Ep 27: Where Angels Fear to Swim

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01:14So I think what we have here is a reflection and echo of this idea that there are angels bound

01:22only here. It's placing them at the Euphrates River. And when they are set free, they're going to go

01:27and marshal an army of 200 million cavalry. And their horses are going to head the heads of lions

01:36and they're going to breathe fire. And their tails are going to be like scorpions.

01:40Are you going to find 200 million lion-headed horses? You can barely find two of them.

01:49There's not a market for that anymore. It is dried up. Just like the Euphrates.

01:54Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan. And I'm Dan Beacher. And you are listening to the Data

02:04Over Dogma podcast where we seek to increase the public's access to the academic study of the

02:10Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation about the same. How do Dan? Hey man,

02:18I am excited. We are going to delve into some crazy stuff. It's going to get weird. That's for sure.

02:26And stuff that some people are still

02:30flogging as potentially possible now. We're going to find out. We're going to find out if if there is

02:38just literally underneath the surface, crazy things lurk here in the modern world.

02:46Yep, we're going to respond to a popular TikTok video from a popular creator that is going to

02:54remind those of you who are of a similar age as Dan and myself of an old Simpsons episode

03:01that involved Lisa Simpson and her skepticism. So skepticism coming up. That sounds like it is time

03:11for a patented Dan McClellan catchphrase. Why don't you hit us with it?

03:19All right, let's see. And today we are looking at a video from a gentleman who is on a handful

03:26of different social media platforms. Goes by the handle Khalil storyteller on TikTok.

03:33I'm not sure if that's their real name, but they're going to talk a little bit about the Euphrates

03:39River. And this is something that has been in the news quite a bit recently and has been all over

03:46social media. But let's see what's to be clear. The river is real. The river is true. We're starting

03:53with a real river and we'll go from there. Yeah. And this has as much relevance to the accuracy of

03:59these claims as the reality of New York City has to the reality of Spider-Man. So let's get into

04:08the first part of this clip. Have you guys heard of the scary things happening at the Euphrates

04:12River? It's one of the longest rivers in the world. And it's located in the Middle East.

04:16But lately it's been drying up. And in 2020, they started finding ancient caves that revealed

04:22themselves while the river was drying up. The caves and structures had been there all this time.

04:26And no one knew about them. Okay, we're going to pause there and talk about the two claims that

04:30are made here. One that the Euphrates River is drying up and two that ancient caves that nobody

04:35knew about are being revealed by the lowering water levels. The first claim is accurate in a

04:46lot of ways. The Euphrates River, the water level has been going down. And this is something that

04:51has been somewhat cyclical. Every few years, the water level goes down because of the convergence

04:59of a number of different factors, including climate change. But probably more directly related

05:05is a bunch of dams have been built further upstream on the Euphrates. And more people are

05:15diverting water further upstream and less water is able to make it down into particularly the

05:21southern parts of Iraq. So this river that used to feed so much of Iraq's agriculture and their

05:29society is partly because of natural things that ultimately come back to human caused

05:38problems and other issues related to dams. Now, in the video, this creator shows two satellite

05:47photos, one that shows a reservoir on a little bend in the Euphrates River, chock full of water,

05:55and then one that shows it looking like a little trickle. Now, there are a number of things to

06:01note about this. One, that's a reservoir where somebody dammed up water. And that's why it is

06:07so full in the one picture. In the other picture, there was a drought because this was back in 2009.

06:14That's where there was a very serious drought that lowered the water level significantly as much

06:20and even more so in some places than it has been recently. So that satellite photo is showing

06:27circumstances 13 years ago. If you go on Google Earth and look for this reservoir today,

06:32you will see that it is back to almost the height of the water level that you see in the first picture.

06:38Well, Dan, I feel like you're poking holes in this guy's story. And that's not very nice.

06:44One also wonders if the book of Revelation has anything to say about the Colorado River,

06:50because it's very similar. Well, in fact, one of the videos that was done maybe six months ago,

06:57that was trying to leverage this claim, took a photo from, they had a handful of photos of dried

07:05up parched river beds, and they insisted it was the Euphrates. One of them was from a river on the

07:12island of Lesbos in Greece. And the other was of the Colorado River. So I mean, we've been really

07:21drinking that one dry. So it makes sense. But the other claim here that this is uncovering

07:28caves also is only partly true, mostly false. See, back in a lot of these dams that have

07:37been built, some of them are to create reservoirs like the one in the satellite photo that gets

07:41shown all over the place without showing you the years. That flooded some cliffs. And we've known

07:51that there were ancient tombs carved into those cliffs. So it was like the 80s or the 90s when they

07:56originally created this reservoir and flooded this area and submerged all these rock cut tombs

08:03from antiquity. So in 2008 and nine, when there was this drought and these water levels lowered, that

08:11was when we saw these rock cut tombs and people went, Oh, forgot those were there. And they're just

08:19tombs. They're not prisons. They're not caves that people were living in. They were just rock cut tombs.

