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More
on the Book of Enoch
'Ashes To Angels' and deals with
the Book of Enoch and
other Apocryphal writings, &
the mysterious 'Watchers'
I don't necessarily agree with
it all, but I did find
it quite interesting reading.
I HAVE BEGOTTEN A STRANGE SON
-----------------------------
And after some days my son,
Methuselah, took a wife for his
son Lamech,
and she became pregnant by him and bore him a
son. And his body was white as snow and red as a rose; the
hair of his head as white as
wool and his demdema ('long
curly hair') beautiful; and as
for his eyes, when he opened
them the whole house glowed like
the sun ... And his father,
Lamech, was afraid of him and fled and went to Methuselah
his father; and he said to him,
'I have begotten a strange
son. He is not like an (ordinary) human being, but he looks
like the children of the angels
of heaven to me, his form is
different, and he is not like us
... It does not seem to me
that he is of me, but of angels...'
These words form the opening
lines to what must be one of
the most astonishing yet
chilling fragments of religious
text ever written. They are the assertions of the
antediluvian patriarch Enoch as
he describes the sheer
distress and horror that
accompanied the miraculous birth of
a son to his grandson, Lamech.
The passage is taken from the
Book of Noah, an ancient script
of Hebrew origin appended to
the more famous Book of Enoch, a
pseudepigraphal (i.e.
falsely attributed) work,
considered by scholars to have
been put together in stages
during the first half of the
second century BC. The predicament conveyed by these
revealing lines seems manifestly
clear: Lamech has recently
taken the hand of a woman who
has given birth to a child
that bears no resemblance
whatsoever to its immediate
family. His appearance is entirely unlike other 'human
beings', for his skin is white
and ruddy, his long curly
hair is white and 'beautiful',
while his eyes mysteriously
enable the whole house to 'glow like the sun'. From this
specific appearance, Lamech can only conclude that his wife
has been unfaithful, since the
infant resembles 'the
children of the angels' who are 'not like US'. This seems an
extraordinary conclusion on the
part of Lamech, and a very
strange subject for a religious
scribe to invent without
good reason. If it can, for a moment, be accepted that this
account records an actual event
in the history of human
kind, then it implies that the
strange appearance of this
child matched the offspring of
angels, and must by inference
have been the product of the
union between a mortal woman
and a divine 'messenger', a
'heavenly intelligence' in the
service of God himself. Surely this is impossible, for
according to Judaeo-Christian
tradition, angels are
incorporeal, having neither form nor substance. They are
certainly unable to reproduce by immaculate conception. If
this is correct, then the story
of the birth of Lamech's
strange son is in direct
contradiction to the rabbinical
teachings of Judaism and the creed of the Christian faith.
Yet here it is, in print for all
to see - heretical words
implying that angelic beings
were able to produce children
by cohabiting with mortal women. For any reader with an
open
mind, this is a perplexing
enigma further deepened by a more
personal portrayal of the birth
of Lamech's son, which is to
be found in a poorly preserved
fragment of religious text,
discovered with many other
rolled-up brittle scrolls inside
a cave overlooking the Dead Sea in
1947. Known to scholars
today as the Genesis Apocryphon, this unique work was
written in Aramaic, the Syriac language adopted by the
Hebrew scribes following the
Jews' exile in Babylon during
the sixth century BC. Dating back to a similar age as the
Book of Enoch, the Dead Sea
Scroll in question would have
originally contained an
alternative, fuller account of the
events featured in the Book of
Genesis; however, it was so
badly damaged when found that
only the birth of Lamech's
son, an account of Noah's Ark and the biblical Flood, along
with the wanderings of the
patriarch Abraham, have been
preserved. The fragmentary text was translated by Nahman
Avigad and Yigael Yadin
in I954 and published under the
title A Genesis Apocryphon two years later by the Hebrew
University, Jerusalem.
With respect to the account of
the strange birth of Lamech's
son, it differs principally from
the version given in the
Book of Enoch, in that the
narrator has altered from the
patriarch Enoch to Lamech himself - it is he who recalls the
scene in his own words. The narrative begins just after the
strange birth as Lamech starts voicing his suspicions
concerning the suspected
infidelity of his wife, here named
as Bathenosh
- and referred to also as his sister - for he
says: 'Behold, I thought then
within my heart that
conception was (due) to the
Watchers and the Holy Ones ...
and to the Nephilim
. . . and my heart was troubled within
me because of this child.' Turning to his obviously
distraught wife, Lamech makes her swear by the Most High
that she will tell him the truth
and admit if she has lain
with anyone else. In reply she beseeches him to accept her
word, saying: 'O my lord, 0 my
[brother, rememberl my
pleasure! I swear to thee by the Holy Great One, the king of
[the heavens] ... that this seed
is yours and that [this]
conception is from you. This fruit was planted by you ...
and by no stranger or Watcher or
Son of Heaven ... I speak
to you
truthfully.'
It is clear that Lamech is accusing his wife of sleeping not
with angels in general, but with
having had relations with a
specific race of divine beings
known in Hebrew as 'irin'
('ir'
in singular), meaning 'those who watch' or 'those who
are awake', which is translated
into Greek as 'egregoris or
grigori',
meaning 'watchers'. These Watchers feature in the
main within the pages of pseudepigraphal and apocryphal
works of Jewish origin, such as
the Book of Enoch and the
Book of Jubilees. Their progeny,
according to Hebrew
tradition, are named as Nephilim, a Hebrew word meaning
'those who have fallen' or 'the
fallen ones', translated
into Greek as 'gigantes', or 'giants' - a monstrous race
featured in the Theogony of the hellenic writer Hesiod (c.
907 BC). As in the biblical
account, this ancient Greek work
focuses on the creation of the
world, the rise and fall of a
Golden Age, the coming of the
giant races and finally a
universal flood. Bathenosh's touching
plea of innocence to
her husband and brother Lamech comes across as most
convincing, and provides
tantalizing evidence that this
ancient account may contain some grain of truth. Somehow it
could just be based on a real-life
event that occurred in a
past age of mankind.
