Fallen Angels and the Origins of Evil (8 page)

The commentary also notes that Pope Zachary in 745
A.D.
held a Roman council against one Aldebert, “who was found to invoke by name eight angels in his prayers.”
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No wonder the intricate angelology in the Book of Enoch—which names far more than three angels—was condemned!

When Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai pronounced an actual curse on those who held the “sons of God” in Genesis 6:2 to be angels, although that had been the age-old Jewish interpretation of the verse,
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he turned the world of Judaism against the Book of Enoch. The rabbi’s second-century curse was apparently effective, because from that point onwards, sparse mention is made in Jewish literature of the book.

It could have been his knowledge of the rabbi’s curse which prompted Origen’s remark a century later that the Book of Enoch was not accepted among the Jews. And it may have been the work of even earlier rabbis that first began to hide the book away in the shadows of Judaic tradition so that, as Augustine noted, it was not found among the approved Scriptures of the Jews.

What eventually happened to the book? In a recent study of the apocrypha, writer Nicholas de Lange cites a revealing passage found in some texts of the Talmud in the context of the statement of Rabbi Akiba (c. 40–135) that “whoever reads the ‘excluded books’ has no share in the world to come.” Following this, the Babylonian teacher Rab Joseph is then quoted as saying, “It is also forbidden to read the book of Ben Sira [another apocryphal work]. But we may teach the good things it contains.” Other texts, however, in place of this last sentence, read, “If the rabbis had not hidden this book away, we should be able to teach the good things it contains.”
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De Lange points out that the expression “hiding away” denotes the process applied to sacred texts and other sacred objects which were no longer considered fit for use. According to the Talmud, he continues, the sages had even considered hiding away the Book of Ezekiel on account of the supposedly “misleading” teachings it contained.
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Undoubtedly there were some apocryphal writings that would have been judged even by laymen as devoid of the Lord’s spirit. These counterfeits have survived perhaps in much greater number than apocrypha of authentic spiritual value, which have come down to us either in severely edited copies or not at all.

Also central to the question of the disappearance of the Book of Enoch from religious scriptures is the fact that books were generally produced in small quantities in this era before the invention of the printing press. In order for a book to survive, it would need to be continually recopied by scribes. The easiest way to suppress a text was simply not to have it copied. Once a book fell into disapproval with the authorities, the scribes were hardly likely to copy it. The book then was allowed to fade into obscurity.

And so the words of Enoch ‘faded’ from the source books of civilization. It might not be irrelevant or irreverent to ask, Who made the deletions—men or angels? Who so wanted to keep the presence of fallen ones upon earth a guarded secret?

In the guise and garb of Christian and Jew, ‘they’—the fallen angels and those who they influenced—denounced and suppressed the Book of Enoch’s record of the fall of angels through the lusts of the flesh. Their verdicts of heresy and blasphemy rested against Enoch for over fifteen hundred years.

Then the twentieth-century discovery of several Aramaic Enoch texts among the Dead Sea Scrolls prompted Catholic scholar J. T. Milik to compile a complete history of the Enoch legends, including translations of the Aramaic manuscripts.

Milik’s 400-page book, published in 1976 by Oxford,
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is a milestone in Enochian scholarship, and Milik himself is no doubt one of the world’s finest experts on the subject. His opinions, based as they are on years of in-depth research, are highly respected.

Milik notes the obviously close interdependence of the story of the fallen angels in Enoch and the story of the “sons of God” in the Book of Genesis. But he does not draw the same conclusion as the Church Fathers, namely that the Book of Enoch misinterpreted the earlier Genesis account and was therefore irrelevant.

