This page provides the footnotes to Dr. Heiser’s book, Reversing Hermon for audio book listeners.

  1. The appellation “Book of Enoch” is incorrect since there are other (different) books of Enoch besides 1 Enoch. There is 2 Enoch (also called the Slavonic Apocalypse of Enoch), dated entirely to the late 1st century A.D., and 3 Enoch (also called the Hebrew Apocalypse of Enoch), which dates to 5th or 6th centuries A.D.
  2. See Appendix II for more detail.
  3. Technically precise transliteration has not been used in this book. Transliteration of words from biblical Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek, along with other ancient languages, has been simplified for English-only readers.
  4. On the divine nature of the sons of God in Gen 6:1-4, see the extended discussion in Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Lexham Press, 2015), 93-109.
  5. The material in the Book of Giants from Qumran overlaps with the content of 1 Enoch, most notably 1 Enoch 6-16, the expanded treatment of the episode of Gen 6:1-4. This being the case, the present volume will include material from the Book of Giants in its discussion of the New Testament theme of “reversing Hermon.” See Appendix II.
  6. See Appendix I: “Reception of 1 Enoch in the Early Church.”
  7. Lopez, “Israelite Covenants in the Light of Ancient Near Eastern Covenants (Part 1 of 2),” Chafer Theological Seminary Journal 9:1 (2003): 97-102; idem, “Israelite Covenants in the Light of Ancient Near Eastern Covenants (Part 2 of 2),” Chafer Theological Seminary Journal 9:2 (2003): 92-111.
  8. Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, A General Introduction to the Bible (Rev. and expanded; Chicago: Moody Press, 1986), 262.
  9. See Appendix I.
  10. A. Carson, “Pseudonymity and Pseudepigraphy,” ed. Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter, Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 858.
  11. No such argument can be made on any grounds. For example, the oldest textual remains of 1 Enoch date (perhaps) to the third century B.C., long after the lifetime of the antediluvian figure for whom it is named and concerning whom it has much to say. See Appendix II.
  12. A. Carson, “Pseudonymity and Pseudepigraphy,” 859; James H. Charlesworth, “Pseudonymity and Pseudepigraphy,” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 540.
  13. See for example Helge S. Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic: the Mesopotamian Background of the Enoch Figure and of the Son of Man (Neukirchener Verlag, 1988); idem, “The Watchers Story, Genesis and Atrahasis: A Triangular Reading.” Henoch 24 (2002), 17-21; Siam Bhayro, “Noah’s Library: Sources for 1 Enoch 6-11,” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha Vol 15.3 (2006): 163-177; James C. VanderKam, Enoch and the Growth of an Apocalyptic Tradition (Catholic Biblical Quarterly Monograph Series 16 (Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 1984); Loren T. Stuckenbruck, “Giant Mythology and Demonology: From the Ancient Near East to the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in A. Lange, H. Lichtenberger and K.F. Diethard (eds.), Demons: The Demonology of Israelite–Jewish and Early Christian Literature in Context of their Environment (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2003), pp. 318-38; Alan Lenzi, Secrecy and the Gods: Secret Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Israel (The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project; State Archives of Assyria Studies XIX; Helsinki, 2008).
  14. Material in this chapter is drawn from the author’s much lengthier discussion in The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Lexham Press, 2015), 92-109, 183-214. Overlaps in prose content here from that book are presented by permission.
  15. The history of how Gen 6:1–4 has been interpreted is chronicled in detail in two major studies: Annette Yoshiko Reed, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity: The Reception of Enochic Literature (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005); Archie J. Wright, The Origin of Evil Spirits: The Reception of Genesis 6:1-4 in Early Jewish Literature, Revised Edition (Fortress Press, 2015).
  16. The verb form (“began”) is third masculine singular. Since the word ʾadam, which is often rendered “mankind” or “humankind” in modern translations (e.g., Gen 1:26), does not actually appear in the verse, the most natural rendering would be that Seth began to call on the name of the Lord. If this is the case, then the Sethite view needs to extrapolate Seth’s faith to only men from that point on, since it is the “sons” of God who must be spiritually distinct from the “daughters” of humankind. One way around this is to argue that Gen 6:1–4 describes godly Sethite men marrying ungodly non-Sethite women. The passage of course never says that, and it presumes that, by definition, the only godly women on the planet were those related to Seth. Those who insert “humankind” into the verse (“humankind began to call on the name of the Lord”) undermine the Sethite view with that decision, as it would have humans from other lineages, not just that of Seth, calling on the name of the Lord.
  17. It is also misguided to argue that the Sethite view is valid because the writers and editors of the Torah were living under the law. There are near-relation marriages in the Genesis story prior to the Sinai legislation. For example, Abraham and Sarah had the same father, but different mothers, a forbidden sexual relationship in the Torah (Gen 20:12; cf. Lev 18:9, 11; 20:17; Deut 27:22). In other words, the later legal backdrop of Sinai isn’t being presumed elsewhere in Genesis, so it cannot be presumed as the backdrop for Gen 6:1–4. There simply is no support for condemned human intermarriage in the text.
  18. On the incoherence of interpreting Hebrew ʾelohim in Psalm 82 as humans, see Unseen Realm, 23-27 and the scholarly sources found therein in footnotes. Several relevant essays can also be found on the author’s website: http://www.thedivinecouncil.com.
  19. The divinized kingship view is also defended by contending that there are no examples in ancient Near Eastern materials of divine beings “marrying” human women, while there are examples of kings claiming mixed ancestry from gods and humans. This wording deflects attention from the many references to sexual activity between divine beings and humans in ancient literature by suggesting that Gen 6:1–4 must refer to matrimonial unions. This is playing word games, since the “marriage” idea derives from English translations. The word translated “wife” is simply the normal plural for “women” (nashim). The biblical euphemisms of “taking” (Gen 6:2) or “going in to” a woman (Gen 6:4) are not exclusively used for marriage. They are also used to describe the sexual act outside a marriage bond. That is, “taking” a woman can describe an illicit sexual relationship (Gen 38:2; Lev 18:17; 20:17, 21; 21:7), as can “coming/going in to” (Gen 38:2; 39:14; Lev 21:11; Judg 16:1; Amos 2:7). The point of the language of Gen 6:1–4 is a sexual relationship, not matrimony. This objection is therefore a distinction without a difference. This view also fails logically. The objection about the lack of divine-human marriages is aimed at eliminating the divine element from Gen 6:1–4, thus reducing the episode to purely human relationships (albeit with divine kings as focus). But on what logical basis would multiple marriages between kings and women bring the world into chaos, necessitating God’s judgment in a catastrophic flood?
  20. See, for example, Peter H. Davids, The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude (Pillar New Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2006), 3; Michael Green, 2 Peter and Jude: An Introduction and Commentary (Tyndale New Testament Commentaries 18; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1987), 68; Jerome H. Neyrey, 2 Peter, Jude: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary (Anchor Yale Bible 37C; New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2008), 120–22.
  21. The word choice (“angels”) comes from the Septuagint, which is the Old Testament used predominantly by New Testament writers.
  22. Some interpreters imagine a pre-fall rebellion of angels that might fit with 2 Peter. The Bible records no such event. The closest one comes to it is in Rev 12:7–9. Not only was Revelation the last book of the New Testament to be written, which means it cannot be the referent of 2 Peter, but Rev 12:7–9 associates the war in heaven with the first coming of the messiah, not events before the flood. There is no biblical evidence for a pre-fall angelic rebellion. The idea comes from Milton’s Paradise Lost, not the Bible.
  23. The phrase “held captive in Tartarus” in 2 Pet 2:4 is the translation of a verb lemma (ταρταρόω) that points to the term from classical Greek literature for the destination of the divine Titans, a term that is also used of their semi-divine offspring. See William Arndt, Frederick W. Danker, and Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 991. The terminology clearly informs us that, for Peter and Jude, an anti-supernaturalist interpretation of Gen 6:1–4 was not in view. See G. Mussies, “Titans,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed. (ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst; Leiden; Boston; Cologne; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 872–874; G. Mussies, “Giants,” in ibid., 343–345; David M. Johnson, “Hesiod’s Descriptions of Tartarus (Theogony 721–819),” The Phoenix 53:1–2 (1999): 8–28; J. Daryl Charles, “The Angels under Reserve in 2 Peter and Jude,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 15.1 (2005): 39–48.
  24. This sort of thing is common in human experience. For example, anyone who has read John Calvin’s thoughts on predestination, or a dispensationalist’s take on prophecy, will find it next to impossible to eliminate that material from their thinking while reading, respectively, the book of Romans or Revelation. First Enoch and other works are part of the thinking of Peter and Jude because they were well known and taken seriously by contemporaries. The content of 1 Enoch shows up elsewhere in these epistles. It is obvious to those who study all these texts, especially in Greek, that Peter and Jude knew 1 Enoch very well. Scholars have devoted considerable attention to parallels between that book and the epistles of Peter and Jude. See George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch 1–36, 81–108 (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001), 83–87.
  25. See the earlier cited study by A. Yoshiko Reed for the history of how the early church embraced and rejected the supernatural view of Gen 6:1-4.
  26. See Chapter Three of the present book for the Mesopotamian context of Gen 6:1-4.
  27. Plural forms of this lemma, depending on grammatical context are gigantes and gigantas.
  28. For a detailed discussion of the Anakim and other giant clans in the Old Testament, see Unseen Realm, 183-214.
  29. The translation “fallen ones” is based on a characterization of the behavior of the giants, not on any passage that informs us this is what nephilim means. One Dead Sea Scroll text says that the Watchers “fell” from right standing with God and that their offspring followed in their footsteps (CD [Damascus Document] II:1–19). Note that while the verb naphal appears in this verse, the word nephilim does not. That is, the “fallen state” is not derivative of the name itself. The word nephilim occurs only twice in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Neither instance makes a connection to any behavior. In fact, no explanation of the term is ever offered. Certain English translations of the Dead Sea Scrolls will occasionally have this “fallen” language elsewhere, but such instances are bracketed—they have been supplied by translators but without any manuscript support (e.g., 4Q266 Frag. 2 ii:18). The most recent scholarly work on the Nephilim and the later giant clans is the recent Harvard dissertation by Brian Doak (published as The Last of the Rephaim: Conquest and Cataclysm in the Heroic Ages of Ancient Israel, Ilex Series 7 [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013]). Despite its many merits, Doak’s book on the giants fails with respect to the meaning of nephilim. Annus’s ground-breaking article (see Chapter Three of the present book) does not appear in either Doak’s dissertation bibliography or that of his book.
  30. As Chapter Three will make clear, a supernaturalist approach is the only approach consistent with the original Mesopotamian backstory to Gen 6:1-4.
  31. The result of the cohabitation (or some other form of divine intervention per the ensuing discussion) is also something that causes hesitation. The information obtainable from the text of Scripture and archaeology leads to the conclusion that neither the Nephilim nor their descendants were freakishly tall. The evidence points to the same range for unusually tall people today (the upper six-foot range to eight feet). The only measurement for a giant that exists in the biblical text is that of Goliath. The traditional (Masoretic) Hebrew text has him at “six cubits and a span” (1 Sam 17:4), roughly 9 feet, 9 inches. The Dead Sea Scroll reading of 1 Sam 17:4 disagrees and has Goliath at four cubits and a span, or 6 feet 6 inches. Virtually all scholars consider the Dead Sea Scrolls reading superior and authentic. Archaeological work across the ancient Near East confirms that six and one-half feet tall was, by the standards of the day, a giant. To date, there is no human skeletal evidence from Syria-Palestine (Canaan) that shows extraordinary height. A number of amateur researchers and websites have asserted that two seven-foot female skeletons were found in a twelfth-century-BC cemetery at Tell es-Sa’idiyeh on the east bank of the Jordan. This assertion comes from a commentary on Deuteronomy written by Jeffrey Tigay of the University of Pennsylvania (J. Tigay, Deuteronomy, JPS Torah Commentary [Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1996], 17). Tigay gave the following footnote information after mentioning this alleged discovery: “The discovery in Jordan was reported by Jonathan Tubb of the British Museum in a lecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1995; see the British Museum’s forthcoming Excavations at Tell es-Sa’idiyeh III/2.” As it turns out, this is not true. I wrote professor Tubb at the British Museum to ask if he had published a report on these two skeletons, and I mentioned Tigay’s footnote. He replied (April 29, 2014): “I’m sorry to disappoint, but I’m afraid the footnote resulted from a misunderstood comment I made at a lecture on Sa’idiyeh I gave at Penn some time ago. We don’t, in fact, have any unusually large skeletons from the Sa’idiyeh cemetery. We are in the last stages of preparing the final report on the graves, and all of the metrics will be contained in the volume.” Readers can visit www.moreunseenrealm.com (ch. 25) for a screenshot of the original email. To date, there are no human skeletons from Canaan that show bizarre height. For documentation of these statements and scholarly bibliography, see my discussion (and footnotes) in Unseen Realm, 210-214. The size of Og’s bed (Deut 3:11) cannot be taken as a precise indication of Og’s own dimensions. First, the most immediate link back to the Babylonian polemic is Og’s bed (Hebrew: ʿeres). Its dimensions (9 × 4 cubits) are precisely those of the cultic bed in the ziggurat called Etemenanki—which is the ziggurat most archaeologists identify as the Tower of Babel referred to in the Bible.10 Ziggurats were part of temple complexes–divine houses. The unusually large bed at Etemenanki was housed in “the house of the bed” (bit erši). It was the place where the god Marduk and his divine wife, Zarpanitu, met annually for ritual lovemaking, the purpose of which was divine blessing upon the land. The ritual was also concerned with maintaining the cosmic order instituted by the gods. Consequently, a link between Og and Marduk via the matching bed dimensions telegraphed the idea that Og was the inheritor and perpetuator of the Babylonian knowledge and cosmic order from before the flood. This ties Og directly back to Gen 6:1–4 and its apkallu polemic discussed in Chapter Three of the present book. What the dimensions don’t do is give us Og’s height–the numbers are very obviously given for a theological purpose, not a clinical one. On Marduk’s bed and sacred marriage, See See Martti Nissinen, “Akkadian Rituals and Poetry of Divine Love,” in Mythology and Mythologies: Methodological Approaches to Intercultural Influences; Proceedings of the Second Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project Held in Paris, France, October 4–7, 1999, Melammu Symposia 2 (ed. R. M. Whiting; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2001), 93–136; Beate Pongratz-Leisten, “Sacred Marriage and the Transfer of Divine Knowledge: Alliances between the Gods and the King in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Sacred Marriages: The Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity (ed. Martti Nissinen and Risto Uro; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 43–72.
  32. Sarah would have been well past the age of producing an egg for fertilization and the physical demands of bringing a child to term.
  33. One scholar has recently put forth the idea that Yahweh is perceived as a “sexual deity” in the Old Testament: David E. Bokovoy, “Did Eve Acquire, Create, or Procreate with Yahweh? A Grammatical and Contextual Reassessment of קנה in Genesis 4:1,” Vetus Testamentum 63 (2013): 19–35. I do not believe a phrase like “sexual deity” captures the semantic point of Gen 4:1. Bokovoy argues that the verb in question in Gen 4:1 (qanah) means to create or procreate. I would agree that the verb can certainly have this meaning. Bokovoy’s argument is that the biblical writer believed God participated in the mystery of procreation. Although he doesn’t state it, his assumption appears to be that the biblical writers attributed conception to the deity because, unlike us, they didn’t know scientifically how human fertilization and what happens in the womb worked. I would also agree with that point. However, Bokovoy’s conclusion, that Yahweh “actively participated” in Cain’s procreation, needs qualifications that he does not include in his work. One can say that, in the perception of the biblical writer, and even Eve herself, God caused Eve’s pregnancy. But what does that mean? The biblical writer wasn’t ignorant of the man’s (Adam’s) involvement. The text of the first half of Gen 4:1 says explicitly that Adam “knew Eve his wife, and she [subsequently] conceived.” In other words, the biblical writer understood that sexual intercourse between a man and a woman led to pregnancy. There is no prerequisite for modern scientific understanding for grasping that point. In the second half of the verse Eve says (ESV), “I have gotten [lemma: qanah; form: qanîtî] a man with the LORD.” But note that Eve is the grammatical subject of this “sexual” verb, not the object. Bokovoy’s writing sounds as though Yahweh is the subject here, and that Yahweh is participating sexually with Eve. That isn’t what the grammar of the text says. The author’s wording lacks precision and is therefore misleading. Nevertheless, following Bokovoy for the sake of discussion, one could translate Eve’s statement this way: “I have procreated a man with YHWH.” What would this mean since the writer clearly has Adam as the one having sexual relations with Eve? The answer is simple. This passage is akin to others in the Old Testament where the author narrates the fact that couples have sexual intercourse and then attributes the pregnancy (e.g., “opening of the womb”) to Yahweh—i.e., God gets credit for the mystery of procreation (Gen 18:9–14; 21:1–2; 25:21; 29:32–35; 30:16–24; 1 Sam 1:19–20; Pss 17:14; 127:3; Isa 44:2, 24). This is neither complicated nor shocking, and it isn’t proof that Yahweh was thought to participate sexually with anyone. The mystery of procreation and the act of intercourse are distinguished in Gen 4:1 and other passages.