If so, then exactly who, or what, were
these Watchers and Nephilim who could lie with mortal women
and produce offspring
recognizable by their physiological
traits alone? Are there any grounds whatsoever on which to
consider that these apocryphal
stories were based on the
miscegenation between two different
races of human beings,
one of whom has been
misidentified or falsely equated with
the angels of heaven? If not, then exactly what were such
stories meant to convey to the reader?
The Book of Enoch seems to
provide an answer. Lamech,
fearful of his predicament,
consults his father, Methuselah,
who, unable to alleviate the
situation, embarks upon a
journey to find his own father
Enoch, who has withdrawn from
the world and now lives among the angels. After Methuselah
has tracked him down in a
far-off land (referred to in the
Genesis Apocryphon
as 'Parwain' or Paradise)
and conveying
the fears of his son Lamech, the ever-righteous Enoch
throws light on the situation
when he states:
'I have already seen this matter
in a vision and made it
known to you. For in the generation of Jared, my father,
they [the angels] transgressed
the word of the Lord, (that
is) the law of heaven.
And behold, they commit sin and
transgress the commandment; they
have united themselves with
women and commit sin together
with them; and they have
married (wives) from among them,
and begotten children by
them ... And upon the earth they
shall give birth to giants,
not of the spirit but of the flesh. There shall be a great
plague ... and the earth shall
be washed clean (by "a
deluge') from all the corruption. Now, make known to your
son Lamech
that the son who has been born is indeed
righteous, and call his name
Noah, for he shall be the
remnant for you; and he and his
sons shall be saved from the
corruption which shall come upon
the earth . . .
So the lid is finally lifted as
the reader of the Book of
Enoch is told that some of the
angels of heaven have
succumbed to carnal sin and
taken wives from among mortal
women. From this unholy
union have come flesh-and-blood
offspring, giant in stature,
who, it must be presumed, match
the description of the child born to Bathenosh.
This betrayal of the heavenly
laws of God was seen as an
abomination that would bring
only corruption and evil to the
human race, the punishment for
which was to be a deluge to
cleanse the world of its wickedness.
The Sons of God
---------------
Theologians are more or less
united in their opinion that
the widespread accounts of
fallen angels cohabiting with
mortal women, like those
included in the Book of Enoch, the
Genesis Apocryphon
and similar texts, are no more than
fanciful expansions of three
verses to be found in Chapter 6
of the Book of Genesis, squeezed
between a genealogical
listing of the antediluvian
patriarchs and a brief account
of Noah's Ark and the coming of the Flood. The first lines
in question, making up Chapter
6, verses 1-2, are indelibly
imprinted in my mind and read as
follows:
And it came to pass, when men
began to multiply on the face
of the ground, and daughters
were born unto them, that the
sons of God saw the daughters of
men that they were fair;
and they took them wives of all that they chose.
By 'sons of God' the text means
heavenly angels, although
the Hebrew original, 'bene ha-elohim' , should really
be
translated as 'sons of the
gods', a much more disconcerting
prospect (and something to be
returned to in a subsequent
chapter). In verse 3 of Chapter 6, God unexpectedly
pronounces that his spirit
cannot remain in men for ever,
and that since humanity is a
creation of flesh, its lifespan
will be shortened to 'an hundred and twenty years'. Yet in
verse 4 the tone suddenly
reverts to the original theme of
the chapter, for it says:
The Nephilim
were in the earth in those days, and also after
that, when the sons of God came
in unto the daughters of
men, and they bare children to
them: the same were the
mighty men which were of old, the men of renown.
In the hundreds of times
I have read these isolated words
out aloud I have wondered to
myself.- what could they
possibly mean? There is no consensus in answer to this
question, and scholars, mystics
and speculative writers have
all given their own
interpretations over the past two
thousand years. Theologians agree in general that such
accounts are not to be taken as
literal fact, but only as a
symbol of humanity's fall from a
state of spiritual grace to
one of conflict and corruption
in the days prior to the
Great Flood. What the texts are
saying, the theologians
would argue, is that if evil and
corruption on this scale
does occur in the world, then
only those of the purest heart
and spirit - individuals
exemplified by Noah and his
righteous family - will be spared the wrath of God. It is
therefore a purely allegorical
teaching intent on conveying
to the reader the inevitable consequences of wickedness.
The
references in verses 2 and 4 to
'the sons of God' coming
unto the daughters of men', so
the scholars believe,
demonstrate how even those
closest to the purity of God can
become infected by corruption and evil. It was usually
accepted among religious
teachers that any such unholy union
between angels and mortal women
could only, because it was
against God's will, lead to the
creation of monstrous
offspring. It was this thought-provoking concept which had,
according to the early Church
Fathers, inspired the creation
of various apocryphal and pseudepigraphal works dealing with
the fall of the angels and the
corruption of mankind before
the time of the Great Flood.
Celestial Mafia
---------------
So much for the theological
debate, but is it correct? Is
this all there is to know about
the origins of fallen
angels? And what about the adherents of the Jewish and
Christian faiths? How were they
able to interpret such
'myths'?
The majority would probably have been unaware that
these problematical verses even
existed in the Book of
Genesis. Others, who did have
some knowledge of the matter,
are unlikely to have been able
to expand on it, while only a
very small minority would have
believed in the actual
existence of fallen angels. Many commentators would have
been unable to explain exactly
how such stories related to
the physical world we live in,
while other more
fundamentalist Jews or
Christians have seen such corruption
and wickedness as the actions of
bloodline descendants of
those first fallen angels who
cohabited with mortal women
before the time of the Flood. Such suggestions may seem
far-fetched, but in the United States there is an
organization known as the Sons
of Jared, who take their name
from the patriarch Jared, the
father of Enoch, during whose
age the Watchers were said to
have been 'cast down' from
'heaven'.
In their manifesto, the Sons of Jared vow
'implacable war against the
descendants of the Watchers',
who, they allege, 'as notorious
Pharaohs, Kings and
Dictators, have throughout history
dominated mankind'. The
Jaredite Advocate, the voice of the Sons of Jared, quotes
lavishly from the Book of Enoch
and sees the Watchers as
'like
super-gangsters, a celestial Mafia ruling the world'.
Is this simply a view gained
from dogmatically accepting the
fall of flesh-and-blood angels of heaven? How many
individuals have the Sons of
Jared accused or persecuted,
believing them to be modern-day descendants of the Watchers?
