HALLOWEEN SPECIAL!!! The History of Demons pt. 1

[00:00:02] From the darkest reaches of space to the deepest corners of your mind. Welcome to From The Void Podcast. When you hear the word demon, what comes to mind? Maybe it's a malevolent spirit, a fallen angel, a servant of Satan. Something lurking in the darkness waiting for an opportunity to possess

[00:00:32] or torment the living. For many of us, those images feel familiar. They're woven into movies and television, ghost stories and horror novels, religious teachings, and the conversations we've been having for as long as most of us can remember. And because they feel so familiar, it's easy to assume that people have always understood demons the same way we do today. But that's where things

[00:00:59] get interesting. Because if you start digging into the history, you find that the answer to a seemingly simple question, what is a demon, has changed many, many times. Across different cultures and different periods of history, people have described all kinds of unseen things. Spirits associated with illness and misfortune, figures that could protect or harm, and supernatural forces

[00:01:25] thought to exist somewhere between the human and divine. And as those ideas traveled and evolved, so did the stories people told about where these things came from, what they wanted, and what role they played in the world. Even within Christianity, the picture is more complicated than we often assume. Some of the details that feel like they've always been part of the story developed over centuries,

[00:01:50] centuries, shaped by ancient traditions, religious writings, interpretation, art, literature, and folklore. So before we begin, I want to be clear about what this episode is and what it isn't. This isn't an attempt to prove that demons don't exist. And it's not an attempt to tell anyone what they should or shouldn't believe. It's an invitation to step back and ask where the ideas we've inherited

[00:02:15] actually come from. Which beliefs appear in the biblical texts? Which ones developed later? And how did centuries of storytelling help create the image of demons that so many of us recognize today? Because whether you approach this subject as a person of faith, a skeptic, or someone who just loves a good mystery, the history is fascinating. And it takes us much farther back than you might

[00:02:40] expect. So let's begin at the beginning, or at least as close to the beginning as the surviving evidence allows, and trace the long, strange history of demons. When you hear the word demon, there's probably an

[00:03:05] image that immediately comes to mind. Maybe it's something with horns, black eyes, claws, something lurking in the darkness. Or maybe your image is more explicitly Christian, like a fallen angel, a servant of Satan. A creature cast out of heaven alongside Lucifer after an ancient rebellion against God. For nearly 2,000 years, Christianity has profoundly shaped the way much of the Western world imagines

[00:03:31] demons. But Christianity didn't actually invent them. Neither did Judaism. In fact, if we want to understand where demons come from, we're going to have to travel thousands of years before Christianity existed. Before the New Testament, before the Hebrew Bible had taken anything resembling its final form. Before Greece gave us the word that would eventually become demon. We're going back to some of the world's

[00:03:59] earliest civilizations, to ancient Mesopotamia. The land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers gave rise to civilizations whose names still echo through history. Sumer, Akkad, Babylon, Assyria. And among the hundreds of thousands of clay tablets these cultures left behind are prayers, myths, medical texts, rituals,

[00:04:24] and incantations. Some of them describe beings that modern scholars routinely translate using a very familiar word, demons. But right away, we have a problem. Because when we call these beings demons, it's almost impossible not to imagine the creatures that thousands of years of Christian tradition, medieval artwork, literature, and horror movies have taught us to see. And these were not those demons. There was no Satan sitting on a throne

[00:04:52] commanding an army of fallen angels. There was no Christian hell. There hadn't been a Christian anything. Instead, the Mesopotamian supernatural world was pretty crowded. There were gods, spirits, ghosts, protective beings, malevolent beings, and creatures whose relationship with humanity wasn't always as simple as good or evil. One of the ancient Sumerian terms scholars encounter is Udug. Later in Akkadian,

[00:05:21] a related term was Utuku. And references to the Udug appear in Mesopotamian texts stretching back into the third millennium BCE. That puts us more than 4,000 years into the past. But even Udug doesn't neatly mean what you and I mean when we say demon. And Udug could be dangerous. There were incantations directed against the evil Udug. But ancient texts could also speak of a good Udug. The category at

[00:05:50] itself wasn't necessarily synonymous with cosmic evil. And that tells us something important almost immediately. The earliest beings we're going to encounter in this story don't fit neatly into the categories we're accustomed to. They aren't fallen angels. They aren't servants of the devil. There's something older, something stranger. And they were believed capable of affecting the physical

[00:06:15] world. For the people of ancient Mesopotamia, the supernatural wasn't necessarily separated from medicine, illness, and everyday life in the way many of us might separate those categories today. Disease could have supernatural causes. Misfortune could have supernatural causes. There were rituals and incantations intended to protect people from hostile forces. There were specialists who attempted to diagnose supernatural affliction and drive dangerous

[00:06:44] entities away. In other words, thousands of years before the Christian ritual of exorcism developed, people were already performing rituals that we would recognize as forms of exorcism. Some surviving Mesopotamian incantations describe a demon entering or afflicting the human body. One text from the later Udug-Hull tradition describes an Esseku demon afflicting a man so severely that he

[00:07:14] cannot raise his hands or feet. The solution involved ritual, incantation, divine assistance. The dangerous thing had to be driven away. And as centuries passed, some of these supernatural threats became much more recognizable. Some even had names. One of the most feared, was Lamashtu. Lamashtu was particularly terrifying because of whom she was believed to target.

[00:07:41] Pregnant women. Women during childbirth. And newborn children. Surviving amulets depict her as a grotesque hybrid creature. A female body. The head of a lion-like beast. Clawed hands. The talons of a bird. In some representations, animals suckle from her breasts. Ancient incantations attempted to repel her.

