Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (31 page)

Leviticus 16:7–10

Then he shall take the two goats and set them before the
Lord
at the entrance of the tent of meeting. And Aaron shall cast lots over the two goats, one lot for the
Lord
and
the other lot for Azazel
. And Aaron shall present the goat on which the lot fell for the
Lord
and use it as a sin offering, but the goat on which the lot fell for
Azazel
shall be presented alive before the
Lord
to make atonement over it, that it may be sent away into
the wilderness to Azazel
.

Scholarly opinion is not unanimous (is it ever?) over just what “Azazel” refers to, but knowing the Enochian tradition of the angelic Azazel bound in the desert, there is strong warrant for the thesis that it refers to a “desert demon”
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who happens to have the name of the demonic fallen angel who was bound in the desert in 1 Enoch.

Another demonized pagan deity appears in the Old Testament that may shed more light on this desert “goat-demon” Azazel. The Hebrew word,
seirim
is translated in several Old Testament passages as the pagan “satyr” or “hairy goat-demon.” In two places it refers to the goat idols to whom some Canaanites made sacrifices (Lev. 17:7; 2Chron. 11:15) and in others to demonic entities that haunt the desert (Isa. 13:21; 34:14).
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The Hebrews saw these pagan deities as the same thing: Demons.

Banias in ancient northern Canaan/Israel near
Caesarea Philippi eventually became the center of worship for Pan, the hybrid goat-man deity. And this temple was near the base of Mount Hermon. To the Old Testament Jew, Azazel was an analog or incarnation of the desert goat-demon.
[40]

Lilith

Another Mesopotamian deity subverted in the Old Testament narrative is Lilith, the she-demon. Regarding this monster, the
Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible
says its Mesopotamian narrative reaches back to the third millennium B.C.

Here we find Inanna who plants a tree later hoping to cut from its wood a throne and a bed for herself. But as the tree grows, a snake [Ningishzida] makes its nest at its roots, Anzu settled in the top and in the trunk the demon makes her lair... Of greater importance, however, is the sexual aspect of the—mainly—female demons lilitu and lili. Thus the texts refer to them as the ones who have no husband, or as the ones who stroll about searching for men in order to ensnare them.
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Lilith was also known as the demon who stole away newborn babies to suck their blood, eat their bone marrow and consume their flesh.
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In Jewish legends, she was described as having long hair and wings, and claimed to have been the first wife of Adam who was banished because of Adam’s unwillingness to accept her as his equal.
[43]
Lilith and her offspring make their appearance in
Enoch Primordial
as temptresses guarding the World Tree in the desert with the snake god Ningishzida in the roots and the Anzu bird in its high branches.

Lilith the “night hag” makes her appearance in the Bible in Isaiah 34 along with that other pagan mythical creature, the satyr, a demonized interpretation of the goat-like god Pan. In this chapter, prophetic judgment upon Edom involves turning it into a desert wasteland that is inhabited by all kinds of demons; ravens, jackals, hyenas, satyrs — and Lilith.

Isaiah 34:13–15 (
RSV)

I
t shall be the haunt of jackals...
And wild beasts shall meet with hyenas, the satyr shall cry to his fellow; yea, there shall the night hag [
Lilith
] alight, and find for herself a resting place.

Resheph and Qeteb

Two other “demonized deities” that show up in the Bible are Resheph and Qeteb. In the song of Moses, Yahweh describes how he will punish those Israelites who enter the Promised Land but do not obey him:

Deuteronomy 32:23-24

And I will heap disasters upon them;

I will spend my arrows on them;

they shall be wasted with hunger,

and devoured by plague (
Resheph
)

and poisonous pestilence (
Qetab
)

Resheph and Qeteb were Canaanite gods of plague and pestilence. Similar to this Deuteronomy passage, Resheph was described in Phoenicia as using his arrow of flaming judgment.
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This curse is a poetic expression of Yahweh handing the rebellious Israelites over to the Canaanite gods for punishment.
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As the
Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible
concludes, “Qeteb is more than a literary figure, living as a spiritual, and highly dangerous, reality in the minds of poets and readers,”
[46]
and “in the OT Resheph is a demonized version of an ancient Canaanite god, now submitted to Yahweh.”
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Rahab

One of the mythopoeic creatures that shows up in
Enoch Primordial
is Rahab, the Sea Dragon of chaos. In the appendix of
Noah Primeval
, I explained the mythological origins of the seven-headed Sea Dragon called Leviathan and its appropriation in the Bible. Though the Old Testament seems to indicate Rahab as simply another name for this sea monster,
[48]
I decided to separate the two and make Leviathan the offspring of Rahab. But in the big war scene, we see that Rahab has other “helpers” with her, other monsters of the deep. This was also taken from a mythic motif that shows up in Babylonian, Ugaritic, and Biblical texts.

In the Ugaritic texts, the gods Baal and Anat defeat Leviathan along with her divine allies Yam, Nahar, Arsh, Atik, and others.
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In the Babylonian Enuma Elish, the god Marduk defeats the sea dragon Tiamat and her monster helpers.
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Tiamat assembled her creatures,

Drew up for battle against the gods her brood [offspring]...
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She has set up the Viper, the Dragon, and the Sphinx, the Great-Lion, the Mad-Dog, and the Scorpion-Man, Mighty lion-demons, the Dragon-Fly, the Centaur…
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So, we also see Rahab, the sea monster in Biblical texts being crushed and her “helpers” the enemies of God being “bowed” and “scattered.”