08:26I mean, you say that, but like the difference between a tomb that contains a human corpse and

08:34a prison for an angel. We might be talking semantics at this point.

08:40Not really. But all right, fine. Let's go on and hear a little bit more from this creator.

08:51Yeah. And so what is being revealed is a handful of these rock cut tombs. And we've known about this.

08:57It's not something nobody knew was there. So the creator's claims there are false.

09:03Now this is the scary part. The river drying up is actually in the Bible. In the book of

09:07Revelation is chapter 914 through 9/5. It says release the four angels who are bound at the great

09:13river of the phrase. It then goes to say that the angels will be released to kill a third of mankind.

09:18That's around 2.6 billion people. Okay, so a couple of things to point out here. First,

09:23he says the river drying up is in the book of Revelation. And then he shared a handful of verses

09:29that don't mention anything about the river drying up. He's talking about Revelation chapter 9,

09:34where it talks about four angels being bound at the river Euphrates. It's in Revelation chapter 16.

09:41It's an entirely different story where it says that the Euphrates will dry up so that the kings of

09:48the east can march across and go to battle against the land to the west, the nation of Israel.

09:55And so these are two separate events within this mythical narrative of the book of Revelation

10:02separated by six chapters. So it is kind of a bait and switch. It's manipulative to try to connect

10:12these two events. They're not connected in the actual text itself. But they both take place at

10:17the Euphrates. So checkmate, I guess. Yeah, the Euphrates was one of the most significant rivers

10:26in the world of ancient Israel at this time. That was the river that fed the civilizations of

10:35Mesopotamia that frequently exercised hegemony or rule, oppressive rule over the nation of Israel.

10:43So it was a symbol of this oppressive regime and these empires that existed off to the east.

10:50Okay. Okay. Let's hear. Let's hear a little bit more of what all this means. All right.

10:55Now people have recorded in her screams coming from the brown before.

11:06So this is a video with audio that has been shared a number of times on social media recently.

11:14It's horrifying. I'm going to give it to him. Those are very scary sounds that he just played.

11:20And the video shows some shaky kind of found footage style imagery of what looks like some

11:28kind of excavated area, some dirt and stuff like that. Yeah, it looks like, you know, they found a

11:36place where there's a hole in the dirt. Who knows what it is. But this is a, and the problem

11:43was suggesting that these are sounds of angels that are bound under the drying up Euphrates River

11:49is that this video has been on the internet for almost 10 years. And the audio is very clearly

11:57added to the video. It is not part of the video because when it was originally shared back in,

12:03I think 2015 or 2016, it was kind of, it was shown as part of like a news reel. Like somebody put

12:14a popular Arabic news stations frame around the video and presented it as

12:23something entirely differently. But the audio repeats at the end of the full video, the track

12:30repeats. And so it's very clearly somebody's audio overlaid on this video. But when this was

12:36originally shared, well, not originally, but when it became very, very popular, when it was shared

12:41millions of times was just after the assassination of a famous slash infamous Pakistani cleric named

12:52Sami Ullhak. Okay. And the claim back then in late 2015, early 2016 was that this was footage

13:01of this cleric's grave. And this was audio of him being tortured in his grave. Oh, my part of

13:10what I understand is one stream of tradition within Islam regarding unrighteous folks.

13:18But can I just say who'd have thought that one of the angels of the apocalypse would be a Pakistani

13:25cleric? You don't see it coming. And he didn't really hit the bullseye when it came to where he

13:33was supposed to be bound. Pakistan is at some distance from the Euphrates River. It's a little

13:41ways off. If my if my middle school geography is is accurate. Now, and the other thing to

13:51note is that the video actually was people have found that video posted online even before

13:57that Pakistani cleric was assassinated. And so this is just take your own video. If you're gonna

14:03if you're gonna do a conspiracy thing, just don't don't go recycling other video. Take your own go

14:09to your backyard, dig a hole and make your own video. That that requires initiative. It requires

14:16effort. It requires creativity. In some instances, it requires money. And and that's I think a bridge

14:23too far for a lot of our conspiracy theorists. And so that's absolutely not audio of bound angels.

14:31I know that has really freaked a lot of people out recently. But it has absolutely nothing to do

14:37with our text from Revelation, which is not about the future anyway, as we have discussed before.

14:43Yeah, but I'll set us straight on that. But I will say this, like the other thought is,

14:48people have been living along the Euphrates since biblical times since Revelation was written.

14:56And nobody's heard that screaming howling whatever the whole time. It like it apparently

15:05couldn't resonate through the water or whatever. It just seems just try to be even a modicum of

15:13skepticism would be useful. Yeah. All right, let's let's hear what else we got. So where these caves

15:18and structures actually prisons for the angels, now that the river is finally drying up, have they

15:23finally been released? Dun dun dun. Yeah, it's scary out there. Remind us a little bit what?

