Angels in Chains

Dan McClellan Hey everybody, I'm Dan McClellan.

Dan Beecher And I'm Dan Beecher.

Dan McClellan And this is Data Over Dogma, where we increase public access to the academic study of the Bible and religion, and we combat the spread of misinformation about the same, and I just barely got that out around my dental tray. So please excuse that. If I sound a little peculiar, like I'm talking around my mouth, that's why.

Dan Beecher Anyway, how are things- I think you're doing a great job.

Dan McClellan Well, I appreciate that.

Dan Beecher I'll just put it out there.

Dan McClellan Thank you.

Dan Beecher I think you're doing well.

Dan McClellan How are things today, Dan?

Dan Beecher Things are good. Things are good. We're having fun.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I'm looking forward to what we're about to talk about because- Yeah ... I think it's all fascinating, and it has come up in some really weird places.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher We touched on it before when people were talking about how the Euphrates River was drying up, and it was going to...

Dan McClellan Dun, dun, dun.

Dan Beecher Yeah. There were scary things. And I recently re-encountered this idea. I was on Threads. I'm a jerk on Threads a little bit. I like to poke the bear a little bit sometimes on Threads.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher It's the one place where I give myself permission to do it.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And I made a post, and somebody mentioned the chaining of angels, and I was like, "Oh yeah, that exists somehow."

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher But it's weird, and it's like, what are we even talking about? So I texted you, and I was like, "Hey, let's talk about this on the show." So, let's get into our chapter and verse.

Dan McClellan Let's do it.

Dan Beecher So, angels getting chained up. What are we talking about? It's something that if you look for it in your standard non-Ethiopic Bible, you're going to find a couple of very cryptic, weird mentions of it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But just the briefest things. You're not going to- Yeah ... find anything explaining anything.

Dan McClellan Yeah. You have the idea in Revelation of angels bound at the Euphrates River. People are always saying they're under the Euphrates River, but the preposition is epi, which literally means upon, but can also mean at.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So anyway, that's in the Book of Revelation.

Dan Beecher I like the idea that they're floating.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher So if it's upon, then I want to think of them floating. That's- Yeah.

Dan McClellan I think of them hanging from a big thing over the water.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan With the alligators snapping. Or if you've been to the Guardians of the Galaxy ride at Disneyland, how they have them dangling in the little line, the video you watch when you're in line, where- ... they're dangling from the thing over the pit. I think that works better. But also, you do have a reference to this in the Epistle of Jude- Mm-hmm ... or the Letter of Jude, which in verse six says, "And the angels who did not keep their own position but deserted their proper dwelling, He has kept in eternal chains in deepest darkness for the judgment of the great day." And what's going on here?

Dan Beecher Yeah. It seems out of the blue. When you're looking at it in the context of Jude, it's just like, "What are you talking about, man?"

Dan McClellan Yeah. And the origin of this tradition is not in the Bible. It is actually in the Book of Enoch, so.

Dan Beecher Yeah. I was going to say, point of order, it's in some Bibles.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Touché.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan It is in The Book of Enoch in the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church's canon. It's a very expansive canon. But the story, and we've talked about The Book of Enoch a bit here and there before, but in chapters 6 through 11, we basically have what some people call fan fic of Genesis 6 through 9.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And here we have in chapter six, you have the angels who decide to come down, and they're going to have intercourse with human women.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And Shemyhaza, or Shemihaza, is the chief angel in this telling of the story. There's actually a different telling of the story later, and the angels are different. But it's Shemihaza with a bunch of leaders like Artacov, and Ramechel, and Cocobel, and Armumael- ... and Ramel, and Daniel.

Dan Beecher Wait a minute.

Dan McClellan And Tim, and Zeqel.

Dan Beecher There are those who call me Tim.

Dan McClellan And the 10th one is Aziel, or Asiel, and Asiel becomes a big deal a little later in chapter eight. "Asiel taught men to make swords of iron and weapons, and shields and breastplates and every instrument of war. He showed them metals of the earth and how they should work gold to fashion it suitably, and concerning silver, to fashion it for breastplates and ornaments for women. And he showed them concerning antimony and eye paint- Hmm ... and all manner of precious stones and dyes." So we're talking the lowest of the low.

Dan Beecher Makers.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher What a jerk.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Teaching people how to arm themselves and defend themselves.

Dan McClellan And then it goes through and talks about all the things that the different angels taught them. "Shemihaza taught spells and the cutting of roots. Hermoni taught sorcery for the loosing of spells and magic and skill." Hopefully everybody was like, "Hermoni's teaching spells."

Dan Beecher Not Hermione, Hermoni.