Some academic scholars, on the
other hand, while unable to
accept any basis in fact behind
the concept of fallen angels
and their monstrous offspring,
the Nephilim, would be
willing to admit that the
original authors of the Book of
Genesis (traditionally
accredited to Moses the lawgiver)
based their material on
previously existing folk legends,
probably from Mesopotamia (the country known today as Iraq).
The historian S. H. Hooke, for instance, in his book Middle
Eastern Mythology, accepts that:
Behind the brief and probably
intentionally obscure
reference in (Genesis) 6:1-4
there lies a more widely known
myth of a race of semi-divine
beings who rebelled against
the gods and were cast down into
the underworld ... The
fragment of the myth here
preserved by the Yahwist was
originally an aetiological myth explaining the belief in the
existence of a vanished race of
giants ...
This might well be so, but
accepting Genesis 6:1-4 as the
product of far older Middle
Eastern myths allows for the
possibility that, sometime
during a bygone age of mankind,
there existed on earth,
presumably in the bible lands
themselves, an elite and
probably superior race of human
beings. These people presumably achieved a state of high
civilization before degenerating
into a corruption and
wickedness that included the
taking of wives from among the
less civilized races and the
creation of monstrous offspring
of disproportionate size to their immediate family. It
might
also be suggested that a series
of global cataclysms
thereafter brought fire, flood
and darkness to the earth and
ended the reign of this race of giants. Should we see
accounts like Lamech's torment at the miraculous birth of
his son Noah, and untold others
like it, as tantalizing
evidence for the idea that
fallen angels were something far
more than simply incorporeal
beings cast out of heaven by
the archangel Michael, as the
theologians and propagators of
the Christian, Islamic and
Jewish faiths have taught during
the last two thousand years? Could their very existence be
confirmed by making an in-depth
study of Hebrew myths and
legends and then comparing these
with other Near Eastern and
Middle Eastern religions and
traditions? Most important of
all, might evidence of their
physical existence on earth be
incidentally preserved in the
records of modern-day
archaeology and anthropology? Such thought-provoking
possibilities were worth further consideration. If, at the
end of the day, it was found
that no such evidence for the
existence of a now lost race in
the bible lands could be
discovered, then at least an
age-old enigma would have been
investigated thoroughly. On the other hand, if there really
was firm evidence that angels
and fallen angels once walked
among mankind as beings of flesh
and blood, no different
from you or me, then it could
change our perspective of
world history for ever.
Fear of Fallen Angels
---------------------
There are clear signs that the
concept of angels and fallen
angels as corporeal
beings of flesh and blood, who lived in
a distant antediluvian age and
left as a legacy an intimate
knowledge of many things
forbidden to humanity, was once
widely accepted by certain
elements of the Jewish
population. These included the devout religious communities
that lived a pious existence in
the hot, rugged terrain on
the west bank of the Dead Sea
from about 170 BC to AD 120.
Known to history as the Essenes, their main centre is
thought to have been at Qumran,
where archaeologists have
uncovered extensive evidence of
occupation, including a
massive library
room where many of the Dead Sea Scrolls are
thought to have been written. Historical works from this
period suggest that the Essenes not only accepted the Book
of Enoch as part of their canon,
but also used its listing
of angels to perform rites of exorcism and healing. Recent
studies of the Dead Sea Scrolls
have also shown that the
Essenes possessed an almost unhealthy interest in
Enochian-style material featuring the Watchers and Nephilim.
Although many of these works
date only to the second century
BC, the hidden teachings found
among the Qumran community
and known as Kabbalah
imply that the Enochian and Noahic
scriptures were passed on by
word of mouth for thousands of
years before finally being set
down in written form by the
Essenes themselves.
With the advent of Christianity,
the Book of Enoch and other
such similar works became generally
available for the first
time. Many of the Early Church leaders, from the first to
the third centuries AD, used and
quoted openly from their
pages. Some Christian scholars held that mortal women had
been responsible for the fall of
the angels, while Paul in
Corinthians 11:10 advocated - according to the Church Father
Tertullianus (AD 160-230) - that women cover their heads so
as not to incite wantonness in
the fallen angels who liked
unveiled women with beautiful hair. Even more remarkable was
the general acceptance among
many prominent theologians that
fallen angels possessed corporeal
bodies. Indeed, it was not
until the age of the Church
Fathers, from the fourth century
onwards, that such matters were seriously questioned. For
these people, fallen angels were
not flesh-and-blood beings,
and any suggestion that they
might have been became
tantamount to heresy. This attitude led to the suppression
of the Book of Enoch, which quickly fell out of favour. Most
bizarre of all were the comments
of St Augustine (AD
354-430) in respect of the
antiquity of this pseudepigraphal
work. He claimed that on account of it being too old (ob
nimiam antiquitatem), the Book of
Enoch could not be
included in the Canon of Scripture. What ever could he have
meant by suggesting it was 'too old'? It was a most
extraordinary statement to be
made by a respected Church
father. Curiously enough, the Book of Enoch had also fallen
out of favour
among the Jews, after Rabbi Simeon ben Jochai,
in the second century AD, cursed
all those who believed that
the Sons of God mentioned in Genesis 6 were truly angels.
This was despite the fact that
the Septuagint, the Greek
version of the Old Testament,
uses the term 'angelos' in
place of 'sons of God'. The Church Fathers then went further
in their attempts to stamp out
the strange fascination with
fallen angels among early
Christians bv condemning as heresy
the use of the many hundreds of
names given both to angels
and fallen angels in various religious works. No longer was
the Book of Enoch copied by
Christian scribes, and those
copies remaining in libraries
and churches were either lost
or destroyed, denying the world
any knowledge of the work's
true contents for over a thousand years.
Subsequently, on top of all
this, it became the policy of
Catholic theologians to
eradicate firmly from the teachings
of the Church any notion that
fallen angels had once been
seen as material beings, a
situation typified by this quote
from the New Catholic
Encyclopedia: In the course of time
theology has purified the
obscurity and error contained in
traditional views about angels
(i.e. the belief that they
were corporeal in nature and cohabited with mortal women).