15:33In Revelation, what are these angels doing? So these angels aren't really doing much of anything.

15:42They're just one of the one of the calamities that is supposed to befall the earth. And what's

15:47supposed to happen? We got four angels bound at the Euphrates. And this is drawing from a tradition

15:55that was in circulation at the time regarding disobedient angels. And we'll talk a bit in our

16:00next segment about what that is about. But this is coming from traditions that are found in the

16:06anarchic literature and another Greco-Roman period literature, where basically there were

16:12some disobedient angels and they fell. And in the book of Enoch, God binds some of them. And they are

16:21like the Valley of Hinnam outside of Jerusalem is likely where the text is saying some of them are

16:30bound. It also talks about them being bound under mountains. And so I think what we have here is a

16:35reflection and echo of this idea that there are angels bound. Only here it's placing them at the

16:41Euphrates River. And when they are set free, they're going to go and marshal an army of 200 million

16:50cavalry. So soldiers on horses and their breastplates are going to be shiny and multicolored and their

16:57horses are going to head the heads of lions. And they're going to breathe fire. And their

17:02tails are going to be like scorpions. Are you going to find 200? What is it 200 million lion

17:11headed horses? I just, I, you know, you can barely find two of them. There's not a market for that

17:16anymore. It is dried up. And so yeah, you will be lucky. Yeah, so you will be, you will be very

17:25lucky to find even one anymore in any kind of usable condition. And so yeah, there's, some people

17:31are suggesting on social media, ah, well, this must be Russia and China collaborating because only

17:38they could create an army that large. And that's laughable. If the two of them put together all of

17:45their currently active and reserve military, they'd have maybe six million and not cavalry. So yeah,

17:54they're the attempts to try to historicize this and make this about the future are just laughable.

18:01And so to answer this creator's question, is this, are these prisons? Is this angels bound? Are they

18:07going to be set free? The answer is, ha ha absolutely not. Because the book of Revelation is not about

18:16our day. And the final thing I want to add here in reference to this claim about the Euphrates

18:22drying up is that these water levels that are being depleted every few years because of climate

18:31change, because of dams diverting water, sometimes it's coming from other nations. This is ruining

18:37the lives of countless people who rely on this river for survival in ways that people who spend

18:44their days on TikTok and I'm including myself in that could never imagine. And so this is causing

18:50all kinds of suffering. And it is, it is awful that people look at this and their first thought is not

18:57that there are a lot of people suffering because of climate change and because of these struggles

19:05for access to water. Their first thought is for making videos about how the end times are going

19:12to be here so that they can exploit this end times anxiety, get more clicks, get more views.

19:19And in the end, I imagine get more money. And so I don't think that this is even, and even folks

19:27who are saying, well, this is for humor or this is I'm just asking questions, which is sometimes

19:32what these people say. Stop doing it. It is not helpful. And you're making light of circumstances

19:40that are ruining. And even in some cases, ending lives on the other side of the world.

19:44Well, and you're not even properly referencing what you're, what you're claiming to be referencing,

19:51like it's you're not doing anybody any favors, warning them about end times that a,

19:56we're already meant to have happened. Yeah. And B, even if even if we were to interpret the book

20:05of Revelation to be saying, you know, that these end times are going to be, you know,

20:11applicable to now, or whatever. Yeah. You're bending and shaping the Euphrates River to be

20:20different things. It's, it's just every time someone goes looking for the, the ways that the

20:28revelation predictions are happening in a modern time, it ends up being destructive. It's not,

20:36it's never productive. It's never. And also, you know, not for nothing, it's never right.

20:42Yeah. You know, every time someone predicts, oh, what's coming, you know, we just had, we just passed

20:47another rapture prediction moment, yeah, which unless nobody was raptured, did not come true,

20:56you know, maybe the rapture happened and like two guys went and none of us knew about it.

21:01Yeah. And that's, that's another claim from the book of Revelation, this idea that there was a

21:06vision of a woman travailing in delivery and she has a crown of 12 jewels on her head and the moon

21:16is under her feet. And people think this is the constellation Virgo. And they try to squeeze these

21:22things in so that it will make it relevant to today. And yeah, it, it never happens. It ends up

21:29causing an awful lot of anxiety. I was fortunate enough not to be raised with any of that kind of

21:35ideology. And so that's not something that that computes for me. But I understand that this causes

21:42untold anxiety and the lives of people all around the United States and other parts of the world.

21:48And so yeah, it is corrosive. It is not helping anyone. It may get you a few extra clicks one day.

21:55But is that really worth kind of cumulatively adding to the suffering that's going on

22:02around the world? I saw a somebody put on TikTok, a video where somebody was like,

22:08me waking up on September 20th. And they were like, time to go outside and fix the world now

22:15that all the problems are gone. And then they go outside and everybody's still there. And

22:23so turn it. Yeah. So these videos are harmful. These videos are ignorance and misleading. And

22:31that is some of the misinformation, the spread of which we are trying to combat on this channel.