[00:08:06] Amulets bearing her image could be worn or placed nearby as protection. And that may initially sound a little strange. If you believe Lamashtu is dangerous, then why would you put a picture of her around your neck? Because in Mesopotamian magic, an image wasn't necessarily decoration. It could do something. The image, the inscription, the ritual, and the invocation of divine powers were part of an

[00:08:32] attempt to control or repel the supernatural threat. And sometimes, the best defense against one terrifying supernatural being was another one. His name was Pazuzu. And if that name sounds familiar, there's a very good reason. In 1973, The Exorcist, one of my favorite horror movies of all time, introduced millions of moviegoers to Pazuzu as the ancient demonic entity possessing 12-year-old

[00:09:01] Reagan McNeil. And visually, the historical Pazuzu certainly looks the part. A monstrous face, bulging eyes, wings, talons, a scaly body. Ancient inscriptions identify him with destructive winds, and surviving artifacts call him the king of the evil wind demons. So when The Exorcist needed an ancient embodiment of evil, Pazuzu certainly looked convincing. There's just one problem. If you

[00:09:29] actually lived in ancient Mesopotamia, Pazuzu might have been the thing you called when you needed protection from a demon. Ancient people wore small bronze representations of Pazuzu's head. His frightening face pointed outward. Not because Pazuzu was secretly benevolent, he definitely wasn't. He could represent dangerous winds believed capable of bringing illness.

[00:09:53] But supernatural power wasn't necessarily divided into the simple categories of good and evil that later western religion would emphasize. And Pazuzu's power could be turned against something worse. Like Lamashtu. Pazuzu was believed capable of driving her away. Some surviving Lamashtu amulets actually depict Pazuzu as part of the protection against her. So think about how strange that is from

[00:10:21] a modern perspective. You didn't necessarily defeat a demon by calling upon something purely good. Sometimes, you fought a monster with another monster. And that leaves us with our first major clue in the history of demons. The oldest demon-like beings weren't necessarily members of an organized kingdom of evil. They weren't fallen angels who had rebelled against God. They didn't necessarily serve a supreme devil. And they weren't always completely evil. They existed inside a much more

[00:10:50] complicated supernatural ecosystem. Some brought sickness. Some protected. Some could apparently do both. Human beings attempted to control them through rituals, incantations, amulets, and appeals to more powerful supernatural forces. And all this was happening thousands of years before anyone wrote the New Testament. Which means that when Christianity eventually develops its own understanding of demons,

[00:11:15] it isn't introducing humanity to the idea that dangerous invisible things exist. That idea is ancient. What changes is what those beings are. Where they come from, who they serve, and eventually, why they're evil. But before we can get there, something else has to happen. Because despite everything we've just discussed, the ancient Sumerians weren't actually using the word demon. That word comes from

[00:11:44] somewhere else. And strangely enough, it originally didn't mean an evil spirit at all. It comes from ancient Greece. From a word pronounced roughly daimon. And a daimon could be something very different from the creature we imagine today. More than 4000 years ago, the people of Mesopotamia were already performing rituals intended to protect themselves from dangerous supernatural beings. But they didn't

[00:12:14] call those beings demons. They couldn't have. Because the word itself hadn't entered the story yet. To find its origins, we have to leave Mesopotamia behind and travel west. To ancient Greece. The English word demon ultimately comes from the ancient Greek word daimon. And if we could somehow travel back to ancient Greece and tell someone that a demon was an evil servant of Satan, they might have

[00:12:41] absolutely no idea what we were talking about. Because a daimon wasn't necessarily evil, it wasn't necessarily good either. And perhaps most importantly, it wasn't the creature that word would eventually become. The word appears very early in Greek literature. In the works traditionally attributed to Homer, composed centuries before Christianity, the words daimon and theos, meaning God, can sometimes overlap.

[00:13:09] A daimon might refer to a divine power whose precise identity wasn't known. Something had intervened, something had changed a person's fate, something supernatural was responsible. But exactly which god? Maybe you didn't know. The daimon was unseen divine power behind what had happened. And as Greek religious and philosophical thought developed, the concept became even more interesting. Because daimonas,

[00:13:43] the Greek poet Hesiod described a mythical golden age of humanity. According to Hesiod, after the people of this age died, Zeus transformed them into daimonas upon the earth. Invisible spirits. Watchers over mortal human beings. Not monsters, not fallen angels, not servants of an evil god. Protective

[00:14:07] spirits. Which means that one of the earliest descriptions of daimonas in Greek literature is almost the exact opposite of what the word demon means to many people today. And centuries later, philosophers would develop the concept even further. Plato describes a daimon as something that exists between gods and humans. In his dialogue symposium, the priestess Diotima explains that the daimon

[00:14:35] occupies the space between the mortal and the divine. These beings could carry prayers and sacrifices upward. And divine commands and the gifts downward. They were intermediaries. A bridge between worlds. And among these intermediary beings was one whose name you've probably heard before. Eros. Love. In Plato's story, Eros isn't described as one of the great immortal gods. He is a daimon,

[00:15:05] a supernatural intermediary. Which sounds nothing like Reagan McNeil floating above her bed. And then there's Socrates. According to Plato, Socrates repeatedly spoke about something he called his daimonion. A divine sign. A supernatural warning that had accompanied him since childhood. It didn't possess him. It didn't tempt him toward evil. It didn't demand a sacrifice. Socrates describes it as

[00:15:34] something that occasionally warned him not to take a particular course of action. And that detail is pretty important. Because once again, the language that will eventually give us the Christian demon is being used for something that isn't demonic in the modern sense at all. But that doesn't mean every daimon was friendly. Greek supernatural thought wasn't that simple. A daimon could be associated with fortune,

[00:16:01] with fate, with protection, with destruction, with forces outside human control. Some could be feared, some could be blamed for terrible things. And over centuries, different Greek writers used the word in different ways. There was never one universally agreed definition. But that's precisely the point. Daimon was not originally another word for an evil spirit. The transformation of daimon into demon

[00:16:29] still hadn't happened. For that, we need another culture. And another religion. As Jewish communities increasingly encountered the Greek-speaking world, something extraordinary happened. Ancient Hebrew religious texts began to be translated into Greek. The collection we now call the Septuagint. And the translators faced a similar problem to anyone who has ever tried to translate one language into another.