Yet why should such beliefs have
become so abhorrent to the
Christian faith after the great
leaders of the Early Church
of Jerusalem had preached so openly on this very
controversial subject? It simply did not make sense, and
suggested there must have been
extremely good reasons for
forcing this strain of thought
underground, for that was
exactly where it went - underground. From the extraordinary
evidence collected together by
the author, and presented in
this book for the first time,
there emerge firm grounds to
suggest that initiates and
secret societies preserved,
revered, even celebrated the
forbidden knowledge that our
most distant ancestors had
gained their inspiration and
wisdom, not from God or from the
experiences of life, but
from a forgotten race remembered
by us today only as fallen
angels, demons, devils, giants and evil spirits. Should such
a view prove in any way correct,
then it must indicate one
of the greatest secrets ever kept from mankind. But where
was I to start? How was I even to begin the quest to unveil
the forbidden legacy of this apparently fallen race? The
answer lay with its main
sourcebook, the Book of Enoch, for
only by understanding its
obscure origins and absorbing its
bizarre contents could I ever
hope to uncover the true
picture behind humanity's lost heritage.
THE SEARCH FOR THE SOURCE
-------------------------
My quest to understand the
importance of the Book of Enoch
began with the man who
single-handedly revived the scholarly
world's interest in this
previously lost piece of Judaic
religious literature. His
name is James Bruce of Kinnaird,
and in 1768 he left England en route for Abyssinia,
modern-day Ethiopia, in search of something, and it was
certainly not the source of the Blue Nile,
as he claimed at
the time.
Bruce was a Scottish nobleman, a
direct descendant of one of
the most powerful families of Scottish history. He was also
an initiate of Freemasonry,
which in Scotland could trace
its roots back to the so-called
Rite of Heredom, first
instituted in early medieval times
and later incorporated
into the Royal Order of Scotland.' This in itself was a
chivalric military order of honour and valour founded on
the
rites of the Knights Templar by
James Bruce's own
illustrious ancestor, Robert
the Bruce, following the
celebrated defeat of the English
at the battle of
Bannockburn in 1314. Bruce himself was a member of the
Canongate Kilwinning NO. 2 lodge of Edinburgh, known to be
one of the oldest in Scotland, with side-orders and mystical
teachings entrenched in Judaeo-
Christian myth and ritual.
Freemasonry is an organization
with innumerable secrets, and
many of these would have been
known to the extremely know-
ledgeable
James Bruce. For instance, he would
have been
aware that in Scottish Masonic
tradition the patriarch
Enoch, Noah's great-grandfather,
was looked upon as one of
the Craft's legendary founders,
since he was accredited with
having given mankind the
knowledge of books and writing and,
most important of all to
Freemasons, to have taught mankind
the art of building.'
The Antediluvian Pillars
------------------------
Enoch had many associations with
early modern Freemasonry,
or speculative Masonry as it is known. According to one
legend, Enoch, with
foreknowledge of the coming Deluge,
constructed, with the help of
his son Methuselah, nine
hidden vaults, each stacked one on top of the other. In the
lowest of these he deposited a
gold triangular tablet (a
'white oriental porphyry stone'
in one version) bearing the
Ineffable Name, the unspoken
name of the Hebrew God, while a
second tablet, inscribed with
strange words Enoch had gained
from the angels themselves, was
given into the safe-keeping
of his son. The vaults were then sealed, and upon the spot
Enoch had two indestructible
columns constructed - one of
marble, so that it might 'never
burn', and the other of
Laterus, or brick, so that it might 'not sink in water.' On
the brick column were inscribed
the 'seven sciences' of
mankind, the so-called
'archives' of Masonry, while on the
marble column he 'placed an
inscription stating that a short
distance away a priceless
treasure would be found in a
subterranean vault'. Enoch then retired to Mount Moriah,
traditionally equated with the Temple
Mount in Jerusalem,
where he was 'translated' to heaven. In time, King Solomon
uncovered the hidden vaults
while constructing his
legendary temple and learned of their divine secrets. Memory
of these two ancient pillars of
Enoch was preserved by the
Freemasons, who set up
representations of them in their
lodges. Known as the Antediluvian Pillars, or Enoch's
Pillars, they were eventually
replaced by representations of
the two huge columns named 'Jachin' and 'Boaz', said to have
stood on each side of the
entrance porch to Solomon's
Temple. What exactly the nine hidden vaults constructed by
Enoch were meant to represent is
completely unknown. They
might well refer to the nine
levels of mystical initiation
contained in the hidden
teachings of the Kabbalah, accepted
among the Dead Sea communities. On the other hand, perhaps
the legends of the hidden vaults
referred to actual
underground chambers located
somewhere in the Holy Land and
constructed to hide sacred
objects of importance to the
future of mankind.
Walked with God
---------------
The patriarch Enoch's legendary
status among both Jewish
mystics and modern-day
Freemasons stems from a very strange
assumption. In the Bible, Chapter 5 of Genesis contains a
genealogical listing of the ten
antediluvian patriarchs,
from Adam down to Noah. In each case it gives only their
names, their age when they
'begat' their first son, and the
age at which they died, with one notable exception - Enoch.
In his case, he is twice said to
have 'walked with God', an
obscure statement elaborated
only in the second instance
with the enigmatic words: 'and
he was not, for God took
him.' Whatever the writer of Genesis had been attempting to
convey by these words, they were
taken to mean that Enoch
did not die like the other
patriarchs, but was instead
'translated'
to heaven with the aid of God's angels.
According to the Bible, only the
prophet Elijah had been
taken by God in a similar
manner, so Enoch (whose name
means
'initiated') had always been
accorded a very special place
in Judaeo-Christian literature.
Indeed, Hebrew mysticism asserts
that on his 'translation'
to heaven, Enoch was transformed into the angel Metatron.