  34. Reconciling the first view with what 2 Pet 2:4–10 and Jude 6–7 say about “the angels who sinned” is straightforward, especially given the sexual nature of the events of Sodom and Gomorrah, which both writers use as analogous situations. The second approach doesn’t question the sexual language; it considers it euphemistic. Peter and Jude’s inclusion of sexual language is no surprise—it is present in the Old Testament. This approach would argue that there is no reason to insist that Peter and Jude did not also consider it euphemistic. In any respect, what cannot be coherently denied is that Peter and Jude have divine beings as the offenders, not mere humans.
  35. Both phrases are regarded as late editorial glosses by many evangelical and non-confessional scholars. See, for example, Brian Doak, The Last of the Rephaim: Conquest and Cataclysm in the Heroic Ages of Ancient Israel, Ilex Series 7 [(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013), 78; Claus Westermann, Genesis 1–11: A Continental Commentary (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994), 378. That they are part of the final form of the biblical text means they must be included in the canonical material that was the product of the process of inspiration.
  36. The Hebrew of the phrase in Num 13:33 literally reads that the sons of (beney) Anak were “from” (min) the Nephilim. The meaning is either that the Anakim were lineal (biological) descendants or were viewed as part of a group that descended from the Nephilim. Some have argued that the preposition min suggests the Anakim were only “like” the Nephilim, but there is no clear instance in the Hebrew Bible for this semantic nuance. As Doak notes in his discussion of the phrase, “Whatever the case, the Anaqim here are most certainly thought to be the physical (and thus “moral” or “spiritual”) descendants of the Nephilim” (Doak, Last of the Rephaim, 79).
  37. The quandary of how anyone, including the giants, had survived the flood led some Jewish writers to speculate that Noah himself had been fathered by a Watcher. One Dead Sea scroll, The Genesis Apocryphon, has Noah’s father challenging his wife, the mother of Noah, about whether her pregnancy was the work of one of the Watchers (Genesis Apocryphon [=1QapGen] 1:1–5:27). She vehemently denies the charge.
  38. The argument for a local flood proceeds along several trajectories aside from scientific arguments. For scientific discussion, see David F. Siemens Jr., “Some Relatively Non-Technical Problems with Flood Geology,” Perspectives on Science and the Christian Faith 44.3 (1992): 169–74; Davis Young and Ralph Searley, The Bible, Rocks and Time: Geological Evidence for the Age of the Earth (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2008), 224–40. Our concern is with the biblical text and its own evidence for a local flood. First, the phrases in the flood narrative that suggest a global event occur a number of times in the Hebrew Bible where their context cannot be global or include all people on the planet. For example, the phrase “the whole earth” (kol ʾerets) occurs in passages that clearly speak of localized geography (e.g., Gen 13:9; 41:57; Lev 25:9, 24; Judg 6:37; 1 Sam 13:3; 2 Sam 24:8). In such cases, “whole land” or “all the people in the area” are better understandings. Those options produce a regional flood event if used in Gen 6–8 where the phrase occurs. Second, the Gen 9:19 clearly informs us that “the whole earth” was populated by the sons of Noah. Gen 10 (see 10:1) gives us the list of the nations spawned by the sons of Noah—all of which are located in the regions of the ancient Near East, the Mediterranean, and the Aegean. The biblical writers knew nothing of nations in another hemisphere (the Americas) or places like India, China, or Australia. The language of Gen 10 therefore allows Gen 7:21 to be restricted to only (or even some) of the people groups listed in the Table of Nations. That interpretation is consistent with a localized flood. Third, the phrase “all humankind” (kol ʾadam) used in Gen 7:21 also appears in contexts that cannot speak to all humans everywhere (e.g., Jer 32:20; Psa 64:9 can only refer to people who had seen what God had done, not people on the other side of the world). Lastly, Psa 104:9 appears to forbid a global flood, since it has God promising to never cover the earth with water as had been the case at creation.
  39. Both supernatural approaches to Gen 6:1–4 can accommodate a local flood. Both posit flood survivors (by whatever means) somewhere in the Mediterranean or Aegean, the known biblical world. Those survivors (at least some of them) would have had to eventually migrate to Canaan. At least one of the giant lineages can be traced to the Aegean (see ch. 25). In like manner, positing a postflood origin for more Nephilim would require more divine intervention of the same (undescribed) type.
  40. A translation of “when” takes the ʾasher clause as temporal. According to Westermann, this is the view espoused by most commentators. He is, however, apathetic as to whether a temporal understanding or another possibility is more coherent: “It does not really matter whether אשׁר is understood as temporal (with most interpreters) or iterative (so E. König, W. H. Schmidt and others) or as causal (e.g., B. S. Childs; against, and correctly, W. H. Schmidt); אשׁר is an afterthought, its function being in fact only to link and so to subordinate” (Westermann, Genesis 1–11, 377). Wenham notes that some Hebrew scholars consider the use of the Hebrew imperfect in this clause to allow for repetition: “ ‘Whenever the sons of the gods went into the daughters of men, they bore them children.’ Though it is not impossible to translate this as a simple past event—‘When they went in …’—it is more natural (with Skinner, König, Gispen) to take the imperfect ‘went’ and perfect preceded by waw (‘bore … children’) as frequentative. To ‘go in to’ is a frequent euphemism for sexual intercourse (cf. Gen 30:16; 38:16)” (Gordon J. Wenham, Genesis 1–15, Word Biblical Commentary 1 (Dallas: Word, 1998], 143. See also Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar, 2nd English ed. (ed. E. Kautzsch and Sir Arthur Ernest Cowley; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910), 315 (sec. 107e). Gesenius includes Gen 6:4 as an instance of this interpretive nuance.
  41. On the meaning of “watcher” (Aramaic: עיר; ʿı̂r), Nickelsburg writes: “If the Aram. עיר was the chief designation for the heavenly beings, precisely what was the meaning of this word? . . . A derivation from the root עור (“to be awake,” “to be watchful”) is usually presumed and is reflected in the Greek translation ἐγρήγορος (egrēgoros) . . . Murray develops an extensive argument for the meaning “guardian” and for an allusion to the old guardian gods of Semitic antiquity. Various passages in 1 Enoch appear to apply such a function to these heavenly beings, although it is perhaps more to the point to describe them as advocates or mediators of human prayer. Throughout the translation in this volume, I have retained the traditional rendering ‘watchers,’ presuming not the notion of watching per se, but the first dictionary definition of this noun, ‘one that sits up or continues awake at night.’ I do so for two reasons. First, neither Fitzmyer nor Murray presents a compelling reason for seeking another translation. Second, alongside the ancient translation ἐγρήγοροι, precisely such an interpretation appears to be presumed in [1 Enoch] 39:12, 13; 40:2; 61:12; 71:7 (“those who sleep not”), and it may also be indicated at 14:23. In both cases, these heavenly beings are on twenty-four-hour duty attending God—whether to praise God or to function as a kind of bodyguard in the throne room.” See George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001), 140; R. Murray, “The Origin of Aramaic ʿı̂r, Angel,” Orientalia 53:2 (1984): 303-17.
  42. ESV correctly renders the Aramaic phrase עִיר וְקַדִּישׁ as “a watcher, a holy one,” as opposed to “a watcher and a holy one.” That the waw conjunction between the words should be understood as creating an appositional relationship between the terms is apparent from the context—only one heavenly being converses with Daniel in the passage (note the ensuing singular participles used for the heavenly figure’s proclamation in Dan 4:14).
  43. See Appendix II. Some scholars include 1 Enoch 93:1-10 in the Apocalypse of Weeks.
  44. J. Collins, “Enoch, Books of,” ed. Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter, Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 314. This last comment about the sin of Adam will be explored in the present book in several chapters. This perspective, as one can imagine, affects the reading of certain New Testament passages.
  45. Ibid., 316.
  46. Ibid., 315.
  47. Ibid.
  48. Ibid., 315–316.
  49. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 8.
  50. Ibid., 8.
  51. Ibid., 174ff. For convenience I have chosen to omit brackets in reconstructed words and names.
  52. This description is found in the Ethiopic text but is not present in some Greek manuscripts.
  53. The direct reference to Mount Hermon—something of importance for our own study—is corrupted in the Ethiopic text. Its authenticity is attested in the Aramaic material of 1 Enoch found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (the first six words of 4QEna), as well as some Greek manuscripts.
  54. In Hebrew (and Aramaic) “Hermon” (חרמן; ḥermōn) is related to חרם which means (as a verb: ḥāram) “devote to destruction” and (as a noun), “[thing] devoted to destruction.” These terms are prominent in the biblical conquest account. As I discussed in The Unseen Realm (183-214), the annihilation terminology of the conquest was directed at the Anakim, the descendants of the nephilim. Nickelsburg (p. 177) notes that this wordplay “is an explicit and typical etymologizing on the name of Mount Hermon (cf. Gen 4:17; 28:10–19; 31:46–49), possible in both Hebrew and Aramaic. The mutual anathematizing of the watchers (for the verb חרם see 4QEna 1 3:3) explains the name of the mountain on which it took place (חרמון). The long history of religious activity in the environs of Hermon is well documented.”
  55. The text as established by Nickelsburg for his translations produces three offspring: giants, nephilim, and “Elioud.” Each succeeding group produces the next. Nickelsburg (p. 184) writes: “The interpretation of this passage, and specifically the relationship between “the giants” (nĕpîlîm) and “the mighty ones” (gibbôrîm), has long been disputed. Ancient interpreters disagreed, although the varying interpretations may reflect knowledge of the Enochic form of the tradition. An identification of the two groups with one another is as old as the LXX, which translates both nouns with οἱ γίγαντες (“the giants”). . . . Modern interpreters also differ on the referents of the two nouns, and these interpretations are often tied to one’s understanding of the history of the tradition. According to Westermann, the two groups are most likely identified with one another in the present state of the Genesis text.” Nickelsburg is citing Claus Westermann, A Continental Commentary: Genesis 1–11 (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1994), 378-379. Westermann notes that originally the two terms “did not designate the same object, because Nephilim is a name whereas גברים [gibborim] describes a group” (p. 379). I agree with Westermann (and others) on this issue. For our purposes (i.e., establishing the Watcher story for the sake of New Testament interpretation), the issue isn’t important. The term “Elioud” is enigmatic (See Nickelsburg’s short survey of options, p. 185). My preference is that the term may derive from the common Semitic root עלי (ʿly; “exalted”) and mean something like “arrogant ones.” See for example Ugaritic ʿly (verb: “to rise up” or “attack”; adjective: “exalted” (Gregorio Del Olmo Lete and Joaquín Sanmartín, “ʿly,” A Dictionary of the Ugaritic Language in the Alphabetic Tradition [Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003], vol 1:160-161).
  56. Nickelsburg’s preferred text (the Greek version of Syncellus) omits the reference to the height of the nephilim. The Ethiopic text and some Greek manuscripts read either 3,000 or 300 cubits for their height. It should be obvious that, given Nickelsburg’s texts have these giants producing successions of giant offspring (with human women apparently), the heights are absurd, making sexual intercourse impossible.
  57. It is interesting to note that the Ethiopic text describes Asael as “the tenth of the archons.”
  58. This last line of 1 Enoch 8:2 is a good illustration of why Enoch scholars have determined that the account is a composite of sources and traditions. Nickelsburg writes: “According to the second clause, these women then led the holy watchers astray. That is, the sin of Shemihazah and his companions, described in chaps. 6–7, was caused ultimately by the instruction of Asael. This idea implies two other ideas not present in chaps. 6–7. First, the original angelic sinner and primary author of the evil under consideration was not Shemihazah but Asael. Second, the angels were seduced by the women” (Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 195).
  59. Annette Yoshiko Reed, Fallen Angels and the History of Judaism and Christianity, 46.
  60. Loren T Stuckenbruck, “The Origins of Evil in Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition: The Interpretation of Genesis 6:1-4 in the Second and Third Centuries B.C.E.,” in The Fall of the Angels (ed. Christoff Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004), 103, n. 35.
  61. R. Schultz, “The Origin of Sin in Irenaeus and Jewish Pseudepigraphical Literature,” Vigiliae Christianae 32:3 (Sep., 1978): 168-169, 172-173.
  62. Ibid., 179, citing Irenaeus, Proof of the Apostolic Preaching, 18.
  63. Stuckenbruck notes that the scholarly literature establishing this fact “is considerable.” This is an understatement. He offers a short list of the scholarship on this point in the first footnote of his essay, “The Origins of Evil in Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition” (p. 87). His list includes: Devorah Dimant, “The Fallen Angels” in the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Apocryphal and Pseudepigraphic Books Related to Them, Hebrew University: Ph.D. Thesis 1974 (in mod. Hebrew); P. Hanson, “Rebellion in Heaven, Azazel and Euhemeristic Heroes in 1 Enoch 6–11,” Journal of Biblical Literature 96 (1977) 195–233; G. W. E. Nickelsburg, “Apocalyptic and Myth in 1 Enoch 6–11,” Journal of Biblical Literature 96 (1977) 383–405; M. J. Davidson, Angels at Qumran. A Comparative Study of 1 Enoch 1–36, 72–108 and Sectarian Writings from Qumran, Sheffield 1992; P. S. Alexander, “Wrestling Against Wickedness in High Places: Magic in the Worldview of the Qumran Community,” in S. E. Porter and C. A. Evans (eds.), Qumran Fifty Years After, Sheffield 1997, 319–30; idem, “The Demonology of the Dead Sea Scrolls,” in P. Flint and J. C. VanderKam (eds.), The Dead Sea Scrolls after Fifty Years. A Comprehensive Assessment, Leiden/Boston/Köln 1999, vol. 2, 331–53; and A. M. Reimer, ‘Rescuing the Fallen Angels: The Case of the Disappearing Angels at Qumran’, Dead Sea Discoveries 7 (2000): 331–53.
  64. Stuckenbruck, “The Origins of Evil in Jewish Apocalyptic Tradition,” 87-88.
  65. The single best study on the material presented in this chapter was published in 2010: Amar Annus, “On the Origin of the Watchers: A Comparative Study of the Antediluvian Wisdom in Mesopotamian and Jewish Traditions,” Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha 19.4 (2010): 277–320. The publication of this study was followed closely by David Melvin, “The Gilgamesh Traditions and the Pre-History of Genesis 6: 1-4,” Perspectives in Religious Studies 38:1 (2011): 23-32; Ida Fröhlich, “Mesopotamian Elements and the Watchers Traditions,” in The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions (ed. Angela Kim Hawkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, and John C. Endres, S.J.; Fortress Press, 2014), 11-24; Henryk Drawnel, “The Mesopotamian Background of the Enochic Giants and Evil Spirits,” Dead Sea Discoveries 21:1 (2014): 14-38; Helge Kvanvig, Primeval History: Babylonian, Biblical, and Enochic: An Intertextual Reading (Journal for the Study of Judaism Supplement 149; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2011). Some of the material in this last source was published earlier in 2002, though Annus’ article supersedes that work considerably: Helge Kvanvig, “Gen 6: 1-4 as an antediluvian event,” Scandinavian Journal of the Old Testament 16:1 (2002): 79-112.
  66. The only place I know of where this material has been brought to light in a source generally accessible to the public is my book: The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Lexham Press, 2015), 92-109.
  67. C. Greenfield, “Apkallu,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst: Leiden: E. J. Brill; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 72.