[00:16:59] Sometimes, there simply isn't a perfect equivalent. When these translators encountered references to foreign gods, supernatural entities, and mysterious beings in Hebrew scripture, Greek words related to daimon could be used to describe them. And slowly, the word began entering a very different theological world. One in which Israel's gods stood above rival supernatural powers. One in which worship of other gods was

[00:17:28] condemned. And one in which the beings associated with those other forms of worship could increasingly be interpreted negatively. Consider a line preserved in Psalm 106. Speaking about Israel's worship of foreign gods, the Hebrew text says that they sacrificed their sons and daughters to Shadim, mysterious supernatural beings. When that passage was rendered into Greek, the translators used

[00:17:55] daimonios, demons. And something similar happens in Deuteronomy. Deuteronomy 32 describes sacrifices made to Shadim rather than to God. Again, the Greek translation uses language derived from daimon. Something important is beginning to happen. A Greek term that could once describe divine powers, intermediaries, and even protective spirits is being used inside Jewish scripture for supernatural

[00:18:21] beings associated with illegitimate worship. The word hasn't completed its transformation yet though, but it's moving in that direction. And there is another strange example. Psalm 96 in the Greek Septuagint, Psalm 95 in the Greek numbering contains a line that would become enormously important to later Christians. In Hebrew, the line essentially says, all the gods of the nations are idols. But the ancient

[00:18:49] Greek translation renders it differently. All the gods of the nations are daimonia, demons. Think about the theological implication there. The gods worshipped by other nations aren't simply being dismissed as statues. They're being described using supernatural terminology and centuries later, Christianity will take that idea even further. The gods of the old religions won't always be treated as imaginary.

[00:19:16] Sometimes they'll be treated as something considerably more dangerous. Real supernatural powers. But evil ones. demons. And Christianity didn't invent that move out of nowhere. We can already see pieces of it developing in Jewish engagement with Greek language and culture. But there's another civilization we need to talk about before we reach Christianity. Because several centuries before Jesus, another religious

[00:19:43] tradition was developing an extraordinarily powerful vision of cosmic conflict. A universe in which the forces of good and evil stood in opposition. A religion containing hostile supernatural beings whose very name presents us with another strange reversal. Because just as the Greek daimon would eventually become the evil demon, another ancient word for a divine being would undergo almost the same transformation. Daiva. And to

[00:20:13] understand that story, we have to travel east. To ancient Iran. So far, our search for the demon has taken us in two very different directions. In Mesopotamia, we found a supernatural world filled with gods, spirits, and dangerous beings. Some caused illness,

[00:20:34] some protected against it. And the boundary between good and evil wasn't always as clean as we might expect. Then in ancient Greece, we found the word that would eventually become demon. Daimon. But once again, these weren't necessarily evil creatures. A daimon could protect, guide, warn, carry messages between humanity and the gods. The creature we recognize as the modern demon

[00:21:01] still hasn't completely emerged. But several hundred miles east of Mesopotamia, another religious tradition was developing. And here, good and evil begin to look much more like opposing sides. Ancient Iran gave rise to one of the world's oldest surviving religious traditions, Zoroastrianism. Named for the prophet known in Greek as Zoroaster, and in the Iranian tradition as Zorathustra.

[00:21:31] Exactly when Zorathustra lived remains disputed. Older history sometimes placed him around the 6th century BCE. Many modern scholars believed he may have lived considerably earlier, possibly sometime in the 2nd millennium BCE. We don't actually know. And that uncertainty is going to become important. Because Zoroastrianism is frequently credited with influencing some of the most familiar ideas in Judaism and

[00:22:00] Christianity. Angels, demons, heaven, hell, resurrection, final judgment, a cosmic battle between good and evil. And even Satan himself. You'll sometimes hear a very simple version of this story. The Jews encountered Zoroastrianism during the Persian period, borrowed its ideas, and eventually those ideas became Christianity.

[00:22:24] It's an incredible story, but there's just one problem. We can't actually prove it actually happened that way. What we can say is fascinating enough. At the center of Zoroastrian tradition stands Ahuru Mazda, the wise lord. Associated with truth, wisdom, and goodness. And opposed to the forces of truth is

[00:22:48] something destructive. It's a spirit associated with deception, chaos, and evil. Angra Mainyu. Later known in middle Persia as Ahriman. And immediately this sounds familiar. A supreme good power, a destructive evil opponent. Human beings caught between them. A cosmic struggle in which our choices actually matter. But

[00:23:11] before we turn Angra Mainyu into the Persian Satan, we need to slow down a bit. Zoroastrian theology developed over an enormous period of time. Different Zoroastrian texts come from different periods. And the relationship between Ahura Mazda and Angra Mainyu isn't described identically across every layer of the tradition. In the Gathas, the oldest hymns associated with Zarathustra, we encounter two opposing spirits.

[00:23:39] One chooses truth. The other chooses the lie. Later Zoroastrian traditions develop that opposition into an increasingly elaborate cosmic struggle between the creations of Ahura Mazda and the destructive forces of Ahriman. And among those destructive forces are beings called the Devas. That word presents us with another historical

[00:24:05] reversal because Deva is related to an ancient Indo-Iranian word for a god or divine being. Its linguistic relatives survived elsewhere with positive meanings. In ancient Indian religion, the Sanskrit Deva means a god, a divine being. But in the Iranian religious tradition associated with Zarathustra, the Devas became something very different. They are rejected, false gods, dangerous

[00:24:34] supernatural beings, and demons. So for the second time in our story, we've watched a word associated with divinity travel towards something demonic. Greek, we've got Daemon. Iranian, we've got Deva. Two completely different words with different histories, but both eventually become associated with supernatural evil.