Dan McClellan Yeah. It's the fashion designer, not the- Yeah ...

Dan Beecher you know.

Dan McClellan Barachel taught the signs of the lightning flashes, and on and on.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And then we get to chapter nine, and then we get the four archangels. And you brought this up. You were like, "What's going on with these four names?" Because in the translation we're looking at, which is Nickelsburg and VanderKam's Hermeneia translation, they're named as Michael, Sariel, and Raphael, and Gabriel.

Dan Beecher Yes.

Dan McClellan And because Donatello and Michelangelo- ... the ooze hasn't gotten to them yet.

Dan Beecher No, Michelangelo is there.

Dan McClellan You're- Oh, Michael. Oh, gosh. I totally screwed it up.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But Donatello, anyway, has not yet transformed from the norm by the nuclear goop.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then there's a footnote for Sariel- Yeah ... which says, "For this name, attested in Aramaic and Greek. Attested in Aramaic. Greek has forms of Uriel- Right ... and Ethiopian or Ethiopic has Suriel." And they suggest this is a confusion of the Greek sigma and the Greek omicron because they can both have circles associated with them. But anyway, so these are the four archangels. And this text is being written in a time period when you're getting all this explosion of literature that is kind of looking at the hierarchy of the heavens and all the roles and the names and who you pray to who for and what they do and for God and all that kind of stuff.

Dan Beecher When was this written? What's the time period? What are we thinking?

Dan McClellan This is probably late 300s, more likely 200s BCE.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan So this is Greco-Roman period Judaism.

Dan Beecher Similar in timeframe to when Daniel was written?

Dan McClellan Probably a little before Daniel.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But notice you do have Michael listed as the chief prince in the Book of Daniel. So the tradition is related.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But yeah, I think this is probably slightly before, at least when Daniel reaches its final form, the apocalyptic chapters. There might be some parts of Daniel that are roughly contemporaneous with- Okay ...

Dan Beecher with this. But most of the Hebrew Bible was written before this.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher This is very late literature, in terms of Hebrew Bible.

Dan McClellan Yes, but there are scholars out there who think that at least parts of the Book of Enoch might actually predate what's going on in Genesis.

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan Or there might be traditions from before the finalization of the Pentateuch that were part of the text before they, for whatever reason, fell out of favor, but are preserved in 1 Enoch. So that's an ongoing debate, but- Interesting.

Dan Beecher Yeah. So- But we do know that this was not a niche book. I believe I remember you saying that there are bits of 1 Enoch that was found with the Dead Sea Scrolls. Is that correct?

Dan McClellan There were more copies of 1 Enoch discovered among the Dead Sea Scrolls than there were of any other books of the Bible apart from Psalms, Isaiah, Deuteronomy, Genesis, and Exodus. I think those are the five- Okay ... that outnumber Enoch. But there were like 12 to 14 copies of Enoch found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. So yes, it was very clearly a popular text.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan And we get down in chapter nine, verse six, "They said to the Lord of Ages, 'You are the God of gods, Lord of lords,' blah, blah, blah. 'You see what Asael has done, who has taught all iniquity on the earth, and he has revealed the eternal mysteries that are in heaven, which the sons of men were striving to learn, and what Shemihazah has done, to whom you gave authority to rule over them who are with him.'" And so a lot of scholars would suggest this is a theory of the origin of evil. So you've got the Garden of Eden story and the fall- Yeah ... and then you've got Enoch and the angels coming down and teaching evil to humanity.

Dan Beecher Interesting.

Dan McClellan So evil either came from eating a piece of fruit or it came from angels teaching women how to wear makeup.

Dan Beecher So- And men how to make swords.

Dan McClellan Right.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So then we get down to chapter 10, and this is where the Most High responds. "Then the Most High declared, and the great Holy One spoke, and he sent Sariel/Uriel to the son of Lamech, saying, 'Go to Noah and say to him in my name, "Hide yourself." And reveal to him that the end is coming, that the whole earth will perish. And tell him that a deluge is about to come on the whole earth and destroy everything on the earth. Teach the righteous one...'" Now, by the way, later on, there's a story about how when Noah was born, he was shiny and had white hair and all this- Oh, okay ...

Dan Beecher good stuff.

Dan McClellan So, "'Teach the righteous one what he should do, the son of Lamech, how he may preserve himself alive and escape forever.'" And it's a great story because Lamech goes to Methuselah, and is like, "Hey, what's going on with this weird kid?" And Methuselah like, "Oh, yeah. This is cool." "'From him, a plant will be planted, and his seed will endure for all the generations of eternity.'" And then God turns to Raphael and says, "Go, Raphael, and bind Asael hand and foot, and cast him into the darkness, and make an opening in the wilderness that is in," and then Dudael or something like that is some weird name that we don't know what that means. "Throw him there and lay beneath him sharp and jagged stones, and cover him with darkness, and let him dwell there for An exceedingly long time. "Cover up his face and let him not see the light. And on the day of the great judgment, he will be led away to the burning conflagration." And then we have a little heal the earth discussion.

