The Book of Enoch: Atlantis, Nephilim & Giants

They descended into the plains and they chose, each one, one woman that they desired to wed. That story is elaborated in the Book of Enoch. In fact, that's where the story comes from, is the Book of Enoch. That little reference in Genesis, if you want to know the full story of what the author is alluding to, you read 1 Enoch, specifically the Book of the Watchers. The antediluvian world was considered, again, almost universally, by the primary ancient cultures around the world as the Golden Age. Of course, this is a term that comes from the Greeks and they all have their own terms for it. For example, the ancient Egyptians referred to it as Zep Tepi, the first time. It's the same thing. It's the same idea. So what is the Golden Age? What is the first time? This is the time when the gods descended from heaven and co-inhabited the earth with mankind, and furthermore, copulated with human women and progenerated hybrid offspring. So I'm thinking now, we were just talking about the Book of Genesis, of Genesis 6, a confusing passage where the church fathers are somewhat divided on it. One explanation of Genesis 6, the sons of God looked on the daughters of men and found them to be beautiful and went and did the thing that men and women do. One reading of that is that it's demons or something. Angels or demons mating with human beings. One issue with that, of course, is that to make a human being in the ordinary course of things, you need two people that have bodies, not an incorporeal being and a corporeal being. However, I think Justin Martyr, in the Second Apology, says that it's angels and humans. That's right. Tertullian? Tertullian, yeah. And really a number of church fathers, early Christian fathers. Origin? Yeah. But there is some disagreement. One view is the Sethite view, that the sons of God refer to the descendants of Seth, and the daughters of men refer to the descendants of Cain. And then if you were to take an even more metaphorical and symbolic view, it's this notion that virtuous men are seduced by not so virtuous women, which is an anthropological fact of history. But your view is... Oh, you've covered the bases there. So, I would say the biblical view, and the only one that makes logical sense, is that the sons of God in Genesis 6 are an angelic faction. These are angels. These are not men. The sons of God saw the daughters of men, that they were comely, and they decided to take wives from among the daughters of men, and they copulated with them. And the production of their union was giants, the Nephilim. See, that story that's found in Genesis 6, the writer of Genesis, when he's writing about the sons of God and this affair, and it's just a little snippet, he does not elaborate. He doesn't enlarge on this strange digression in the Genesis narrative. He just mentions this bizarre thing. You know, I've started to read the Bible since I was a kid. I want to read the whole Bible, but I wouldn't finish it often. So, I would start it again eventually. I'd say, okay, I'm going to start it again. So, I've read the book of Genesis like a billion times or something. And, you know, every time you get to that, you say, wait, what? Hold on. What was that part about? Hold on. That's right. To back up, we need an elaboration on that. Well, the thing is that I'm totally persuaded that the writer of Genesis, as he's writing about the sons of God, this bizarre affair, he's not elaborating on it because the story is already well known. He's just assuming that the audience already knows what he's talking about because this was one of the most monumental events that's ever happened. Even you see this in the New Testament when specific people who were either alive at the time of the writing or who had been alive within living memory, they'll say, yeah, you know, so-and-so, the daughter of so-and-so or the son of so-and-so. Yeah, he saw this happen. And here's just a little bit, you know, anyway, we all know, right? You all know Johnny, right? Exactly. Okay. So, you're saying that this is happening in the book of Genesis. Like, yeah, of course, we all know. The writer of Genesis is assuming that his audience is conversant with the larger narrative that expands on the mention of the sons of God, on the writer of Genesis' allusion to that story. The audience already knew the whole story, so he didn't have to repeat it. There was no need to go back into all the details. Now, two questions then. One, how does, at least the traditional Christian understanding of what an angel is, which I'm persuaded by, is that an angel is incorporeal. And one can go further, you know, St. Thomas Aquinas describes angels as being, in a way, unique species. We have choirs of angels, we have a hierarchy of angels, but they don't communicate by speaking, for instance, because they don't have vocal cords and mouths. Now, angels do interact with human beings in mystical and interesting ways, but angels in themselves don't have bodies. Human beings do have bodies and rational souls. We have intellect, and we have flesh, and we have will. And then there are the lower animals, who have bodies, and they have instinct, and they have appetite, but they don't have intellect and will. So we're kind of this middle ground. We've got the reason, the intellect and the will, albeit greatly degraded, of an angel, but we got the body of an animal, and we're kind of this meeting point. So how does an incorporeal being create a child with a corporeal being, or