Ep 28: Angels and Demons

00:00There's the cherubim which are, they have four faces, an eagle face, a human face, an

00:08ox and a lion face.

00:11It does kind of have the feel of a design by committee, doesn't it?

00:14It kind of has a feel of like a whole bunch of guys sitting around and they're like, "Well,

00:19how are we going to get the bowl in there?

00:21Well, you could have the bowl's feet."

00:23Somebody's leaning over the shoulder of somebody on a drafting table with more eyes.

00:28Yeah.

00:29Don't know more eyes.

00:31Hey everybody, I am Dan McClellan.

00:36And I'm Dan Beecher.

00:37And you are listening to the Data Over Dogma podcast where we try to give the public more

00:42access to the academic study of the Bible and religion and combat the spread of misinformation

00:49about the same.

00:50How are things today, Dan?

00:51You know, it's fall here in Salt Lake City, it's gorgeous, prettiest fall we've had in

00:56a long time.

00:57I'm having a good time.

00:59So today's show, Dan, we're going to dive into something that I'm kind of excited about.

01:05With apologies to Dan Brown, again, we are going to dive into actual angels and demons.

01:13All right.

01:14Let's launch into our first segment right now, Getting Angelic.

01:20Getting Angelic.

01:21That sounds wonderful.

01:24You couldn't think of anything more clever than that.

01:26Oh, look, we didn't plan anything ahead.

01:28So we're just speaking extemporaneously at that.

01:31We're off the cuff, baby.

01:33That's all I got right now.

01:34I never took any improv classes.

01:36I don't know if you have, but I've never taken any improv classes and I think it should.

01:40But I wasn't great at it.

01:43So there's that.

01:45Anyway, here we are.

01:47The Bible talks about angels.

01:49It does.

01:50Humans talk about angels, Christians and Jews talk about angels.

01:55This is a, I don't know how much Jews talk about angels.

01:57I just know that the Hebrew Bible talks about angels, but it's confusing to me.

02:03I've read a lot of weird and conflicting ideas about what an angel actually is.

02:10So I think it's time we dig in.

02:13We get to the bottom of what these things are and what purpose they serve at various

02:20points in the Bible.

02:21It seems like they're different in different places.

02:23I could be mistaken on that.

02:26So yeah, let's start off with like, if there is an overview, do we know what an angel actually

02:34is?

02:35Well, we can start with the word angel in English, which is an English transliteration

02:42that is rooted in the Greek word, angelos, which comes from a root that means to send.

02:49So this is a one who is sent, it's kind of like an emissary and the interesting thing

02:55is nothing about the word in Greek has any divine denotation.

03:03You can use that word in reference to humans.

03:06So when our word angel kind of has a lot of baggage that comes along with it, you could

03:12translate that word messenger or emissary or something like that.

03:17And it could be a perfectly fine translation of the Bible.

03:22We take all that baggage that we have accumulated over the last 2000 years and we put it back

03:27on our translations when we render angel.

03:30And the same is true of the Hebrew.

03:32The word there is malach, which again is one who is sent an emissary coming from a verbal

03:38root that means to send.

03:41And in the Hebrew Bible, you have the word used in reference to human messengers as well.

03:47So when you it says, Saul sent messengers or something like that, that's malachim, the

03:53word that sometimes we translate angels and sometimes we translate messengers rather arbitrarily.

03:58We decide that one's that one's more divine.

04:01That one's probably just a human one.

04:03So it's kind of when we use the word angel, it's kind of a bit of a mistranslation in

04:11that regard.

04:14There are places where we do see this concept developing of a specific type of divine messenger,

04:21but it does not have unique terminology uses the same terminology.

04:25We've encountered this angel slash messenger thing before when we talked about lot and the

04:33people that came into his city and that he took in who were messengers who are it's translated

04:40as angels, but they seem to just be dudes, they seem to just be people.

04:46Yeah.

04:47And this is this is also something pretty important to note about the Hebrew Bible is when we have

04:53a discussion, there's a narrative involving these individuals.

05:00They get confused for humans.

05:02They are referred to using words like each, which means man.

05:07There's no indication that they are these glorious, shiny entities that strike fear in

05:13the hearts of the people around them.

05:16Or they are accompanied by harps and trumpets and have wings or anything like that.

05:22They get confused for humans and there are even passages where God themselves seems to

05:28be confused for a human as well.

05:30So we have a trajectory developing because that's not the case in the New Testament and

05:36we'll get to why that's not the case in the New Testament later.

05:40But first, let's let's stay in the Hebrew Bible a little bit and talk about what where

05:47likely the concept of an angel came from.

05:51Okay.

05:52So we have, I don't know if we've talked a bunch about the Eucharitic literature on

05:57our show yet mentioned it, but maybe refresh people to help us know what that is.

06:03So Eucharit was a city, a somewhat large city state that's existed between around 1500 BCE

06:10and about 1200 BCE.

06:12It was destroyed with the Bronze Age collapse shortly after 1200 BCE and it's near the coast

06:19in Syria.

06:21And in the 1920s, I think 1929, somebody stumbled across a sarcophagus and archaeologists descended

06:30upon the area, uncovered the city and they were like, this is probably Eucharit.

06:37And they found about a thousand texts there that were written in a cuneiform script.

06:43However, rather than having hundreds of different signs, they only had, I think, around 30,

06:51which indicates it's alphabetic.

06:53It is not syllabic.

06:54It's not ideographic, but alphabetic.

06:57And we all know what all of those things are so that we get what alphabetic means, we're

07:04using sounds to build words.

07:06Right.