  68. Annus (p. 302) notes: “. . . [T]he realm of Apsu is often confused with underworld in Mesopotamian literature. Evidence indicates that the reason for this was either a simple confusion, or Apsu itself was occasionally thought to be a netherworld inhabited by malevolent spirits. The second option seems more likely, as there are many literary references, which place underworld deities and demons in Apsu.” See also Wayne Horowitz, Mesopotamian Cosmic Geography (Eisenbrauns, 1998), 342-343.
  69. Kvanvig, Roots of Apocalyptic, 201.
  70. Annus, 295.
  71. Entire scholarly studies on such access to secret knowledge have been produced. The most recent and, arguably, the most thorough, is Alan Lenzi, Secrecy and the Gods: Secret Knowledge in Ancient Mesopotamia and Biblical Israel (The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project; State Archives of Assyria Studies XIX; Helsinki, 2008).
  72. For the concept of the divine council (cf. Psa 82:1, 6; 89:5-8; 1 Kings 22:19-23), see Heiser, Unseen Realm, 23-37 or the papers at http://www.thedivinecouncil.com.
  73. Lenzi, 106-107.
  74. Ibid., 287-289.
  75. Francesca Rochberg, The Heavenly Writing: Divination, Horoscopy, and Astronomy in Mesopotamian Culture (Cambridge University Press, 2004), 17.
  76. Ibid., 289. On this subject, see also the monograph by the great Sumerian-Akkadian scholar William Hallo, Origins: The Ancient Near Eastern Background of Some Modern Western Institutions (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1996).
  77. The Seleucid period is historically late, well after the Babylonian (or earlier) era. Nevertheless, as studies of the apkallu have confirmed, the ideas and names conveyed in this tablet have a much older history in Mesopotamian material. See Lenzi, 107-108.
  78. The spellings and the list come from Lenzi, 108.
  79. Anne Draffkorn Kilmer, “The Mesopotamian Counterparts of the Biblical Nephilim,” in Perspectives on Language and Text: Essays and Poems in Honor of Francis I. Andersen’s 60th Birthday (ed. E. W. Conrad and E. G. Newing; Eisenbrauns, 1987), 39-40. On the cuneiform text from which this information derives, see Erica Reiner, “The Etiological Myth of the ‘Seven Sages’,” Orientalia 30 (1961): 1-11.
  80. Kilmer, 40-41. More on this apkallu and this cuneiform text below.
  81. Ibid., 40.
  82. Wright (Origin of Evil Spirits, 146-147) notes: “The death of the giants reveals something about the nature of their spirits. They are considered evil spirits because they were born on the earth; they are a mixed product of a spiritual being (Watcher angel) and a physical, and a somewhat spiritually undefined human. The resulting entities are identified in I Enoch 15.8 as “strong spirits,” “evil spirits,” which come out of their bodies at their death. . . . [T]he Watchers [were necessarily] bound in Tartarus in order to halt their activity, while the spirits of the giants, following the death of their physical body, are allowed to roam freely upon the earth. The ability to roam about the earth links the nature of the evil spirits of the giants to the spiritual nature of the Watchers prior to their fall. What is not clear is why these beings are given that freedom.”
  83. Annus, 297-303. The characterization of the apkallu as fish-men points to their origin in the watery abyss in Mesopotamian religion. Apkallu are also characterized as bird-men, a likely image associated with their divine (“heavenly”) nature. The major study on the pictorial iconography of apkallu is F. A. M. Wiggerman, Mesopotamian Protective Spirits: The Ritual Texts (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1992).
  84. Cited by Annus, 309.
  85. Ibid., 309, 311.
  86. Ibid., 311 and 293, in that order. On this point see also John C. Reeves, Jewish Lore in Manichean Cosmology: Studies in the Book of the Giants (Hebrew Union College Monographs 14; Hebrew Union College Press, 1995), 95; Simo Parpola, Letters from Assyrian and Babylonian Scholars (The Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project; State Archives of Assyria Studies X; Helsinki, 1993), xx.
  87. On this text and its translation, see R. Borger, “The Incantation Series bı̄t mēseri and Enoch’s Ascension to Heaven,” in I Studied Inscriptions from before the Flood: Ancient Near Eastern, Literary, and Linguistic Approaches to Genesis 1–11 (ed. Richard S. Hess and David T. Tsumura; Sources for Biblical and Theological Study 4; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1994), 230-231.
  88. Annus, 283, 296. On the description of Gilgamesh in the Book of Giants from Qumran, see Loren Stuckenbruck, The Book of Giants from Qumran: Text, Translation, and Commentary (Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum 63; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), 329. On the cuneiform evidence for Gilgamesh’s height, see the line references in the translation of Andrew R. George, The Babylonian Gilgamesh Epic: Introduction, Critical Edition and Cuneiform Texts (Oxford University Press, 2003). On the Ugaritic material he refers to, Annus adds a footnote on p. 296 which cites another source by Andrew R. George: “The passage describing the physical appearance of Gilgamesh can be reconstructed in five lines as follows: ‘[A giant(?)] in stature, eleven cubits [was his height, four cubits was] the width of [his chest,] a triple cubit his foot, half a rod his leg, six cubits was the length of his stride, [x] cubits the whiskers(?) of his cheeks’.” See Andrew R. George, “The Gilgameš Epic at Ugarit,” Aula Orientalis 25 (207): 237-54.
  89. Greenfield, 73.
  90. Annus, 304. As noted earlier, this characterization as bird-men is likely chosen to denote the divine (“heavenly”) nature of apkallu.
  91. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, Inc., 2003).
  92. Annus, 280.
  93. On Deut 32:8-9 and its importance for biblical theology, see Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 110-122; Michael S. Heiser, “Deuteronomy 32:8 and the Sons of God,” Bibliotheca Sacra 158 (January-March 2001): 52–74.
  94. Annus, 282, 289.
  95. Annus, 282-283, 295.
  96. Annus, 283, 314-315. Annus adds (p. 315): “The Aramaic term for ‘Watchers’ (ʿyr) must have come about as an adaptation of Akkadian term maṣṣaru, the term which denoted specialized guards for gates, doors, walls, and so on, but also divine guardians and their representations in private houses and temples. The verbal root ʿwr in Hebrew means ‘(to be) awake’, and Syriac ʿr, with participle ʿı̄r means ‘(to be) awake, watch’. Hence the Aramaic term means ‘wakeful one’. The expression ʿyryn came to denote angelic beings, whether they are good or rebellious, or could be used neutrally to refer to angels in general (Stuckenbruck 1997: 84). The cognate verb in Akkadian is êru, ‘to be awake’ (CAD E 326).” Annus attributes some of this to Stuckenbruck, Book of Giants, 84. The CAD = ¬The Chicago Assyrian Dictionary.
  97. This thought may be new to some readers, but messianic prophecy was intentionally cryptic for precisely the reason Paul noted. Satan and demons knew very well who Jesus was. They could reason that the “Son of the Most High” had come to restore Eden. But they were unaware of the path—that the indispensable element to the plan of God was the death and resurrection of his Son. This was something that could only be discerned after the fact. See Heiser, The Unseen Realm, Chapter 28. The lemma behind “rulers of this world” (archōn) is a term used elsewhere in the singular for Satan / the Devil (Matt 12:24; John 12:31; Eph 2:2). It is also used in the Septuagint for the elohim sons of God (“princes”) over the nations (Dan 10:13; see Theodotian’s Greek text of Daniel). The lemma is closely related to archē, a lemma used in the plural for spiritual powers of darkness (Eph 3:10; 6:12; Col 1:16; 2:15). For a lengthy overview of Paul’s adoption of this worldview, see Ronn Johnson, “The Old Testament Background for Paul’s Principalities and Powers,” (PhD diss., Dallas Theological Seminary, 2004). For brief discussions of archōn and archē, see D. G. Reid, “Principalities and Powers,” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters, 746–752.
  98. My view is not that Paul was arguing the story of the cross was in the starry heavens, but that the stars communicated the arrival of a divine king. In that sense, Paul believes it was possible for the news about Jesus’ coming to be known to everyone. His task in the gospel was to explain what that coming meant (the “mystery” as Paul called the plan of salvation), particularly with respect to the cross. Several well-known Christian writers have attempted to argue that the starry sky, and specifically the zodiac, lays out every detail of the work of Christ and the gospel. Those attempts, well-intentioned as they were, go too far. It is fallacious to presume that the starry heavens could actually explain the way of salvation to someone when Christ Himself sent the apostles into the world to preach the gospel. If looking at the heavens was sufficient for evangelism, why would Jesus send out the apostles? (The sky has far greater and more immediate coverage!) Moreover, the message of the traveling apostles was not how to read the heavens—it was the work of Christ on the cross. Finally, the notion that the gospel message could be understood through the stars conflicts with the fact that the disciples themselves didn’t understand the cross event until after the ascension (e.g., Luke 24:45-49). The most well-known efforts to argue that the plan of salvation is revealed in the stars are: E. W. Bullinger, The Witness of the Stars (reprint; Forgotten books, 2009) and Joseph Augustus Seiss, The Gospel in the Stars (reprint; General Books, 2009). The famous evangelical preacher D. James Kennedy also espoused this idea (see http://www.djameskennedy.com/full-view-sermon/djk18549a-the-gospel-in-the-stars).
  99. The major work in this regard is Bruce J. Malina, The Genre and Message of Revelation: Star Visions and Sky Journeys (Hendrickson, 1995). Malina overstates his case at times, and neglects the role of the Old Testament and Second Temple Jewish literature for interpreting Revelation, but he marshals a good deal of evidence that Revelation (at least major sections of it) should be considered part of the astral prophecy genre.
  100. See for example these studies: Jodi Magness, “Helios and the Zodiac Cycle in Ancient Palestinian Synagogues,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 59 (2005): 1-52; Rachel Hachlili, “The Zodiac in Ancient Jewish Art: Representation and Significance,” Bulletin of the American Schools of Oriental Research 228 (Dec. 1977): 61-77; James H. Charlesworth, “Jewish Astrology in the Talmud, Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, and Early Palestinian Synagogues,” Harvard Theological Review 70:3/4 (July-October 1977): 183-200.
  101. A noteworthy exception is the work of Dr. Ernest L. Martin, The Star That Astonished the World (2nd ed, 1996). (Martin’s book is available free at www.askelm.org). Readers are referred to Martin’s book for his far more detailed treatment of the astronomy associated with Revelation 12 and the birth of Jesus. The astronomical material in the present chapter follows Martin’s book closely (by permission), but only selectively. There are many more points of data that could be brought to bear. Martin’s view has been endorsed by leading experts on biblical chronology and many astronomers in the United States and abroad. While I find Martin’s view the most convincing and coherent explanation of the astronomical events associated with Jesus’ birth, that approval is not an endorsement of all that Martin says in the book or his other publications.
  102. It is equally clear that this passage is not describing any sort of primeval angelic/demonic rebellion. The “third of the stars” reference follows the birth of the child, which is clearly Jesus. Despite its obvious nature, this passage is often referred to by Bible students in defense of some sort of angelic rebellion at the time of the creation preceding the creation of humankind. There actually is no such passage in the Bible for that idea.
  103. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation, The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), 621. Beale’s commentary is one of the leading scholarly resources on Revelation. It is far and away the best commentary on Revelation with respect to interaction with Second Temple Jewish thinking.
  104. See 2 Kings 19:21; Isa. 37:21; Jer. 14:17; 18:13; 31:4, 21; Amos 5:2; Lam 1:15; 2:13.
  105. Beale (The Book of Revelation, 642-643) describes the imagery: “Verse 6 is saturated with a rich diversity of OT, Jewish, and early Christian background. The woman flees from the dragon after the deliverance of her son. She flees so that the dragon will not annihilate her. This is not a mere literal escape, whether of Christians fleeing the Roman siege of Jerusalem in A.D. 66 and going to Pella (Eusebius, H.E. 3.5) or of a remnant of Christian Jews being protected from the future Great Tribulation. As in vv 1 and 2, the woman represents the community of faith, though now it is not that of the OT epoch, but the messianic community after Christ’s resurrection. The woman is now on earth and not in heaven because she now represents the true people of God on earth. She escapes into the wilderness for protection because ‘there she has a place prepared by (ἀπό) God’ . . . She has not only protection but also ‘nourishment,’ which enables her to continue to exist. . . . The flight into the wilderness is a collective allusion primarily both to Israel’s exodus from Egypt and the anticipated end-time exodus, which was to occur during Israel’s latter-day restoration from captivity. First, it refers to the time when Israel fled from Egypt into the wilderness and was protected and nourished by Yahweh (Exod. 16:32; Deut. 2:7; 8:3, 15–16; 29:5; 32:10; Josh. 24:7; Neh. 9:19, 21; Pss. 78:5, 15, 19; 136:16; Hos. 13:5). The same pattern of flight into the wilderness is observable in the case of Elijah (1 Kings 17; 19:3–8) and Moses (Exod. 2:15; Josephus, Ant.2.256), who symbolize the church in Rev. 11:5–6. Similarly, Isaiah and other prophets ‘withdrew … to a desert place’ because ‘Israel went astray’ ‘in service to Satan’ (Asc. Isa. 2:7–11; cf. Assumption of Moses 9:1, 6). The OT faithful were those who ‘wandered in the wilderness’ (Heb. 11:38). Matt. 2:15 links the flight of Jesus’ parents from Herod and their return to Israel to the exodus. Together with the exodus, these other parallel desert pilgrimages could also be echoed in Revelation 12. Nevertheless, the parallel of Rev. 12:14 with v 6 makes the exodus background explicit. The ‘two wings of the eagle’ on which the woman is borne into the wilderness (v 14) allude to God’s care of Israel after the exodus during the wilderness sojourn. In Deuteronomy the ‘wilderness’ (ἔρημος) is the avenue on which God guides Israel to the ‘place’ (τόπος) of the Promised Land, where the divine presence is to dwell (Deut. 1:31; 9:7; 11:5).”
  106. Beale (The Book of Revelation, 625-626) has devoted considerable attention to the ancient Jewish and Old Testament context for the woman. He writes in part: “Verses 2-6 reveal that this woman is a picture of the faithful community, which existed both before and after the coming of Christ. This identification is based on the OT precedent in which the sun, the moon, and eleven stars represent Jacob, his wife, and the eleven tribes of Israel (Gen. 37:9; cf. Testament of Naphtali 5:3ff.), who bow down to Joseph, who represents the twelfth tribe. The depiction could also reflect the portrayal in Jewish writings of Abraham, Sarah, and their progeny as sun, moon, and stars (Test. Abr. B 7:4–16). . . . Jewish exegetes believed that the sons of Jacob were likened to stars in Genesis 37 to connote the indestructible nature of Israel: as stars appear far from earth and immune from destruction by any earthly force, so also (true?) Israel was ultimately indestructible (Midr. Rab. Gen. 9; Targ Neof. Gen. 50:19–21). . . . The twelve stars represent the twelve tribes of Israel. The woman’s appearance may also connote Israel’s priestly character (cf. 1:6; 5:10), since Philo’s and Josephus’s explanations of Exodus 28 and 39 use the imagery of a crown, the sun, the moon, and twelve stars to describe the vestments of the Israelite high priests, since the priests represented the twelve tribes before Yahweh in the temple service (Josephus, Ant. 3.164–72, 179–87; Philo, Vit. Mos. 2.111–12, 122–24; Spec. Leg. 1.84–95). In fact, in these same texts the parts of the priestly garment represented by the heavenly bodies are explicitly said to symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel. Such dual imagery was meant to indicate that Israel on earth also had a heavenly identity. Indeed, later Jewish writings interpreted the twelve signs of the zodiac as representing the twelve tribes of Israel (Midr. Rab. Exod. 15.6; Midr. Rab. Num. 2.14; cf. b. Berakoth 32b). Therefore, the twelve stars surrounding the woman call to mind the twelve constellations, which connote the Israel of God viewed from the perspective of Israel’s heavenly life or calling.”