[00:24:55] In Zoroastrian tradition, the Devas become aligned with the lie, with disorder, with destructive forces opposed to the good creation. And as later Zoroastrian cosmology develops, the supernatural world becomes increasingly organized around a conflict. On one side, Ohura Mazda and the forces associated with truth and goodness. On the other, Ahriman and the destructive spirits.

[00:25:25] Human beings aren't simply spectators. Every truthful word, every good thought, every good action, every rejection of deception and chaos participates in that struggle. And eventually, evil will lose. Later, Zoroastrian traditions describe a final restoration of creation. The dead are raised. Judgment occurs. Evil is ultimately defeated. Creation is purified.

[00:25:52] And suddenly, we have to address the elephant in the room. Because that sounds very familiar. Because centuries later, Jewish and Christian writings will contain increasingly elaborate ideas about angels, demons, resurrection, final judgment, cosmic evil, and the eventual defeat of the forces opposing God.

[00:26:16] So, did they get those ideas from Zoroastrianism? Maybe. At least in part. But history rarely gives us a simple answer. In 539 BCE, the Persian king Cyrus the Great conquered Babylon. The Jewish population living under Babylonian rule now found itself living under the Persian Empire.

[00:26:39] According to the Hebrew Bible itself, Cyrus allowed Jewish exiles to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple. And for roughly the next two centuries, Judah existed under Persian rule. That means Jewish communities in Iranian religious traditions occupied the same imperial world for generations. Contact was absolutely possible. Cultural exchange was possible. Religious influence was possible.

[00:27:07] And scholars have spent generations comparing later Jewish ideas with Iranian ones. But demonstrating contact isn't the same thing as demonstrating borrowing. There are several problems. The first is dating. Some of our most detailed Zoroastrian texts survive in forms written down centuries after the biblical texts scholars sometimes claim they influenced. Now, that doesn't mean the traditions themselves are necessarily late.

[00:27:34] Many were almost certainly transmitted orally for generations. But it makes reconstructing exactly what Persian religion looked like at a particular moment extremely difficult. The second problem is that Judaism already had its own supernatural traditions. Divine beings, a heavenly council, accusers, hostile spirits, chaos monsters, foreign gods, ideas about death and divine judgment. Not every later Jewish idea requires a Persian explanation.

[00:28:03] And the third problem is perhaps the most important. Even if Jewish writers encountered Persian ideas, cultures don't simply photocopy one another. They reinterpret. They argue. They reject. They absorb. They transform. An idea can cross a cultural boundary and become something very different on the other side. So when we eventually encounter Satan, we shouldn't simply say, That's Aramon with a Hebrew name. Because it isn't.

[00:28:32] And when we encounter Jewish demons, we shouldn't simply call them Persian devas. Their traditions aren't identical. But the historical overlap is impossible to ignore. And this is where our timeline becomes extremely interesting. Because during and after the Persian period, Jewish ideas about supernatural evil begin to become considerably more elaborate. And over the following centuries, another empire will dominate the region.

[00:28:59] Another language will spread. Another mythology will become impossible to avoid. Alexander the Great will conquer the Persian Empire. Greek culture will spread throughout the Eastern Mediterranean and Near East. Jewish communities will find themselves living inside an increasingly Hellenistic world. And somewhere in this enormous collision of cultures, Jewish writers begin telling extraordinary stories about rebellious heavenly beings.

[00:29:26] Angels who abandon their proper place. Angels who descend to Earth. Angels who take human women. Giants. Forbidden knowledge. Cosmic warfare. And eventually, evil spirits wandering the Earth. But here's the strange part. The seed of that story was already hiding inside the Hebrew Bible. The book of Enoch.

[00:29:54] A book that isn't found in most Bibles today. But was known by some of the people who wrote the New Testament. And is actually quoted inside it. The book of Enoch. But before we open Enoch, we need to look at those four verses. Genesis. Let's go back to Genesis chapter 6. Because this is where the fallen angels are supposed to begin. The problem is, Genesis never actually calls them angels.

[00:30:23] Before Christianity, before the New Testament, before the familiar story of Lucifer's rebellion against heaven, there was a much older story. A story buried near the beginning of the Hebrew Bible. And it begins with something extraordinary. Divine beings. Looking down upon human women. And deciding to take them for themselves. The passage appears in Genesis chapter 6. Just before the story of Noah and the great flood.

[00:30:53] And it consists of only four verses. Four verses that would eventually inspire centuries of speculation about angels, giants' forbidden knowledge, and the origins of evil spirits. But here's what makes those verses so fascinating. They don't actually explain very much. Genesis tells us that as human beings multiplied upon the earth, the sons of God saw that the daughters of humanity were beautiful. And they took wives from among them.

[00:31:23] The passage then introduces a mysterious group called the Nephilim. It associates them with a time when the sons of God went to the daughters of humanity, and children were born. These offspring are described as mighty figures of ancient times. Men of renown. And then? The story just moves on. That's it. No great war in heaven. No angel named Lucifer. No Satan leading a rebellion.

[00:31:50] No detailed account of divine beings teaching humanity forbidden secrets. And perhaps most surprisingly, no explanation that the spirits of dead giants became demons. None of that appears in these four verses. And yet? Over the centuries, this short and mysterious passage would become one of the foundations upon which elaborate supernatural traditions were constructed. So what exactly were the ancient authors describing?

[00:32:18] And who were these mysterious sons of God? The Hebrew phrase translated as sons of God is a phrase I'm not even going to attempt to pronounce because I'll get it wrong. But understanding that phrase requires us to enter a religious world that looked considerably different from the one familiar to many modern Christians. In portions of the Hebrew Bible, God is depicted surrounded by a heavenly assembly. It's a divine council.