07:07So where each letter represents an individual sound, yeah.

07:10And so they were like, ah, this is probably related to other Northwest Semitic languages

07:15that are being used in this area around this time period.

07:18They were able to decipher the languages very closely related to Hebrew and they found receipts,

07:22they found letters, they found contracts.

07:25They found mythological texts, they found ritual texts, mentioning a lot of characters

07:31that are even mentioned in the Bible, divine figures, for instance.

07:34And this gives us a ton of information about Syria in this time period about the development

07:42of Northwest Semitic languages and even gives a lot of hints about what's going on in the

07:46Hebrew Bible.

07:48Now they have messengers that are basically using the same eucharitic version of the Hebrew

07:55word from which we get malach, this word that we frequently translate angel.

08:02These are divine messengers.

08:03However, in the eucharitic literature, they are messengers going between the gods.

08:08They're not messengers that are sent to humans, gods, the gods themselves are the ones who

08:13visit humans, but they send messengers between themselves.

08:18So they're framing the heavens as a divine kingdom bureaucracy thing where they will send

08:29me messengers, send a message to so-and-so and they run down the valley, they run up the

08:33hill on the other side.

08:34They get on a bike and they travel through Manhattan.

08:40And this is probably the idea about messengers that was these specific type of messengers

08:45that was widespread when we get the development of Hebrew and we start to get the earliest

08:50biblical narratives.

08:52But in the Hebrew Bible, I would argue that the earliest references that we have to this

08:58messenger are, well, the earliest narratives in the Hebrew Bible where we see a messenger,

09:04we see a specific kind of messenger, the malach Adonai or the malach Elohim.

09:09The messenger of Adonai or the messenger of God.

09:13This seems like a specific, individuated messenger who is doing things that normally only God

09:19would do.

09:20So we see this in Exodus three where Moses comes across the burning bush and it says

09:28in verse two of Exodus three, the messenger of Adonai called out to Moses from the flame

09:35of fire in the burning bush and then in verse six that messenger says, I am the God of Israel,

09:41the God or the God, I am the God of your father, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the

09:45God of Jacob.

09:47And so there's kind of a conflated identity going on here between the messenger and God

09:51themselves.

09:52We see this with Hagar when she's out in the wilderness.

09:56We see this with Abraham.

09:58We see this with Gideon in the book of Judges.

10:01We see that this with Minoah and his wife, these are the parents of Samson.

10:06We have a messenger of Adonai or of God and they are confused for God themselves.

10:12And as I argued in my book, this is probably a case where the original version of these

10:18stories involved God themselves.

10:21But at some point, as they are trying to inflate God and exalt God, hire over the gods

10:29of the other nations, they get a little uncomfortable with the idea that God can sit down by the

10:34campfire and enjoy a nice piece of bread with Abraham or Sarah or Minoah and his wife.

10:41And so they insert this word from messenger.

10:46And now we have this story about someone who is both divine and also some kind of distinct

10:54messenger and I am developing an argument that angels originate in the use of this word

11:05as a bit of an obscurant a way to hide the presence of God themselves in these early

11:14narratives.

11:15Some way to put a layer of a layer between the people and God.

11:22We've got middle management going on between the one upstairs and the ones in the trenches.

11:33And so this happens in a number of different places, but I would argue that from this we

11:38get this idea that there are these entities that act as go-betweens between God and humanity.

11:46Because you don't just see regular old angels in these early narratives.

11:51It's only the angel of the Lord, the angel of God in these early narratives.

11:57It's in later biblical literature, Hebrew Bible literature, where we start to see these

12:03people popping up, such as Genesis 18 and 19, where we have the messengers coming into

12:09Sodom and staying with Lot.

12:12And initially they're traveling with God themselves in Genesis 18 when they stopped

12:17by Abraham's encampments and chat with him for a while before the two travel on to Sodom.

12:26And there are scholars who would argue that this text has been edited and there are later

12:31layers on here, but it's probably also not an incredibly early text in and of itself.

12:38So I would argue that that is a likely origin for the concept of some kind of divine messenger.

12:46And so in contra distinction with the way these messengers operate in the other literature

12:51of that time period, they don't have a lot of stories about communication between the

12:56gods and the Hebrew Bible.

12:58And so instead they're going to use this messenger as a way to mediate communication between God

13:06and humans.

13:07Okay.

13:08I mean, there are moments where we have God talking to the divine counsel like we've talked

13:13about before, but yeah, they're not sending, they're not like, yeah, getting their speedy

13:20delivery guy to go and send it off.

13:24I do know that eventually the idea, so the idea of angels morphs out of messenger and

13:35into some really interesting different concepts.

13:41Yeah, so I'm thinking right now of Ezekiel's vision of the cherubim who are guarding the

13:51Garden of Eden, making sure that none of us get back in and far from cute little babies

13:59with baby little wings that are like little chubby, cheeked cupids or whatever, right?

14:07Ezekiel has a totally different look for the cherubim.

14:11Yeah.

14:12So we have a few different words that are used in Ezekiel.

14:15We have living beings.

14:18We have Ophaneem, which this means wheels.

14:22And so something as popular on social media is to talk about biblically accurate angels

14:28and then have a giant series of wheels with eyes all over them and wings and all this

14:33kind of stuff.

14:34Yeah, which is understandably terrifying.

14:38Yeah.

14:39That's freaky.

14:41It's some literary imagery that people are not, well, now we are.

14:46But a long time ago, people were not used to actually seeing it represented on paper.

14:52But yeah, it's a freaky circle.

14:59And the problem here is that there's not a word of this text that identifies them as

15:04angels.