Job 9:13

God will not turn back his anger;

beneath him bowed
the helpers of Rahab
.

Psalm 89:10

You
crushed Rahab
like a carcass;
you
scattered your enemies
with your mighty arm.

Behemoth

Speaking of Rahab’s monstrous “helpers” of chaos, we come to Behemoth, another creature who finds his way into
Enoch Primordial
and
Noah Primeval
. The one place in Scripture where this huge beast shows up is in God’s discourse with Job about God’s unapproachable incomparable powers of creation:

Job 40:15–24

“Behold, Behemoth,

which I made as I made you;

he eats grass like an ox.

Behold, his strength in his loins,

and his power in the muscles of his belly.

He makes his tail stiff like a cedar;

the sinews of his thighs are knit together.

His bones are tubes of bronze,

his limbs like bars of iron.

“He is the first of the works of God;

let him who made him bring near his sword!

For the mountains yield food for him

where all the wild beasts play.

Under the lotus plants he lies,

in the shelter of the reeds and in the marsh.

For his shade the lotus trees cover him;

the willows of the brook surround him.

Behold, if the river is turbulent he is not frightened;

he is confident though Jordan rushes against his mouth.

Can one take him by his eyes,

or pierce his nose with a snare?

The most common interpretations of the identity of this monster by Biblical scholars is a hippopotamus, a crocodile, or a water buffalo. Young earth creationists argue that it is a sauropod dinosaur.
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All of these seek to understand the creature as a real beast that existed in Bible times. Ancient Near Eastern scholar John Day dismisses these naturalistic interpretations in favor of a mythological picture of a chaos monster. There is no paleontological evidence of dinosaurs coexisting with humans. Hippopotamuses and water buffalos do not have strong bones, sinewy muscles, or tails like a cedar. Crocodiles are carnivores and do not eat grass.
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But more importantly, unlike Behemoth, all of these animals are easily caught by man in contrast with Job’s emphasis that only God can do so. And lastly, none of them hold pride of status as “the first of the works of God.”
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Day argues that Behemoth is a mythological chaos monster that represents the Jewish demonization of pagan deities and symbolizes the subjugation of creation by God. He points out that Behemoth in this Job passage is coupled with the mythical chaos monster Leviathan in the verses following Behemoth (Job 41).

Later Jewish texts also understood Behemoth to be coupled with Leviathan as chaos monsters of creation with eschatological references to future judgment:

1 Enoch 60:7-8, 24

On that day, two monsters will be parted—one monster, a female named
Leviathan
, in order to dwell in the abyss of the ocean over the fountains of water; and (the other), a male called
Behemoth
, which holds his chest in an invisible desert whose name is Dundayin, east of the garden of Eden...“
These two monsters are prepared for the great day of the Lord (when) they shall turn into food
.
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God is using these symbols of creative power over Chaos to close the mouth of Job’s complaints. Leviathan and Behemoth were “the first of the works of God” (40:19) and “the king over all the sons of pride” (41:34) because “the powers of chaos were primeval in origin.”
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But fear not, God created them, God subjugated them, and God will turn them into a feast at the end of time.

Day then shows where this coupling of Leviathan and Behemoth has its origin, in two Canaanite texts of Ugarit where the goddess Anat is described as defeating Leviathan, “the dragon,” “the crooked serpent, the tyrant with seven heads,” and “El’s calf Atik” also called
Ars
(the ox-like Behemoth of Job 40:15).
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Kenneth Whitney shows an established 2nd Temple Rabbinic tradition of Leviathan and Behemoth as companions of destruction in this same manner, thus the bovine nature of the amphibious creature in the
Chronicles of the Nephilim
.
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Day then concludes, “The reason for the inclusion of the sections on Behemoth and Leviathan in Job 40-1 is to drive home the point that, since Job is unable to overcome them, how much less can he hope to overcome in argument the God who defeated them.”
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In
Enoch Primordial
, I took liberties to alter this monster’s description somewhat in order to make him more ferociously carnivorous, but he remains a monster of chaos that is held at bay by the mountainous gates of a hidden valley of God’s creation.

Mushussu

Another mythological creature that shows up in
Enoch Primordial
is the mushussu chimera that is well known from its tiled depiction on the Babylonian Ishtar Gate and many other seals discovered throughout Mesopotamia. It was a lion’s body with a dragon’s head, taloned back feet, and a tail that was a snake.

Robert Koldeway, an amateur archeologist of the 19th century, wrote a book about the Gate of Ishtar and noted that this mythical creature, called a
sirrush
at the time, was one of the few animals that were depicted remarkably consistent in Babylonian art over time. He thought that this might be because they had actual specimens of them. His thoughts were that they were dinosaurs misinterpreted as dragons. Ancient astronaut authors like Joseph Farrell suggest they were examples of actual genetic splicing by extraterrestrial aliens.
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I used it as the first hint of the dark arts that the Watchers were just beginning to perfect in their own miscegenation project. We would see their advancements in
Noah Primeval
, but it represented the notion of the violation of the natural order of separation that seemed to be an important element of God’s creation.

Scholar Theodore Lewis explains regarding the mushussu genetic combination of lion and dragon, “The common denominator for associating these two creatures seems to be that they could both inspire paralyzing, heart-stopping fear when encountered.”
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He concludes that this is the creature used as a metaphor for the Pharaoh who had oppressed Judah rather than the “crocodile of outdated scholarship.”
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Yahweh was going to capture and cast that beast of a ruler onto the ground for the nations to gorge on its flesh.