  107. Martin notes that, “Interpreting astronomical signs dominated the thinking of most people in the 1st century, whether the people were Jews or Gentiles. Indeed, the word “sign” used by the author of the book of Revelation to describe this celestial display was the same one frequently used by the ancients to denote the zodiacal constellations.” Cited from the text at: http://www.askelm.com/star/star006.htm. The Greek lemma translated “sign” is sēmeion. Martin’s source is a solid one: Henry George Liddell et al., A Greek-English Lexicon (With a revised supplement, 1996; Rev. and augm. throughout; Oxford; New York: Clarendon Press; Oxford University Press, 1996), 1593. The entry in part reads: “. . . sign from the gods, omen, S.OC 94; τὰ ἀπὸ τῶν θεῶν σ. γενόμενα Antipho 5.81, cf. Pl.Phdr.244c, Ap.40b, X.Cyr.1.6.1; wonder, portent, LXX Ex.4.8, al.; σ. καὶ τέρατα Plb.3.112.8, Ev.Matt.24.24, Ev.Jo.4.48, cf. IPE l.c., D.S.17.114; φόβηθρα καὶ σ. ἀπʼ οὐρανοῦ Ev.Luc.21.11; esp. of the constellations, regarded as signs, δύεται σημεῖα E.Rh.529 (lyr.), cf. Ion.1157.”
  108. While the symbolism we will discuss in this chapter communicates, and is thus consistent with Paul’s quotation of Psalm 19:4 from the Septuagint (“their voice goes out…”), the Masoretic Text reading of Psalm 19:4 actually aligns much better with the notion of a constellation following the ecliptic. The Masoretic Text of Psalm 19:4 reads: “their line goes out…”). The stars communicating via a “line” that goes out in the heavens is quite descriptive of the astronomical notion of a path or ecliptic.
  109. Martin, Chapter 5, cited from the text at: http://www.askelm.com/star/star006.htm.
  110. See Malina, 155-160 for a brief sketch of those mother goddess figures.
  111. For a good summary of chaos and the imagery of the sea monster, see the entries for “Dragon” and “Sea” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, as well as F. J. Mabie, “Chaos and Death,” in Dictionary of the Old Testament: Wisdom, Poetry & Writings (Edited by Tremper Longman III and Peter Enns; Downers Grove, IL: Inter-Varsity Press, 2008): 41-54.
  112. Grant R. Osborne, Revelation (Baker exegetical commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Academic, 2002), 459.
  113. Malina, 160-161.
  114. There are other astronomical events besides the additional ones shared here. They can be discovered in Martin’s book.
  115. “Sun, Moon, and Stars (Introductory),” The Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, XII (ed. James Hastings; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1921), 51. See also Martin’s text at: http://www.askelm.com/star/star006.htm.
  116. As Martin details in Chapter 5 of his book, reading Revelation 12 this way correlates precisely with the chronological testimony of Luke concerning the timing of the birth of John the Baptist and his father’s (Zechariah) priestly duties at the temple, where the angel met him to announce John’s birth. The primary objection to this date is that it violates the accepted date for Herod’s death (4 B.C.), requiring that Herod die in 1 B.C. Despite the objections of many to the September 11, 3 B.C. date on these grounds, a 1 B.C. date for Herod’s death is indeed possible—and actually quite plausible. For recent research into how a 1 B.C. date for the death of Herod is historically coherent, see Ormond Edwards, “Herodian Chronology,” Palestine Exploration Quarterly 114:1 (1982): 29-42; Andrew Steinmann, “When Did Herod the Great Reign?” Novum Testamentum 51 (2009):1-29. The former article focuses on numismatic (coins) evidence for reconsidering how Herod’s dates are calculated and understood. The latter casts a wider net for data leading to a 1 B.C. death while also chronicling problems with the 4 B.C. consensus.
  117. See Martin, Chapter 5 (at http://www.askelm.com/star/star006.htm) for the details on these other conjunctions.
  118. See Matthew 2:11, where the child Jesus is referred to with the Greek term paidion, as opposed to brephos in Luke 1:41. While the former can be used of an infant or toddler, the latter is only used of newborn infants or children in utero. See G. Braumann, and C. Brown, “Παῖς,” New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology (ed. Lothar Coenen, Erich Beyreuther, and Hans Bietenhard; Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986), vol. 1: 283. Martin (Ch. 5) points out that the account in the New Testament said the Magi saw the star rising above the eastern horizon. And in August 12, 3 B.C., Jupiter rose as a morning star which soon came into conjunction with Venus. If the Magi began their own journey toward Jerusalem near this time, this apparent westward motion of Jupiter each day could have indicated to the Magi to proceed in the same westward direction toward Jerusalem. Martin follows this by noting that the Magi could have been “following” Jupiter in the example it was setting. The Bible says the star “went ahead of them.” Upon reaching Jerusalem the Magi were told to look toward Bethlehem for the newborn king. This occurred when the New Testament says the “star” came to a halt in the heavens (Matt. 2:9). Jupiter stopped its motion and “stood over where the young child was.” In a word, the celestial body became stationary. Martin references Kittel’s theological dictionary for this point. In commenting on the passive form of the Greek word for the star’s behavior (ἐστάθη) Kittel quotes from A. Schlatter’s Kommentar z. Matthäusev (1929): “In distinction from ἔστη, ἐστάθη implies that the star is halted” (see Gerhard Kittel, Geoffrey W. Bromiley, and Gerhard Friedrich (eds.), Theological Dictionary of the New Testament [Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1964–], vol. 7:648). Martin also references the scholarly article by F. Steinmetzer at this point (“The Star of the Wise Men,” Irish Theological Quarterly, VII [1912], 61.). Martin comments: “The theologian F. Steinmetzer, back in 1912, wrote an article stating his belief that Matthew was referring to one of these normal ‘stationary’ positions of the planets. Indeed, Steinmetzer suggested that the planet that suited Matthew’s account the best was Jupiter. This is true.”
  119. Beale, The Book of Revelation, 620; cp. b. Rosh Hashanah 16.
  120. Edwin R. Thiele, The Mysterious Numbers of the Hebrew Kings (Kregel, 1994), 28, 31, 161, 163.
  121. Theodor Gaster, Festivals of the Jewish Year (4th ed.; William Sloane Associates, 1968), 109.
  122. See the website Judaism 101: http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday2.htm.
  123. Sample dates for Rosh Ha-Shanah are as follows: Jewish Year 5778: sunset September 20, 2017 – nightfall September 22, 2017; Jewish Year 5779: sunset September 9, 2018 – nightfall September 11, 2018; Jewish Year 5780: sunset September 29, 2019 – nightfall October 1, 2019. Source: http://www.jewfaq.org/holiday2.htm.
  124. What follows in the present chapter from this point is a distillation of certain points in Robbins’ essay. The full citation for this source is: Ellen Robbins, “The Pleiades, the Flood, and the Jewish New Year,” in Ki Baruch Hu: Ancient Near Eastern, Biblical, and Judaic Studies in Honor of Baruch A. Levine (ed. Robert Chazan, William W. Hallo, and Lawrence Schiffman; Winona Lake, Ind.: Eisenbrauns, 1999), 329-344.
  125. See http://terpconnect.umd.edu/~tlaloc/archastro/ae25.html (the archaeoastronomy page of the University of Maryland). Another source notes, “. . . ancient astrologers gave particular emphasis to the heliacal rising and setting of stars since these could be used as reliable indicators to agricultural conditions” (http://www.skyscript.co.uk/gl/heliacal.html).
  126. See for example: http://www.theoi.com/Gigante/GiganteOrion.html.
  127. See the Comprehensive Aramaic Lexicon. Targum Job from Qumran – 11QtgJob; 11Q10. Hebrew Union College, 2005.
  128. Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 105-107.
  129. Hermann Hunger and David Pingree, Astral Sciences in Mesopotamia (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999), 67.
    1. Hill, “History of Israel 3: United Monarchy: Ideology of Kingship,” ed. Bill T. Arnold and H. G. M. Williamson, Dictionary of the Old Testament: Historical Books (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2005), 450.
  130. The material in this chapter is based primarily on a 2010 dissertation by Amy S. Richter completed at Marquette University: Amy S. Richter, “The Enochic Watchers’ Template and the Gospel of Matthew,” PhD dissertation, Marquette University, 2010. At the time of this writing, Richter’s dissertation was freely accessible in its entirety at: http://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1044&context=dissertations_mu.
  131. The identification of all four women as Gentiles is plausible and, therefore, possible, but the matter is not certain. As Luz notes, “Tamar is usually, but not always, regarded in the Jewish tradition as a proselyte. (Footnote: In Jub. 41.1–2 and T. Jud. 10.1 she is presumably regarded as a member of Abraham’s family. According to Philo [Virt. 221] she is a proselyte [Syrian Palestinian]; likewise according to rabbinic tradition where she becomes the daughter of Melchizedek). Ruth is a Moabitess, Rahab a resident of Canaanite Jericho. There are no reports about Bathsheba. Is that why she is cited not by name but as the wife of Uriah, who, as is well known, was a Hittite (2 Sam 11:3)? That is conceivable, but it is by no means the most obvious idea that the readers would associate with the name Uriah. Thus, this sense is clear only with Ruth and Rahab. With Tamar it is quite possible, and for Bathsheba it may be possible” (Ulrich Luz, Matthew 1–7: A Commentary on Matthew 1–7 [ed. Helmut Koester; Rev. ed.; Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007], 84-85.
  132. Luz, Matthew 1–7, 83.
  133. Richter, abstract (p. 3 of the dissertation in PDF form).
  134. Ibid., abstract, 25-26.
  135. Ibid., 3. The point here is not that Mathew’s gospel shows literary dependence on 1 Enoch. No scholar would argue that trajectory for a simple reason: There is no clear instance of Matthew quoting 1 Enoch. Rather, the point is that Matthew deliberately utilizes and inverts elements of the Watchers story to show how the circumstances of Jesus’ conception, birth, and bloodline counteract the sin of the Watchers and its effects. Richter (p. 3) comments in a footnote: “I am cautious throughout this dissertation not to make claims that Matthew had access to a text containing the Enochic material. He may have had, but the fact that there is little, if any evidence, of Matthew’s quoting material from 1 Enoch advises against making such a claim. However, I find the volume of material—even in the first two chapters of Matthew’s Gospel—that can be explained in light of Enochic material to be evidence that Matthew was aware of many of the same traditions as those that would be gathered as 1 Enoch.” Later (p. 22) she adds: This dissertation makes no claims of direct dependency of the Gospel of Matthew on the text of 1 Enoch. However, when examining Matthew chapters 1-2 in light of motifs of the Enoch watchers’ template, evidence of these motifs as background for the Gospel material is apparent. This evidence appears in the frequency with which Enochic motifs can be identified in connection with material in Matthew’s Gospel. The evangelist does not replicate any large sections of 1 Enoch, nor, as mentioned above, does he quote from 1 Enoch, with the possible exception of Sim’s example. However, again and again in Matthew’s genealogy and infancy narrative one finds motifs and allusions to material that one also finds in 1 Enoch. The number of instances in which Enochic motifs occur, even within the first two chapters of Matthew’s Gospel, is too great for Matthew not to have been familiar with the Enochic tradition and for these to appear as background material as the evangelist tells his version of the story of Jesus.”
  136. Ibid., 47-48.
  137. The negative view toward cosmetics is a good example. Ancient writers condemned cosmetics because of the association with seduction, which hearkened back to the Watchers episode. Richter (p. 49) notes that early Christian writers drew upon the Enochian material in their condemnation of cosmetics: “Clement uses the example of the watchers to appeal to men that they not be enticed by women’s beauty and fall like the rebel angels did. Both Tertullian and Cyprian make use of the story of the watchers’ illicit pedagogy in their appeal to Christian women to cease using cosmetics and other means of beautification which came from such a corrupted source.” Richter’s sources are: (1) Clement: Paedagogus 3.2: “the mind is carried away by pleasure; and the unsullied principle of reason, when not instructed by the Word, slides down into licentiousness, and gets a fall as the due reward of its transgression. An example of this is the angels, who renounced the beauty of God for a beauty which fades, and so fell from heaven to earth” (The Ante-Nicene Fathers; Edited by Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, 1885–1887; Repr. Peabody, Mass.: Hendrickson, 1994, vol 2:274); (2) Tertullian: On the Apparel of Women 1.2. (ANF 4:15); Tertullian: Disciplinary, Moral and Ascetical Works (trans. Rudolph Arbesmann, Emily Joseph Daly, Edwin A. Quain; The Fathers of the Church 40: A New Translation; ed. Roy Joseph Deferrari; New York: Fathers of the Church, 1959), 118-21; On the Veiling of Virgins 3.7 (Ante-Nicene Fathers, 4:32). Richter adds (p. 49, n. 116): “Tertullian argues that virgins should be veiled on the basis of the illicit sexual relations between the fallen angels and women. He reasons that the women whom the angels desired and consequently married must have been virgins. Therefore, virgins should be veiled.”
  138. Shuah is a name we will encounter again when we discuss Bathsheba.
  139. LXX is an abbreviation for the Septuagint, the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament.
  140. Richter, 63-64.
  141. Richter, 63-64. Underlining is mine. There are many more details to these connections and other links in Richter’s actual dissertation. My goal is to offer noteworthy examples in this chapter.
  142. See Ludwig Koehler et al., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old Testament (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1994–2000), 876. Richter cites Martin Noth, Die israelitischen Personennamen im Rahmen der gemeinsemitischen Namengebung (Hildesheim: Olms, repr. 1980), 228; William F. Albright, “The Egyptian Empire in Asia in the Twenty-First Century B.C.,” Journal of the Palestine Oriental Society 8 (1928): 238.
  143. Richter, 65.
  144. See for example, Joan Goodrick Westenholz, “Tamar, Qedēšā, Qadištu, and Sacred Prostitution in Mesopotamia,” Harvard Theological Review 82 (July 1989): 245-266.
  145. Westenholz, 253. See also Philip Jones, “Embracing Inana: Legitimation and Mediation in the Ancient Mesopotamian Sacred Marriage Hymn Iddin-Dagan A,” Journal of the American Oriental Society 123 (2003): 291-303; Mary K. Wakeman, “Sacred Marriage,” Journal for the Study of the Old Testament 22 (1982): 21-31.
  146. Richter, 69 and note 167. Indeed, the close relationship of the Tamar story to sacred prostitute motifs has led some scholars to posit that Genesis 38 is a re-crafting of a story originally about a Canaanite qedēshah. See Michael C. Astour, “Tamar the Hierodule: an Essay in the Method of Vestigal Motifs,” Journal of Biblical Literature 85 (1966): 185-96.
  147. Richter, 93.
  148. See Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 183-214 for a discussion of the conquest and the giant clans.
  149. For example, Israelite warriors under Joshua are labeled with the term (Josh 6:2; 8:3), as is David (1 Sam 16:18). Even God is called gibbor in Deut 10:17.
  150. A search in Logos Bible Software (version 6) via the “Bible Word Study” function using the Logos Septuagint (edition of Rahlfs) reveals this rendering occurs fifteen times. For instances where no scholar would argue giants in view, see Pss 18:6; 32:16; Isa 3:2; 13:3; 49:24, 25. Other instances are likely not referring to giants, though some scholars see a suggestion in those passages.
  151. Because Rahab is connected to Boaz in Matt 1:5, this same presumptive connection to giants is also true of Ruth due to her connection to Boaz. Ruth, of course, is one of the four women in Jesus’ genealogy. See the ensuing discussion.
  152. In Greek, two consecutive gamma letters have the sound “ng” – hence “angel” not “aggel” in English pronunciation.
  153. Richter, 94. Transliteration and translations were added by this author.
  154. Richter (pp. 96-99) notes several inter-textual connections in the Hebrew of the Rahab story and that of Lot’s interaction with the angels in Sodom. Apparently, the writer of both texts deliberately intended them to echo one another in certain respects. She also discusses (100-101) connections between how Matthew’s account of the angelic warning to Joseph, Mary, and the Magi echo Rahab’s “hiding of the elect” (Israelites).
  155. Richter, 114.
  156. Ibid., 117-118.
  157. Richter (199-120) notes that rabbinic tradition altered the meaning of parts of the Ruth story to “clean up” Ruth’s ancestry. See Ruth Rabbah (5:12; 6:4; 8:4) and Étan Levine, The Aramaic Version of Ruth (Analecta Biblica 58; Rome: Biblical Institute, 1973), 22.