do you have a different view of angels? I think we need to back up a little bit, because we have to deal with what I call the first cause. So let's assume for a moment that Genesis 6 is angels, and they're looking down at the daughters of men, and they're lusting after them. They're desiring to take them as wives and to copulate with them, to have intercourse with them. So what's the first cause here? Lust. In fact, when I was talking about the elaboration of that story, why the writer of Genesis didn't bother to elaborate on it, it's because it was well known to the ancient Hebrews in the book of Enoch, which was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. The book of Enoch is actually quoted verbatim in the New Testament in the book of Jude, verbatim. Right, so it's considered an apocryphal book or non-canonical book. It's not included in any canon of the Bible that we're familiar with, certainly not in the history of the church, making ecumenical counsel, formal decrees, but it has been around. Except for in Ethiopia. Ethiopia. In Ethiopia, both the Beta Israel Jews, the ancient Jewish community, and the Talahedo Orthodox Christians long ago incorporated and preserved the book of Enoch in their canon. And as you say, there are references, it would seem, in the New Testament. Many. There are many allusions to the book of Enoch. For example, when Jesus says, in my Father's house are many mansions. Well, where does that come from? The book of Enoch. The book of Enoch. I've never read the book of Enoch. There are many, many allusions. But then, as I said, in Jude, it's verbatim. And Jude says that Enoch the seventh from Adam prophesied, saying, and then copy, paste. Copy from first Enoch, paste into his epistle. So, they were conversant. The early church, the church fathers, the disciples of Christ, Christ himself, and all of the writers of the Bible, all of them were conversant with the book of Enoch. There's no question. In fact, I believe that if you were living in first century Jerusalem, but before it was destroyed by the Romans, and if you were to walk into the temple during the time of Christ, into the synagogue, I think you would find in the scriptorium, where all of the sacred scrolls are held, are kept, you would find a manuscript that was reflective, representative of what today we call first Enoch, Ethiopic Enoch. I would even say, as someone who is totally innocent of the book of Enoch, I've never read it. I have no strong opinions of whether it was some huge mistake not to include it in the canon. I don't think there are mistakes in the canon. And I'm not arguing that it was, but... Exactly. My view is, I think that the Proto-Evangelium of James, for instance, is an edifying work to read and can inform us. It's useful. Maybe it's not canon, but it's useful. And so that seems to be kind of the view that you're taking. Well, I will say this, and that is my view, but I will say this. I'll add that in the book of Enoch, see, the book of Enoch, first Enoch, is very complex. And we're going to get back to what I call the first cause in a minute with Enoch. But the book of Enoch is very complex. First Enoch, there are three different books of Enoch. Only one of them, portions of it were written before Christ. That's the one I'm interested in, first Enoch. There's second Enoch, which is called the Slavonic Enoch, and third Enoch, which is called the Hebrew Enoch. First Enoch is known as the Ethiopian Enoch because the Ethiopians preserved it. First Enoch, the oldest portions of first Enoch, namely the book of the Watchers and the book of parables, were most certainly written before Christ. Why is this important? Because some of the most extraordinary, astounding, Christological prophecies, prophecies pertaining to the Son of Man, which is the title that Jesus used most often when speaking of himself, are in the parables in first Enoch. I mean absolutely stunningly accurate prophecies pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth, written before Christ. Is there any dispute over the dating of the first book of Enoch? Most scholars will date, in fact, almost universally, scholars date the earliest portions of Enoch to sometime around 300 BC. Now, it's a complicated document because it's a compilation of text written by various authors. I'm most interested in the first two sections of first Enoch, which are the book of the Watchers and the parables, precisely because they're dated to before the birth of Christ. My whole point in bringing up Enoch was you have that snippet in Genesis. Well, that story is elaborated in the book of Enoch. In fact, that's where the story comes from, is the book of Enoch. That little reference in Genesis, if you want to know the full story of what the author is alluding to, you read first Enoch, specifically the book of the Watchers, the first section, and it tells you this extraordinary narrative. I mean, it's what I call the Enochian tale about the sons of God, which are designated as Watchers in first Enoch, that they're looking down, they're seeing the daughters of men, and it's basically almost copy-paste into Genesis, the Genesis 6 reference. Intriguingly enough, in R. H. Charles' translation, it's the same verses, Genesis 6, 1 through whatever it is, 4, I think, the sons of God, but in the book of Enoch, it's the angels. By the way, that's the way the Septuagint renders it as well, Genesis 6, the angels are looking down at the daughters of men, that they're fair, that they're beautiful, and they