22:38Indeed. Well, and there's more yet to come. Let's pause for a brief ad break. And we'll dive into

22:45our next segment. All right. Well, for this week's chapter and verse, we're going back to

22:55toward the beginning of the book, back to Genesis. And we're in Genesis six now.

23:00And this is there are other creators who are making interesting reference to this. This isn't

23:06from Revelation, but man, people are talking about this in some fascinating ways. You're going to

23:14help me help expound on it. Yeah. We'll start with the very first, first line of this or the first

23:23verse, which is when human beings begin to increase in number, we're back at the beginning of creation.

23:30So, you know, we're sort of early on creation, not not all the way to the beginning, but yeah,

23:36it's, yeah, we're still new. Humans are still new. We've just gotten through this long genealogy.

23:41So, folks like Adam and folks like that have passed away. Oh, that's true. So, like, we,

23:48you know, if you, if you refer back to our episode on the patriarchs and the age of them,

23:55we're, we're many thousands of years, or, or, yeah, we're thousands of years into this at this point,

24:02because those dudes were living for crazy, crazy amounts of time. But it's still, it's still,

24:10human beings are still pretty new. So, you know what, I'm reading the NIV. So, just to just to

24:18clue people, and it's just what full disclosure, what my browser happened to pull up. So, when human

24:25beings began to increase in number on the earth, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God

24:33saw that the daughters of humans were beautiful, and they married them, or they married any of them

24:40they chose. That, okay. Mind blown. Who are the sons of God? What is happening? Why do they get

24:49to choose all the pretty girls? What is going on? So, the Hebrew here is Benihalohim. So,

24:55sun, literally, sons of the God. And this is a term that occurs a handful of times in the Hebrew

25:02Bible. It occurs in Job, talks about the sons of God, shout out for joy at the foundation of the

25:09earth. It occurs in the beginning of Job, where it says there was a day when the sons of God

25:15presented themselves before the throne, and Satan was among them. And it occurs in a handful

25:23of other places. In Psalm 29, the Psalmist calls upon the, here it's Benihalim, a different form

25:30of the word for God, but it's still a plural, sons of God. You said that it was Elohim. Now,

25:37sometimes that word is a singular, refers to a singular God. And sometimes that word refers to

25:43multiple gods, right? Yes. Do we know that this is a singular version of that, of the use of that

25:49word? It is possible it could be plural. It could be sons of the gods. Like, that's not outside the

25:56realm of possibility. Elohim is a concretized abstract plural. And I don't know if we've talked

26:02about this before on the channel, but this might be fodder for a future episode. But the idea is

26:07that Elohim was originally a plural that began to be used as an abstract plural to refer not to

26:13deities, but to divinity. And then it became used so frequently in reference to specific

26:19deities that it became concretized or reconquertized. And so it can be used in reference to a single

26:25deity or a plural. And you can know just by looking at the verbs in the pronouns. If they're plural,

26:32you have plural deities. If they're singular, you have a single deity. Unfortunately, here,

26:38we don't have any verbs or pronouns associated with the word Elohim. So we cannot tell. We can only

26:43deduce from from usage. And based on comparison with the other literature from ancient Southwest

26:50Asia, the other Northwest Semitic literature, the Benelohim seemed to be the second tier of deities

26:56in the Northwest Semitic pantheon, which generally had the divine pair at the top. So that would be

27:02the high deity and their consort. And their children, the Benelohim, the children of God,

27:08would make up the second tier of the pantheon. And they would be responsible for the functioning

27:14of the universe. And then, according to some reconstructions, there's a third tier of craftsmen

27:19deity. And then the fourth tier would be the servile deities, the servants, which is largely

27:26in the Bible, this is messenger deities or angels. And all of them are chained up under

27:33the Euphrates. Well, we're going to get to that. They're not there yet. So Genesis 6 is

27:40talking about this second tier. And it's kind of going to condemn them for being a little too

27:48randy and not obedient enough to their station. And so they like the looks of the human women,

27:56which is something that evidently the gods of the ancient societies, you know, that was their

28:02won't. And so they go down and took wives of all those that they chose, which is going to result in

28:10something unfavorable. But we've got a verse in between this. And it has echoes, like you mentioned,

28:18of, you know, Greek gods and may, you know, taking human brides or human mates.

28:26It's an interesting, the whole concept is fascinating. Yeah. So let's, yeah, let's move on.

28:35This is verse three. Then the Lord said, "My spirit will not contend with humans forever,

28:42for they are mortal. Their days will be 120 years." Yeah. And, and contend is

28:49one interpretation of the verb here. It's, it's a very uncommon verb. It's

28:57dune. So Dalit Vav noon are the three letters of the verbal root. And it can mean content if we

29:07hypothesize that it comes from a root, a specific root. It could also mean remain or stay.