  158. David R. Jackson, Enochic Judaism: Three Defining Paradigm Exemplars (London: T&T Clark, 2004), 62. Richter (122, n. 275) cites this study and adds in a footnote: “Jackson gives the examples ofממזר in 4Q394 8 i.10; 4Q396 1.5; 4Q397 5; cf. also 4Q174i.21, 2, 4. The phrase ‘the spirits of the bastards’ appears in 4Q511 35.7; 48, 49, 51.2-3. In 4Q510 1.5 reference is made to ‘the spirits of the ravaging angels and the bastard spirits.’”
  159. The translation is that of Abraham Cohen, cited in Richter.
  160. Richter, 132-133.
  161. The direct reference to Mount Hermon is corrupted in the Ethiopic text. Its authenticity is attested in the Aramaic material of 1 Enoch found among the Dead Sea Scrolls (the first six words of 4QEna), as well as some Greek manuscripts.
  162. The Hebrew phrase translated “mountain of God” is har ʾelohim. The phrase could be rendered “divine mountain” or, taking ’elohim as a superlative, “mighty mountain.” As Goldingay notes (see the ensuing discussion) in a footnote in his own discussion of Psalm 68: “J. A. Emerton emphasizes that not least in a context such as the present one, it is unlikely that ʾĕlōhîm is merely a way of expressing the superlative” (citing J. A. Emerton, “The ‘Mountain of God’ in Psalm 68:16,” in History and Traditions of Early Israel (Eduard Nielsen Festschrift; ed. André Lemaire and Benedikyt Otzen; Vetus Testamentum Supplements 50; Leiden: Brill, 1993), 24–37 (esp. 29–30).
  163. J. M. Roberts, “The End of War in the Zion Tradition: The Imperialistic Background of and Old Testament Vision of World Peace,” Horizons in Biblical Theology 26:1 (June 2004): 2-22 (esp. p. 4)
  164. John Goldingay, Baker Commentary on the Old Testament: Psalms 42–89 (ed. Tremper Longman III; vol. 2; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2006), 323.
  165. See my lengthy discussions of these associations in The Unseen Realm, pp. 183-232.
  166. The use of “Amorite” in the Old Testament is indiscriminate. In some passages it’s a label for the entire population of Canaan (Josh 7:7). In that sense, “Amorites” and “Canaanites” are interchangeable, both denoting non-Israelite in the land of Canaan. In other passages its use is more specific to one people group among several within Canaan (Gen 15:19-21).
  167. The dimensions of Og’s bed are not the dimensions of his actual height. While the text is clear that he was the last of the Rephaim and that “Rephaim” was a term associated with the giant Anakim (Deut 2:11) who were “from the nephilim” (Num 13:32-33), the bed’s dimensions are mytho-theological. That is, the dimensions are designed to take readers back to Mesopotamian religion, the original context for Gen 6:1-4. I wrote: “First, the most immediate link back to the Babylonian polemic is Og’s bed (Hebrew: ʿeres). Its dimensions (9 × 4 cubits) are precisely those of the cultic bed in the ziggurat called Etemenanki—which is the ziggurat most archaeologists identify as the Tower of Babel referred to in the Bible. Ziggurats functioned as temples and divine abodes. The unusually large bed at Etemenanki was housed in “the house of the bed” (bit erši). It was the place where the god Marduk and his divine wife, Zarpanitu, met annually for ritual lovemaking, the purpose of which was divine blessing upon the land” (The Unseen Realm, 199).
  168. Joel C. Slayton, “Bashan (Place),” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 624.
  169. See G. del Olmo Lete, “Bashan,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed. (ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst; Leiden; Boston; Cologne; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 161–62.
  170. Scholarly studies on the origin of demons as Watcher spirits of dead nephilim include: Wright, The Origin of Evil Spirits (op. cit); Kevin Sullivan, “The Watchers Traditions in 1 Enoch 6-16: The Fall of Angels and the Rise of Demons,” in The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions (ed. Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, and John C. Endres; Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2014), 91-103; Silviu N. Bunta, “Dreamy Angels and Demonic Giants: The Watchers Traditions and the Origin of Evil in Early Christian Demonology,” in The Watchers in Jewish and Christian Traditions (ed. Angela Kim Harkins, Kelley Coblentz Bautch, and John C. Endres; Augsburg Fortress Publishers, 2014), 116-138.
  171. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 267.
  172. Material for this and the following section is drawn in part from Chapter 32 of my book, The Unseen Realm.
  173. 2 Kgs 1:2, 3, 6, 16; Matt 10:25; 12:24, 27; Luke 11:15, 18-19. See W. Herrmann, “Baal Zebub,” in Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible, 2nd ed. (ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst; Leiden; Boston; Cologne; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 154-156.
  174. Brandon Ridley, “Mount Hermon,” ed. John D. Barry et al., The Lexham Bible Dictionary (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2012, 2013, 2014, 2015). Nickelsburg demonstrates the identification of Hermon / Bashan / Galilee in his study, “Enoch, Levi, and Peter: Recipients of Revelation in Upper Galilee,” Journal of Biblical Literature 100:4 (1981): 575-600. The book of 1 Enoch itself identifies Hermon with the region known in Jesus’ day as Upper Galilee. When Enoch writes down the confessions and petitions of the Watchers—their pleas to God for forgiveness and clemency, he says, “And I went and sat down upon the waters of Dan—in Dan which is on the southwest of Hermon” (1 Enoch 13:7). Nickelsburg observes, “This is a clear reference to the immediate environs of Tell Dan in upper Galilee” (p. 582).
  175. Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 292–294.
  176. Joel C. Slayton, “Bashan (Place),” ed. David Noel Freedman, The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (New York: Doubleday, 1992), 623. That Mount Hermon is also included in the boundaries of the promised land has been established by careful studies of the boundary descriptions. See Zecharia Kallai, “The Patriarchal Boundaries, Canaan, and the Land of Israel: Patterns and Application in Biblical Historiography,” Israel Exploration Journal 47:1-2 (1997): 69-82 (esp. 73); idem, “Conquest and Settlement of Trans-Jordan: A Historiographical Study,” Zeitschrift des Deutschen Palästina-Vereins (1953+) 99 (1983):110-118.
  177. See 4Q394 8 i.10; 4Q396 1.5; 4Q397 5; 4Q174i.21, 2, 4; 4Q511 35.7; 48, 49, 51.2-3. In 4Q510 1.5.
  178. Some scholars believe that the Legion confrontation is a cryptic call for political liberation. The argument is made on a twofold basis: (1) the Greek term for Legion (legiōn) is a direct reference to Roman forces, and (2) the Greek word translated “herd” (agelē) was also used of Roman military recruits. The logic is dubious. The region of the Gerasenes was known as Gentile territory—that herdsmen were caring for pigs in the region makes that evident. Jews wouldn’t have been earnestly seeing Roman expulsion from Gentile areas, so a cryptic endorsement of political liberation isn’t the point Mark wanted his readers to catch.
  179. See my discussion of Deuteronomy 32 and cosmic geography in The Unseen Realm, 110-123.
  180. The translation and associated transcriptional brackets are those of Florentino Garcı́a Martı́nez and Eibert J. C. Tigchelaar, “The Dead Sea Scrolls Study Edition (translations)” (Leiden; New York: Brill, 1997–1998), 1177.
  181. Miryam T. Brand, “ ‘At the Entrance Sin is Crouching’: The Source of Sin and Its Nature as Portrayed in Second Temple Literature,” Ph.D. Dissertation, New York University, 2011, 33. Brand’s dissertation was later published under the title, Evil Within and Without: The Source of Sin and Its Nature as Portrayed in Second Temple Literature (Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplements 9; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Rupprecht, 2013). References in this chapter are to Brand’s dissertation.
  182. Garcıa Martınez and Tigchelaar, 159–161.
  183. Brand, 71. Similar terms are applied to humankind in general in 1QHa V.31-35.
  184. Ibid., 269. While we’ll see her statement about the link between human sinfulness and demons (i.e., the fallen Watchers) is correct, Brand overstates the dichotomy between the two perspectives about sin. She elsewhere (p. 269) claims that, “The attribution of sin to demons renders moot the question of why humans were created with sinful desires.” It doesn’t. There is no reason to suspect that Second Temple Jews didn’t believe both explanations were true. She also fails to consider the transparent truth of the Genesis 3 narrative, that humans were created imperfect (lesser than God and without his nature). By definition, any being lacking the nature of God himself will sin.
  185. Ibid., 275-276.
  186. Ibid., 287-288.
  187. Translation is from Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 267.
  188. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 270-273. It should be noted that Brand’s discussion (and some of her sources), portrays the Enochian tradition as confused on these points, having multiple contradictory perspectives. This is because of the scholarly propensity to divide 1 Enoch in multiple sources and traditions. Some of that division is demonstrable, while some of it (in my view) stems from the imagination. For many scholars of ancient literature, when a book says two different things they are typically thought of as having derived from two different sources. The notion that a writer can say opposing things for a reason and then later have those things converge seldom occurs to textual scholars, conditioned as they are to see multiple sources everywhere. Scholars reflexively tend to need every element of a given topic spelled out in every textual passage to see sameness of source for a given passage. This exaggerated sensitivity is a bi-product of the source-critical methodology in which scholars are trained. For our purposes, the issue doesn’t matter, as the final form of 1 Enoch puts forth the belief that the post-flood “Watcher demons” continued to corrupt humanity.
  189. Translation is from Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 267.
  190. Garcıa Martınez and Tigchelaar, 1027–1029.
  191. Brand, 369.
  192. Tyler A. Stewart, “Fallen Angels, Bastard Spirits, and the Birth of God’s Son: An Enochic Etiology of Evil in Galatians 3:19-4:11,” Paper read at the annual meeting of the Society of Biblical Literature, 2014, 1-2.
  193. As Stewart details, there have been a number of studies on the Second Temple Jewish subordination of the law of Moses to the revelation to Enoch. Among the sources he cites are: Gabriele Boccaccini, Beyond the Essene Hypothesis : The Parting of the Ways between Qumran and Enochic Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 68–79; Philip S. Alexander, “From Son of Adam to Second God: Transformations of the Biblical Enoch,” in Biblical Figures Outside the Bible (Harrisburg: Trinity International Press, 1998), 87–122, esp. 107–110; George W. E. Nickelsburg, “Enochic Wisdom: An Alternative to the Mosaic Torah?” in Hesed Ve-Emet (ed. Jodi Magness and Seymour Gitin; BJS 320; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1998), 123–132; James C. VanderKam, “The Interpretation of Genesis in 1 Enoch,” in The Bible at Qumran (eds. P. W. Flint and T. H. Kim; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), 129–148, esp. 142–146; Andreas Bendenbender, “Traces of Enochic Judaism within the Hebrew Bible,” Henoch 24 (2002): 39–48; Andrei A. Orlov, The Enoch-Metatron Tradition (Texte und Studien zum antiken Judentum 107; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005), 254–260; John J. Collins, “How Distinctive was Enochic Judaism?” Meghillot 5–6 (2007): 17–34. Helge S. Kvanvig, “Enochic Judaism – a Judaism without the Torah and the Temple,” in Enoch and the Mosaic Torah: The Evidence of Jubilees (eds. Gabriele Boccaccini and Giovanni Ibba; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans 2009), 163–177.
  194. Stewart, 6.
  195. I discussed the role of angels in the giving of the law and the identity of this intermediary as the Angel of Yahweh, God in human form, in The Unseen Realm, 163-170. We will not devote space to these items in the present chapter.
  196. Stewart, 7-8, 12-13; emphasis (underlining) is mine. On scholarly challenges to the interpretation of Gal 3:19 that has the law producing human transgressions, see David J. Lull, “‘The Law Was Our Pedagogue’: A Study in Galatians 3:19–25,” Journal of Biblical Literature 105, no. 3 (1986): 481–498, esp. 483–485; Richard B. Hays, The Letter to the Galatians (pages 181–348 in NIB 11; Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2000) 266. Stewart elsewhere notes, “Consistently χάριν is translated as “because of” in contemporary translations including NRSV, ESV, NIV, NASB. The preposition appears only here in Paul’s undisputed letters, but also occurs in Eph 3:1, 14; 1 Tim 5:14; Titus 1:5; Lk 7:47; 1 Jn 3:12; Jude 16; LXX 2 Chron 7:21; Dan 2:13. This preposition simply cannot carry the exegetical load to indicate that the law produces transgression” (footnote 20, page 7; emphasis mine).
  197. Richard J. Bauckham, 2 Peter, Jude (vol. 50; Word Biblical Commentary; Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1998), 89.
  198. Stewart, 15-16.
  199. The major study on Irenaeus in this regard is D. R. Schultz, “The Origin of Sin in Irenaeus and Jewish Apocalyptic Literature,” Ph.D. dissertation, McMaster University, 1972. An abbreviated form of this study is D. R. Schultz, “The Origin of Sin in Irenaeus and Jewish Pseudepigraphical Literature,” Vigiliae Christianae 32 (1978): 161-190. Quotations in this chapter from Schultz come from this shorter article. However, in his dissertation (Appendix I) Schultz includes a lengthy table comparing the wordings of specific passages in Irenaeus’ writings to passages in 1 Enoch. The correlations are quite obvious when viewed side-by-side.
  200. Schultz, 161, 168-169, 172-173.
  201. Tertullian, de virg. vel. 7; de idol. 9; de oratio 22.
  202. Loren T. Stuckenbruck, “Why Should Women Cover Their Heads Because of Angels?” Stone-Campbell Journal 4 (2001): 205-234.
  203. Stuckenbruck notes that this view is preferred by: J. B. Lightfoot, Home Hebraicae et Talmudicae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1859) 4:238; A. Padget, “Paul on Women in Church: The Contradiction of Coiffure in 1 Cor 11:2-16?” Journal for the Study of the New Testament 20 (1984): 69-86; and J. Murphy-O’Connor, “1 Corinthians 11:2-16 Once Again,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 50 (1988): 268-269. The ancient church father Ambrosiaster also took this view (“The veil signifies power, and the angels are bishops”; Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinorum 81.3:122).
  204. W. Winter, After Paul Left Corinth: The Influence of Secular Ethics and Social Change (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), 133-138. The notion that the angeloi are hostile spies is not harmed by the criticisms of this view that follow. It’s lethal weakness is that the supporting context—the rest of what Paul says in 1 Cor 11:2-16—does not fit the idea of human spies. As this chapter will demonstrate, the full content of Paul’s teaching makes the fourth option, that Paul has the transgression of the Watchers in mind, the most likely.
  205. As Stuckenbruck notes (222), this view is put forth by James Moffatt, The First Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (London: SPCK, 1947), 152, and Charles H. Talbert, Reading Corinthians: A Literary and Theological Commentary on 1 and 2 Corinthians (New York: Crossroad, 1987), 69.
  206. The angels of the seven churches in Rev 2-3 are another possible reference to humans, though this is much-disputed.
  207. David E. Garland, 1 Corinthians (Baker Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament; Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2003), 526.
  208. Stuckenbruck, 222-223.
  209. Joseph Fitzmyer, “A Feature of Qumran Angelology in 1 Cor 11:10,” in Essays on the Semitic Background of the New Testament (ed. Joseph A. Fitzmyer; Grand Rapids, MI; William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company), 187-201. See also H. J. Cadbury, “A Qumran Parallel to Paul,” Harvard Theological Review 51 (1958) 1–2. See the remainder of this chapter in the present work for a coherent resolution to the passage.
  210. Fitzmyer, 188, note 1.
  211. Fitzmyer’s article and subsequent postscripts list the following as being relevant: lQWar Rule vii, line 6; lQSa=Rule of the Congregation ii, lines 8-9; 4QFlorilegium fragment 1 i, lines 3-4; CD=Damascus Document xv, lines 15-17; 4Q491=4QWar Rule fragments 1-3, line 10; 4QD=Damascus Document fr. 8 i, lines 6-9;
  212. Stuckenbruck, 224-225. The word “cult” in scholarly discussion refers to liturgy and ritual—religious ceremony.
  213. Ibid., 225-226.
  214. Ibid., 226-227.
  215. Ibid., 227.
  216. Tertullian is an example of an early church leader who made this same connection: “It is on account of the angels, he says, that the woman’s head is to be covered, because the angels revolted from God on account of the daughters of men” (On Prayer 22.5).
  217. Stuckenbruck, 228-230. Stuckenbruck marshals a number of primary sources in the course of articulating his defense of an Enochian connection on these grounds.
