The Origin Of Evil And The End Of The World

The Origin of Evil and the End of the World Lloyd D. Graham To a large extent, Judaeo-Christian beliefs have shaped the values and morals of the Western world. It is therefore somewhat surprising to find that the Old Testament lacks an account of the origin of evil, other than possibly attributing it to God (Isa 45:7), and that neither it nor the New Testament provides a convincing reason for the fall of Satan and his cohort from heaven. One possible allusion – the desire of Lucifer to exalt himself above God, resulting in his being cast down (Isa 14:12-15) – occurs in a context that shows it to refer to the ambitions of a particular King of Babylon. So is there, then, no explanation of evil that dates to Old Testament times? There is, and yet – despite its prominence in apocryphal literature and some scriptural allusions to it – the story remains little known. A passage in Genesis mentions it as follows: And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them, that the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose ... There were giants in the earth in those days; and also after that, when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and bare children to them, the same became mighty men which were of old, men of renown. And God looked upon the earth ... [and said:] The end of all flesh is come before me; for the earth is filled with violence through them ... (Gen 6:1-13)

These profoundly important events are described in much greater detail in Old Testament pseudepigrapha and apocrypha, such as the Book of Enoch (1 En) and the Book of Jubilees (Jub). Such sources describe how two hundred heavenly beings, all drawn from the angelic order known as Watchers (Heb. ‘irin, “those who are awake”), ensured their own damnation by forsaking their heavenly estate in favour of sexual liaisons with mortal women: And it came to pass, when the children of men had multiplied, that in those days were born unto them beautiful and comely daughters. And the angels, the children of the heaven, saw and lusted after them, and said to one another: “Come, let us choose wives from among the children of men, and beget us children”. And Semjaza, who was their leader ... and all the others together with [him] took unto themselves wives, and ... they began to go in unto them and to defile themselves with them, and they taught them charms and enchantments, and the cutting of roots, and they made them acquainted with plants. And they became pregnant, and they bare great giants ... who consumed all the acquisitions of men. And when men could no longer sustain them, the giants turned against them and devoured mankind. And they began to sin against birds, and beasts, and reptiles, and fish, and to devour one another's flesh, and drink the blood. Then the earth laid accusation against the lawless ones. (1 En 6:1-7:6)

Thus the immediate consequences of this forbidden intercourse were twofold. The first outcome was that the fallen angels imparted their heavenly knowledge of the sciences and the arts to mortals: 1

And Azazel taught men ... the metals of the earth and the art of working them ... Semjaza taught enchantments, and root-cuttings ... Kokabel the constellations, Ezeqeel the knowledge of the clouds... (1 En 8:1-3); ...[they] revealed the eternal secrets which were in heaven, which men were striving to learn (1 En 9:6-7). And the whole earth has been corrupted through the works that were taught by Azazel: to him ascribe all sin. (1 En 10:8-9).

Such enlightenment parallels the outcome of the well-known Genesis story (Gen 3:1-7) where Adam and Eve were induced to eat from the Tree of Knowledge by the Serpent (an entity later identified with Satan, as in Rev 12:9). In fact, the story of Eve succumbing to the temptations of the diabolical and phallic serpent can be viewed as a prudish encryption of the Watcher legend that was moved to an earlier position in the Genesis chronology in order to emphasise its singular importance. This view is supported by a passage (1 En 69:6) in which one of the fallen Watchers is credited with leading Eve astray, and also by the inclusion of Samsapeel as a leader of the Watchers (1 En 6:7). The latter is cognate with Samael, the angel of death who from the late Rabbinic period onward provided Judaism with the major name for Satan; it is Samael who planted the forbidden Tree in the Garden of Eden (3 Baruch 4:9), who tempted Eve through the serpent, and who went on to seduce and impregnate her (Pirke De Rabbi Eliezer 13 & 21). If the view proposed in this paragraph is accepted, then the fall of the angels and the fall of man become two aspects of a single event. The second outcome of the fall of the angels was the giant and monstrous offspring (Heb. nephilim, “fallen ones”) born to Watcher fathers by human mothers, monsters that turned against humanity and the other creatures of the Earth. A passage in Jubilees (Jub 7:21-25) identifies the nephilim with the mighty men of renown (Heb. gibborim) of Genesis 6:4. One of God’s avenging archangels arranged the destruction of the nephilim by inciting them to battle each other; when the giants perished, their souls became the evil spirits and demons that have afflicted mankind ever since (1 En 15:8-16:1; Jub 10:5). The fallen Watchers – now the princes of evil – were imprisoned in torment until the Day of Judgement, and God instigated the Flood in order to purge and purify the earth. Dates and Words The earliest reference to the Watcher story is probably Gen 6:1-13, and it may date from as long ago as the eighth or ninth centuries BCE. Early copies of the Septuagint translation of 270 BCE (where the Old Testament and related apocrypha were rendered into Greek) suggest that the Hebrew term bene ha-elohim – “sons of God” or “sons of gods” – in Gen 6:2 was translated from the outset as “angels of God”. The Book of Enoch contains the earliest detailed account of the full story. It dates to the period 200100 BCE, although 1 En 1-36 (the Book of the Watchers) may have been written in the third century BCE. The term “Watcher” (Heb. ‘irin) occurs mainly in the Old Testament pseudepigrapha that deal with the fallen angels, but it is also found in the Book of Daniel, a canonical book contemporary with 1 Enoch. There the phrase “a watcher and an holy one” (Dan 4:13 & 23) is used to denote a particular class of angel, and precisely the same phrase is found in some fragments from the Dead Sea Scrolls (e.g., 1 QapGen II:1). Most sources identify Azazel and Semyaza as the leaders of the fallen Watchers. The name Azazel appears also in the canonical Old Testament (Lev 16:8-10), where it seems to refer to a wilderness demon of Judaeo-pagan origin; in this respect, it resembles Isa 34:14, 2