15:05Okay.

15:06That is a post-biblical identification because later on down the road, we're going to create

15:11this entire hierarchy of the angels and the heavens.

15:17And then we're going to look back on words like cherubim, seraphim, Ophaneem and other

15:24entities that are never described as angels in the biblical text.

15:28And we're going to say they're angels.

15:31And there's, there's a, so there's a process that's taking place here.

15:34We start with God's meeting with humanity.

15:37We don't like that very much.

15:39Let's get something in between them.

15:40Okay.

15:41We got this malach.

15:42We got angels now.

15:43When we get into the Greco-Roman period, we have this problem of the gods of the nations

15:50and particularly during the Exilic period when, cause Adonai is the God only of Israel.

15:57And Israel is outside of Israel.

16:01How are we supposed to worship the God that is only worshiped inside of Israel?

16:04This creates this, this big problem we have in the Psalms.

16:09How can we sing the song about Adonai in a foreign land?

16:13And so to facilitate the worship of Adonai on the banks of the river, the Tigris and the

16:20Euphrates in Babylon, we got to come up with some way to make God accessible.

16:25Ezekiel actually mobilizes the divine throne.

16:28Ezekiel's like, man, what if God's throne had wheels and it could fly?

16:34And then it could come here to Babylon and then we wouldn't have to be in Israel.

16:41And that's more or less what, what the story in Ezekiel is, is trying to do.

16:45Say, we don't need the table.

16:47I got to say, Ezekiel, well, we'll just say that he had a very active imagination.

16:53Yeah.

16:54There are those who would theorize that maybe he had some imagination aids that he was using

17:01because supplementing his imagination.

17:04Because oh my gosh, yeah, I mean, you mentioned the wheels with the eyes, but like, can I

17:10describe some of the other things that you talked about?

17:13There's the cherubim, which are, they have four faces, an eagle face, a human face, an

17:20ox and a lion face, straight legs with four wings, one of one set of which covers their

17:27body and the other while the other set flies, which I think is kind of funny.

17:31And then like cow hooves for meat, yeah, that I don't know what to do with that.

17:38That's a crazy looking, that's a crazy looking dude.

17:42I think faces.

17:43Yeah.

17:44And today we can gin up imagery of this and we can say that looks really weird.

17:50Yeah, somebody do that, go to mid-journey, have AI, tell AI what angels look like or non-angels,

17:59sorry.

18:00Yeah.

18:01Well, and anciently this would have been, they're literally constructing this out of these kind

18:10of symbolic images.

18:11So I don't think that what we have is somebody who had a weird dream and then woke up and

18:17tried to describe it.

18:18I think what we have is a writer sitting down and going, "Well, we got to get these symbols

18:24in here and I want to make it say this and I want to make it represent that."

18:27Okay, so we're going to have four faces, ones and ox, ones a bull, ones a human, and they're

18:31going to have six wings and they're also drawing from Isaiah 6, which has the seraphim and they

18:37have six wings and with two wings, they covered the crotchal region and with two wings, they

18:44flew and stuff like that.

18:46So it's imagery that's out there in the Zeitgeist already and they're kind of consolidating

18:50it all and saying it's all in one big ball.

18:53It does kind of have the feel of a design by committee, doesn't it?

18:57It has a feel of like a whole bunch of guys sitting around and they're like, "Well, how

19:02are we going to get the bull in there?

19:04Well, you could have the bull's feet, okay, well, how are we going to get a lion in?

19:09Wow, let's give it a lion head as well."

19:11We already gave it a person head.

19:13No, no, let's, you know what, we can have as many heads as we want.

19:16How one of the heads do we want?

19:18Somebody's leaning over the shoulder of somebody on a drafting table with more eyes.

19:21Yeah.

19:22No, more eyes.

19:26So we've got all these creatures and this is kind of a way to just imagine what's going

19:32on up in the heavens.

19:33They don't really have any guardrails, any ceiling on what the heavens are like.

19:37And so they're reaching out for more and more powerful imagery.

19:43And so Ezekiel is one of the ones who's most, both Sifras about this and is most productive

19:49about this.

19:50But one of the things that they have to do is do something about the gods of the nations.

19:56In prehistoric Israel, Adonai was the god of Israel, but every other nation had their

20:01own patron deity, had their own god.

20:03In the exile and into the Greco-Roman period, we come up with this idea, the pantheon is

20:10made up of the high deity, the children of the high deity, the second tier.

20:15We might have some craftsmen deities, but then the servile deities, the servant deities,

20:19the messengers are on the bottom tier.

20:21And what they did to try to exalt Adonai, the god of Israel over the other gods of the

20:26nations, was basically smoosh them all down and say, you're all angels now.

20:33And God's the only one who's still a full-fledged deity.

20:39And this is what I have argued in peer-reviewed publications that Psalm 82 is doing, where

20:46God stands amidst the gods and judges.

20:49And then you have this statement toward the end, you are God's children of the most high,

20:53but you will all die like men and fall like any prince.

20:57And here the idea is we've got to depose the gods of the nations.

21:01And then in the last verse, the psalmist calls on God to rise up for you will inherit all

21:06nations.

21:07And so what this does is it empties the seats on the divine council and then the god of Israel

21:13takes over rule of all the nations.

21:15And now...

21:16Are you sure you're not thinking of Palpatine in this?

21:20I'm a Star Trek guy, myself, so I don't know who you're talking about.

21:25Yeah, right.

21:26Well, you know what, let's pause right now.

21:29We'll go to a commercial and we'll come back with the whole divine, with the demotion of

21:34the divine council and how that leads more into angels.