Milik, rather, arrives at a surprising yet well-justified conclusion: that not only is the history of the fallen angels in Enoch
older
than Genesis 6—but Genesis 6 is in fact a direct
summary
of the earlier Enoch account.
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This is what Milik calls the “ineluctable solution”: it is Genesis 6 that is based on Enoch and not the other way around. Milik thinks that the text of Genesis 6, by its abridged and allusive formulation and direct quoting of two or three phrases of Enoch, must be the later of the two, making the Enoch legend earlier than the definitive chapters in Genesis.
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Milik has thus deftly turned the tables on the late Church Fathers who banned the records of fallen angels mating with daughters of men and who labeled Enoch’s teaching a heretical misinterpretation of Genesis 6. For if Genesis 6 was really based on the Book of Enoch, then obviously Genesis 6 is retelling the same event as Enoch: the lusting of the fallen angels after the daughters of men. Enoch’s account
was
in the Bible, right in the approved text of Genesis, all along.

If Milik is right—and the evidence leans in his favor—then the criteria upon which the Fathers based their judgments against the Book of Enoch are fully invalidated and their testimony against Enoch is refuted. Their arguments have no ground. Enoch’s case must be reopened and retried.

But the astute reader will ask, If Genesis 6 tells of the fall of the angels through lust, what about the
other
biblical fall of the archangel through pride, as told in Isaiah and as noted (or rather, used) by the later Church Fathers long ago? Here again, twentieth-century scholarship provides an answer that was unavailable in the patristic era.

In an unparalleled and detailed probing into the specific meaning of the passage, Hebrew scholar Julian Morgenstern discovered that tied up in the Genesis verses are traces of “two distinct and originally entirely unrelated myths dealing with gods or angels.”
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In his remarkable exegesis (Hebrew Union College, 1939), Morgenstern proves that originally two accounts of separate falls of the angels were known: one, that of the archangel’s rebellion against the authority of God and his subsequent fall through pride, in which he was followed by a multitude of lesser angels, biblically called the
Nephilim
(the “fallen ones”); and two, the other account, recorded faithfully in the Book of Enoch—the later fall of the angels, called
Watchers,
through inordinate lust for the daughters of men.
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And so, Morgenstern concludes, the angels fell not once but
twice.

Morgenstern explains that the very construction of Genesis 6:4, one of the most intricate and obscure Old Testament verses, implies that it is a synthesis of two different stories. The verse reads in literal English:

The Nephilim were on the earth at that time (and even afterward) when the sons of God resorted to the daughters of man, and had children by them. (
Jerusalem Bible
)

The text specifically sets side by side two facts: one, there used to be beings called Nephilim on earth; and two, they were still around when the sons of God came down and mated with the daughters of men. Clearly, says Morgenstern, the Nephilim are fallen angels who were
already
on the earth when the sons of God—the other angels which Enoch depicted—also fell through their own lust.

But how did the Nephilim fallen angels get here to earth in the first place? That, states Morgenstern, is where the rebellious archangel and the fall through pride fits in. That is the earlier of two entirely separate celestial events.
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What seems to have caused scriptural confusion in later times is the many-faceted meaning of the word
Nephilim.
The synopsis in Genesis 6 is so terse and abbreviated that it apparently became all but unreadable to later Jews.

Some seem to have thought the Nephilim were the same as the “sons of God” in that verse, while others thought the Nephilim were the evil children of the sons of God and the daughters of men. The latter misunderstanding cropped up in the Book of Jubilees and in some editions of the Enoch material.
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On top of this confusion, the Greek Septuagint, a late translation of the Hebrew Scriptures, rendered the word
Nephilim
as “giants,” eliminating all connotations of “fallen angels.” The evil giant children born to the Watchers and daughters of men were known to the Hebrews specifically as
Gibborim
(literally “heroes” or “mighty men”), but later editors, in the confusion, mixed up the Nephilim with these Gibborim and also with the giants of Numbers 13:33, the Anakim.
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Morgenstern further notes that the term
Nephilim
is in the passive voice, i.e., “those who were made to fall” or “those who were cast down.”
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The New Testament Greek term
ebleethesan
conveys precisely
the same meaning. (“And the great dragon was
cast out,
that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was
cast out
into the earth, and his angels were
cast out
with him.” Rev. 12:9)

This form of the word
Nephilim
is entirely different from the active voice of the verbal form, i.e.,
Nophelim,
those who fell of their own accord or in a natural manner. Elsewhere the Bible confirms that these fallen ones were “cast down” and “delivered into chains of darkness” (II Pet. 2:4)—they did not descend by their own free will but were forcibly removed from heaven.