the single Old Testament reference to Lilith (see below). On delving deeper, it appears that Azazel, Azzael, Azza, Ussa, Uzzaya, and even Semyaza (literally Shem-y-aza, ‘the name Aza’) are cognate with al-‘Uzza, one of the three chief deities of pre-Islamic Arabia (Qur’an, Surah 53:19). This name features in Lihyanite graffiti as early as the fourth century BCE, and translates as “the Mighty”. In an unexpected twist, al-‘Uzza is unambiguously female; for example, she was identified by the Nabataeans with Aphrodite/Venus, the goddess of love and beauty. Perhaps this is why, as well as teaching the manufacture and use of weapons, ‘Azazel taught […] bracelets, and ornaments, and the use of antimony, and the beautifying of the eyelids, and all kinds of costly stones, and all colouring tinctures’ (1En 8:1-2). The Christian church later attempted to reinterpret the phrase “sons of God” in Gen 6:2 as “sons of Seth” and “daughters of men” as “daughters of Cain” so that the Watcher story could be dispensed with. In contrast, Josephus (see below) specifies not only that the males were angels but that the women were of untainted human lineage – the daughters of Seth. The Church’s re-interpretation also sits oddly with other events in the same epoch, where illicit heterosexual couplings (inter-generational incest, to be precise) were tolerated by God and gave rise to normal offspring (Gen 19:30-38), while “unnatural” unions were punished (Gen 19:1-26). Clearly, there was something more abhorrent about intermarriage between “sons of God” and daughters of men than would be warranted by unions between humans of opposite sex, whatever their lines of descent. Retellings and Allusions In 1 Enoch, the Watcher story is first given in ch. 6-16, recapitulated in ch. 64-69, and re-told in a disguised form in the Animal Apocalypse (ch. 86-89). In the Book of Jubilees, a work of 153-105 BCE, it is given in Jub 4:21-24; 5:113; 7:20-27; and 10:1-15. As in 1 Enoch, the fallen Watchers were imprisoned within the earth until Judgement Day. In the final version given in Jubilees, the prince of the nephilim-derived evil spirits is called both Mastema and Satan, and – in a duplication of the imprisonment of the Watchers – these spirits too were bound in the earth until Judgement Day. In this account, God granted Mastema’s request that a tenth of the evil spirits should be left free to roam the earth while the remainder were bound. As a remedy for their corrupting activities, though, God ordered one of his loyal angels to instruct Noah in the science of medicine (Jub 10:10-14). The Watcher episode features in sources other than 1 Enoch and Jubilees, appearing also in Wis 14:6, some Dead Sea Scroll texts, the Ethiopic Kebra Nagast, and in the Book of the Secrets of Enoch (2 Enoch, a Slavonic work written after 100 CE). Aspects of the Watcher story are also mentioned in the canonical New Testament (e.g., 1 Pet 3:19-20; 2 Pet 2:4-5; Jude 1:6; Rev 12:9; Rev 20:1-3). There are also references in the writings of first century Christians like Tertullian, and of their Jewish contemporary, Josephus. The author of the pseudo-Clementine homilies resolved some of the theological difficulties inherent in the Watcher story by proposing that the angels were not overpowered with sensual passion while in their purely spiritual state (Hom 8:9). He maintained that the angels asked God to endow them with human bodies so that they could descend to earth and rectify the wickedness of mankind. Once they had taken human form, however, they also acquired the weaknesses and passions of mortal men and gave themselves up to the gratification of their lust. Reuben’s admonitions in the apocryphal Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs (c. 3