lust. Okay, so that's why I told you to back up. I call that the first cause of the angels' sin in this particular case, the Watchers' Rebellion. The first cause is lust. How do you explain lust for spiritual beings who don't have bodies? How do you explain incorporeal beings having sexual impulses? That is a very good question, but just before we get to it, you wouldn't say this is the first sin that the angels committed, because the rebellion of the angels, the rebellion of Satan, would have had to predate. This particular incident, this was the catalyst for what they were about to do. Yes, so how does an incorporeal being become tumescent, to use a diplomatic word, for fair-looking ladies on the ground? That's right, and not only do these angels, according to 1 Enoch, again, which is the elaboration of the Genesis 6 reference, not only do they lust after these women, they are determined to take them as their wives and procreate offspring with them. So they lust, that's the first cause, then they descend to the earth, according to 1 Enoch, 200 Watchers descend to the earth on the summit of Mount Hermon. Mount Hermon is very interesting in the Bible. They descend to the summit of Mount Hermon, they bind themselves by an oath of mutual imprecations, in other words, all for one, one for all, we're all in this together, they knew it was a great sin, but they were going to accept the consequences together, whatever befall, and then they, that's why, by the way, Mount Hermon has been known since time immemorial as the mountain of oath, and then they descended into the plains and they chose each one, one woman, one maiden that they desired to wed, who they ultimately took to wife. They copulated with these women, these women conceived and gave birth to giants, demigods, the offspring of God and man. This is the Hebraic cosmological paradigm of the antediluvian world, this is the Hebraic paradigm of the golden age of Zep Tepi, because the ancient Mesopotamians and the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans and all the rest of them, they believe that the very same thing occurred, that the gods descended to the earth, that they copulated with human women. I mean, look at Atlantis, the story of Atlantis, everybody knows about the city of Atlantis and the legend of Atlantis, but very few people pay attention to what Plato writes in the Timaeus and Critias dialogue, where he talks about Atlantis. He has Solon of Athens traveling to Egypt, and he's being informed by the priest of Sais about the extraordinary past of the Athenians that he's unaware of, and part of this past involves this conflict that they had, this epic conflict with Atlantis and the Atlanteans, and they tell him the whole story, right? And everybody's familiar with Atlantis, that Atlantis was this advanced ancient city. It's a great resort in the Caribbean. Right, that as well, yes, it still exists today. In a slightly degraded form, perfectly pleasant. It does. So Atlantis was this advanced civilization that was destroyed in a day and a night in cataclysm, right? But Plato has the priest of Sais telling Solon in the dialogue the full story. And what's the beginning of the story of Atlantis? The beginning of the story of Atlantis is that the gods who descended to the earth, are apportioning the earth amongst themselves. They're creating an empire, and they're dividing up their kingdoms. And Poseidon, for his lot, he got the area of Atlantis, the region that would become Atlantis. So what does he do? He builds Atlantis. He raises up an island out of the sea, which is ultimately going to be the home of this city Atlantis. But what does he do after this, or during this? He becomes enamored of a human woman named Plato. And he takes her as his wife, and he copulates with her. And she gives birth to five sets of twin sons who will become the 10 kings of Atlantis. And these are giants. Atlas, for example, he's the chief among them. That's the backstory. So what do we see here? Well, this is a one-to-one match with the Book of Enoch and Genesis 6. Is it not? It's the gods descending to the earth, taking human women as their wives, having intercourse with them, and progenerating a race of demigod giants. This is everywhere. It's just like the megaliths that we were talking about. This is called the golden age. And I believe that it's literally true, that that literally happened in the time before the great flood. And I believe in the ubiquitous testimony of our ancient ancestors. And in fact, the Egyptians informed Solon, it was in the midst of the conflict, because this Atlantean empire became expansionary, they became aggressive, and they were going on conquest, and they were steamrolling everybody that they encountered, until they encountered the Athenians, who were the only faction that was able to resist them. And they're locked into this epic war, the Atlanteans versus the Athenians, and then cataclysm. Cataclysm destroys Atlantis and everyone else, not just Atlantis. It's a global cataclysm. And the Egyptians kept record of this, and they told Solon that that wasn't the only cataclysm. There have been many cataclysms, because they believed it was cyclic, that the cataclysm is cyclic, that there's this celestial timepiece, the zodiac, that the primary function of which is to keep track of when the cataclysm is going to occur again. So this is how the ancients viewed. So if you were to, and I'm not saying, by the way, that that means that the pyramids were built by giants or anything like that. I don't want people to think that. I don't know who built the great pyramids. But I do believe that many of these extraordinary megalithic sites around the world, like Baalbek, were built in the age before the flood. And it had something to do with the knowledge of the gods who descended to the earth. That's what the ancients say. That's what they all say. Go to goodranchers.com, use code Knowles. Over 140,000 family farms across America have shut down since 2017. Why? Because grocery chains keep pushing cheap imported meat. Instead of supporting the folks who live and work right here in the USA, when you visit goodranchers.com, you are not just getting better meat, you're getting behind a mission that matters. What makes them different? For starters, everything they offer is 100% American sourced. 