 55:45Speaker 00

  Yeah, and there's a lot of back and forth about the punishment of the angels. Because you even have conversations between Michael and Raphael with, on that day, Michael answered and said to Raphael, "The power of the Spirit seizes me and aggravates me because of the harshness of the judgment of the secrets, the judgment of the angels, for who can endure the harshment of the judgment that has been executed before which they melt." And Michael answered and said to Raphael, "Who is there who would not soften his heart over it? And whose kidneys would not be troubled by his word? Judgment has gone forth against them, who have led them out thus." And they, when they stood before the Lord of Spirits, Michael spoke thus to Raphael,

• 56:28Speaker 00

  "I will not take their part under the eye of the Lord, because the Lord of Spirits is angry with them, because they act as if they were like the Lord." And so we do have some, a bit of friction going on between the archangels here.

• 56:42Speaker 01

  Yeah, that's interesting. It does seem like everything, and they're even sort of questioning God's judgment on this point. They're not going to do it to his face, but they're questioning it.

• 56:56Speaker 00

  Behind their back, yeah. And then I think there's, and the book of Enoch is divided up into different books. I think it's five different books. And you've got the book of the watchers. You've got the parables of Enoch, which is what I think 54 is a part of. Then you get the book of luminaries, and I, and it's, I want to say it's chapter 86. I'm pretty sure it's chapter 86. Let me just scroll on down here and make sure. Yes, chapter 86. And this is what's called the animal apocalypse. Have you heard of the animal apocalypse?

• 57:31Speaker 01

  No, but I love it. I don't know what I'm in for, but I like, I like hearing about it.

• 57:37Speaker 00

  We're basically telling the whole story of the history of the earth and Israel in a very, very shortened form.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 57:47Speaker 00

  But all the characters are animals.

• 57:50Speaker 01

  So it's veggie tails or no, it's animal tails.

• 57:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, animal farm, but yeah. But, um, but 86 one, we got Enoch, he says, and again, I saw with my eyes as I was sleeping, I saw the heaven above and look, a star fell from heaven and it arose and was eating and pasturing among those cattle. Then I saw those large and black cattle and look, all of them exchanged their pens and their pastures and their calves and they began to moan one after the other. And again, I saw in the vision and I looked to heaven and look, I saw many stars descend and cast themselves down from heaven to that first star. And in the midst of those calves, they became bulls and they were pasturing with them in their midst.

• 58:38Speaker 00

  And I looked at them, here, it gets a little blue here. I looked at them and I saw and look, all of them let out their organs like horses and they began to mount the cows of the bulls and they all conceived and bore elephants and camels and asses.

• 58:56Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 58:58Speaker 00

  Yes.

• 58:59Speaker 01

  This is, this is the origin story of animals? Everything starts with cows and moved on from there?

• 59:05Speaker 00

  And all the bulls feared them and were terrified before them and they began to bite with their teeth and devour and gore with their horns and they began to devour those bulls and look, all the suns of the earth began to tremble and quake before them and to flee. And so the, the, the characters from the narrative of Enoch are now recast as animals. But, but I think this is interesting because we've been talking about Revelation, we've been talking about parts of the New Testament. Something else in Revelation is that Satan, the great dragon, fell from heaven. And what did, and what did he do with his tail? He swept down a third of the stars of heaven.

• 59:46Speaker 01

  Okay.

• 59:47Speaker 00

  And so we've got an origin for that tradition as well. Now, obviously, it's been altered. We got this great dragon, which is Leviathan. But this is, and even in Luke, I think it's chapter, it's either 1018 or 1810. Jesus says, I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning. And people are like, well, this is about Lucifer from Isaiah 14. No, it's not. This is the animal apocalypse. This is Enoch, who sees the star fall to earth. So, so the, this story has a lot more influence on what's going, on the traditions of the New Testament than a lot of people are willing to give it credit for.

• 1:00:32Speaker 00

  And so when we look in Revelation, when we look in Jude, when we look elsewhere and we see these weird, this weird imagery and all this stuff going on with angels and, and sex always has something to do with it.