29:14And so the, what does the King James version say? "My spirit shall not always strive with man."

29:23And, and I think some people understand, strive in the, the Marshall sense. But the idea is

29:31remain with. And so this seems to be suggesting that there's, and it says, you know, is,

29:37their days will be limited to 120 years. And this is basically God saying, I'm sick of people living

29:44to be 93969 years. We got to put a stop to this. We're going to cap it at 120. And that's my

29:53final offer. So you got to imagine the pawn star guy going, best I can do is 120. Yeah. Yeah. And so

30:00the idea that the, that God's spirit will not always remain with, with humanity, with man seems to

30:08suggest that, that human lives are kind of sustained by an indwelling of the spirit or, or the companionship

30:16of the spirit. Somehow God's spirit is sustaining human life. And God's like, not anymore. And so

30:23this is something that we see in the Mesopotamian literature, where the Sumerian king lists and

30:31different Akkadian iterations of that have the pre flood kings living or having rains that are,

30:38you know, 38, 42,000 years long. And then after the flood, it's like you only get like 1200 years

30:45to rain. So there's a big drop off as soon as you have the flood. And here we're setting the stage

30:51for the flood. Because God doesn't seem happy about what's going on here. Verse three suggests

30:57that it is a result of the sons of God having offspring with the daughters of humans that he's

31:05like, this is a problem. And so the solution is, well, we're going to cap the years. And then

31:14after the next verse, God's going to say, well, no, we need to, we need to do more than that. We're

31:20just going to destroy all of humanity. Goodness. That sounds extreme. I will just say that.

31:26My mind made an interesting connection. It's a feeble connection. So I wanted to check in with

31:33you about it, because contending with God isn't it? Isn't that the meaning of a word that's that's

31:44that's very prominent, contends with God or well, that would be that would be the name Israel.

31:50Yeah. Yeah. So that's one way to interpret it. I think more than likely the name Israel,

32:00the idea was L contends, God contends. Okay. But yeah, there are different ways to interpret it.

32:08And there's a little etiology in in Genesis. We have Jacob fighting with God. Right.

32:17And that's where God says, you know, weird story where we'll get to that one. I'm sure.

32:24Yeah, we're going to talk about that at some point. And genitals are involved. It gets weird.

32:30And then there's there's a there's a reference in Hosea. And Hosea suggests it's an angel.

32:37But I would argue that that's actually an interpolation. Someone has changed that.

32:41But but the story is basically an etiology for where Israel got his name and that it means

32:47contends with God. But that probably wasn't where that name, what that name originally was

32:54understood to mean. Okay. Fascinating. Sorry about that. Just wanted to go down a little

32:59rabbit trail right there. All right, I'm going to keep reading. So so we we've we've got human

33:06women being taken as wives by sons of God, the Lord getting a little bit huffy about that.

33:13And then we get to verse four, which is the Nephilim were on earth in those days and also

33:20afterward when the sons of God went to the daughters of humans and had children by them.

33:26They were the heroes of old men of renown. All right, Nephilim. I know that is I can of worms

33:35right now on the internet. Walk us through it. What have we got? What are the Nephilim?

33:40So Nephilim, there there is some debate about what this means. But I think most scholars would

33:48probably say this comes from the verbal root in a fall, which means to fall and is frequently used

33:54to refer to dying. And I think the the theory that I think makes the most sense is that this is

34:02a reference to an ancient tradition of of the spirits of deceased warriors, people who fell in

34:10battle. And so were were celebrated as heroes of old warriors of renown, as it says. And there is

34:20some there is some lack of clarity in this verse. Who are the heroes of old the wars of renown?

34:27Is it the Nephilim or is it the children of the union of the sons of God and the daughters

34:35of humans? It's not perfectly clear. And there are arguments for both sides of that. But I would

34:43suggest that. Well, actually, I think they could could work either way. It could be these demigods

34:50that were the product of this union became the heroes of old warriors of renown. But it could

34:56also refer to the Nephilim. Hercule is sort of figure. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's an argument to

35:03make that there's there's some resonance with some of these other traditions about demigods from

35:08elsewhere in the world. Now, when we look at the Greek translation of this passage, the ancient

35:14Greek translation, the Septuagint, it does not say it does not transliterate Nephilim like many

35:20English translations do today. It says hegantes, which would be giants. So there are a lot of

35:28translations that render giants here because of this Greek translation. And this is based on

35:34a a tradition that arose probably within the Persian period and into the Greco-Roman period.