  218. Troy W. Martin, “Paul’s Argument from Nature for the Veil in 1 Cor 11:13-15: A Testicle instead of a Head Covering,” JBL 123:1 (2004): 75-8 (see 75-76). Martin’s thesis was contested by a subsequent essay: Mark Goodacre, “Does περιβολαιον Mean ‘Testicle’ in 1 Cor 11:15?” JBL 130:2 (2011): 391-396. Martin then produced a thorough response to Goodacre in defense of his original essay: Troy W. Martin, “Περιβολαιον as ‘Testicle’ in 1 Cor 11:15: A Response to Mark Goodacre,” JBL 132:2 (2013): 453-465.
  219. Martin, “Paul’s Argument from Nature,” 76-77.
  220. Martin, “Paul’s Argument from Nature,” 78-80. The text for the Hippocratic test for sterility is Hippocrates, Aph. 5.59.
  221. On the term “feet” as a euphemism for genitalia in the Hebrew Bible, see Marvin H. Pope, “Bible, Euphemism and Dysphemism,” The Anchor Yale Bible Dictionary (vol. I; ed. David Noel Freedman; New York: Doubleday, 1992), 720-725; E. Ullendorff, “The Bawdy Bible,” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 42 (1949): 425-456.
  222. Martin, “Paul’s Argument from Nature,” 83-84.
  223. Material in this chapter is drawn from the author’s book, The Unseen Realm: Recovering the Supernatural Worldview of the Bible (Lexham Press, 2015), 335-339. Overlaps in prose content from that book are presented here by permission.
  224. For example, see Tertullian: On the Crown 3: “When we are going to enter the water, but a little before, in the presence of the congregation and under the hand of the president, we solemnly profess that we disown the devil, and his pomp, and his angels. Hereupon we are thrice immersed, making a somewhat ampler pledge than the Lord has appointed in the Gospel. Then when we are taken up “as new-born children . . .” (Source: Tertullian, “The Chaplet, or De Corona,” in Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian [ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe; vol. 3; The Ante-Nicene Fathers; Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885], 394. See also, Tertullian, On the Shows 4; On the Soul 35.3. For a discussion of this practice, see Ansgar Kelly, The Devil at Baptism: Ritual, Theology, and Drama (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985), 94–105.
  225. The most recent exhaustive study of 1 Peter 3:14-22 and all debates, data, and associated passages concerning the matter of the imprisoned spirits is William Joseph Dalton, Christ’s Proclamation to the Spirits: A Study of 1 Peter 3:18–4:6 (vol. 23; Analecta Biblica; Roma: Editrice Pontificio Istituto Biblico, 1989). I am in agreement with Dalton that the imprisoned spirits are not the people who died in the flood, and that 1 Peter is following the story of the sin of the Watchers from 1 Enoch. Dalton notes (pp. 19, 21) that his understanding is not isolated. Well known and respected commentators before him rejected the human identification for the imprisoned spirits: “The great commentary of Selwyn seemed to move a long way towards a solution. He took in the wider context of Jewish tradition, particularly the First Book of Enoch, and saw in the ‘spirits’ to whom Christ made proclamation the wicked angels associated in this tradition with the flood and presented as the real instigators of human sin. I personally discovered that this understanding of the text, which at first sight appears forced, was well supported by further study of First Enoch and other related texts. In Selwyn’s explanation Christ’s proclamation was an announcement of his victory over his angelic adversaries. The whole presentation, despite its problems, had the advantage of understanding 1 Pet 3:19 and its context as part of Christian tradition, typical of the whole approach of 1 Peter. The victory of Christ over the superhuman powers of evil is, in fact, a basic element in early Christian tradition. . . . J.N.D. Kelly published his commentary in 1969. It is difficult for me to assess this work with impartiality, since in all points of importance it agrees with my own views on 1 Pet 3:19 and 4:6. I found it particularly gratifying that Kelly had come independently to such conclusions. This commentary has particular value, not only because of the exegetical wisdom of the author, but because of his acknowledged mastery of early Christian history. . . . In 1971 E. Best published his commentary on 1 Peter. In this he accepted the view that the ‘spirits’ in 3:19 are fallen angels. Their “prison” should be set in the underworld, since, according to Best, there is no evidence in the relevant literature for such a prison in the heavens (despite 2 Enoch 7:1, where the fallen angels in the second heaven are described as “prisoners under guard”).” Best, however, also believed that Christ offered salvation to the fallen angels (1 Pet 3:19). I don’t follow this thinking since it would be an inconsistency in the Enochian typology followed in 1 Peter 3. See the second part of the present chapter.
  226. The term can also refer to one’s inner being, way of thinking, rationality, etc. See Louw, Johannes P., and Eugene Albert Nida, Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament: Based on Semantic Domains (New York: United Bible Societies, 1996), vol. 2, p. 200 for semantic options.
  227. Ibid., vol. 2, p. 266. See also Liddell, Henry George, Robert Scott, Henry Stuart Jones, and Roderick McKenzie, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996), 2026.
  228. Note that in 1 Peter 4:6 the gospel was preached to “the dead” (Greek: nekrois), a term defined in the same verse as “people” (anthropous). This vocabulary makes sense in 1 Peter 4:6, but not in 1 Peter 3:19. As noted in our discussion, the vocabulary differentiation is the basic reason why it makes little sense to see 1 Peter 4:6 and 1 Peter 3:19 as referring to the same event and objects. It should be added that seeing disembodied human spirits in 1 Pet 4:6 does not require endorsing the idea that the disembodied dead get another chance at faith in Christ. 1 Pet 4:6 says: “For this is why the gospel was preached even to those who are dead, that though judged in the flesh the way people are, they might live in the spirit the way God does.” It is nothing more than an assumption that this preaching was post-mortem—an assumption largely deriving from a second assumption that 1 Peter 3:19 is another reference to this preaching. The preaching could refer to proclamation that preceded death. For example, one could say of their deceased relative whom one presumes did not embrace the gospel, “I gave grandma the gospel” after grandma died to refer to the fact that she had heard the gospel. There is no necessary reason the language has to refer to contacting grandma in the afterlife to give her the gospel. The “judgment in the flesh the way people are” could simply refer to the fact that people die. Applying this to 1 Pet 4:6 we have: “I gave grandma the gospel because she was going to die like all people do, so that she might live in the spirit [read: have eternal life] the way God does.” In other words, the gospel is preached to mortals so that they, like God, can escape the finality of death and have everlasting life with the Lord. There is nothing in 1 Pet 4:6 that requires a post-mortem reading.
  229. Dalton, Christ’s Proclamation to the Spirits, 160–161.
  230. Ramsey Michaels, 1 Peter (vol. 49; Word Biblical Commentary; Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1998), 207–208. Michaels unfortunately gets tripped up in his analysis on one point. In the second ellipsis of the above selection he also wrote: “If this passage is brought to bear on 1 Peter, then the ‘spirits in refuge’ are neither the souls of those who died in the flood nor precisely the angels whose sin brought the flood on the earth, but rather the ‘evil spirits’ who came from the angels—probably identified in Peter’s mind with the ‘evil’ or ‘unclean’ spirits of the Gospel tradition.” This is demonstrably incorrect from the Enochian material. The “spirits in prison” of 1 Peter 3:19 are not the Watcher-spirits of the dead nephilim for the simple reason that those spirits are not the ones the Enochian material has imprisoned. As we saw in an earlier chapter, Enoch’s Watcher story has only the original offending Watchers (“sons of God”) bound and imprisoned. The spirits of their offspring, the giants, while also being called Watchers, are never described as being imprisoned until the time of the end. Rather—in concert with the New Testament gospels—these Watcher spirits are allowed to roam the earth and harass humanity. They are clearly not bound. Michaels has unfortunately conflated the two.
  231. William F. Arndt, F. W. Gingrich, Frederick W. Danker, and Walter Bauer, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (=BDAG; Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 285.
  232. Ibid., 967–968. BDAG glosses the lemma this way: “attentiveness to obligation, conscientiousness” (p. 968). The entry and the secondary scholarship it cites for this meaning point to 1 Tim 1:5; 1 Cor 10:25, 27–29; Heb 9:9, 14 as New Testament examples. In these instances, it may be helpful to think of “conscience” as one’s predilection or inner disposition in some behavioral direction (as opposed to a “moral gyroscope” that parses good and evil). Contemporary texts such as 1 Clement 2:4; 34:7 illustrate the former usage and meaning. See H. Osborne, “Συνείδησις,” Journal of Theological Studies 32 (1931): 167–178; B. Reicke, The Disobedient Spirits and Christian Baptism, 174–182 (more external examples); Margaret E. Thrall, “The Pauline Use of Συνείδησις,” New Testament Studies 14.1 (1967): 118–125; Paul W. Gooch, “ ‘Conscience’ in 1 Corinthians 8 and 10,” New Testament Studies 33.2 (1987): 244–254.
  233. For a short survey of the historical scholarly “back and forth” as to whether the concept of antichrist is solely Christian or has deep Jewish roots, see William Horbury, Messianism among Jews and Christians: Twelve Biblical and Historical Studies (London: T&T Clark, 2003), 328–330. Horbury notes, for example: “Antichrist seems as native to Christianity as the devil with horns and a tail. This impression receives learned support in much recent scholarship. Thus G. C. Jenks, C. E. Hill and L. J. Lietaert Peerbolte all contend that the figure of Antichrist is a Christian development. In earlier years, by contrast, it had been considered originally Jewish by Wilhelm Bousset, Moritz Friedländer, Louis Ginzberg and Israel Lévi. Then, however, Paul Billerbeck (1926), concisely summarizing a wealth of material, urged that, despite appearances, there was virtually no contact in substance between ancient Jewish literature and the New Testament on Antichrist; in Jewish sources the messiah had political opponents, but the Christian Antichrist was a religious figure. More recently Stefan Heid, in a book finished in 1990, accepted that Bousset was fundamentally right. A contrast between Christian and Jewish sources, in some ways recalling that drawn by Billerbeck, has nevertheless returned to prominence. For Jenks (1991), Hill (1995) and Lietaert Peerbolte (1996), the expectation of an enemy specifically opposed to the messiah first occurs among the earliest Christians, rather than among the non-Christian or pre-Christian Jews. Pre-Christian traditions, it is urged, refer to an eschatological tyrant, a final attack by evil powers, or the accompanying false prophecy, rather than a messianic opponent who can properly be termed Antichrist. Yet, just as Belial with horns now looms up hauntingly in Qumran texts (see 11Q Apocryphal Psalmsa, col. iv, lines 6–7), so it may be asked again, a hundred years after Bousset, whether Antichrist is not pre-Christian and Jewish as well as Christian. With regard to the Jews in the Roman empire this question frames itself more precisely. In the early empire, was Antichrist a Jewish counterpart of Greek and Roman notions concerning the great enemy of a savior king? If so, Jews and gentiles would have shared, in this as in many other respects, a broadly similar pattern of hopes and fears for the future.” As our own discussion will note, Horbury answered this last question in the affirmative. Jews, in reaction to their Roman overlords, did indeed describe a great tyrant who, logically, would seek to defend the empire against the messianic son of David. Select studies noted by Horbury in the above quotation are: G. C. Jenks, The Origins and Early Development of the Antichrist Myth (Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die neutestamentliche Wissenschaft und die Kunde der älteren Kirche 59; Berlin and New York, 1991); L. J. Lietaert Peerbolte, The Antecedents of Antichrist: a Traditio-historical study of the Earliest Christian Views on Eschatological Opponents (Leiden, 1996); C. E. Hill, “Antichrist from the Tribe of Dan,” Journal of Theological Studies, new series 46 (1995): 99–117. See also Geert Wouter Lorein, The Antichrist Theme in the Intertestamental Period (Library of Second Temple Studies 44. London: Bloomsbury T & T Clark, 2003).
  234. Horbury, 330. We’ll be considering the Gog material in Chapter 11.
  235. As Bauckham notes, “There is widespread agreement that Jude’s source in v 9 was the lost ending of the [Testament of Moses] . . . preserved for us only in Latin translation . . .” (Richard J. Bauckham, 2 Peter, Jude [vol. 50; Word Biblical Commentary; Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1998], 67). Bauckham includes a lengthy excursus in his commentary about other Second Temple texts from Qumran that informed Jude of the idea expressed in Jude 9 (“Excursus: The Background and Source of Jude 9,” 2 Peter, Jude, 65-76).
  236. Translation is that of James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (vol. 1; New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983), 930–931.
  237. Horbury, 332-333.
  238. The Second Temple Jewish profile of the great end times enemy of messiah consistently portrays this figure as an evil tyrant, distinct from Satan/Belial, but in league with or empowered by Satan/Belial. Jews of the period didn’t understand this figure as a Jewish pseudo-messiah, that is, a figure which Jews would mistakenly embrace as the messianic son of David. The Second Temple profile of the great end times enemy, the one Christians would identify as the end times antichrist, points to a man who opposes the messiah, not one who masquerades as messiah. See Appendix V for more detail.
  239. Elgvin, “Belial, Beliar, Devil, Satan,” Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship (ed. Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 153-154.
  240. Ibid., 156.
  241. The main texts in this regard are the War Scroll (1QM); The War Rule (4Q285 or 4QSM, also known as 4QSefer ha-Milhamah).
  242. As I have written elsewhere: “The Sibylline Oracles is a collection of prophetic utterances attributed to a female prophetess known as the sibyl, regularly described as an elderly woman or old hag. The sibyl is actually a legendary figure known from classical sources, most notably the Aeneid of Virgil. She had acquired her reputation well before Virgil’s time, though. Roman sources at times list sibyls, and the Romans kept a record of their oracles for consultation in times of crisis. In the Hellenistic period, the period in which the Sibylline Oracles were composed, there were allegedly several sibyls. . . . [A distinctive Jewish element] in Book 3 [is the] reference to the final divine judgment when ‘the sons of the great God will live peacefully around the temple’ (702–3) and God ‘will raise up a kingdom for all ages among men’ (767–68)” (Ken Penner and Michael S. Heiser, “Old Testament Greek Pseudepigrapha with Morphology” [Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2008]).
  243. John J. Collins, “Sibylline Oracles,” in James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha (vol. 1; New York; London: Yale University Press, 1983), 360.
  244. David W. Baker, Nahum, Habakkuk and Zephaniah: An Introduction and Commentary (vol. 27; Tyndale Old Testament Commentaries; Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1988), 31.
  245. Ibid., 775–777.
  246. Geert Wouter Lorein, The Antichrist Theme in the Intertestamental Period (vol. 44; Journal for the Study of the Pseudepigrapha; London: T & T Clark International, 2003), 150.
  247. The source for Irenaeus’ speculation is Against Heresies 5.28-30. On Teitan Alan Bandy notes: “the Titans were figures from pagan mythology. There has never been a ruler with the name Titan.” See Alan Bandy, “The Hermeneutics of Symbolism: How to Interpret the Symbols of John’s Apocalypse,” Southern Baptist Journal of Theology 14:1 (2010): 53 (footnote 52). This article is accessible at: http://www.sbts.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/5/2015/10/SBJT-V14-N.1-Bandy.pdf.
  248. Horbury, Messianism among Jews and Christians, 343.
  249. The literary history of the story of the Titans in ancient Greece is complex and, at times, contradictory. See Jan Bremmer, “Remember the Titans!” in The Fall of the Angels (ed. Christoff Auffarth and Loren T. Stuckenbruck; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004), 35-61.
  250. Michael S. Heiser, “Giants—Greco-Roman Antiquity,” in the Encyclopedia of the Bible and Its Reception, vol. 10 (Berlin: Verlag Walter de Gruyter, 2015). Given that both the Titans and the giants of the classical Greek myths both fought against divine authority and were imprisoned in Tartarus, it is easy to see how those two groups get conflated in later ancient material. For example, Euripedes: Hec. 472; Iph. Taur. 224; Virgil: Aen. iv.179; Horace: Odes iii.4, 42, etc. The two groups are clearly distinguished in older material, such as Hesiod (8th cent. B.C.) and Xenophanes (6th cent. B.C., Xenophanes, frg. 21.20).