Dan Beecher And We should mention that this continually talks about the Watchers.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And those are the bad angels. The bad angels that came down are nicknamed the Watchers.

Dan McClellan Yes. And they were supposed to watch over things, and instead they inserted themselves in the story, literally.

Dan Beecher They watched as the ladies of humanity got hot and got- ... and decided, "Okay, well, I'm going to have to get me some of that."

Dan McClellan And here's a weird part of this particular passage. "And to Gabriel, he said, 'Go, Gabriel, to the bastards, to the half-breeds, to the sons of miscegenation.'"

Dan Beecher Uh-huh.

Dan McClellan "And destroy the sons of the Watchers from among the sons of men. Send them against one another in a war of destruction. Length of days they will not have, and no petition will be granted to their fathers in their behalf, that they should expect to live an everlasting life, nor even that each of them should live 500 years." So, I think this is getting close to what's going on with Genesis 6, with the whole, "My spirit will not stay with man. Their life will be 120 years." Here, we got something similar, where kill all the kids from this inappropriate union of- Right ... angel and human. And then when we get back to Jude, and Jude talks about Sodom and Gomorrah, and says, "In like manner as they," specifically these angels- Right ... "they pursued other flesh." It's very clear that Jude is talking about angelic/human intercourse, since it was angels that they wanted to sexually assault in Genesis 19.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And then to Michael, he said, "Go, Michael, bind Shemihazah and the others with him, who have mated with the daughters of men so that they were defiled by them in their uncleanness." And then talks about how their sons will perish. They'll see the destruction of their beloved ones. But this is the origin of the notion that there are angels that are bound in darkness for eternity.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan And I think the story is actually the spark, the catalyst for the notion of postmortem divine punishment. Because they're being kept, and later on in the story, it's going to talk about how they are kept in the...

Dan Beecher Is this?

Dan McClellan Yeah, it's still in chapter 10. "Bind them for 70 generations in the valleys of the earth until the day of their judgment and consummation, until the everlasting judgment is consummated." And later on, the valleys of the earth are going to conceptually merge with the idea of the Valley of Hinnom, which is the valley on the south of Jerusalem- Right ... which becomes the location of postmortem divine punishment.

Dan Beecher Is that- Gehenna.

Dan McClellan Gehenna.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Okay. Gehenna, exactly. Which becomes a word that in the New Testament that gets translated hell.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan And later on, when Enoch is having these visions of this punishment, it's kind of funny because the vision... Well, not funny. Not funny ha ha anyway. But the visions kind of toggle back and forth between eternal conscious torment being in darkness versus eternal conscious torment being in fire.

Dan Beecher I was wondering about that because I saw the great conflagration. You just read that a few- Yeah ... a few verses ago, and I wondered if that meant burning for eternity or if it just meant, "Okay, judgment has been given, and now we're going to burn you, and then you're gone."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher You know.

Dan McClellan The temporary conscious torment followed by annihilation- Right ...

Dan Beecher method.

Dan McClellan Yeah, I think that's probably what's understood by the great conflagration, because I don't think you have this notion of eternal conscious torment yet.

Dan Beecher At least- Right ...

Dan McClellan it's certainly not systematic at this point. And again, we've got the punishment of the angels versus the punishment of humans. And there's definitely a parallel going on, but these are the results of two very different sets of circumstances, even though the punishments seem to be quite parallel. So, it's cold and dark versus hot and fiery.

Dan Beecher Mm-hmm.

Dan McClellan And again, because you have multiple different tellings of this story, and the details change from time to time, that might have to do with why you have that distinction between the types of punishment. And I don't think it's as simple as just saying, well, one is where they're being kept until the final judgment, and then the other is what happens for eternity after the final judgment. I don't think the punishment is that systematic. I think we've got some inconsistency going on here.

Dan Beecher Well, speaking of punishment- Yes ... I'm going to take us to chapter 53 of 1 Enoch, where- Okay ... it says, and on the PDF, it's page 67, just to get you there.

Dan McClellan I can find chapter 53.