What does it mean: 'translated
to heaven'? As we know,
people are not carried off to
heaven by angels while still
living their life on earth. Either these words are
metaphorical or else they need drastic reappraisal. Might
Enoch have been simply taken
away from his people by
visitors from another land who
were looked upon as angels by
the rest of the community? And where was heaven, anyway? We
know it is deemed to be a place
'in the clouds', but did
this literally mean somewhere
beyond the physical world in
which we live? Once in this place called heaven, Enoch would
appear to have made enemies
immediately, for according to
one Hebrew legend, an angel
named Azza was expelled from
Paradise - the alternative name for the heavenly domain -
for objecting 'to the high rank given to
Enoch' when he was
transformed into Metatron. All these
legends and traditions
concerning Enoch show that the
patriarch was highly
venerated in Jewish mythology
because of his trafficking
with the angels. This position led many scholars to believe
that apocryphal works, such as
the Book of Enoch, were
imaginative stories based on his
much celebrated translation
to heaven, where he now lives in the presence of God.
The Search for the Book of Enoch
--------------------------------
James Bruce of Kinnaird was one giant of a man, 'the tallest
man you ever saw in your life -
at least gratis', or so said
one woman who met him. He was fluent in several different
languages, including some no longer spoken. These included
Aramaic, Hebrew and Geez, the written language of the
Ethiopian people. Even before
his travels in Abyssinia,
Bruce had journeyed far and
wide, visiting Europe, North
Africa and the Holy
Land, exploring ancient
monuments and
searching out old manuscripts
ignored by all but a few
inquisitive Westerners. In
spite of his Blue Nile story,
the noble Scotsman would appear
to have spent much of his
time in Ethiopia within the libraries
of ramshackle
monasteries, fingering through
dusty volumes of neglected
religious works, many hoary with
age and in a state of
advanced disintegration."
So what had he been looking for?
After nearly two
years of constant travelling, Bruce arrived at the sleepy
monastery of Gondar, on the banks of the vast inland sea
named Lake Tana. Having convinced the abbot of his
integrity, he was admitted into
the dark, dingy library
room, where he found, and was
finally able to secure, a very
rare copy of the Kebra Nagast, the sacred book
of the
Ethiopians. It told of a romantic love affair between
King
Solomon and the Queen of Sheba,
the legendary founder of the
kingdom of Abyssinia,
and of the birth of their illicit son
Menelik, who had conspired with his mother to abduct the
fabled Ark of the Covenant from Solomon's Temple. According
to the story, the Ark had been carried off to Ethiopia,
where it remained to that day.
Had Bruce in fact been searching
for a copy of this obscure
but very sacred book to take back with him to Europe?
THE SEARCH FOR THE SOURCE
-------------------------
Despite its rarity, the Kebra Nagast (or 'Book of the
Glory
of Kings') had long been known
to exist, while its wild
claims concerning the Queen of
Sheba and the Ark of the
Covenant were seen by Western
scholars as having been
concocted to give Ethiopian
Christians an unbroken lineage
and national identity stretching
back to the time of Adam
and Eve. Even so, there is compelling evidence to suggest
that the Ark really did reach Ethiopia (although not at the
time of King Solomon) and that
James Bruce was well aware of
this fact and even entered Ethiopia in 1768 with the express
intent of bringing it back to Britain."
So was this the answer - a quest
for the lost Ark of God?
Had Bruce been the Indiana Jones
of his day? Perhaps. Yet
beyond his interests in the Kebra Nagast and the Ark of the
Covenant, Bruce could hardly have
been unaware of the
rumours circulating Europe regarding the existence in
Ethiopia of the forbidden Book of Enoch. Indeed, during the
early 1600s a Capuchin monk
visiting Ethiopia had secured a
religious text written in Geez which was at first believed
to be a long-lost copy of this very book. The find caused
much excitement in European academic circles. Yet when it
was finally studied by an
Ethiopian scholar in 1683, the
manuscript was identified, not
as the missing Book of Enoch,
but as a previously unknown text
entitled the Book of the
Mysteries of Heaven and Earth.'
No one really
knew what the Book of Enoch might contain.
Until the 1600's, its contents
were almost entirely unknown.
Yet its title alone was so
powerful that at least one person
attempted to learn its secrets from the angels themselves.
This was the Elizabethan
astrologer, magus and scientist, Dr
John Dee, who, working with an
alleged psychic, Edward
Kelley, used crystal balls and
other scrying paraphernalia
to invoke the presence of angels. The spirits told Kelley
they would provide him with the
contents of the Book of
Enoch, and there is evidence to
suggest that Dee did
actually possess a 'Book of
Enoch' dictated through Kelley's
mediumship."
It is not, however, thought to have in any way
resembled the actual work of this name. In addition to
this, Dee and Kelley whole
written language, complete with
its own 'Enochian'
script or cipher, from their trafficking
with angels. This
complex system of magical invocation
survives to this day and is
still used by many occultists to
call upon the assistance of a
whole hierarchy of angelic
beings.
Scaliger's Discovery
--------------------
At the beginning of the
seventeenth century, a major
breakthrough occurred in the
search for the lost Book of
Enoch. A Flemish scholar named
J. J. Scaliger, having
decided to study obscure Latin
literature in the dimly lit
vaults of European libraries,
sat down one day to read an
unpublished work entitled Chronographia, written in the
years AD 808-10 by a learned monk named George Syncellus.
Having ploughed through lengthy
pages of quite mundane
sayings and quotes on various
matters appertaining to the
early Christian Church, he then
came upon something quite
different - what appeared to be
extensive tracts from the
Book of Enoch. Handwritten in
Greek, these chapters showed
that Syncellus
had obviously possessed a copy of the
forbidden work and had quoted
lavishly from its pages in an
attempt to demonstrate the
terrible transgressions of the
fallen angels. Scaliger, realizing
the immense rarity of
these tracts, faithfully
reproduced them in full, giving the
world its first glimpse at the
previously unknown contents
of the Book of Enoch. The sections quoted by Syncellus and
transcribed by Scaliger revealed the story of the Watchers,
the Sons of God, who were here
referred to by their Greek
title 'Grigori'. It told how they
had taken wives from among
mortal women, who had then given
birth to Nephilim and
gigantes,
or 'giants'. It also named the leaders of the
rebel Watchers and told how the
fallen angels had revealed
forbidden secrets to mankind,
and how they had finally been
imprisoned until the day of judgement by the archangels of
heaven.