[00:32:45] We encounter language associated with this heavenly court in passages such as Job, Psalm 82, and 1 Kings 22. In Job, for example, the sons of God present themselves before the Lord. And among them appears a figure known as the Satan, the accuser. We've explored the fascinating development of Satan in previous episodes of From the Void, and we'll include links to those episodes in the show notes. But for now, something else matters.

[00:33:14] The Hebrew Bible preserves traditions in which the heavenly realm contains multiple supernatural beings. And the expression sons of God can refer to members of that supernatural assembly. Which leads to one of the oldest interpretations of Genesis chapter 6. That the sons of God were heavenly beings, not ordinary human men. And that their union with mortal women represented a violation of the boundary between heaven and earth.

[00:33:43] This interpretation is not merely a modern invention. It appears in ancient Jewish literature including the book of Enoch. And versions of it were known to early Christian writers. But it wasn't the only interpretation. Some later Jewish interpreters understood the sons of God as powerful human rulers. Perhaps kings or aristocrats who claimed divine status. Other interpreters, particularly within Christian tradition, identified them as descendants of Seth.

[00:34:13] The son of Adam and Eve marrying women descended from Cain. The son of Adam and Eve. These explanations developed in different historical settings. And scholars continue to debate the original meaning of the passage. Many contemporary biblical scholars regard the heavenly being interpretation as the strongest explanation of the ancient language and mythological setting.

[00:34:35] But even if that's correct, Genesis itself leaves the identities and motivations of these beings remarkably underdeveloped. And then there's the matter of their children. The Nephilim. Few words in the Hebrew Bible have generated as much speculation as Nephilim. In some English Bibles, particularly older translations, the word is rendered as giants. But that translation carries its own history.

[00:35:03] The Hebrew words precise origin and meaning remain uncertain. Some have connected it to a Hebrew root meaning to fall. That connection has encouraged the popular interpretation that the Nephilim were somehow fallen ones. But that etymology is disputed. And Genesis does not explicitly identify the Nephilim as fallen angels. In fact, the Nephilim are not the sons of God themselves.

[00:35:29] They are a separate group, mentioned in connection with the period when heavenly beings and human women produced offspring. The exact relationship between those groups is not completely clear from the Hebrew wording. When Jewish translators rendered Genesis into Greek, they used a word with enormous mythological significance. Gigantes. Giants. And to someone living in the Greek-speaking world, that word could evoke an entirely different collection of ancient stories.

[00:35:59] Stories about extraordinary beings, divine ancestry, the offspring of gods and mortals, and conflicts involving supernatural powers. In Greek mythology, the giants were not simply unusually tall human beings. They belonged to a much larger mythological world of divine conflict. And now, here in the Greek translation of Jewish scripture, readers encountered the Nephilim through that same vocabulary.

[00:36:27] That doesn't prove that the original Hebrew story came from Greek mythology. The Genesis tradition may be substantially older than the Greek translation. But it does demonstrate how the language of one culture could reshape the way another culture encountered an ancient story. And that becomes enormously important when we reach the Book of Enoch. Because Jewish authors living in the centuries before Christianity were not isolated from the religious ideas surrounding them.

[00:36:56] They lived in a world shaped by Babylonian, Persian, and Greek traditions. And those traditions included stories of divine beings crossing into the human world. There's another reason Genesis chapter 6 is so intriguing. Its placement. Immediately after these mysterious verses, the biblical narrative describes humanity's increasing wickedness. The Genesis chapter 6 is a world that has gone terribly wrong.

[00:37:25] And God decides to bring judgment upon the earth. The flood. But Genesis does not explicitly say that the Nephilim alone caused the flood. Nor does it provide a detailed explanation of how the unions between the sons of God and human women relate to humanity's corruption. The stories appear beside one another. And their relationship invites questions. Were the divine beings responsible for corrupting humanity? Were their offspring violent?

[00:37:55] Had the boundaries separating the divine and human worlds been violated? And was the flood intended, at least in part, to erase the consequences? Genesis leaves much of that unanswered. But later Jewish writers would not leave it unanswered. They would take these mysterious verses and expand them into a sweeping narrative of cosmic rebellion.

[00:38:18] And in doing so, they would provide one of the most extraordinary explanations for the existence of demons in ancient religious literature. Imagine being a Jewish reader more than 2,000 years ago. You encounter this strange passage in Genesis. Heavenly beings descend into the human world. They take human women. Extraordinary offspring appear. Violence spreads. And divine judgment follows.

[00:38:47] But the details are missing. Who were these heavenly beings? Why did they descend? What happened to their children? And what became of them after the flood? Eventually, a body of Jewish literature would answer those questions. Not with a few verses. But with an entire supernatural history. A story of angels who descended upon a mountain. Who sworn oath together. Who took human wives.

[00:39:16] Who taught humanity secrets that were never meant to be revealed. Who fathered monstrous giants. And whose actions unleash violence upon the earth. A story in which the death of those giants would not be the end. Because according to this tradition. Their bodies could be destroyed. But their spirits would remain. And those spirits would become the evil beings that haunted humanity. The demons. The demons.

[00:39:44] But that story isn't found in Genesis. It comes from another ancient Jewish work. One that was known long before Christianity emerged. One that influenced early Christian thinking. One that is quoted in the New Testament. And one that despite its enormous historical importance. Is absent. From most modern Christian Bibles. The first book of Enoch. And when we open that book.

[00:40:11] The story becomes considerably darker. Somewhere in the ancient world. Centuries before the birth of Christianity. Jewish writers began telling a story. A story about beings who descended from heaven. Who crossed a boundary they were never supposed to cross. And who brought something terrible. Into the human world. The story would eventually become part of a collection of writings. Known as the first book of Enoch. And if you've never read it.