21:39We'll be right back.

21:40All right, when last we left, we had gods being demoted down to angels.

21:45Where do we go from here?

21:47So where we go from here is the increased literacy and the increased literary productiveness

21:54of Judaism in the Greco-Roman period.

21:57So we're getting a lot more people who can read and write, and they're producing a lot

22:00more literature.

22:01This is where a lot of the apocryphal, a lot of the pseudopographical literature is born,

22:06is in the Greco-Roman period.

22:08And we get a lot more speculation about what's going on up in the heavens.

22:11And so we've had a bunch of different ways to try to handle the divine council, making

22:16them angels, condemning them to mortality.

22:20But we've still got our scriptural heritage and they're still there.

22:24So you still have to deal with them in some way.

22:28And so now that they're all angels, we're starting to come up with theories about what's

22:34going on in the heavens.

22:35Okay, they have responsibility over different aspects of the functioning of the universe.

22:42And we're going to think of them kind of like a military hierarchy or a bureaucratic hierarchy

22:48or something like that.

22:49And so they have different stations.

22:50We've got general angels and we've got foot soldier angels and we've got all these different

22:55stations and then they're going to come up with names for them.

23:00And most of them have L on the end.

23:03So we've got, and the book of Enoch is one of the most prolific in this regard because

23:08it comes up with all of these angels who come down to Mount Herman with Shemi Hazah, which

23:15is the main baddie in the early parts of the book of Enoch and the name all these angels

23:21that came with him.

23:23And so you've got a very productive period where we're coming up with all these different

23:28ideas about angels.

23:29And this is where we're starting to look back on some of these entities from the earlier

23:33Hebrew Bible and we're starting to incorporate them into this angelic hierarchy.

23:39And this is also where we get the rise of, or the beginnings of concepts of demons, which

23:45we'll get to a little later.

23:48But we have the production of an entire hierarchy of the heavens.

23:54And one, as we move into the New Testament, we are adopting, we're looking back at the

24:00Hebrew Bible through the lens provided by Greco-Roman period Judaism.

24:05And so the types of things that we see going on with the messenger of the Lord in the Hebrew

24:13Bible and with God themselves are now consolidated within these angels.

24:18So when we get into the enunciation from Mary and John the Baptist mother, they're visited

24:25by angels and they're all shiny and scary and they're afraid they're going to die.

24:30And this reflects precisely the visitations of the Malach Adonai, the angel of the Lord

24:37in the Hebrew Bible where Gideon and Moses and Hagar and these others are afraid they're

24:43going to die or are surprised that they have seen God and have managed to survive.

24:50And so those things are kind of systematized.

24:54And now when angels visit humans, they're always shiny and frightening.

24:58In the Hebrew Bible, that's not the case.

25:01With God, it's the case.

25:02And then once we put the angel in that position, now all of a sudden angels are shiny and frightening.

25:10And so the angels of the New Testament are kind of the accumulation of everything that

25:17has been gathered as part of the Jewish scriptural heritage from the early Hebrew Bible all the

25:23way down to through the anochic and other pseudopographical and apocryphal literature

25:29down to the New Testament.

25:32So New Testament angels very different from Hebrew Bible angels.

25:36And they have names.

25:37They get to say, I am the angel Gabriel.

25:40And they have identities and they have assignments and you start to get concepts of, well, this

25:47is the angel that carries prayers up to the presence of God.

25:51And this is the angel of the presence or something like that.

25:55This is the one that stands in the presence of God at all times.

25:58Are words like archangel?

26:00Are those biblical or are those applied afterwards?

26:05Oh, gosh.

26:07You caught me.

26:08Ah-ha.

26:09Off guard there.

26:10I got you.

26:11All right.

26:12I want to say, I want to say archangel is somewhere in the, no, is it in Daniel?

26:19I think it might be in Daniel.

26:20So Daniel is written in the Greco-Roman period.

26:22This is written, the final form of it comes in the 160s BCE.

26:28And there I mentioned that God's, the nations had their own gods.

26:32But then in Daniel, you have this reference to the Prince over Persia and the Prince of

26:37Greece.

26:38And then Michael is described as the, I'm going to say Michael is described as the archangel.

26:44The archangel or a head angel.

26:47And this is a reflection of this idea that the gods of the nations have now become guardian

26:52angels.

26:53So the Prince of Persia and the Prince of Greece are the guardian angels who 600 years

27:00earlier would have been the patron deity of Persia and the patron deity of Greece.

27:05Okay.

27:06I, I, I'm just on Wikipedia right now under the archangel thing.

27:11And it says that in Judaism, the highest ranking angels, such as Michael Raphael, Gabriel and

27:16Uriel, who are usually referred to as archangels in English are given the title of Sarim.

27:24Sarim.

27:25Yeah.

27:26Princess.

27:27Okay.

27:28So that's what we're talking about.

27:29Yeah.

27:30So Jude, the, the book of Jude in the New Testament only has one chapter, verse nine, refers

27:35to Michael as archangulos, the archangel.

27:39Okay.

27:40So that's that Greco-Roman period Jewish tradition.

27:44And Jude is quoting directly from Enoch in their, in their epistle as well.

27:49So that's where the idea of the archangel is, is coming from.

27:52And that is probably, yeah, I think that might be the only time that word comes up.

28:00You were just talking about, about sort of ranking the angels, you know, just different

28:05ranks.

28:06And that seems like the highest rank, right?

28:07Yeah.

28:08Like these, these are considered the highest possible angel.

28:11Yeah.

28:12And then when you, they have the best cars for delivering messages.