In time, it appears, the original meaning of the term
Nephilim
(the “cast down ones”) became more generalized and applied to whoever or whatever was wicked. Thus, the giant Gibborim born to the lustful Watchers and the daughters of men might have been labeled Nephilim simply because they were of fallen character like the original Nephilim who already walked the earth and seemed like “giants” in their own right.

With so many definitions and misunderstandings piled on top of the word, it is not surprising that the history of the original Nephilim who fell with the archangel through pride got lost in the translation.

But the account in Revelation 12 is well worth examining. The angels who had fallen in rank with the fall of the proud archangel were forced to surrender their position in the hierarchy of heaven by none other than Archangel Michael. This “great prince” (Dan. 12:1) of the celestial orders had to wage a cosmic war and engage in direct combat with the rebels in order to force them to surrender their position.

The Gospel of Bartholomew elaborates upon the reason for the archangel’s fall. This apocryphal work explains that the archangel revealed his pride when he refused to bend the knee (to confess the Christ) before the man made by the Lord.

The account in Revelation 12 gives force to this apocryphal theme. The great dragon in Revelation, “called the Devil, and Satan,” is threatened by the birth of the Manchild to the Woman “clothed with the sun” and therefore seeks “to devour her child as soon as it is born.” The dragon’s disrespect for the Manchild, son of the Woman and Son of God, cost him his high rung on the ladder of the heavenly hierarchy.

The same proud refusal to bend the knee before God’s newly created man is evident in the Gospel of Bartholomew. “I am fire of fire,” boasts the archangel. “I was the first angel formed, and shall I worship clay and matter?”
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His refusal to worship the man—as the Son of God (or the Son of God
within
the Son of man)—was the original act of rebellion.

The apocryphal Book of John the Evangelist contains a description of the consequences of the archangel’s pride: physical incarnation. The apostle John asks the Lord, “When Satan fell, in what place dwelt he?” The Lord replies, “My Father changed his appearance because of his pride, and the light was taken from him, and his face became like unto heated iron, and his face became wholly
like that of a man.
”
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Revelation 12:9 (“he was cast out
into the earth
”) confirms the incarnation of the Nephilim in the earth plane in earth bodies. Genesis 6:4 confirms not only the physical incarnation of the Nephilim (the “giants”
in the earth
) but also that of the Watchers, as we have seen. So not only were there two falls—there were two (or at
least
two) separate incarnations of fallen angels upon earth. The Nephilim were “made to fall” or “cast down”; the Watchers “fell” of their own accord—we might therefore call the latter
Nophelim.

Strike two for the Church Fathers and rabbis who banned the Book of Enoch. The seeming contradiction between two falls of angels, eventually used by the Fathers against Enoch, disappears if there are separate stories of two falls.

Enoch’s book, then, is a trustworthy preservation of the one fall, the one through lust, that would otherwise have been lost to posterity but for a few other brief apocryphal references.

The later Church Fathers’ denial of the Book of Enoch thus clouded man’s understanding of the fallen angels for centuries. Furthermore, the statements of the later Church Fathers against the idea of physical incarnation of angels are far from authoritative. Linguistic proof supports the theory that the Jews of ancient times believed the fallen angels physically incarnated in flesh bodies.

In a respected scriptural study in the late nineteenth century, Franz Delitzsch shows that the wife-choosing of the fallen angels was a contract of actual and lasting marriages, as shown by the Hebrew verb phrase
(lakach ishsha)
used to describe them. “To make this to a certain degree conceivable,” says Delitzsch, “we must admit an assumption of human bodies by angels; and hence not merely transitory appearances of angels in human form, but actual angelic incarnation.”
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