Dan Beecher Okay. Anyway, it was hard for me to track down the different chapters. Anyway, that's where we get the valley of punishment- Mm-hmm ... for the kings and the mighty.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher And you get down a little bit in there to 54, and it says, "And I asked the angel of peace who went with me, 'For whom are these chains being prepared?'" Apparently, they were building chains. They were making chains. And that's when-- And he said to me, "These are being prepared for the host of Azazel." Which I had to ask you, is Azazel the same as Azael or Asael?

Dan McClellan Asael.

Dan Beecher Asael, whatever. Because that's a different name.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher But we've been doing a lot of that lately, the different names.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, and the angels are different as well. Michael, Raphael, Gabriel, and Phanuel- Oh, that's right ... are the four here.

Dan Beecher The archangels have switched up, too.

Dan McClellan Yeah. So, this is a different telling of the story. But, yeah, I think we have here kind of the merging of the two different punishments. We got a different telling of the story and, yeah, I think if we get to-- Is it 54? Oh, shoot. I think when we get to 64, it talks about the punishment even more, and the fact that they are kept in chains.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan "The other figures I saw hidden in that place, I heard the voice of the angel saying, 'These are the angels who descended upon the earth. And what was hidden, they revealed to human beings, and they led human beings astray so that they committed sin.'" And then, yeah, they get the chains.

Dan Beecher Yeah. Well, back in chapter 54, they get- Uh-huh ... it says, "These are being prepared for the host of Azazel, that they might take them and throw them into the abyss of complete judgment, and with jagged rocks, they will cover their jaws." Presumably, that means that they're just buried up to their nose or something. "As the Lord of Spirits commanded."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher Yeah. It's very interesting the different forms that the punishment of these angels takes.

Dan McClellan Yeah, and there's a lot of back and forth about the punishment of the angels, because you even have conversations between Michael and Raphael with, "On that day, Michael answered and said to Raphael, 'The power of the Spirit seizes me and aggravates me because of the harshness of the judgment of the secrets, the judgment of the angels, for who can endure the harshment of the judgment that has been executed before which they melt?' And Michael answered and said to Raphael, 'Who is there who would not soften his heart over it, and whose kidneys would not be troubled by his word? Judgment has gone forth against them who have led them out thus.' And when they stood before the Lord of Spirits, Michael spoke thus to Raphael, 'I will not take their part under the eye of the Lord, because the Lord of Spirits is angry with them, because they act as if they were like the Lord.'" And so, we do have a bit of friction going on between the archangels here as well.

Dan Beecher Yeah, that's interesting. It does seem like everything-- And they're even sort of questioning God's judgment on this point.

Dan McClellan Mm-hmm.

Dan Beecher They're not going to do it to his face, but they're- Yeah ... but they're questioning it.

Dan McClellan Behind their back.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And the Book of Enoch is divided up into different books. I think it's five different books, and you've got the Book of the Watchers, you've got The Parables of Enoch, which is what I think 54 is a part of. Then you get the Book of Luminaries, and I want to say it's chapter 86. I'm pretty sure it's chapter 86. Let me just scroll on down here and make sure. Yes, chapter 86, and this is what's called The Animal Apocalypse. Have you heard of The Animal Apocalypse before?

Dan Beecher No, but I love it. I don't know what I'm in for, but I like hearing about it.

Dan McClellan We're basically telling the whole story of the history of the Earth and Israel in a very, very shortened form.

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan But all the characters are animals.

Dan Beecher So it's VeggieTales or-- No, it's Animal- Yeah ...

Dan McClellan Animal Tales. Animal Farm.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But yeah. But 86:1, we got Enoch, he says, "And again, I saw with my eyes as I was sleeping, I saw the heaven above, and look, a star fell from heaven, and it arose and was eating and pasturing among those cattle. Then I saw those large and black cattle, and look, all of them exchanged their pens and their pastures and their calves, and they began to moan one after the other. And again, I saw in the vision, and I looked to heaven, and look, I saw many stars descend and cast themselves down from heaven to that first star. And in the midst of those calves, they became bulls, and they were pasturing with them in their midst. And I looked at them--" Here, it gets a little blue here. "I looked at them, and I saw, and look, all of them let out their organs like horses."

Dan Beecher Oh.

Dan McClellan "And they began to mount the cows of the bulls, and they all conceived and bore elephants and camels and asses."

Dan Beecher Okay.

Dan McClellan Yes.

Dan Beecher And they- This is the origin story of animals? Just everything starts with cows and moves on from there?

Dan McClellan "And all the bulls feared them and were terrified before them, and they began to bite with their teeth and devour and gore with their horns, and they began to devour those bulls, and look, all the sons of the earth began to tremble and quake before them and to flee." And so, the characters from the narrative of Enoch are now recast as animals. But I think this is interesting because we've been talking about Revelation, we've been talking about parts of the New Testament. Something else in Revelation is that Satan, the great dragon, fell from heaven.