28:17Right.

28:18They get the, the corner offices in heaven with the best view.

28:23And when you get into early Christianity and early Judaism, you have more traditions

28:28about angels who are, you, you, you know, recite an incantation for this angel.

28:36If you have the gout, you cite an incantation for this angel, if somebody is trying to

28:44murder you.

28:45Like you have all different kinds of situations where there are angels who are assigned to

28:49oversee that.

28:50It's almost a patron saint idea.

28:52Yeah.

28:53Yeah.

28:54It's very much.

28:55And so the whole patron saint idea, I would, and I don't know how thoroughly it's been

28:59argued, but it very much matches up with the very early idea of the children of God, the,

29:07the second tier deities patrons over the nations who have responsibilities over the functioning

29:13of the universe, which then becomes angels, which then becomes special deceased folks.

29:20So it's, it's a very similar framework that has been repatriated with different types of

29:27individuals as the, as the theology is developing and changing.

29:32Okay.

29:33I actually really like thinking of it in, along this, this sort of continuum of time as, as

29:39they evolve in, and, and conceptually are given sort of more, less ambiguous characteristics,

29:48and they become more and more real things.

29:53I do feel like, you know, you said, you said that they're shiny, which I is actually kind

29:59of how they're referred to, you know, when they visit, when Gabriel visits Mary or whatever.

30:06But are they people?

30:07Yeah.

30:08I mean, surely the person that gave, you know, Gabriel, when Gabriel visits Mary, she's not

30:14seeing a, you know, a lion face and a bear face and a bear face.

30:18No.

30:19No, this, this is an anthropomorphic entity, overwhelmingly, they are, they are anthropomorphic,

30:25which is why I, and I haven't looked into it, I probably should, but I would imagine the,

30:31the kind of lumping in of the seraphim and the ophanim and the cherubim and all these

30:36others as angels is probably something that seems like it is late antique period, maybe

30:42even medieval.

30:43I don't think that's going on yet in the biblical period.

30:48I could be wrong.

30:50And, and for anyone who wants to go research more about, particularly angels, Annette Yoshiko

30:56Reed is a phenomenal scholar who has published some wonderful texts on this demons, angels

31:02and writing in ancient Judaism is a wonderful text, fallen angels in the history of Judaism

31:07and Christianity, wonderful book, edited volume, she published a paper called when did diamond

31:14ace become demons, so she's done a lot of great work on this.

31:18And so if she happens to hear this episode and is like, Dan is wrong about all of this,

31:23listen to her and not to me because she knows this much better than I do.

31:28And, and if we get enough wrong, we may have to have her on the show, we'll, we'll figure

31:31something out.

31:32Yeah.

31:33Yeah.

31:34All right.

31:35Well, I think that's a good primer on, uh, on angels.

31:37Do you, is there anything else that we need to add to it or, um, at this point, giving me

31:41license to just ramble more is probably going to be a serious to, yeah.

31:45Okay.

31:46All right.

31:47Well, then we will move on, uh, to our next segment, I don't know.

31:50What do you want to call it?

31:51We didn't work this out.

31:52So let's just say, you know, we could put, we can get demonic and getting demonic.

31:57We got an angelic.

31:58Now we're going to get demonic.

32:02So the demons, we've got angels.

32:05Now I, I've read a little bit about demons, uh, demonism, you know, demonology is, is

32:14a thing.

32:15It is.

32:16I don't know.

32:17And, and it really has taken on a life of its own, even modern new, uh, theologies have

32:25just turned demons into everything's a demon now.

32:29You can't, you can't go anywhere without, there's just demons in everybody, demons

32:34that are being exercised out of people, demons are what, you know, cause of wokeness.

32:40If you're in, in, if you go to certain churches, what is the, uh, what is his name, Mark Driscoll?

32:45Yeah.

32:46Yeah.

32:47It was like demons recognize each other.

32:48And you know what?

32:49We're going to play it.

32:50We're going to play that clip.

32:51So hang on.

32:52So here's, here's Mark Driscoll, a pastor, an American pastor, big, important pastor guy

32:58talking about demons and people and wokeness and whatnot.

33:03All the ugliness.

33:05Demons know each other.

33:06And if they're working through people, the demons who are friends introduce the people

33:10to become friends.

33:11And in the days of technology and internet, evil people find each other and they form

33:15sultized and they bond together to do evil and to oppose good.

33:19We call this cancel culture.

33:21We call this progressivism.

33:22We call this woke up.

33:24That's exactly what it is.

33:25It's like, well, how is it so powerful, it's demonic.

33:27How is it so organized?

33:29It's demonic.

33:30How is it so quickly overtaking every area of culture?

33:33It's demonic.

33:34Well, why does no one see it?

33:35Because they call it justice and that's the deception.

33:39So there you have it.

33:40Evil demons meeting each other, their friends, like, is any of what he just said biblically

33:47grounded, none of it.

33:51This is entirely.

33:52Yeah.

33:53This is, this is entirely an attempt to say, okay, we, we've got this idea from the Bible

33:58of demons, now let's make it fit our own day and let's make it serve the interests of

34:04my attempts to structure power and values and the enemy is wokeness.

34:09So I'm going to say everything that is woke is, is demonic and we're going to come up

34:13with some kind of framework for, for blaming this all on demons.

34:18And unfortunately, there are a lot of people out there for whom it, it kind of scratches

34:22an intuitive itch.

34:24It makes them feel justified in their own perspectives and their own insecurities and

34:29fears about the world around them.

34:31And so it just takes on a life of its own and not a word of it has anything to do with

34:37anything in the Bible related to demons.