[00:40:40] What you're about to hear might surprise you. Because this is not the story that would eventually become familiar to many Christians. You probably know the version. Lucifer once a powerful angel becomes consumed by pride. He rebels against God. He convinces other angels to follow him. A great war erupts in heaven. Michael and the loyal angels defeat the rebellion. And Lucifer and his followers are cast out. Those fallen angels become the demons who torment humanity.

[00:41:09] But there's just one small problem with that. The Bible never actually tells that complete story. Instead, it's a narrative that developed over centuries. Drawing together passages from different biblical books. Jewish religious traditions. And later Christian interpretations. Some of those biblical passages weren't originally about Satan at all. Others come from apocalyptic literature.

[00:41:35] Where visions of dragons, stars, and heavenly battles communicate through elaborate symbolism. And still others come from religious writings that aren't included in most modern Bibles. We'll explore how those different traditions were brought together a little later. But for now, it's important to understand that the Book of Enoch gives us something very different. In this story, the Watchers descend because they desire human women. Their offspring become giants.

[00:42:03] And when those giants die, their spirits become the evil beings that continue to afflict humanity. Not fallen angels serving Satan. But the disembodied spirits of dead giants. And that distinction will become enormously important as our story continues. So let's talk about the Book of Watchers. Preserved in chapters 1-36 of 1 Enoch. We encounter an expanded version of the mysterious events described in Genesis chapter 6.

[00:42:32] Humanity has multiplied across the earth. And as I mentioned previously, among the heavenly beings are a group known as the Watchers. And these beings are associated with the heavenly realm. And they have begun looking upon the human women. And they desire them. Because apparently human women are way more attractive than the ones up in the heavenly realm. I'm assuming. I'm assuming that's how it went. But anyway, one of their leaders is named Semihaza. And according to the story, he fears that the others will abandon their intentions.

[00:43:01] That he'll be left alone to bear the consequences. So he proposes something extraordinary. An oath. You know, a binding agreement. They will all descend together. And they will all take human wives. And they will all share responsibility for what follows. So, according to the book, 200 Watchers agree. And they descend upon a mountain. Mount Hermon. There, according to the ancient texts, they bind themselves together through an oath. A supernatural conspiracy.

[00:43:28] Not against heaven in the form of an organized military rebellion. But against the boundaries separating the heavenly world from humanity. And once they descend, they take human wives. The women become pregnant. And their children are unlike anything the earth has ever seen. Giants. According to 1 Enoch, these offspring grow in extraordinary proportions. One surviving textual tradition describes them as thousands of cubits tall. That's an impossible height.

[00:43:58] A monstrous exaggeration. And that's important to remember. We're reading ancient apocalyptic mythology, not a biological report of creatures that historians believed once walked the earth. But within the story, their size is only the beginning. The giants consume the resources of humanity. Everything people produce. Everything they grow. Everything they raise. And eventually, there just isn't enough. The giants turn against humanity. Then against the animals.

[00:44:26] And finally, they begin devouring human beings themselves. Yeah, I told you things were going to get dark and weird. The earth became a place of violence. Bloodshed, destruction. And the consequences of the Watchers' actions spread far beyond the women they took as wives. The natural order itself has been violated. Heavenly beings have crossed into the human world. And their children have become instruments of devastation. But the giants aren't the only problem. Because the Watchers have brought something else with them. Knowledge.

[00:44:57] One of the most intriguing figures in this tradition is Aziel. Aziel. In many translations, his name appears as Azazel. According to 1 Enoch, Aziel teaches human beings how to make weapons. Swords, knives, shields, armor. He also teaches the working of metals. And the creation of ornaments. Jewelry, cosmetics, the decoration of the body. Other Watchers reveal additional secrets. Enchantments. Astrological knowledge.

[00:45:26] The movements of the heavenly bodies. Knowledge associated with signs and omens. Things that, according to the story, humanity was never supposed to learn in this way. And notice something fascinating. The forbidden knowledge isn't exclusively what we would call magic. Some of it's technology. Metalworking, weapons, adornment. The knowledge of the heavens. Things that human civilizations would eventually regard as signs of progress.

[00:45:56] But in this story, their origins are deeply suspicious. Because the knowledge has been transmitted by heavenly beings who have violated the natural order. And the consequences are catastrophic. Weapons contribute to violence. As there is a miracle. When the earth is a miracle, the earth is a miracle. The earth itself is described as crying out against what has happened. And the cries eventually reach heaven.

[00:46:21] In 1 Enoch, the suffering of the earth does not go unnoticed. The archangels witness the devastation. Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Sariel, whose name varies in different manuscript traditions. They look upon the violence, the bloodshed, the destruction, and they appeal to God, the Most High, the Holy One, the Creator of the world. And divine judgment follows.

[00:46:45] But what happens next is not a simple battle between angels and demons. It's a series of punishments, each directed at the consequences of the Watchers' transgression. Raphael is instructed to bind Aziel, to cast him into darkness, to imprison him beneath the earth until the time of judgment. Gabriel is instructed to turn the offspring of the Watchers against one

[00:47:09] another. The giants will destroy themselves. Michael is instructed to bind Semihaza and the other Watchers. They will witness the destruction of their children. And afterward, they too will be imprisoned, held until the final judgment. The heavenly beings who crossed into the human world will not simply return to heaven. Their actions will have consequences, and their offspring will

[00:47:35] be destroyed. But there's a problem. Because killing the giants doesn't actually end the story. In chapter 15 of 1 Enoch, we encounter one of the most important passages in the entire history of demonology. God explains why the offspring of the Watchers are fundamentally different from ordinary human beings. Their fathers came from heaven. Their mothers came from earth. They are the offspring of two