35:43So we're talking the end of the sixth century up to 500 BCE, 400, 300 BCE. We have

35:52the Enochic literature, like first Enoch, a very famous text that was phenomenally influential

35:59within Greco-Roman period Judaism and early Christianity before finally being jettisoned

36:05from most biblical canons. The Ethiopian Orthodox to Wahkato Church still includes

36:12first Enoch in their canon. But first Enoch is basically a retelling of this story. This is the

36:21center of the story and then several other stories from the book of Genesis. And it's expanding on

36:29things and is building on this tradition because we just have these few little verses and they seem

36:34to be many scholars would say this is a fragment from some separate story and is just kind of inserted

36:42at the beginning of chapter six here to make it seem like there was some reason for God to be

36:46upset. Yeah, it does feel like out of the blue. It feels very apropos of nothing. Yeah,

36:54because you could you could take out verses two and four and the story would actually make more

37:00sense. It's like they were the men began to multiply. So here's the NRSV when people began to

37:06multiply on the face of the ground, daughters were born to them, skip. Then the Lord said,

37:10"My spirit will not abide in mortals forever. They're flesh. Today's will be 120 years." Skip.

37:15The Lord saw that the wickedness of humankind was great on the earth. Like it makes more sense

37:19without this. But I think that the story seems to be inserted in here to give a better case

37:26that people needed to be killed by suggesting that there's all this wickedness and these monsters

37:33that are resulting from the wickedness of the sons of God. Who are reinterpreted in the

37:41anarchic literature as disobedient angels? Whoa. Yes. All right. Well, you dropped a bomb.

37:49We're going to take a brief ad break and we're going to come back and we're going to connect

37:53all the pieces and tie it all up in a bow. All righty. All right. So when we last left our heroes,

38:03we were talking about how these Nephilim, these giants are somehow connected to angels

38:13and you're going to figure that out for us. Yeah. So what are we talking about?

38:17So we talked a little bit about the Pantheon earlier where we have the high deity and their

38:22consort and then their offspring or the second tier and then we've got the servile deities,

38:26the angels at the bottom. Right. As we move into the Persian period in the Greco-Roman period,

38:33there's a lot more discomfort with the parity between the different deities of the Pantheon and

38:40you get a lot more exaltation of the God of Israel. We have this rhetoric of incomparability

38:47and we have the authors of the biblical and other literature championing Adonai as incomparable to

38:54everybody around them. And so we get kind of a what Seth Sanders is called Pantheon reduction,

39:01where other members of the Pantheon are like, eh, you're not welcome anymore. You're not good enough.

39:06And I suggest we get kind of a squeezing of the Pantheon, where Adonai kind of pops out the top

39:12as the main baddie and then all the other deities get squished down into the bottom tier.

39:21And so the Benelohim, the sons of God, are now squished down into the servile angelic tier.

39:28And so where they used to be the patron deities of the nations of the earth, they are now angels.

39:34And so in first Enoch, we have them represented as angels and they rebel, they come down to earth,

39:42they teach humanity, all this wicked stuff like murder, like makeup. They teach them, yeah,

39:50that's in first Enoch. They teach them how to make weapons. They like basically all of the evil

39:59that is on the earth is a product of these disobedient angels coming down and teaching humanity about

40:04all this bad stuff. I'm just going to say, murder and makeup do not feel like they are on the same

40:09plane. Those feel like two very different levels of naughty. I don't remember if they occur, if

40:18they are juxtaposed on the actual list or if they occur further apart. But you have these angels

40:24being named and so-and-so was the whoever was new about makeup or so-and-so was the one who knew

40:33about abortion and this kind of stuff. And one of the things that they do is that these angels

40:40sire offspring with human women. And initially, they create the giants. And the giants, when they

40:48die, the spirits or the ghosts or whatever that come from their corpses are the Nephilim.

40:55And so this is- Oh, wow. So they are dead giants. They are expired.

41:02Yeah. And we've got a few different versions of this tradition.

41:07But in the book of Enoch, the Nephilim are not the direct product of this union.

41:15And so when we see Nephilim in the Hebrew bottle, there's only one other place where the Nephilim

41:23are referred to. And it's in, I want to say numbers. And this is where they have the spies

41:28they're sending into the land to see if Canaan is suitable for them to come in and take over and

41:33they come back and go, Oh, yeah, we barely got out of there with their lives. They had the

41:38the Nephilim or these giants, we were like grasshoppers to them. And so which is probably one of the

41:47reasons that we have this statement here, which is kind of peculiar, the Nephilim were in the earth

41:52on those in those days. And also afterwards, because we're about to have the flood wipe

42:00every thing that breathes out. And so all the Nephilim are obviously going to be killed as well.

42:08And so we seem to have somebody who's inserting this story here going like, Oh, we got an issue

42:13here, boss. We'll just write that they were there afterwards as well. Okay, that'll work.

42:17They had snorkels. They were fine. Yeah. Through the flood.

42:21Very tall. So they're there nose. Yeah. Not go below the the water line.

42:28And if I recall the the book of Enoch, the first enoch says that the the giants were like 450 feet

42:34tall or something like that. Oh, that is that's quite tall. Yeah, pretty big. Yeah, not Goliath.

42:39Yeah, not Goliath, six foot four. But yeah, some we're not we're not talking cubits in a span.