We may imagine the conflicting
emotions experienced by
Scaliger - on the one hand excitement, and on the other
horror and revulsion. As a God-fearing Christian of the
seventeenth century, when people
were being burnt as witches
with only the most petty charges
brought against them, what
was he to make of such claims? What, moreover, was he to do
with them? Angels lying with mortal women and the conception
of giant babies? What could this all mean? Was it true, or
was it simply an allegorical
story concerning the
consequences of trafficking with
supernatural beings such as
angels? Merely by making copies of this forbidden text, he
ran the risk of being accused of practising
diabolism. Yet
this incredible chance discovery
begged the question of what
the rest of the book might contain. Would it be as shocking
as these first few chapters appeared to suggest? Bruce must
have been aware of the
controversial nature of the sections
of the book preserved for
posterity by Syncellus in the
ninth century. He must also have been aware of the enormous
implications of retrieving a
complete manuscript of the Book
of Enoch. It was perhaps for this very reason that he spent
so long talking to the abbots
and monks at the Ethiopian
monasteries. In the light of this supposition, it becomes
crystal clear that one of the
primary objectives of Bruce's
travels must have been to secure
and bring back to Europe a
copy of the Book of Enoch. And Bruce's efforts did not go
unrewarded, for he managed to
track down and obtain not one,
but three complete copies of the [Book of Enoch]. One Book
of Enoch, with which he returned
to Europe in 1773, was
consigned to the National
Library of Paris, one he donated
to the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the third he placed
'amongst the books of Scripture,
which I brought home,
standing immediately before the
Book of Job, which is its
proper place in the Abyssinian Canon.'
The earth-shaking consequences
of these gracious acts of
literary dedication can scarcely
have been realized by Bruce
himself during his lifetime, for
they would ultimately lead
to the recirculation of heretical
stories concerning
humanity's forbidden trafficking with the fallen race. And
yet from the very moment of
Bruce's return to Europe with
his precious Ethiopian
manuscripts, strange events were
afoot. Having deposited the copy with the Paris library,
Bruce made tracks to return to England, where he planned to
visit the Bodleian Library at his earliest convenience. Even
before he had a chance to leave France, however, he learnt
that an eminent scholar in
Egyptian Coptic studies, Karl
Gottfried Wolde,
was already on his way from London to
Paris, carrying letters from the Secretary of State to Lord
Stormont, the English Ambassador, desiring that the latter
help him gain access to the Paris manuscript of the Book of
Enoch, so that a translation
could be secured immediately.
Permission was duly granted to Wolde, who after admission
into the National Library wasted
no time in making the
necessary translation of the text. Yet as Bruce was to later
admit in his magnum opus on his
travels to Ethiopia 'it has
nowhere appeared.'
What therefore were the motives
behind this extraordinary
urgency in translating the Book
of Enoch, before even the
Bodleian Library had received
its own copy? The absurdity of
the situation lies in the fact
that no outright translation
of the valuable Geez text was to appear in any language
whatsoever for another forty-eight years. Why this delay?
Why should such an important
piece of lost religious
literature have been ignored for
so long, especially since
there were now not one but two
extant copies available to
the theological world? This ridiculous situation must have
infuriated James Bruce after he
had gone to all the trouble
of finding and securing these
manuscripts in the belief that
they would be presented to the
public domain in a translated
form before the expiry of his own life (he died in 1794).
Tempting as it may be to evoke
the idea of some kind of
organized conspiracy behind
these extraordinary actions on
the part of Wolde
and the English Secretary of State, the
truth of the matter was far more
mundane and lay in the
economical and political climate of the time. The late
eighteenth and early nineteenth
centuries saw a massive
decline in the popularity of the
Christian Church in many
parts of Protestant Europe. Attendance at church services
was dwindling, and churches
everywhere were being neglected
and left to fall into ruin under
the impact of Newtonian
science and the arrival of the Industrial Revolution. ln an
age of reason and learning,
there was little place for the
alleged transgressions of angels, fallen or otherwise. Most
of the general public were
simply not interested in whether
or not angels had fallen through
grace or lust, while any
theological debate as to whether
or not fallen angels
possessed corporeal
bodies was simply not a priority in most
people's minds.
THE SEARCH FOR THE SOURCE
-------------------------
Fuelled by Fallen Angels
------------------------
The Book of Enoch remained in
darkness until 1821, when the
long years of dedicated work by
a professor of Hebrew at the
University of Oxford were finally rewarded with the
publication of the first ever
English translation of the
Book of Enoch. The Reverend
Richard Laurence, Archbishop of
Cashel, had laboured for many
hundreds of hours over the
faded manuscript in the hands of
the Bodleian Library,
carefully substituting English
words and expressions for the
original Geez,
while comparing the results with known
extracts, such as the few brief
chapters preserved in Greek
by Syncellus during the ninth
century. It is fair to say
that the publication of the Book
of Enoch caused a major
sensation among the academic and literary circles of Europe.
However, its disturbing contents
were not simply being read
by scholars, but also by the general public. Churchmen,
artists, writers, poets all
sampled its delights and were
able to form their own opinions
on the nature of its
revelations. The consequences of this knowledge passing into
the public domain for the first
time were to be enormous in
many areas of society. Romantic writers, for instance,
became transfixed by the stories
of the Sons of God coming
unto the Daughters of Men, and
began to feature these
devilish characters in their poetic works. A little later,
Victorian painters started
portraying this same subject
matter on canvas. One might even be tempted to suggest that
the Book of Enoch was a major
inspiration behind the darker
excesses of the so-called Gothic
revival, which culminated
in such literary works as Bram
Stoker's Dracula, in which
the eponymously named character is
himself a fallen angel.
Why should such satanic subjects
have inspired or repulsed
people to this extent? Why are people so fuelled by stories
of fallen angels? It also seems certain that the Book of
Enoch was readily accepted as a
work of great merit among
the Freemasons, who used it to
revive their ancient
affiliation with the
antediluvian patriarch; indeed, my own
1838 copy of Laurence's
translation once belonged to the
library of the Supreme Council 33, the highest ranking
enclave of Royal Arch Freemasons in Britain. There is even
a rumour
that the third copy brought back to Europe was
presented by Bruce to the Scottish Grand Lodge in Edinburgh.