34:41And in the Hebrew Bible, you have maybe one reference to demons.

34:47Oh, okay.

34:48So, okay.

34:49What's, let's start with that.

34:51What is that?

34:52Okay, it's Deuteronomy 32 17, we get this word shadim and it says, let me pull up the

34:59Hebrew here just so I don't misquote it because, because I don't want to get more letters.

35:05Have we ever gotten a letter?

35:06Probably not.

35:07Hopefully people don't know where we live.

35:10Okay.

35:11So, that is not an invitation for you guys to try and track us down here.

35:17And they sacrifice to shadim lo Elohim lo yadahum.

35:24So it says, they sacrifice to shadim, not to to deity, to gods they did not know.

35:32And so we have two parallel statements and it's referring to these shadim as deities

35:38of some kind.

35:39But the word shadim is widely interpreted as a reference to some kind of deity, some kind

35:45of demon, and we get the translation of this Hebrew word in the Septuagint, the ancient

35:50Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible as Daimonese or demons or Daimonios or however you want

36:00to understand that.

36:02And so that's probably the best candidate for a reference to demons in the Hebrew Bible.

36:09And it's basically saying these folks were sacrificing to the wrong deities.

36:16And so the idea is demons are bad deities, deities we don't like.

36:20Okay.

36:21So, so the earliest idea is just, and you know, I think a lot of, a lot of what I hear people

36:30like Pastor Driscoll hollering about in terms of demons, demons, they often will bring in

36:38other past deities, they'll bring in ball and they'll bring in, you know, these other

36:43molek or whatever.

36:45And it feels like they're, what they're doing is just any, any non-audonai deity we then

36:56conflate with or, or, or demote to demon.

37:00Yeah.

37:01Does that seem fair?

37:02Yeah.

37:03And it's because the goal is to kind of reduce everything to a black and a white, a good

37:08and a bad, evil and not evil, good.

37:13And so everything that's on the opposite side from, from God, the God of Israel is going

37:19to be considered evil.

37:20And so you take things like, like ball, Beelzebub in the New Testament, and I recently posted

37:26a video about this.

37:27So in the New Testament, Beelzebub is equated with Satan and basically all these monstrous

37:36malevolent forces that are mentioned anywhere in the Hebrew Bible all become Satan at one

37:40point or another, whether it's in the New Testament, whether it's in early Christianity.

37:45And Beelzebul is how it's transliterated in the New Testament.

37:49And that's an accurate representation of what this deity's name would have been.

37:53Beelzebub is an editorialization.

37:56So Beelzebul would be balls of wool or Zevu ball, which is a title we know from the Eucharitic

38:01literature means Prince ball or Prince Lord.

38:05They distort it to Beelzebub or balls of move, which would mean Lord of flies.

38:13So it's a way to wag the finger at them and make fun of them.

38:19Right.

38:20But ball was the Northwest Semitic Storm deity, ball was the one who made it rain, who was

38:26the writer of the clouds, ball was the one who facilitated agriculture and all this kind

38:32of stuff.

38:33But all was the deity whose divine profile Adonai came in and took over.

38:37So in we have Psalm 29, we have Isaiah 27 one, we have Psalm 104, we have a bunch of places

38:46where praise that was originally directed at ball was taken over, ye old five finger

38:53discount by people who want to use that stuff to praise Adonai as the one who is now the

39:00real, yeah, ride the clouds.

39:05So the, yeah, the longest standing yonk in human history is of balls divine profile.

39:12And then they want to turn around.

39:13It was a strong yonk.

39:14It was a powerful, that was a power yonk right there.

39:17And then, and then they want to turn around and say, he's the devil.

39:21Yeah.

39:22And it's, it's the inspiration for God's representation in the Hebrew Bible.

39:30And so everything becomes the devil in one form or another.

39:35Now we do have a lot of the inspiration for what we can refer to as demonology in Greco-Roman

39:42period, Judaism, and into the New Testament is drawing from two different sources.

39:46One of them is Mesopotamian.

39:48You did have ideas, and this is related to other traditions from places like Egypt and

39:52elsewhere of malevolent divine forces, mini deities that could possess or occupy your

40:00body and make you sick or make you do bad things.

40:03And they could get in through the main places they could get in through or for the, through

40:07the ears, through the mouth, and for women during menstruation, that was a particularly,

40:13that was a very volatile time.

40:15So they would have incantations that they would pronounce in order to, to keep things

40:21on the outside that you wanted on the outside so that they didn't get in and either make

40:25you sick or make you do bad things.

40:29And you also get some of these ideas of demons coming from the Greco-Roman world.

40:36So by the time you get to the New Testament, you've got this idea that maladies, disabilities,

40:43things like that were the product of some kind of possession that demon has got into someone

40:48and has caused this.

40:51And so in the New Testament, we have Jesus basically going around, healing people from

40:55what would have been just run-of-the-mill conditions or pathologies, but they're being

41:03attributed to some kind of malevolent divine force that has invaded their body.

41:09And so Jesus is the way to get them out.

41:12And in late antique Christianity, in early Judaism, you have a lot of a patropaic amulets

41:19and things like that, that are also being used where they have the divine name or they're

41:24calling on one of these angels that is responsible for this specific malady.

41:28You've used the term "apatropaic" before, but can you just define it again?

41:32It's warding off evil.

41:35So if you have an apatropaic amulet on you, you can ward off evil and the evil eye was

41:41one of the most widespread concepts.

41:44So just a few years ago, there was an amulet that was an anti-evil eye, a patropaic amulet

41:52that was discovered near our bell, which is a mountain northwest corner of Sea of Galilee.