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Use code Knowles. GoodRanchers.com. Code K-N-O-W-L-E-S. Good Ranchers American meat delivered. All I will contribute to that narrative is one of my most intelligent friends, very well-grounded, extraordinarily educated, very, very high IQ, very serious person, has told me for years now, says, yeah, you know, when I think of these ancient structures and there are all these debates over how they were built and, you know, I basically think it's largely demons. And he says it with a totally straight face. He means it. He's not joking around. And that kind of sounds like what you're saying. Well, I'm going to qualm with the term demons a little bit here. So, we have a very Western perspective of angels and demons. We have a demonology that comes from Western tradition that is not necessarily concordant with ancient Hebraic cosmology. Because if you were to ask an ancient Hebrew or the writers of the Old Testament what a demon was, they would have a very different answer than us. Well, if you asked an ancient Greek what a, you know, daimon, like even the phrase for happiness, right, eudaimonia, like spirit. That's a very good point because the Greeks believed specifically that the daimon was a spirit, a disembodied spirit of a being who had lived in the world before the flood. That's what a daimon was, that they died in the golden age and that their spirits persisted in the earth after the flood in the form of daimons. Well, guess what? That's the Hebraic view. That's the view of the, that's the, that's concordant with ancient Hebrew cosmology. So, in the cosmology of the Jews, the demons are a very specific thing. So, let's address first how we view demons in Western civilization. And this is, I would say, primarily the product of medieval Christianity. I'd love to, by the way, before you get into this explanation, I love this point you're making which is more ambitious and audacious probably than many viewers are even noticing. Because there's this idea that we all just accept as a matter of course that our civilization comes from the melding of Greece and Jerusalem. And so, and there are these totally different ways of viewing the world with these totally different perspectives. But really, I think it's overly simplistic to suggest that the Greeks had no sense of the Hebraic view and that the Hebrews had no sense of the Greek view. And you know, come on guys, it's pretty close together and you see, you see harmonies and echoes. And that's what you're saying. No, actually, there's a kind of unified cosmology. They're all inheriting the same tradition. Now, that tradition is becoming variegated. It's taking on the idiosyncrasies of these particular cultures as it, as they develop. But there's a source. The answer is it's because there's a source of a narrative. There's a, there's a source to the narrative of the flood. There's one particular source. And I would say that source is Noah and his sons. And then that story gets taken by the ancient Mesopotamians, the ancient Sumerians, who I think are the, are the civilization that grew out ultimately of Noah and his sons. And then it's changed. The names are changed. People speak different languages. The details get jumbled and you get these stories that have similar elements, right? They have, they have these foundational elements, the flood myths, but then they have their, their idiosyncrasies as well. And that's precisely because all of these, all of these stories are founded in the same original narrative. So then what did we... The true story. Right. What have we gotten wrong about demons? Okay. So going back to that, so the Western perspective of demons is basically we will view demon as anything that is, well, demonic, anything that is scary or grotesque, we would call a demon. Or even basically like an angel that rebels, a bad angel. Or an angel that rebels. We lump all of that together in this term demon. So in the Western mind, a demon is like, it's like a boogeyman, basically. It's like anything that's evil and malevolent, supernaturalism, that's all demon. That's a demon. But the, in the ancient Hebrew cosmology, they were much more, they were much more narrow in their defining of the word demon. To them, a demon was something very, very specific. A demon was the disembodied spirit of a giant, a giant that died in the antediluvian world before the flood. Their spirit, as this is in the book of Enoch, by the way, this is, it derives from the book of Enoch, that their spirit, this is judgment. God judges them that because they're neither holy of their fathers, their angelic fathers, or of their human mothers, that they're going to be cursed