Gradually, as the Oxford
University edition of the Book of
Enoch reached wider and wider
audiences, scholars began
checking in library
collections across Europe, the result
being that many more fragments
and copies of the Enochian
text in Ethiopian, Greek and
even Latin were found tucked
away in neglected corners. New translations were made in
German and English, the most
authoritative being that
achieved in 1912 by Canon R. H. Charles." Even a sequel to
the original text entitled the
Book of the Secrets of Enoch
was found in Russia and translated in 1894. Since that time,
the authenticity of the Book of
Enoch has been amply
verified with the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Many
fragments of copies written in
Aramaic have been identified
among the hundreds of thousands
of brittle scraps retrieved
over the years from the caves on
the Dead Sea, where they
were placed in around AD 100 by
the last survivors of the
Essene communities at Qumran and nearby En-Gedi.
The Ethiopian copyists had kept
true to the original Aramaic
text, which had probably passed
into their country in its
Greek translation sometime during
the second half of the
fourth century AD. For generation after generation, the Book
of Enoch had been copied and
recopied by Ethiopian scribes,
the old battered and torn
manuscripts being either cast away
or destroyed during the many
bloody conflicts that took
place in Abyssinia over a period of fifteen hundred years.
The fact was that somehow the
Book of Enoch had survived
intact, despite its heavy
suppression by the Christian
Church, and it was to the
authoritative English translation
made by Canon R H. Charles in
1912 that I would next turn to
discover for myself the dark secrets within its pages. Only
by absorbing the obscure
contents of this unholy treatise
could I begin to understand why
its forbidden text had
become abhorrent to so many over the previous centuries.
DEMONIC DOCTRINE
----------------
Reading the Book of Enoch for
the first time was quite an
unnerving experience, which on
more than one occasion sent
unexpected shivers down my spine. Here was perhaps one of
the oldest accounts of mankind. It had been passed down
orally from one storyteller to
the next over thousands of
years. Finally it became a book in its own right sometime
after 200 BC, almost certainly
at the hands of the Essene
community at Qumran on the Dead
Sea. Yet what were its
contents, and why had it caused
so much consternation to the
Jewish rabbis and the Early
Church of Christianity? I found
the Book of Enoch to be a colourful but often confusing and
contradictory patchwork of
material that required extensive
disentanglement before any
cohesive picture could be gleaned
from its contents. Much of it appears to have been written -
originally on sheets of fine
animal skin - during or shortly
after the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Syrian king who
ruled Judaea
at the time of the Maccabean revolt of 167 BC.
Among its 108 short chapters is
irrefutable evidence of the
battles fought and won against
the hated Syrian ruler by the
Jewish reactionary movement, the
Zadokite Hassidaeans,
under
the leadership of Judas Maccabeaus.
Other parts were written
shortly after this period, while
some passages even reflect
an age postdating the commencement of the Christian era. So
what does it contain? What element is it that so offends its
opponents?
In the opening chapters the
narrator reiterates the story
told in Genesis 6 concerning the
Sons of God coming unto the
Daughters of Men and taking
wives from among their number.
The reader then learns how, 'in
the days of Jared', two
hundred Watchers 'descended' on
'Ardis', the summit of Mount
Hermon - a mythical location equated with the triple-peak of
Jebel esh Sheikh (9,200 feet),
placed in the most northerly
region of ancient Palestine. In Old Testament times
its
snowy heights had been revered
as sacred by various peoples
who inhabited the Holy Land;
it was also the probable site
of the Transfiguration of Christ
when the disciples
witnessed their Lord 'transfigured before them.' On this
mountain the Watchers swear an
oath and bind themselves by
'mutual imprecations',
apparently knowing full well the
consequences their actions will
have both for themselves and
for humanity as a whole. It is a pact commemorated in the
name given to the place of their
'fall', for in Hebrew the
word Hermon or herem,
translates as 'curse'. Why the two
hundred angels should have
picked this location as opposed
to any other to make their
descent into the lowlands is
never made clear. Yet this is what they do, travelling down
to mix and mingle among humanity
in the hope of sampling the
delights of mortal women. The reader is then introduced to
Shemyaza, the leader of the Watchers, while eighteen of his
minions are also named; these,
it says, are 'their chiefs of
tens.' At this stage, I will not question the authenticity,
origin or reality
of this curious narrative, but simply
continue with the story as told in the Book of Enoch.
After the Watchers find themselves wives and
'go unto
them,' the women give birth to
the enormous Nephilim babies,
who grow up to become barbaric in every way possible. The
words here are pertinent and
must be quoted in full: 'And
they [the mortal women] became
pregnant, and they bare great
giants, whose height was three
thousand ells: who consumed
all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer
sustain them, the giants turned
against them and devoured
mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts,
and reptiles, and fish, and to
devour one another's flesh,
and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against
the lawless ones.' The height of the Nephilim,
here given as
3,000 ells, with one English ell
being the equivalent of
forty-five inches, is an
exaggeration of the sort so often
found in Jewish myth. It is used only to emphasize a
specific point, which is to
record that these 'gibborim', or
'mighty men', were of great
height and possessed enormous
appetites. More disconcerting is the suggestion that the
Nephilim turned against their mortal families and engaged in
what can only be described as cannibalism. 'Sinning' against
'birds, and beasts, and
reptiles, and fish' could either
mean that they were consumed by
the Nephilim as food, or
that the giants committed
barbaric sexual acts with them,
perhaps both. Whatever the answer, they would appear to have
developed a lust for drinking
blood, which must also have
been viewed as abhorrent by the
communities in which they
were born and raised.