  251. As I have written elsewhere: “. . . [O]ne contextual meaning of repha’im in the Hebrew Bible [is] spirits of the dead in the underworld. Several biblical texts employ repha’im in parallel to other words for the shadowy dead (e.g., methim; ‘dead’) or in contexts dealing with the grave (qeber; she’ol) or the underworld (she’ol). Psalm 88:10 (Heb. 88:11) asks: ‘Do you work wonders for the dead (methim)? Do the departed (repha’im) rise up to praise you? Selah Is your steadfast love declared in the grave (qeber), or your faithfulness in Abaddon?’ . . . [T]he second contextual meaning of repha’im in the Hebrew Bible [is] the giants encountered in Canaan during the conquest and the time of David. The term repha’im is linked to other terms for Old Testament giant clans in the Torah. The Israelites’ first trek to the promised land under the leadership of Moses failed when the people lost faith after the spies sent into the land reported the presence of the unusually tall Anakim, also referred to as Nephilim (Num 13:28–33; compare Gen 6:4). The Anakim are mentioned in several passages in Deuteronomy as ‘great and tall’ enemies (Deut 1:28; 2:10, 21; 9:2). In describing ancient inhabitants of Moab, the Emim, Deut 2:10–11 specifically describes the Anakim as repha’im: ‘(The Emim formerly lived there, a people great and many, and tall as the Anakim. Like the Anakim they are also counted as Rephaim, but the Moabites call them Emim’). . . . The giant Og, the king of Bashan (e.g., Deut 1:4; 3:10; Josh 9:10), is partnered in Scripture with another king, Sihon of Heshbon. Together they are referred to as ‘kings of the Amorites’ (Deut 3:1–8; 4:46–47; 31:4; Josh 2:10; 9:10). ‘Amorite’ is a term that can refer broadly to the inhabitants of Canaan (e.g., Gen 15:16; Deut 1:7). Its association with Sihon, Og, and the Rephaim makes Amos 2:9–10 especially interesting, as it describes the Amorites dispossessed in the conquest of Canaan as unusually tall (‘I destroyed the Amorite before them … whose height was like the height of the cedars and who was as strong as the oaks’).” See Michael S. Heiser, “Rephaim,” The Lexham Bible Dictionary (ed. John D. Barry et al.; Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2016). This is a digital resource, so there are no page numbers.
  252. See Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 183-218.
  253. Brook W. R. Pearson, “Resurrection and the Judgment of the Titans: ἡ γῆ τῶν ἀσεβῶν in LXX Isaiah 26:19,” in Resurrection (ed. Stanley E. Porter, Michael A. Hayes, and David Tombs; London; New York: T&T Clark, 1999), 5-51 (esp. 36–37).
  254. The translation is from R. Doran, “Pseudo-Eupolemus (Prior to the First Century B.C.),” in James H. Charlesworth, The Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1985), 880-882. The passages in Eusebius are Praeparatio Evangelica 9.187.2-9 (lines 2-3, 9 cited); 9.18.2 (most of the passage cited). Lines not cited have Abraham tracing his lineage to the giants and learning astrology. Why a Second Temple text would connect Abraham with the giants and astrology is beyond the scope of the present book. For a discussion of the rhetorical strategies behind what Pseudo-Eupolemus says about Abraham (contrasting him with Nimrod and aligning him with favored Enoch), see K. van der Toorn and P. W. van der Horst, “Nimrod Before and After the Bible,” Harvard Theological Review 83:1 (Jan. 1990): 1-29 (esp. 20-25). The idea of someone (even a giant) surviving the flood apparently did not trouble a number of Jewish readers of the flood account (nor the Jewish writer of Pseudo-Eupolemus). This may be due to the fact that phrases in the flood narrative that to most modern readers require a global flood of exhaustive loss of life, elsewhere do not denote exhaustive totality. As I wrote in a footnote in The Unseen Realm (p. 189): “[T]he phrases in the flood narrative that suggest a global event occur a number of times in the Hebrew Bible where their context cannot be global or include all people on the planet. For example, the phrase ‘the whole earth’ (kol ʾerets) occurs in passages that clearly speak of localized geography (e.g., Gen 13:9; 41:57; Lev 25:9, 24; Judg 6:37; 1 Sam 13:3; 2 Sam 24:8). In such cases, ‘whole land’ or ‘all the people in the area’ are better understandings. Those options produce a regional flood event if used in Gen 6–8 where the phrase occurs. . . . Gen 9:19 clearly informs us that ‘the whole earth’ was populated by the sons of Noah. Gen 10 (see 10:1) gives us the list of the nations spawned by the sons of Noah—all of which are located in the regions of the ancient Near East, the Mediterranean, and the Aegean. The biblical writers knew nothing of nations in another hemisphere (the Americas) or places like India, China, or Australia. The language of Gen 10 therefore allows Gen 7:21 to be restricted to only (or even some) of the people groups listed in the Table of Nations. That interpretation is consistent with a localized flood. . . . [T]he phrase ‘all humankind’ (kol ʾadam) used in Gen 7:21 also appears in contexts that cannot speak to all humans everywhere (e.g., Jer 32:20; Psa 64:9 can only refer to people who had seen what God had done, not people on the other side of the world). Lastly, Psa 104:9 appears to forbid a global flood, since it has God promising to never cover the earth with water as had been the case at creation.”
  255. The Greek fragments behind “son of Kronos” reads ὃν εἶναι Κρόνον (literally, “who is Kronos”). This cannot be correct, as it would require Belos and Kronos to be the same figure, whereas the next verse has Kronos begetting Belos (and Canaan). Consequently, scholars emend the final Greek letter in the phrase from an accusative form to a genitive so that it reads ὃν εἶναι Κρόνου (“who is of/from Kronos”). See Doran, 881.
  256. Van der Toorn and van der Horst, “Nimrod Before and After the Bible,” 16, 18.
  257. Ibid., 17.
  258. The term gibbor does not inherently mean “giant,” though it can in context. Joshua’s men who fought against the Anakim are called gibborim (Josh 8:3); David is called a gibbor (1 Sam 16:18), as is Gideon (Judg 6:12). Even God is so described (Isa 9:6).
  259. Etemenanki = Esagil (Sumerian). See Andrew R. George, “The Tower of Babel: Archaeology, History, and Cuneiform Texts,” Archiv für Orientforschung 51 (2005/2006): 75–95; John H. Walton, “The Mesopotamian Background of the Tower of Babel Account and Its Implications,” Bulletin for Biblical Research 5 (1995): 155–75.
  260. Michael S. Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 198–199. See Martti Nissinen, “Akkadian Rituals and Poetry of Divine Love,” in Mythology and Mythologies: Methodological Approaches to Intercultural Influences; Proceedings of the Second Annual Symposium of the Assyrian and Babylonian Intellectual Heritage Project Held in Paris, France, October 4–7, 1999, Melammu Symposia 2 (ed. R. M. Whiting; Helsinki: Neo-Assyrian Text Corpus Project, 2001), 93–136; Beate Pongratz-Leisten, “Sacred Marriage and the Transfer of Divine Knowledge: Alliances between the Gods and the King in Ancient Mesopotamia,” in Sacred Marriages: The Divine-Human Sexual Metaphor from Sumer to Early Christianity (ed. Martti Nissinen and Risto Uro; Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2008), 43–72.
  261. Parts of this chapter are drawn substantially from my book, The Unseen Realm, Chapters 40 and 41.
  262. Our coverage of the items in this chapter will be necessarily brief. A good deal more could be said in defense of certain ideas. While the same regret could be expressed with most everything else in this book, the topics in this chapter involve considerable detail in textual and literary analysis in the original languages to lay out a full case for them. Since that isn’t possible here, readers are encouraged to study the sources cited for more detail.
  263. The translation is Nickelsburg’s. See also 1 En 13:1; 14:5; Jubilees 5:6, 10; 10:7-11). I refer here to Chapter 2 of the present study.
  264. There is considerable debate about whether this “star,” whom all agree is a divine being, is good or evil. Thompson argues for the former: “Most commentators, including Charles and Aune, assume that the key was given to the star, who, they then argue, was in fact a fallen angel. But this creates a problem when the star-angel of 9:l is identified with the angel of 20:1. . . . The aggelos in Rev 9:l and the aggelos in 20:l have the same heavenly origin and the same responsibility-the key to the abyss. . . . While the angel keeper of the key of Sheol is not named in Revelation, he is elsewhere. The Greek version of 1 Enoch 20:2 attributes control of Sheol to ‘Uriel, one of the holy angels, who is over the world and over Tartarus’. . . . Elsewhere the angel keeper of Sheol is given a title. In Sibylline Oracles book 8 there is an occurrence of the rare Greek kleidophylax, ‘key-keeper.’ Although the sentence is incomplete, the context allows it to refer to an otherwise unidentified key-bearer who is responsible for the enclosure where persons are retained before coming before the judgment seat of God in the final judgment. The concept of the angel keeper(s) of Sheol flows into early Christian thinking by use of the Greek term tartarouchoi aggeloi, ‘angels who keep Tartarus,’ in Apocalypse of Paul 18; Gospel of Bartholomew 4:12; and Hippolytus, Commentary on Daniel 2.29.11. The synonymous expression temelouchos aggelos, “angel keeping Tartarus,” is found in Clement of Alexandria, Prophetic Eclogue 41.1.” See Steven Thompson, “The End of Satan,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 37:2 (1999): 260-262. Beale argues that the keeper is evil: “The main debate is whether this is a good or evil being. It could be either the archangel Uriel, who was chief ‘over Tartarus,’ or the archangel Saraqael, who was ‘over … the spirits, who sin in the spirit’ (1 En.19:1; 20:1–6; 21:1–10; Testament of Solomon 2). But 1 Enoch never calls those figures ‘fallen stars.’ Instead, this description is reserved exclusively for fallen angels under the confinement of the archangels. . . . In addition to the resemblances with falling star depictions elsewhere (mentioned above), the conclusion that this is not a good angel but a fallen angel is also suggested by v 11. There the ‘angel of the abyss’ is called ‘king over’ the demonic locusts and is called ‘Abaddon’ (‘Destruction’) and ‘Apollyon’ (‘Destroyer’). The heavenly being who is sovereign over the abyss and the locusts in vv 1–3 is probably the one called their ‘king’ in v 11. . . . Therefore, the angel in v 1 is either Satan or one of his minions (the latter would be parallel with 2 En. 42:1, which portrays ‘those who hold the keys … of the gates of hell’ as ‘like great serpents, and their faces like extinguished lamps, and their eyes of fire, their sharp teeth’). See G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text (New International Greek Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1999), 491, 493.
  265. Thompson, “The End of Satan,” 260.
  266. Beale, The Book of Revelation, 493. Aune adds to the data: “The “star” is obviously some kind of supernatural being, as this verse and the following make clear. . . . While the key to the abyss is mentioned again in 20:1, the notion of a shaft that could be locked and unlocked is implied rather than explicitly stated. In the other two references, in Rev 11:7 and 17:8, the abyss is the place from which the beast is said to ascend. Papyri Graecae Magicae XIII.169–70, 481–83 indicates a belief in a supernatural being who rules over the abyss: “a god appeared, he was put in charge of the abyss”. . . . It is sometimes synonymous with the underworld, which is the abode of the dead (Jos. As. 15:12; Ps 71:20; Rom 10:7; Diogenes Laertes 4.27 mentions “the abyss of Pluto” = Hades) and the place where demons are imprisoned (Luke 8:31; 1 Enoch 18–21; Jub. 10:7 [the Greek fragment reads “to cast them into the abyss until the day of judgment”; see Denis, Fragmenta, 86]).” See David E. Aune, Revelation 6–16 (vol. 52B; Word Biblical Commentary; Dallas: Word, Incorporated, 1998), 525–526.
  267. See Alexander Kulik, “How the Devil Got His Hooves and Horns: The Origin of the Motif and the Implied Demonology of 3 Baruch,” Numen 60 (2013): 195-229 (esp. 215-216).
  268. In other words, to impose modern war machinery on the passage violates the contextualized intention of the writer. Below I argue that Gog is best identified as an evil supernatural being, perhaps even Satan. As such, he is not the human antichrist, but the being personified by or empowering the antichrist. Since the final battle in Revelation and Second Temple Jewish sources (e.g., 1QM, the Qumran War Scroll) has both divine and human combatants on either side, I consider the released Watchers to be part of the enemies described as “Gog and Magog” in league with Satan.
  269. See G. Del Olmo Lete, “Bashan,” Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst; Leiden: E. J. Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 161-163.
  270. E. Hill, “Antichrist from the Tribe of Dan,” Journal of Theological Studies (new series) 46:1 (April 1995): 102-104. This perspective on the tribe of Dan was not shared by rabbinic commentators. Hill writes elsewhere in his study (pp. 111-113): “The strongest Old Testament footing for a Danite Antichrist would have to be the mention in two passages of a serpent or serpents in close proximity to the mention of the name of Dan (Gen. 49:17; Jer. 8:17). Yet the latter passage does not seem to have played any part in rabbinic comment on Dan, and Jewish exegesis of Gen. 49:16-18, Jacob’s blessing of Dan, turns out to be overwhelmingly positive. Gen. 49:16-18 reads, ‘Dan shall judge his people as one of the tribes of Israel. Dan shall be a serpent in the way, a viper by the path, that bites the horse’s heels so that his rider falls backward. I wait for thy salvation, O Lord.’ The Jewish interpretation of these verses centered virtually exclusively on the figure of Samson who, with all his faults, was more a Christ than an Antichrist figure. Even the comparison with the serpent is explained in terms of Samson’s exploits against the Philistines by Targum Onkelos, glorified by Philo through a linking with Moses’ healing brass serpent (Allegoriarum ii), and even when allusion is made to the serpent in Eden in Genesis Rabbah 98.14 there is no apparent disapproval: ‘As the serpent is found among women, so was Samson the son of Manoah found among women. As a serpent is bound by an oath, so was Samson the son of Manoah bound by an oath [citing Judg. 15: 12]. Just as all the serpent’s strength resides in his head, so it was with Samson’. . . . Samson, as the biblical text in Judges makes abundantly clear, was a Danite. His father, Manoah, was a Danite. But when Jacob says that Dan will judge his people ‘like one of the tribes of Israel’, the tribe he will judge ‘like’ is the pre-eminent tribe of Judah (Num. Rabbah 14. 9). And according to R. Joshua b. Nehemiah, although Samson’s father was a Danite, Samson’s mother was from the tribe of Judah. Thus in Samson were the two tribes united. In Genesis Rabbah Jacob is said to have been so impressed with Samson in his vision that he thought this prodigious warrior was the Messiah! ‘But when he saw him dead he exclaimed, ‘He too is dead! Then I wait for thy Salvation, O God’” (ibid. 98. 14). This assertion that Samson, the one great Danite, had a mother descended from Judah helps explain the saying of R. Hama b. R. Hanina, on Gen. 49: 9, Jacob’s blessing of Judah: ‘This alludes to Messiah the son of David who was descended from two tribes, his father being from Judah and his mother from Dan, in connection with both of which “lion” is written: Judah is a lion’s whelp; Dan is a lion’s whelp (Deut. xxxiii,22)’, a saying which, however, cannot have been intended to refer to Samson, as the Messiah here is expressly the son of David. Thus in the claim of a royal, Judahite paternal descent and Danite maternal descent we finally have a Jewish exegetical warrant for, not an Antichrist to be sure, but a Christ from the tribe of Dan.”
  271. I have argued for a Gentile antichrist template in several places in earlier chapters, but see Appendix V as well.
  272. Revelation 20:7-10 has “Gog and Magog” as the end times enemies of Jerusalem as though the two were separate entities. This is not a necessary conclusion. If, as seems quite likely, Gog is a person and Magog a country or region, saying Gog and Magog were gathered for battle in Rev 20:8 can semantically point to the figure of Gog leading his hordes, gathered from the four corners of the earth, against Jerusalem. One could refer to “Patton from the U.S.” as an enemy of the Nazis and “Patton and the U.S.” making war against the Nazis without changing the meaning—Patton the general led an army of U.S. soldiers against the Nazis. Magog is a person in the Table of Nations of Genesis 10, but that passage is designed to explain the national geography deriving from the post-flood family of Noah. Lust summarizes the evidence for Magog being a place, not a person: “Magog is mentioned in the table of nations in Gen 10:2, and in 1 Chr 1:5, as one of the seven sons of Japheth. Three of these sons occur in Ezekiel’s Gog section as three countries or nations over which Gog is lording (Gomer, Tubal, Meshech: 38:3, 6; 39:1). In Gen 10:3, Togarmah is listed as a son of Gomer. His name returns in Ezek 38:6 as Beth-togarmah alongside with Gomer. See J. Lust, “Magog,” Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst; Leiden: E. J. Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), 536.