[00:48:03] different orders of existence. And because of that, their destruction creates a terrible consequence. Their bodies can die, but their spirits remain. The text describes these spirits as evil spirits upon the earth. They will afflict humanity, oppress, attack, corrupt, and bring destruction. They will continue until the time of final judgment. So think about what that actually means. According to this ancient

[00:48:30] Jewish tradition, demons are not simply angels who rebelled against God. They are not necessarily the Watchers themselves. They are the disembodied spirits of the Watchers' monstrous offspring, the giants, the Nephilim, the beings whose physical bodies were destroyed, but whose spirits were left wandering the world. And those spirits became the evil forces that tormented humanity. It's an extraordinary explanation,

[00:48:57] and it raises an equally extraordinary question. If this was one of the stories circulating among Jewish communities before Christianity, how much of the demonology we encounter in the New Testament was shaped by traditions like this? Because centuries later, the Gospels will describe Jesus confronting evil spirits, spirits that enter human beings, spirits that cause suffering, spirits that recognize

[00:49:23] divine authority, spirits that beg not to be destroyed. And while the Gospels do not explicitly identify these beings as the spirits of the dead Nephilim, the world of First Enoch helps us understand the religious environment in which such stories could be told. But before we get to Jesus, there's something else we need to understand. Where did the authors of First Enoch get these ideas? Were they simply inventing an

[00:49:51] explanation for four mysterious verses in Genesis? Or were they drawing upon stories already circulating in the ancient world? Modern scholars have spent decades examining that very question. And the possible answers take us back to two civilizations we've already encountered, Mesopotamia and Greece. In Mesopotamian tradition, there were ancient sages known as the Apokalou, beings associated with the time before the flood.

[00:50:19] They were connected with divine wisdom and the transmission of knowledge to humanity. Some scholars, including Ammar Anas, have argued that the Watcher's story represents a Jewish reinterpretation of traditions surrounding these antediluvian sages. In Mesopotamian tradition, divine wisdom could be understood as a gift that helped establish civilization. But in First Enoch, heavenly beings

[00:50:45] reveal knowledge that contributes to humanity's corruption. The relationship is not a simple case of copying one story into another. But the parallels are striking. Ancient supernatural beings, the world before the flood, divine knowledge, the transmission of that knowledge to humanity, and the consequences that follow. Then there's Greece. By the time much of the Ionachic literature was

[00:51:10] developing, Jewish communities were living in a world deeply influenced by Greek language and culture. And Greek mythology contained its own stories of gods and mortals producing extraordinary offspring. Heroes, demigods, giants, and beings who challenged the established divine order. There's also the story of Prometheus, a divine figure who brings fire to humanity, a gift of knowledge and power that results in

[00:51:38] punishment. The parallels with the Watchers are intriguing. But we should be careful. The existence of similarities does not prove that the authors of First Enoch simply borrowed their story from Greek mythology. The traditions developed in a world of cultural exchange and some of their themes may have much older Near Eastern roots. What we can say is that the Book of Watchers belongs to a historical period

[00:52:03] in which Jewish authors were interpreting their own scriptures, while engaging directly or indirectly, with a much larger world of ancient mythology. And the result was a story that would profoundly influence the development of Jewish and Christian ideas about supernatural evil. Now, consider how different this story is from the one many Christians grow up hearing. In the familiar version, Lucifer becomes proud. He rebels against God. He leads other angels into

[00:52:32] rebellion. They are cast out of heaven, and those fallen angels become demons. But that's not the story First Enoch tells. In First Enoch, the Watchers descend because they desire human women. Their offspring become giants. Those giants corrupt and devastate the earth. God destroys their bodies, and their spirits become evil spirits that continue to afflict humanity. Two very different origin stories. And yet, over the

[00:52:59] centuries, elements of these traditions would become intertwined. The rebellious angels, the fallen heavenly beings, the evil spirits, Satan, the devil. Eventually, Christianity would develop a more unified explanation of the supernatural forces opposed to God. But that process didn't happen all at once. And it certainly didn't begin with the single biblical passage. Which brings us to another mystery.

[00:53:27] If First Enoch was so important, if it influenced early Jewish and Christian thinking, if the New Testament itself quotes from it, then why isn't it found in most modern Bibles? Was it rejected? Forgotten? Removed? Or is the real story considerably more complicated? Because the history of the Book of Enoch is almost as fascinating as the supernatural story it contains. And understanding what happened to it will

[00:53:54] help us understand something even more important. How the boundaries of Scripture were established. And how some ancient religious ideas became part of mainstream Christian belief. Even when the books that helped shape those ideas did not become part of most Christian Bibles. Two hundred heavenly beings. A forbidden oath. Giants that devoured humanity. And spirits that continued to wander the earth long after their

[00:54:20] bodies had been destroyed. That's an extraordinary story. And for many people hearing it today, it probably sounds almost nothing like the Bible they grew up reading. Because most modern Christian Bibles don't contain the Book of Enoch. And that raises an obvious question. If this story was so important to the development of Jewish and Christian ideas about demons, then what happened to it? Was it rejected? Was it deliberately removed? Or was there something about its account of the supernatural world that made

[00:54:49] later religious authorities uncomfortable? The answer is considerably more complicated. And to understand it, we need to remember something about the Bible itself. It did not arrive as a single complete book. The writings that eventually became the Hebrew Bible and Christian New Testament were composed, collected, copied, translated, debated, and transmitted across many centuries. Different Jewish and Christian communities preserved different collections of religious literature.