Dan Beecher Hmm.

Dan McClellan And what did he do with his tail? He swept down a third of the stars of heaven. Okay, so we- And so we've got an origin for that tradition as well. Now, obviously, it's been altered. We got this great dragon, which is Leviathan. But this is, and even in Luke, I think it's either 10:18 or 18:10. Jesus says, "I saw Satan fall from heaven like lightning." And people are like, "Well, this is about Lucifer from Isaiah 14." No, it's not. This is the animal apocalypse. This is Enoch who sees the star fall to Earth. So, this story has a lot more influence on the traditions of the New Testament than a lot of people are willing to give it credit for. And so when we look in Revelation, when we look in Jude, when we look elsewhere, and we see this weird imagery and all this stuff going on with angels, and sex always has something to do with it.

Dan Beecher Yeah. That is- There's a quotation in 2 Peter about the angels in judgment, which is- Oh, yeah.

Dan McClellan Where?

Dan Beecher 2 Peter 2.

Dan McClellan Uh-huh.

Dan Beecher I've got it.

Dan McClellan Is it 18?

Dan Beecher No. Verse four. Verse four.

Dan McClellan Okay.

Dan Beecher Where it says, "If God did not spare the angels when they sinned, but cast them into hell and committed them to chains of deepest darkest darkness to be kept until judgment."

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So, without this story in Enoch, that makes no sense. That's just like, "Wait, uh-huh?

Dan McClellan What?

Dan Beecher What are we talking about?"

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher "Who did what now?"

Dan McClellan Yeah. And then, 2 Peter 2 even brings up Sodom and Gomorrah again.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan Just like Jude does.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan So, yeah. There's so much of the... And if this idea of the punishment in these valleys of the Earth and everything like that, if that's really the origin of the concept of hell and Gehenna, a lot of Revelation, 2 Peter, Jude, Luke, the concept of hell- ... a lot of this seems to descend from the traditions that we find in the book of 1 Enoch. And I think once you get to Paul, Paul kind of pivots back to the fall of Eden as kind of the origin of evil.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan But I think there were probably competing traditions about where evil came from. Did angels teach evil, or did a piece of fruit cause evil to happen? I know which tradition I would've gone with. Sexy angels, 10 times out of 10.

Dan Beecher I love it.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher I think it's so interesting to realize that big, important ideas that shaped how a lot of the authors of the New Testament think are all from a book that is largely excluded from the biblical canon. I think that's fascinating. They're quoting it, they're talking about it, and yet they're taking ideas from it, but didn't make the cut.

Dan McClellan Yeah. Well, except in Jude, because Jude directly quotes from it and says, "Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied," and then quotes Enoch 1:9.

Dan Beecher There you go.

Dan McClellan Yeah. And there's a lot of hemming and hawing about- ... about why the author of the Epistle of Jude would call this prophecy. And in fact, even our friend Wes Huff made a big old video talking about- Let's not call him our friend.

Dan Beecher We've never met that man.

Dan McClellan No. Made a video trying to talk around what's going on there. In fact, he even got to the point where it was like, "Just because Jude quoted that one verse doesn't mean Jude thought that the whole book was inspired." As if Jude was going through and being like, "This is good. This is out. Not you.

Dan Beecher Ew."

Dan McClellan I want to see another text where Christians did that, where they said- Where you- ... "Verses one through seven are inspired. Verse eight, definitely not."

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah. "Verse nine, we're on the fence about." That's not how any of this works.

Dan Beecher Yeah.

Dan McClellan But people go to just twist themselves into pretzels to try to make it sound logical to reject the inspiration of the entire book of Enoch when the text that they insist is inspired says it was prophecy.

Dan Beecher Right.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher So, yeah.

Dan McClellan All right. Well, there you have it.

Dan Beecher It's a fascinating book. It's kind of fun to thumb through, if you have a long time, because there's many chapters. They're short chapters, but there's a lot. It's a big book.

Dan McClellan Yeah.

Dan Beecher But yeah. And if anyone mentions angels being chained up, ask them where they got that idea. See if they know.

Dan McClellan All right.

Dan Beecher Well, that's it for today. Thank you all so much. If you would like to go and hear us blather on about other fun and interesting things that hit our minds, and even ask us questions, you can become a patron over on patreon.com/dataoverdogma, and go hit up the afterparty. That's always a good time. And we really appreciate all of our patrons.

Dan McClellan We do.

Dan Beecher Thanks so much to Roger Gowdy for editing. Thanks to JJ for being our producer. And we will talk to you again next week.

Dan McClellan Bye, everybody.