The Secrets of Heaven
---------------------
The narrative then tells how the
rebel Watchers who walked
among humanity revealed the forbidden secrets of heaven. One
of their number, a leader named Azazel, is said to have
'taught men to make swords, and
knives, and shields, and
breastplates, and made known to
them the metals (of the
earth) and the art of working
them', indicating that the
Watchers were the first to bring
the use of metal to
mankind. He also instructed them on how they could make
'bracelets' and 'ornaments' and
showed them how to use
'antimony', a white brittle
metal employed in the arts and
medicine. To the women he taught the art of 'beautifying'
the eyelids, and the use of 'all
kinds of costly stones' and
'colouring
tinctures', indicating that before this time the
wearing of make-up and jewellery was
unknown. Through this
unforgivable act, the Daughters
of Men were believed to have
been 'led astray', and because
of it they became 'corrupt',
committing fornication not only
with the Watchers
themselves, but also, it must be
assumed, with men who were
not their regular partners. Azazel
also stood accused of
teaching women how to enjoy
sexual pleasure and indulge in
promiscuity - a blasphemy seen
as 'godlessness' in the eyes
of the Hebrew story-tellers. Linguistic experts believe
that
the names Azazel
and Shemyaza probably derive from the same
source, but were made into two
separate fallen angels before
their introduction to the Book
of Enoch; however, since they
both have quite independent
legends attributed to them, each
will be dealt with separately as and when they appear.
Other Watchers stand accused of
revealing to mortal kind the
knowledge of more scientific
arts, such as the knowledge of
the clouds, or meteorology; the
'signs of the earth',
presumably geodesy and
geography; as well as astronomy and
the 'signs', or passage, of the
celestial bodies, such as
the sun and moon. Shemyaza is
accredited with having taught
men 'enchantments, and
root-cuttings', a reference to the
magical arts shunned by most
orthodox Jews, but accepted to
some degree by the Dead
Sea communities. One of their
number, Penemue,
taught 'the bitter and the sweet', surely a
reference to the use of herbs and
spices in foods, while
instructing men on the use of
'ink and paper', implying that
the Watchers introduced the earliest forms of writing. Far
more disturbing is Kasdeja, who is said to have shown 'the
children of men all the wicked smitings of spirits and
demons, and the smitings of the embryo in the womb, that it
may pass away'. In other words, he taught women how to abort
their babies.
These lines concerning the
forbidden sciences handed to
humanity by the rebel Watchers
raise the whole fundamental
issue of why angels of heaven
should have possessed any
knowledge of such matters in the first place. Why should
they have needed to work with
metals, use charms,
incantations and writing;
beautify the body; employ the use
of antimony, and know how to abort an unborn child? None of
these skills are what one might
expect heavenly messengers
of God to possess, unless, that
is, they were human in the
first place. In my opinion, this revelation of previously
unknown knowledge and wisdom
seems more like the actions of
a highly advanced race passing
on some of its closely
guarded secrets to a less
evolved culture still striving to
understand the basic principles of life. A comparison might
be drawn with the way in which
supposedly civilized cultures
of the Western world have
introduced everything from whisky
to clothes, firearms, [file corruptioon] to indigenous races
in remote regions of the world. If such is what really
happened - members of one highly
advanced race passing on
its knowledge to a less evolved
culture still struggling for
survival?
Plight of the Watchers and Nephilim
-----------------------------------
One by one the angels of heaven
are appointed by God to
proceed against the Watchers and
their offspring the
Nephilim, described as 'the bastards and the reprobates, and
the children of fornication'. Azazel
is bound hand and foot,
and cast for eternity into the
darkness of a desert referred
to as Dudael. Upon him are placed
rough and jagged rocks and
here he shall forever remain
until the Day of judgement,
when he will be 'cast into the fire' for his sins. For their
part in the corruption of
mankind, the Watchers are forced
to witness the slaughter of
their own children before being
cast into some kind of heavenly prison, an 'abyss of fire'.
Although the Watchers' leader, Shemyaza, is cast into this
abyss alongside his brothers, in
other versions of the story
he undergoes a more dramatic punishment. Since he was
tempted by a beautiful mortal
maiden named Ishtahar to
reveal the Explicit Name of God
in exchange for the offer of
carnal pleasure, he is to be
tied and bound before being
made to hang for all eternity
between heaven and earth, head
down, in the constellation of Orion. The suggestion that the
rebel Watchers had to look on as
their children were
murdered hints at a form of
infanticide in which those born
of the union between fallen
angels and mortal women were
systematically rounded up and
slaughtered as their fathers
watched helplessly. If
this supposition is correct, then it
could explain the fear and
revulsion instilled in Lamech and
Bathenosh at the birth of their son Noah, who apparently
resembled a Nephilim
baby- their horror being connected not
simply to their own son's
strange appearance, but to the
fact that the offspring of the
Watchers were being murdered
by those angels still loyal to heaven.
Following the incarceration of
the rebel Watchers, Enoch is
summoned to 'heaven' and
addressed by the archangels, who
are also, confusingly, referred to as Watchers. They
request that he intercedes on
their behalf and puts to the
rebel angels the crimes they have committed against mankind.
Enoch accepts this task and goes
to see them in their place
of incarceration. On his approach, he finds them 'all
afraid, and fear and trembling seized them'. Fear of
punishment is surely a human
tendency, not the emotions one
might expect of incorporeal
messengers of God, and where was
this prison, so accessible to Enoch? The text suggests it
was near the waters of Dan, to
the south of the west of
Hermon. 'The waters of Dan' refers to one of the tributaries
of the river Jordan in northern Palestine. The root of the
Hebrew word dan
means 'to judge', and Canon R. H. Charles in
a footnote to this particular
reference in his widely
accepted translation of the Ethiopian
text, concedes that
this location was specifically
chosen 'because its name is
significant of the subject the
writer is dealing with, i.e
the judgement of the angels
[author's italics].' The
geographical positioning of this
story is therefore symbolic
and not actual. Clearly the author of the Book of Enoch is
attempting to create some kind
of sound geographical
perspective to the narrative, in
this case establishing the
rebel Watchers' place of
incarceration close to the location
of their original descent upon Mount Hermon. In other words,
many of the sites given in the
Book of Enoch were chosen
simply to give credence to the stories it contains.
The corruption still left in the
world after the
imprisonment of the Watchers,
and the death of their
Nephilim offspring, is to be swept away by a series of
global catastrophes, ending in
the Great Flood so familiar
within biblical traditions. In a separate account of the
plight of the Nephilim, this mass-destruction is seen in
terms of an all-encompassing conflagration
sent by the
angels of heaven in the form of
'fire, naphtha and
brimstone'. No one will survive these cataclysms of fire and
water save for the 'seed' of
Noah, from whose line will come
the future human race. This is how the Dead Sea
communities
and the earliest Christians
| 