42:47We're talking up there. Yeah. But you see the the influence of this tradition in a number of

42:54different places within early Jewish literature and early Christian literature and in the Bible.

42:59For instance, there's a part in one of the epistles of Peter where it talks about the

43:05disobedient angels in the days of Noah. And that's a reference to this. We've talked about the book

43:12of Jude, where it talks about Sodom and Gomorrah pursuing strange flesh or other flesh,

43:20sarcosa terrace, which would be other flesh. And this is most likely a reference to this idea that

43:28angelic or intercourse between angels and humans is is a big no no. Like this is the great sin

43:35that brought evil into the world is these angels having intercourse with the human women. And so

43:44that becomes the symbol of everything that's wrong is that intercourse. And there were even

43:50debates about whether or not this could actually happen. We see rabbinic debates about whether

43:58angels were sexually compatible with humans. And you know, some of them are saying, Oh, well,

44:03what it really means is that the angels were in the room when the women were having intercourse

44:09with their husbands. And so that's what made their children all messed up. And I don't think

44:14that accounts for a 400 foot tall person, to be perfectly honest with you. You know what? It does

44:19not tag all the bases. You are you are correct. And so I can see why they would want to

44:27why they would want to distance themselves from this idea. This idea is I mean,

44:35it's more is I think it's fascinating. I think it's interesting. But it is a it is a rough one.

44:41I'm also confused. Let me ask you this. I know that you you're going down a path. We'll get back to

44:45it. But I I suppose it would be the height of foolishness for me to suggest, are there

44:51female angels that then took husbands of humans? Or is it just male angels taking female humans?

45:05as their as their mates? I I do not recall any references to female angels. And

45:12there is always a possibility that I am entirely wrong, but I don't recall any. And I do recall

45:22thinking that the idea of female angels is entirely absent from this part of early Judaism. Okay.

45:28So I'm going to say no, but I could be proven wrong. And if there's a listener out there who

45:34can prove me wrong, please do so. I love it. So getting back to the path, these angels do not

45:42escape accountability. God punishes them. And this is another part of the book of Enoch.

45:48And one of the things that happens is they they get cast down some of them, some of the named

45:54angels are bound in the Valley of Hinnam, which is associated with child sacrifice in the Hebrew

46:02Bible later is a symbol of hell. And we've talked about that a little bit.

46:07Yeah. And so this, this idea that these angels and the, the unrighteous dead are going to be

46:15kind of inhabiting this, this realm is probably what starts the ball rolling on this idea of

46:26postmortem divine punishment, of hell. And so this tradition and the literature, the

46:34anarchic literature sits at the foundation of a lot of the ideas that are going to be developing

46:40within early Christianity and down to today. And so when we, when we talk about fallen angels,

46:47when we talk about things like hell, when we look at some of this literature that is very

46:55prudish about sex, a lot of this is based on these traditions that were in circulation and

47:00Greco-Roman period Judaism about disobedient angels coming down and inappropriately having

47:07sex with human women, which is one of the reasons that like in the New Testament,

47:10people are neither married nor are given in marriage in heaven, but are as the angels of heaven.

47:17This is a way to say, not the bad angels who had sex, they're going to be like the celibate,

47:25good angels who are still up in heaven. So there are a lot of different ways that we see echoes

47:30and vestiges of this tradition within the Bible and elsewhere in early Christianity. And the book

47:38of Jude, I didn't mention it earlier, but the book of Jude actually directly quotes the book

47:43of Enoch. And so when people talk about the book of Enoch not being scripture, not being

47:48authoritative, not being inspired, one of the authors of a New Testament text certainly thought

47:54it was all of those things. And so we're rejecting that author's estimation of the book of Enoch when

48:03they quote Enoch and say the seventh from Adam and then shares a quote directly from the book of Enoch.

48:10So we skip right over this over Genesis 6 when people are reading this. It's weird. We don't

48:16know what to make of it. It's just these two passages. These two passages have had an immeasurable

48:23impact on the development of Greco-Roman period Judaism, which is the seedbed for Christianity.

48:30And so we see the echoes of this tradition down to today and so many of the ideologies,

48:38so many of the stories and so many of the traditions of Christianity and even to a much

48:45lesser extent within Judaism. Yeah, you know, it is easy when you don't understand something,

48:53you know, that you're reading in the Bible to skip down, especially when you know that like

48:58half a page down, we're starting a very familiar story of Noah. And you just want to get to the

49:06good stuff on that. But like, yeah, there's this whole section that is befuddling and confounding

49:17and fascinating. And I think that's one of the reasons we have the book of Enoch is because

49:22it's so befuddling. And so they, you know, we couldn't help but try to fill in the gaps because

49:28we go from, you know, these angels, they took wives of the women and then they had children with them

49:35and then God saw that the wickedness of humanity was too much. And so what happens between verse

49:41four and five, that this results in all this wickedness and you get the development of this

49:46tradition. Oh, well, maybe these angels were wicked angels and maybe they taught humanity,

49:50all this wickedness and all this violence. And so it's kind of filling in the gaps in this

49:56kind of fractured, kind of stuttered story that is probably the result of people cobbling

50:04together different traditions to just try to get some kind of rough narrative out the door.