• 1:00:46Speaker 01

  There's a, there's a quotation in 2 Peter that of, about the angels in judgment.

• 1:00:57Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  2.

• 1:01:00Speaker 00

  Uh huh.

• 1:01:00Speaker 01

  I've got it.

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  Is it, is it 18?

• 1:01:03Speaker 01

  Verse 4, where it says, for if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but for God, if God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of deepest, darkest darkness to be kept until judgment. Yeah, so like that, without this, this story in Enoch, that makes no sense. That's just like, wait, uh huh, what? What are we talking about?

• 1:01:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:31Speaker 01

  Who did what now?

• 1:01:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. And, and then 2 Peter, chapter 2, even brings up Sodom and Gomorrah again.

• 1:01:40Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:40Speaker 00

  Um, just like Jude does.

• 1:01:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:01:43Speaker 00

  So. Yeah, there's, there's so much of the, and you know, if, if this idea of the punishment in these, in these valleys of the earth and everything like that, if, if that's really the origin of the concept of, of hell and Gehenna, like a lot of Revelation, 2 Peter, Jude, Luke, the concept of hell, like a lot of this seems to descend from the traditions that are, that we find in the book of 1 Enoch, which, and you know, I, I think, once you get to Paul, Paul kind of pivots back to the fall of Eden as kind of the origin of

• 1:02:25Speaker 00

  evil. But I, I think there's probably, there were probably competing traditions about where evil came from. Did angels teach evil? Or did a piece of fruit cause evil to happen? I know which, which tradition I would have gone with. Sexy angels, like 10 times out of 10.

• 1:02:44Speaker 01

  I love it. Yeah. I, I think it's so interesting to realize that so like, big, important ideas that shaped how, how a lot of the, the authors of the New Testament think are all from a book that is largely excluded from the big biblical canon. I think that's fascinating. They're quoting it. They're talking about it. And, and yet it doesn't, and, and, and the, you know, they, they're taking ideas from it, but didn't make the cut.

• 1:03:20Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, except in Jude, because Jude directly quotes from it and calls it, says Enoch, the seventh from Adam prophesied, and then quotes Enoch, chapter 1, verse 9.

• 1:03:35Speaker 01

  There you go.

• 1:03:36Speaker 00

  And, and a lot of people, there's a lot of hem and and haw in about, about why the author of the Epistle of Jude would call this prophecy. And, and in fact, even, even our friend Wes Huff made a big old video talking about-

• 1:03:51Speaker 01

  Let's not call him our friend. We've never met that man.

• 1:03:55Speaker 00

  No, I made a video trying to talk around what's going on there. In fact, even got to the point where it was like, just because Jude quoted that one verse doesn't mean Jude thought that the whole book was inspired, as if Jude was going through and being like, this is good, this is out, not you, ew. I want to see another text where Christians did that, where they said, verses 1 through 7 are inspired, verse 8, definitely not, verse 9, we're on the fence about. Like, that's not how any of this works, but people go to just twist themselves into pretzels

• 1:04:35Speaker 00

  to try to make it sound logical to reject the inspiration of the entire book of Enoch, when the text that they insist is inspired says it was prophecy.

• 1:04:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:04:47Speaker 00

  So, yeah.

• 1:04:48Speaker 01

  All right, well, there you have it. It's a fascinating book. It's kind of fun to thumb through if you have a long time, because there's many chapters. They're short chapters, but there's a lot. It's a big book. But yeah, and if anyone mentions angels being chained up, ask them where they got that idea. See if they know. All right, well, that's it for today. Thank you all so much. If you would like to go and hear us blather on about other fun and interesting things that hit our minds and even ask us questions, you can become a patron over on patreon.com/dadodma

• 1:05:31Speaker 01

  and go hit up the after-party, that's always a good time. We really appreciate all of our patrons. Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing. Thanks to JJ for being on our producer, and we will talk to you again next week.

• 1:05:48Speaker 00

  Bye, everybody.

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  Welcome to the 50th Hunger Games.

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  Witness the beginning of the revolution.

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