when they die to wander the earth as bodiless vagabonds, as disembodied vagabonds. They're going to be hungry. They're going to be thirsty. Presumably they're going to have all the desires of the flesh, but no bodies through which to fulfill those desires, to satiate those desires. That was a curse that was placed on them by God, according to the book of Enoch, according to ancient Hebrew cosmology. This is, this and only this is the origin of a demon and is what a demon is. And so what about like when Lucifer rebels, you know, Satan falls like lightning and leads all the bad angels who rebelled against God and there's a great battle and they lose, spoiler alert. And, you know, St. Michael, the archangel, wins. God wins. He always wins. And what about them? That's before the giants. Well, those are the insubordinate sons of God. These are the defected sons of God, right? These were the angelic beings who were loyal to the king at one time, but who rebelled and became disloyal and were expelled. And that's what they are, but they're not distinct. They're not technically demons. So the demon is, again, specifically according to Hebrew cosmology, a demon is specifically the disembodied spirit of Nephilim. Now, when God, in the book of Enoch, again, this is a judgment on the giants, on the offspring of the watchers. They're sentenced to this terrible curse. You know, it's very much like the plot line of the Pirates of the Caribbean, the first one, right? You had Barbossa and his crew. They had the Mayan gold, the cursed Mayan gold, and they had this curse where they were living forever. They were eternal, but they couldn't satisfy any of the desires of their flesh. And this is illustrated with Barbossa who wants to bite the apple, but when he bites it, the moon comes out or something, and you see that he's just a skeleton and there's nowhere for the food to go. He has no tongue. He has no stomach. And all he wants is to be able to satisfy his hunger, to be able to bite that apple. Well, that perfectly illustrates the nature of a demon according to ancient Hebrew cosmology. So, you have the disembodied spirits of the giants that are going to persist in the world as vagabond wraiths. That's their curse, much like Barbossa and his crew's curse. They're going to wander the earth, hungry, thirsty, presumably all of the desires of the flesh, but with no flesh through which to fulfill those desires, to satiate those desires. That's a very torturous existence. So, fast forward to the New Testament, I should say before I go there, and a part of this curse, God tells them that they'll be in this condition until the end of the age, when the age is wholly consummated and the great judge appears. And at that time, they will be judged with finality. But until that time, they're going to be cursed to wander the earth in this miserable state. So, fast forward to the New Testament. Jesus is walking in Galilee. Jesus is walking all over Judea. And what is he encountering? He's encountering these things called unclean spirits. And going back to the Enochian reference, part of the judgment was, God says, evil spirits or unclean spirits you shall be called. Fast forward to the New Testament. Jesus is encountering unclean spirits. And what are these spirits doing? They're inhabiting the bodies of human beings. And when they get inside the body of a human being, it manifests something like epilepsy. The person is rolling around, foaming from the mouth, throwing themselves into the fire, screaming at the top of their lungs. And Jesus would cast these demons out. And they were called unclean spirits. And there's a particular occasion when Jesus is walking on the shores of Gadara. And this is the Gadarene demoniac encounter, where the Gadarene demoniac comes running up to Jesus and he's full of a legion of demons. I mean, he's full of all kinds of demons, right? Yeah, his pronouns were the plural pronouns. It was they, them. Modern analogy. Yeah, exactly. Precisely right. He was they, them. And he throws himself at the feet of Jesus. He sees him coming. And he throws himself at the feet of Jesus. And the demons cry out, what have we to do with you, oh son of God? We know who you are, you son of God. Why have you come to judge us before the appointed time? So what do we have here? We have a confirmation of the book of Enoch, because the distance-bodied spirits of the Nephilim, they have no bodies of their own, so what do they want? They want bodies. So they're inhabiting the bodies of human beings. And through the bodies of the people that they possess, they're attempting to satiate these desires that they have, which are otherwise insatiable. And they see who walking on the shore of Gadara, the great judge. But wait a minute, it's not time yet, according to the book of Enoch. It's not the end of the age yet. That's why they cry out, what have we to do with you? Why have you come before to judge us before the appointed time? The time had not yet come and they knew it. So there's a confirmation of that cosmology that comes from 1 Enoch in this encounter that Jesus has with the Gadarene demoniac, who is a human being being possessed by disembodied spirits. So that's the very narrow definition of what a demon is. And as I illustrated before, it's the same idea to the Greeks. As I said, they believe that the daimons, the daimones, or however you pronounce it in Greek, are disembodied spirits from people who lived in the world before the in the golden age. It's basically the same tradition.