[00:55:16] And the boundaries between writings considered sacred, authoritative, useful, or simply interesting, were not always identical. Which means that when we ask why the Book of Enoch was removed from the Bible, we may already be asking the wrong question. Because there was no single universally agreed Christian Bible from which someone simply deleted it. First, there's something important about

[00:55:40] the Book of Enoch itself. Despite its familiar title, 1 Enoch isn't simply one book written by one person at one moment in history. It's actually a collection of Jewish writings composed and assembled over several centuries. Different sections have different concerns. Some describe journeys through the heavens. Others explore astronomy and the movements of celestial bodies. Some contain visions of judgment and the end of

[00:56:05] the age. And the section we've just explored, the Book of Watchers, contains the extraordinary account of heavenly beings descending to earth, producing giants and unleashing evil spirits upon humanity. Many scholars date substantial portions of the Book of Watchers to approximately the 3rd or 2nd century BCE, although the dating of individual passages remains debated. And despite the title, historians do not

[00:56:30] regard these writings as having been composed by the Biblical Enoch himself. The Enoch described in Genesis belongs to the ancient generations before the Flood. The surviving Enoch literature was composed much later. Its authors wrote in the name of an ancient figure believed to have enjoyed extraordinary access to the divine world, a literary practice scholars called pseudepigraphy. And in the ancient world, attributing revelations to a revered figure from the distant past could give those revelations a

[00:56:59] particular kind of authority. But here's where the story gets interesting. For a long time, modern scholars knew the complete first Book of Enoch primarily through manuscripts preserved in Ethiopia. Then, in the 20th century, something remarkable happened. In 1947, ancient manuscripts began coming to light in caves near Qumran, close to the Dead Sea. And over the following years, archaeologists and researchers

[00:57:25] recovered fragments of hundreds of manuscripts. Biblical writings, community rules, interpretations of scripture, prayers, apocalyptic literature, and among them, fragments of the Book of Enoch. These manuscripts were written centuries before the medieval Ethiopian copies through which the complete work had survived. And they demonstrated something important. Enoch wasn't simply a late Christian invention. Versions of this literature were circulating among Jewish communities before

[00:57:55] Christianity emerged. Multiple Aramaic manuscripts of Enochic writings were discovered at Qumran. Not every section of the later complete collection is represented there. But the discoveries confirm that major Enochic traditions had deep roots in Second Temple Judaism. And that changes how we understand the New Testament. Because the authors of the New Testament emerged from a world in which stories about angels, heavenly rebellion, cosmic judgment, and evil spirits were already circulating.

[00:58:25] Christianity didn't have to invent all of those ideas. It inherited and reinterpreted traditions that were already there. And we know at least one New Testament writer was familiar with the Enochic literature. Because he actually quotes it. In the short New Testament letter of Jude, we encounter something remarkable. Jude introduces a prophecy attributed to Enoch, the seventh generation from Adam. And then he

[00:58:51] quotes a passage corresponding closely to 1 Enoch, chapter 1, verse 9. The passage describes the Lord coming with countless holy ones to execute judgment. That's not merely a vague thematic resemblance. It's a recognizable quotation. And it appears inside the New Testament itself. Think about that. A religious work absent from most modern Christian Bibles is explicitly quoted by an

[00:59:16] author whose own writing became part of the Christian Bible. But we need to be careful about what that means. Quoting a book doesn't automatically mean the author regarded every word of that book as divinely inspired scripture. Ancient writers frequently quoted sources they considered useful, meaningful, or authoritative without necessarily treating the entire source as sacred. What Jude's quotation demonstrates is that the Enochic tradition was known and meaningful to at least this

[00:59:44] early Christian author. And there's more. Earlier in the same letter, Jude refers to angels who abandoned their proper dwelling and are now kept in darkness awaiting judgment. Second Peter contains a similar reference to angels who sinned and were confined until judgment. Both passages strongly resemble traditions associated with the Watchers. Neither reproduces the complete story found in 1 Enoch. But the parallels are difficult to ignore. And that leaves us with a fascinating possibility. Some New

[01:00:13] Testament writers may have assumed their audiences already knew stories about rebellious heavenly beings that were circulating outside the writings eventually included in the biblical canon. So what did the early Christians think? Well, early Christians didn't all agree about the Book of Enoch. Some writers used its traditions enthusiastically. The second-century Christian writer Justin Martyr described angels who transgressed their appointed order, took human women, and produced offspring

[01:00:41] associated with demonic powers. Tertullian, writing around the beginning of the third century, went even further. He defended the value and authority of Enochic writings and argued against dismissing them simply because they were not accepted in the Jewish scriptural collection. But other Christian thinkers questioned the Book's authority. Its authorship was uncertain, its transmission was complicated, and its place within the inherited Jewish scriptures was disputed.

[01:01:08] Over time, most Christian traditions did not include 1 Enoch in their biblical canons. But that doesn't mean all its ideas disappeared. Far from it. The Watchers, the Rebellious Angels, the corruption of humanity, the transmission of forbidden knowledge. These traditions continue to influence Christian discussions of supernatural evil. And here's the remarkable irony. A book could remain outside most Christian Bibles while ideas associated with that book continue to shape the way

[01:01:37] Christians understood passages inside the Bible. But the story doesn't end with Enoch being excluded, because one ancient Christian tradition preserved something that most others did not. In the Ethiopian Orthodox Tawahido Church, 1 Enoch remains part of the biblical canon. Its complete text survived in the classical Ethiopian language known as Ge'ez. And that

[01:02:02] preservation was enormously important to modern scholarship, because without the Ethiopian manuscript tradition, we would possess a much less complete picture of this remarkable ancient Jewish collection. So when someone says the book of Enoch isn't in the Bible, the historically accurate response is, eh, depends which Bible you're talking about. Most Protestant, Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox biblical canons do not include 1 Enoch. But the Ethiopian Orthodox tradition does. And that reminds us of

[01:02:31] something easy to forget. Christianity has never been a single completely uniform tradition. Its communities developed across different languages, cultures, and historical circumstances. And their biblical collections were not always identical. Isaiah 19 Leo Leo Leo Leo