42:01Those of you who come with us to Israel-Palestine next year will have an opportunity to go to

42:06the top of our bell and see the whole of the northern Galilee from there.

42:10But they found an amulet that has an inscription on it and a drawing of somebody stabbing a

42:17woman who is representative of evil and then the evil eye is on the other side.

42:22So the world was just permeated with divine forces, malevolent and benevolent, and anything

42:32that was going wrong was probably because a malevolent force had somehow gained entry

42:39to your body or your spirit or something like that and is wreaking havoc.

42:43And so you had a variety of ways to try to protect yourself, to try to rid yourself if

42:48they did gain entry, and then Jesus kind of comes in and is the one who can take care

42:54of everything for you.

42:55But instead of replacing everything else, you just had Jesus' name slapped onto everything

43:01else.

43:02So you still had people using the a patropaic amulets and everything only, they just had

43:08Jesus' name.

43:09Okay.

43:10Yeah.

43:11I mean, I suppose that's as good as any and that's an upgrade right there.

43:17Yeah.

43:18And we're just making it better.

43:19And this down to this very day, you have similar ideas.

43:23So there was, I want to say his name is Wookie is coming into my head, but it might be

43:30woolly.

43:33I don't think, but in the 19th century, this is a guy who translated a bond to language

43:41Bible.

43:42It might have been Setswana.

43:44I don't remember if that's what it was.

43:46But there's a, there's a word that they use a badimo in this language represents ancestral

43:53spirits.

43:54And in this society, they would appeal to the badimo to aid them in all kinds of different

44:01endeavors.

44:03And so what this individual did, this European Christian who came in to colonize the area

44:09did when he translated the Bible was for the word demon, he rendered badimo.

44:15And the hope was that this would disincentivize people from wanting to engage with the ancestral

44:23spirits.

44:24This would literally demonize those ancestral spirits.

44:28So they would go from being the good guys to being the bad guys.

44:31So he's trying to take their current theology, twist it and, and say, Oh, no, the thing

44:39that you like, that's, those are actually the bad guys.

44:42Yeah, when you read our story, you'll see that they're actually the opponents are the

44:46bad guys and it didn't work because they then started using passages from the, this translation

44:55of the New Testament as their ritual implements and tools for engaging with the badimo.

45:03And so there, there's a, there's an interesting story about, there's an interesting article

45:09or a handful of articles that have been written on this with the whole concept of how we do

45:14Bible translation and, and how people frequently are trying to do Bible translation in order

45:19to manipulate societies.

45:21And sometimes those societies don't take to it as, as well as they, they think they should.

45:27And, and with the adoption of the, the word demon in Greek, demonize didn't really necessarily

45:34refer to a malevolent spirit.

45:36It could refer to your inspiration.

45:40It could refer to, um, they were basically just little gods who did a variety of different

45:45things.

45:46But as another example where we took that and we said, okay, it's just the bad guys now.

45:52It's just a demon.

45:54That's up.

45:55Wow.

45:56That is interesting.

45:57I, I, first of all, I love the idea of little gods, little gods are flying around.

46:02They might be good.

46:03They might be bad.

46:04You don't know.

46:05Now that's the world that I want to live in is, uh, is the world with little gods.

46:09Um, I'm going to, I've got some more questions for you.

46:12We're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back with more questions about demons.

46:18Awesome.

46:19So one of the things that, one of the concepts that I encountered when I was sort of looking

46:24at all of this, and you mentioned it earlier, uh, in the pro, in the show, is the idea that

46:29demons could be fallen angels or the, that there are, what is, what is a fallen angel?

46:36And how does, how does that factor into all of this?

46:39So in this trajectory of the development of the concept of angels, and particularly in

46:42the anarchic literature, we have this story in Genesis six, where the children of God,

46:49the sons of God specifically have a hankering for some human women and they come down and

46:56the, and, uh, the text says they, they make why they made wives of whichever of them they

47:00chose.

47:01Uh, and then they have offspring.

47:04And this story with the anarchic literature, this is basically fan fiction.

47:08So we don't get a ton of detail in most of the stories in the Hebrew Bible, but as we

47:13bring more questions to it and as the, these stories circulate in society and we wonder

47:18about stuff, people are going to come up with answers.

47:21And one of the things is, um, the first enoch is kind of taking this and expanding on it,

47:26innovating on it and telling a new story using this as the inspiration.

47:30And according to this new story, the banalohim, the sons of God are angels and the descent

47:37to go down and, and take wives of the human women is this big story about how they rebel.

47:45And they come down on Mount Hermon with 200 something odd angels and they name a handful

47:49of them.

47:50And this is the origin of, or this is how evil makes its way into humanity.

47:57They didn't know warfare and they did not know about abortion and they did not know

48:03about weaponry and they did not know about makeup.

48:08But these angels come down and they teach humanity, all these things.

48:11And so this is a way to account for the presence of evil in the world by saying these originally

48:16good angels rebelled and their descent to earth becomes this concept of the fall of the angels.

48:25And then later on in first enoch, these angels are going to be punished.

48:29When we get into the rabbinic period and the period of early Christianity, you have a lot

48:34of debates about are angels even sexually compatible with human women?

48:40And so there are different takes on that.

48:42Can angels, do they even have their own agency?

48:45Can they rebel?

48:46So you have different takes on that.

48:47And you have newer interpretations of Genesis 6 that say, no, those were not angels.

48:53Those were humans because that accounts for the whole agency question that accounts for

48:57the sexual compatibility question.