  273. Lust, “Gog,” Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst; Leiden: E. J. Brill 1999), 373–374.
  274. This perspective is found with some frequency among dispensationalist evangelicals. See Paul Tanner, “Daniel’s ‘King of the North’: Do We Owe Russia an Apology?” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 35:3 [Sept 1992]: 315-328.
  275. For example, there is no such place-name as roʾsh known in the ancient world. As Astour has noted, the closest geographical correlation that could be argued is “Raʾshi (or Araʾshi) of Neo-Assyrian records, a district on the border of Babylonia and Elam . . . which had nothing in common with Meshech and Tubal” (M. C. Astour, “Ezekiel’s Prophecy of Gog and the Cuthean Legend of Naram-Sin,” Journal of Biblical Literature 95 [1976]: 567, note 4). Further, the place-name “Rosh” would have had no meaning to an ancient Hebrew audience, since “the name Rus was first brought to the region of the Kiev by the Vikings in the Middle Ages” (E. Yamauchi, Foes from the Northern Frontier: Invading Hordes from the Russian Steppes [Wipf & Stock Publishers; 2003], 23). Rus and the longer Russia are of course Indo-European words, while Hebrew is from the Semitic language family. Consequently, a Rosh:Russia equation is a linguistic fallacy (false etymology). Additionally, aside from Genesis 10’s placement of Meshech and Tubal in Anatolia, Ezekiel’s own descriptions of those places in Ezek 27:12-15 have them located among nations adjacent to Anatolia. The place-names are thus not the Russian cities, but ancient ethnic groups firmly situated in the ancient near eastern geographical reality of the Hebrew Bible.
  276. Block argues for the first option in the second volume of his lengthy scholarly commentary on Ezekiel (see Daniel Isaac Block, The Book of Ezekiel, Chapters 25–48 [The New International Commentary on the Old Testament; Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997–], 435). The latter position follows the explanation of Gesenius and Waltke-O’Connor, where the second noun in the Hebrew construct phrase (רֹאשׁ) functions adjectivally, as an “adjectival genitive” (See B. Waltke and M. O’Connor, Introduction to Biblical Hebrew Syntax [Eisenbrauns, 1990], 148; Friedrich Wilhelm Gesenius, Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar [Edited by E. Kautzsch and Sir Arthur Ernest Cowley; 2d English ed.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1910], par. 127).
  277. Lust “Gog,” 373.
  278. The LXX mistakes appear to be behind the supposition of Gressmann, mentioned by Zimmerli, that Gog was a mythological “locust giant after the manner of the scorpion man in the Gilgamesh Epic.” See Walther Zimmerli, Frank Moore Cross, and Klaus Baltzer, Ezekiel: A Commentary on the Book of the Prophet Ezekiel (Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1979–), 300. Zimmerli cites H. Gressmann, Der Messias (FRLANT 6; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1929), p. 129 n. 1. Block includes reference to this same idea and source on p. 433,footnote 31. The idea is almost certainly a conflation of the Septuagint translation errors related to Gog: LXX Amos 7:1 and the swapping in of “Gog” for “Og” in certain LXX passages. While data such as these takes the reader’s mind directly to the locust army of Revelation 9 released from the Abyss, it is unwise to consider such a move exegetically legitimate. Revelation 9 never identifies a leader and never cites Amos 7:1. Likewise it is tenuous to identify Gog as a giant given the transparent textual confusion in the Septuagint. Put simply, one cannot use the confusion of the translators as evidence for any identification of Gog.
  279. As I wrote in Unseen Realm (pp. 359-360): “The Bible records a number of such incidents. But the most traumatic incursions into Canaan were always from the north. In 722 B.C. Assyria conquered the ten tribes of the northern Israelite kingdom and deported them to many corners of its empire. In a series of three invasions from 605 to 586 B.C., Babylon destroyed the southern kingdom, comprising only two tribes, Judah and Benjamin. Both Assyria and Babylon invaded Canaan from the north, since they were both from the Mesopotamian region. The trauma of these invasions became the conceptual backdrop for descriptions of the final, eschatological judgment of the disinherited nations (Zeph 1:14–18; 2:4–15; Amos 1:13–15; Joel 3:11–12; Mic 5:15) and their divine overlords (Isa 34:1–4; Psa 82). It is hard to overstate the trauma of the Babylonian invasion. The northern tribes, too, had met an awful fate, the outcome of which was well known to the occupants of the kingdom of Judah. But Judah was David’s tribe, and Jerusalem the home of Yahweh’s temple. As such, the ground was holy and—or so the kingdom of Judah thought—would surely never be taken by the enemy. But Zion’s inviolability turned out to be a myth. Jerusalem and its temple were destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar in 586 B.C. The incident brought not only physical desolation but psychological and theological devastation. The destruction of Yahweh’s temple and, consequently, his throne, would have been cast against the backdrop of spiritual warfare by ancient people. The Babylonians and other civilizations would have presumed that the gods of Babylon had finally defeated Yahweh, the God of Israel. Many Israelites would have wondered the same thing—or that God had forsaken his covenant promises (e.g., Psa 89:38–52). Either God was weaker than Babylon’s gods or else he had turned away from his promises.”
  280. Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 360-361.
  281. Block (p. 433) cites one source for this possibility: P. Heinisch, Das Buch Ezechiel übersetzt und erklärt (Heilige Schrift des Alten Testaments 8; Bonn: Hanstein, 1923), 183.
  282. Lust, for example, rejects it as “highly implausible,” but offers no reasons why it ought to be dismissed.
  283. Heiser, The Unseen Realm, 366. Whether Rev 20:7-10 includes the antichrist (and, so, the notion that Gog is the antichrist) depends on the interpretive approach to the book of Revelation one adopts. Many who read Revelation as a linear chronology (the “futurist” view) also understand Gog of Ezekiel to be the antichrist—yet they somehow miss the fact that the antichrist’s demise (in a linear futurist reading) precedes the Gog and Magog defeat of Rev 20:7-10. The Beast is captured and thrown into the lake of fire in Rev 19:20. This means that, for a futurist approach to Revelation’s events, Gog can’t be identified with the antichrist (Beast). Those who see recapitulation (recycling) in what Revelation describes and not a linear chronology of events do not have this problem, for the judgment at Armageddon in Rev 17-19 and the battle of Rev 20:7-10 are viewed as the same event. This allows an identification (whatever that might be) of Gog with the Beast. For the evidence aligning Armageddon of Rev 17-19 with Rev 20:7-10, see Meredith G. Kline, “Har Magedon: The End of the Millennium,” Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 39:2 (June 1996): 207-222.
  284. The term “Armageddon” has been fundamentally misunderstood by most prophecy teachers and enthusiasts, who presume the term points to a battle at Megiddo. As I wrote in The Unseen Realm (pp. 369-372): “Anyone who has ever investigated the term has undoubtedly read that it refers to a battle that will take place at or near Megiddo, the presumed geographical namesake for the term Armageddon. Further research would perhaps detect the fact that in Zechariah 12:11 the place name ‘Megiddo’ is spelled (in Hebrew) with an ‘n’ on the end, tightening the association between that place and the term Armageddon. As coherent as all that sounds, it’s wrong. As we’ll see in this chapter, an identification of Armageddon with Megiddo is unsustainable. With respect to the word itself, the scriptural description of the event, and the supernatural concepts tied to both those elements, the normative understanding of Armageddon is demonstrably flawed. . . . John, the author of Revelation, tells us explicitly that ‘Armageddon’ is a Hebrew term. John does that in part because the book of Revelation is written in Greek. There’s something about the Greek word ‘Armageddon’ that required, for Greek readers, clarification that the term had been brought into the verse from Hebrew. Those who can read Greek, or at least know the alphabet, will notice that the Greek term (Ἁρμαγεδών) would be transliterated into English characters as h-a-r-m-a-g-e-d-o-n. If you don’t know Greek, you’ll wonder right away where the initial ‘h’ in the transliteration comes from. The ‘h’ at the beginning of the term corresponds to the superscripted apostrophe before the capital ‘A’ in the Greek letters—what is known as a rough breathing mark in Greek. The Greek language had no letter ‘h’ and so instead used this mark to convey that sound. As a result, the correct (Hebrew) term John uses to describe the climactic end-times battle is harmagedon. This spelling becomes significant when we try to discern what this Hebrew term means. The first part of the term (har) is easy. In Hebrew har means “mountain.” Our term is therefore divisible into har-magedon, “Mount (of) magedon.” The question is, what is magedon?” Megiddo, of course, is not a mountain, and so the idea that the battle of Armageddon will be at Megiddo is deeply flawed. The Greek term har-magedon retroverts back into Hebrew as har moʿed, the “mount of assembly” at which Yahweh lives and where his divine council serves him. That mountain is Zion—Jerusalem. Armageddon is a battle for God’s dominion over Jerusalem at Jerusalem.
  285. W. van Henten, “Typhon,” Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (ed. Karel van der Toorn, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst; Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999), 880.
  286. W. van Henten, “Antiochus IV as a Typhonic Figure in Daniel 7,” in The book of Daniel in the Light of New Findings (ed. A. S. van der Woude; Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium 106; Leuven: Peeters Publishers, 1993), 223-243 (esp. pp. 228, This is the same scholar who produced the DDD entry. This work is a much more thorough treatment.
  287. The translations come from Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch.
  288. The Enochian material recognizes that God’s plan for humanity was violated in a series of rebellions, two of which have divine beings as the catalysts (Gen 3, Gen 6:1-4). It is understandable, then, that Second Temple writers would assume the first divine rebel had a hand in the second divine rebellion. The two rebellions would have been further associated by the Underworld itself. The divine cherub of Eden is cast down to earth (ʾerets) in the biblical account. This term is used elsewhere in the Hebrew Bible for the Underworld realm of the dead (Jonah 2:6). The Watchers were imprisoned in this place, and the Watcher-spirits were the source of demons. But there is no sense that the Enochian writer thought the leader of the Watchers was the serpent figure of Eden. There is also no need to presume, as many scholars do, that the New Testament writers are presuming that equation. The New Testament writers do apply what is said about the leader of the Watchers to Satan, but they aren’t following an Enochian equation by doing so.
  289. For a detailed survey of Second Temple Jewish literature referencing Enochian material, see George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001), 71-82.
  290. Ken Penner and Michael S. Heiser, “Old Testament Greek Pseudepigrapha with Morphology” (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2008).
  291. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 72.
  292. Ibid., 72.
  293. Ibid., 77.
  294. J. Brooke, “Pesharim,” ed. Craig A. Evans and Stanley E. Porter, Dictionary of New Testament Background: A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholarship (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 2000), 778.
  295. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 77.
  296. For a lengthier survey of Christian sources that utilize 1 Enoch, see Nickelsburg, 87-95 and James C. VanderKam, “1 Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch in Early Christian Literature,” in idem and William Adler, eds., The Jewish Apocalyptic Heritage in Early Christianity (Compendia rerum iudaicarum ad Novum Testamentum 3/4; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996).
  297. George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001), 87.
  298. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 87–88.
  299. Irenaeus of Lyons, “Irenaeus against Heresies,” in The Apostolic Fathers with Justin Martyr and Irenaeus (ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe; vol. 1; The Ante-Nicene Fathers; Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 1330–331.
  300. VanderKam, “1 Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch in Early Christian Literature,” 43.
  301. Tertullian, “On the Apparel of Women,” in Fathers of the Third Century: Tertullian, Part Fourth; Minucius Felix; Commodian; Origen, Parts First and Second (ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe; trans. S. Thelwall; vol. 4; The Ante-Nicene Fathers; Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 415–16.
  302. Tertullian, “On Idolatry,” in Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian (ed. Alexander Roberts, James Donaldson, and A. Cleveland Coxe; trans. S. Thelwall; vol. 3; The Ante-Nicene Fathers; Buffalo, NY: Christian Literature Company, 1885), 370–71.
  303. VanderKam, “1 Enoch, Enochic Motifs, and Enoch in Early Christian Literature,” 54.
  304. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 90.
  305. Ibid., 92.
  306. Ken Penner and Michael S. Heiser, Old Testament Greek Pseudepigrapha with Morphology (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2008).
  307. George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch: A Commentary on the Book of 1 Enoch (ed. Klaus Baltzer; Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress, 2001), 9. Nickelsburg’s footnote at the end of this selection reads (in part) as follows: “Throughout his edition, Milik assumes that Aramaic was the original language (J. T. Milik, The Books of Enoch: Aramaic Fragments of Qumrân Cave 4 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1976). . . . Michael A. Knibb (Knibb, The Ethiopic Book of Enoch: A New Edition in the Light of the Aramaic Dead Sea Fragments, vol. 2:6–7) also considers an Aramaic original ‘most probable.’”
  308. Ken Penner and Michael S. Heiser, “Old Testament Greek Pseudepigrapha with Morphology” (Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press, 2008).
  309. George W. E. Nickelsburg, 1 Enoch, 8.
  310. Ibid., 173.
  311. See http://www.bombaxo.com/blog/biblical-stuff/apocrypha-and-pseudepigrapha/new-testament-allusions-to-apocrypha-and-pseudepigrapha/
  312. My point here is that the masquerade idea has little to no solid exegetical support. One could argue, though, that such a masquerade might be tactical on the part of the antichrist.
  313. Some would appeal to 1 Kings 10:14 to defend the idea that the profile is not exclusively Gentile. That verse tells us that Solomon had accumulated 666 talents of gold. Scholars have noticed the number, naturally, and it may well be behind what John was thinking in Revelation. Beale comments, for example: “The mention in 1 Kgs. 10:14 of 666 talents of gold accumulated by Solomon may also be in John’s field of reference. The 666 talents are mentioned immediately after Solomon has reached the peak of his kingship. After telling of such greatness, 1 Kings immediately tells how Solomon broke a series of God’s laws for kings (Deut. 17:14–17) by multiplying gold, horses, chariots, and foreign wives and by becoming involved in idolatry (1 Kgs. 10:14–11:13). Consequently, the 666 from 1 Kings would have served as an excellent candidate for a number to symbolize the perversion of kingship through idolatry and economic evil” (G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation: A Commentary on the Greek Text [New International Greek Testament Commentary; Grand Rapids, MI; Eerdmans, 1999], 727). Beale’s point is well taken. If John was thinking of Solomon, he was using the number to denigrate the tyrannical abuse of kingship, something entirely consistent with the description of his beast in Revelation. He wasn’t using the number to identify the beast as a Jew. As the only alternative against the consistent Gentile typology for the great eschatological enemy, the argument from 1 Kings 10:14 for a Jewish antichrist is extraordinarily weak.
  314. Some argue that the Hebrew phrase here (ʾelōhê ʾabōtayw; “God/gods of his fathers”) is always used (with other suffixes, like “your”) to describe Yahweh (“God of his fathers”) and therefore points to a Jew. This is a more coherent approach to a Jewish antichrist than an appeal to Solomon but is inconclusive since the phrases in question can be found in polytheistic religions. For example, “the god of your father” and “the god of our fathers” can be found in Old Assyrian texts, a letter from Mari from the eighteenth century BC, hieroglyphic Hittite texts, and (with less precision) Ugaritic texts (Frank Moore Cross, “Yahweh and the God of the Patriarchs,” Harvard Theological Review 55:4 (1962): 225-259 [esp. 228]; J. Philip Hyatt, “Yahweh as ‘the God of my Father’,” Vetus Testamentum 5:2 (1955): 130-136 [esp. 131-132]). The point is that the writer of Daniel might be drawing on a similar conception of pagans with this wording if he has a Gentile in view.
  315. John Joseph Collins, and Adela Yarbro Collins, Daniel: A Commentary on the Book of Daniel (Ed. Frank Moore Cross; Hermeneia—a Critical and Historical Commentary on the Bible; Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1993), 12-13.
  316. Louis F. Hartman and Alexander A. Di Lella, The Book of Daniel: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary on Chapters 1-9 (vol. 23; Anchor Yale Bible; New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2008), 14.
  317. Ibid., 260.
  318. Ibid, 267.
  319. I have not spelled this term with final nun so readers can better see the visual confusion Hartman and Di Lella presume.
  320. Ibid., 260.