50:11Yeah. Actually, that's really cool that the book of Enoch would go through that and at least

50:20attempt to fill in those gaps because it is confusing to jump straight to, well,

50:28everybody just got wicked. We got to kill all of them now. Yeah. And I think there's no,

50:34there's no line drawn in Genesis that makes any sense to me whatsoever about how we got to that

50:42level of evil that the Lord had to kill everyone. Yeah. It's, and, but this is how some of these

50:50stories go. It's just like, we're in verse one, it's like, so it turns out everybody was evil.

50:56And, you know, but later on, people are like, we should probably kind of ease our way into this

51:02one. We need to base. Although I got to say, whoever it was that inserted the Nephilim as like,

51:08an explanation, you didn't do a great job. Like, how does that reflect on humanity that, you know,

51:16that the sons of God dive in and start taking mortal wives? Yeah. How's that our fault?

51:24Why are you blaming us for that? Yeah. Yeah. And I, and I, and I think, you know, a lot of people

51:30use this kind of pejoratively or facetiously, but I think first Enoch is like one of our earliest

51:37really good examples of fan fiction. Yeah. This is taking the story and going,

51:42needs more. I'm gonna write my own version of this. I love it. Yeah. So, and, you know, including all

51:50of the kissy face and stuff like that, that so frequently goes on in the fan fiction.

51:55Well, you got to include it. You got to, you got to jazz it up somehow. That sells books.

51:59I do want to get to, we, we teased it a little bit. How, so you have talked about, to me at least,

52:07how Nephilim and giants are sort of showing up in creators. Yeah. Like videos and stuff. Yeah.

52:15Talk a little bit about how people are talking about that, what, what they're saying and, and, and

52:22like why that might be coming out. Well, a lot of people are only recently finding out about the

52:28book of Enoch and think it's fascinating and think, well, this has been hidden from us for so long and,

52:32and think this makes so much sense of the world around them. And so they want it to be

52:37something that is historical and something that is accurate, just as much as they believe the Bible

52:43to be historical and accurate. So where did all these giants go? And, and so there is a remarkably

52:51durable contingent of conspiracy theorists and social media folk who think that there are giants

52:59hiding out around the world and I think we're still alive. Yeah, still alive. Oh, and, and like

53:05you hear this a lot about Kandahar, they're, I don't know what the story is, but everybody knows

53:13a soldier who knows somebody in the army who can confirm the story that there are caves with giants

53:21in Kandahar and the US military came across them and they're hiding this. And you know, once you get

53:26the military into the conspiracy theory, I mean, that's solid gold. Yeah, yeah, like somebody's gonna

53:33take that and run with it because the military is ultimately the source of all of our problems and

53:39also the solution. Right. If Toby Keith is to be believed, which he should not be except for his

53:47song, I should have been a cowboy. I think that was Toby Keith. Was that Toby Keith? I don't know,

53:52I could be wrong. That might not be Toby Keith. Another another way in which you might be wrong

53:56on this podcast. I, this is a bad episode for you. They're they're piling up. And but we see,

54:02I forget what country was it in Switzerland? Somebody somebody was taking video driving

54:08in there was a mountain off in the distance. And there were some radio towers, but they could have

54:14sworn they saw a move. And so they they thought they were giants. And then like bizarre idea of us

54:22using Nephilim now just to hold up our wires or yeah, yeah, here hold this dish and angle it

54:29exactly in this direction. Yes, we need to. And there's a, I don't know if it's true or not,

54:35but a lot of places are reporting that whoever recorded that video that that person actually

54:40died shortly after that. And so obviously the military is involved again,

54:47assassinated them. And there's like supposed to be a UN base or something like that up there.

54:54And so there's there's no end of the imagination of folks who who want first Enoch to be the thread

55:02that that ties all of this together, because giants are just so sexy these days, so hot right now.

55:10And yeah, it's driving me up the wall. Well, look, look for giants everywhere you go. Maybe

55:18look for their noses to be appearing above the the surface of the ocean, because apparently

55:24they can survive floods. So why not? Maybe look for them under the Euphrates. You never know they

55:33could be anywhere chained up as just like the angels are. We're gonna have to do an episode on

55:39angels, I think, coming soon. Yeah, that would be really cool. There's a there the whole concept is

55:45it gets weird, man. So we'll get into that for now. That's it. Thank you guys for tuning into

55:53this week's show. If you would like an ad-free version of our of our show, we can head on.

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56:21to contact us, you can reach out at contact@dataoverdogmapod.com. Dan, thanks so much for

56:28another great episode. Thank you. Bye, everybody. Bye, everyone.

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