48:59And so people say, well, that was the line of Seth.

49:03And that was all humans who did that.

49:05And so we actually have different ideas about who these entities were, were the angels were

49:10the humans.

49:12It's a free for all basically around this time period.

49:15When we see some of this in the book of Jude, we see some of this in Peter.

49:19We see it in other places, but this story of the fall of the angels is one kind of origin

49:27story for the concept of demons.

49:30And so you also have evil angels and these evil angels also get names that frequently

49:37end in L as well.

49:40And these become soldiers in Satan's army as particularly Christianity further develops

49:50and elaborates on on these angels.

49:52And I'm trying to think of the name of a book.

49:56Saul Olyon is a wonderful Hebrew Bible scholar who published a book, oh man, 30 years ago,

50:04a thousand thousands served him exegesis in the naming of angels in ancient Judaism,

50:10which is about how the naming angels and giving them assignments is kind of a way to say look

50:16how big and grand God's troops are, God's armies are.

50:21And this is a way to further exalt God.

50:23But then the more you also expand on the enemy troops, you kind of further increase the size,

50:32the grandeur, the glory, and also the tension.

50:35And revelation is kind of another attempt to further meditate on what's going on in

50:42the heavens.

50:43And we've got the dragon and we got Satan and we got the one third of the host of heaven

50:49are cast down to earth with Satan.

50:52So this is the idea that the fall of the angels and the lead malevolent angel who becomes Satan.

50:59They took one third of the angels that were up in heaven with them.

51:04And so it's not a single story that is just being represented by different authors.

51:10The story is developing as these authors are coming up with things and as they're responding

51:15to their own circumstances and the times they are a change in, and so the story, it is a

51:19change in at the same time.

51:22And as Christianity and Judaism diverge so to a lot of the practices and a lot of the

51:27understanding of who these angels are, who these demons are.

51:31I guess I'm wondering if there's a biblical origin to the idea, because the thing that

51:38you hear about with demons now all the time is that they are possessing us, that they

51:43are getting into us, they are making us do bad things, they are chatting with their friends

51:50through us.

51:51Certainly vaccines have something to do with demons.

51:54Yeah, I mean, obviously if you're vaccinated, you got a bunch of demons in you, you gotta

51:59probably get that taken care of.

52:02But is there, is that biblical?

52:04The idea of these entities invading us and then taking, like being able to control us

52:11in some way?

52:12So we don't see that in the Hebrew Bible.

52:14But like I said, in Mesopotamia, there was this idea that these forces could gain entry

52:20into your body to cause illness and stuff like that and it make you do bad things.

52:24And this becomes, this merges with Greco-Roman Judaism, Hellenistic Judaism, and you get

52:30this idea that demons, A demon or multiple demons can possess the human body, can take

52:37over executive functions of the person and turn them into the demoniac who wanders around

52:46the crypts and can break chains because they're so strong.

52:51And so by the time of the New Testament, that is pretty firmly in place.

52:56But it's something that I would suggest probably comes back from the exile, Zoroastrianism

53:02and the dualism of Zoroastrianism, where you have Angra Manu and Ahura Mazda opposing

53:10divine forces, that dualism is probably influencing the framework for Greco-Roman period Judaism,

53:18how they're looking at Mesopotamia, how they're looking at the Greco-Roman world.

53:25And so by the time of the New Testament, I would say that's the idea of possession is

53:29there.

53:30But what's interesting, and I did a lot of research on this for my doctoral dissertation,

53:34which became my book, is you have concepts of spirit possession in the overwhelming majority

53:39of societies around the world and throughout time.

53:42Yeah, that's okay.

53:43Yeah.

53:44I've definitely seen that.

53:45The pretty intuitive notion that the seat of your agency, your cognition, is separable

53:55from your body.

53:57And if that's the case, then why not the case that's agency from somewhere else can take

54:04over your body?

54:06It's very intuitive.

54:07It happens all the time.

54:08And so there have been a lot of great investigations of the idea of spirit possession and all kinds

54:15of different societies, as well as in Christianity and Judaism and Islam and how those traditions

54:23have interacted with more local traditions when they come into a new area.

54:29So fascinating line of study and fascinating just issue, this idea of possession, which

54:36I think part of in the Hebrew Bible, you do have the idea that God can possess a person.

54:43And you see it particularly with Saul.

54:47Samuel tells Saul in one part that God's spirit is going to force entry into your body and

54:53give you a new heart and turn you into a new person.

54:57And so the ecstatic prophetic trance is God possessing the person.

55:03And so you do have a one tradition, at least one tradition of possession going on in the

55:10Hebrew Bible.

55:11In that case, it being a good thing.

55:13Right.

55:14And it is the benevolent possession in that instance.

55:19You don't get a lot of that in modern day pop culture or whatever, the benevolent possession.

55:26The movie Ghost, I remember there was some good, there was some benevolent possession

55:31in that movie.

55:32So yeah, maybe it's there.

55:34Maybe I'm wrong.

55:36Well this is fascinating.

55:37I'm sure that we could go on and on.

55:40We'll find other ways to talk about demons.

55:42In the meantime, seek medical attention if you have health problems, go to a doctor before

55:50you go to a priest.

55:52Yeah.

55:53If somebody says you endanger girl, best seek out professional medical help first.

55:59And then the the terror reader.

56:02Yeah, exactly.

56:03All right.

56:04Thanks so much, Dan.

56:05If you would like to write into us, you can do so.

56:08It is contact at data over dogma pod.com is the email address.

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56:26Otherwise, thanks so much for joining us and we'll talk to you again next week.

56:30Bye everybody.

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