70-200 CE) present a variation in which the Watchers are portrayed as sexual voyeurs, which may go some way towards explaining their unusual name: “For thus [women] allured the Watchers who were before the flood; for as these continually beheld them, they lusted after them, and they conceived the act in their mind; for they changed themselves into the shape of men, and appeared to them when they were with their husbands. And the women lusting in their minds after their forms, gave birth to giants, for the Watchers appeared to them as reaching even unto heaven” (Testament of Reuben 5:67). Although the woman/angel union is here portrayed as mental, indulging this fantasy during copulation was evidently potent enough to transform the offspring born to the human parents. Later, the New Testament apocryphal work known as the Questions of Bartholomew (c. 300-500 CE) insinuates that the fall of man was caused by intercourse between Eve and Satan soon after the latter and his troop of angels were banished from heaven. The idea of sexual transgression in the Garden of Eden between the leader of the fallen spirits and the first mortal woman reinforces the link – proposed above – between the fall of man (as told in Genesis) and the fall of the angels (as found in the Watcher narrative). There are strong echoes of the Watchers in the Persian story of the angels Harut and Marut. These two angels of the highest rank fell in love with a mortal woman, to whom they revealed the secret Name of God. As a punishment, they were hung upside down in a bottomless pit near Babylon, from which they taught magic and sorcery. The second Surah of the Qur’an, v. 102, indicates that these two angels did not actually sin, but simply carried out the will of Allah in order to test the faith of the local people. Their occult teachings carried repeated warnings to this effect. In a curious twist, a Hebrew midrash published in 1625 CE – but claiming Biblical antiquity – describes illicit unions in the days leading up to the Flood in terms that nowadays are suggestive of genetic engineering: And every man […] corrupted the earth, and the earth was filled with violence. And […] the sons of men in those days took from the cattle of the earth, the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air, and taught the mixture of animals of one species with the other, in order therewith to provoke the Lord; and God saw the whole earth and it was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon earth, all men and all animals. (Book of Jasher 4:17-18)

Possible Sources The main Babylonian creation epic, Enuma Elish, which may date to the early second millennium BCE, describes a war between the gods in which those allied with Tiamat and her monsters (enormous serpents ... snarling dragons ... the worm ...) were vanquished by Bel-Marduk. The gods were then divided into two groups by Marduk, “three hundred above for the watchers of heaven, ... five times sixty for earth, six hundred gods between earth and heaven”. The defeated rebel gods appear to have been the ones assigned to earth. The Babylonians also believed in edimmu, violent vampire-like giants, which were originally created as a result of intermarriage between human beings and the spirit world. These demons “neither eat nor drink” but “are full of violence, ceaselessly devouring blood”. Similarly, in 1 En 15:11-12, we read that the spirits of the giant nephilim “work destruction on the earth, and cause trouble: they take no food, but nevertheless hunger and thirst, and cause offences”. In combination, a belief in edimmu and earth-based rebel gods could account for some of the elements of the Enochian 4

Watcher episode. A Babylonian connection is supported by the fact that one of the Watcher-human progeny in the Dead Sea Scrolls’ Book of the Giants is called Gilgamesh, the name of the (oversized) hero in the eponymous Babylonian epic. Various first-millennium BCE texts from Mesopotamia relate the story of the Seven Sages (apkallu) who seem to have brought the arts of magic to Babylonia; they are named in the Bīt mēseri incantation, whose earliest extant copy is neo-Assyrian. Since the apkallu were emissaries from Ea/Enki, the god of civilization who resided in the freshwater depths of the abzu (abyss), they were often characterised as fish-man hybrids who were born in a river and emerged from the sea – an embodiment that probably dates back to Kassite times (c. 1374-1155 BCE). After the Great Flood, the Bīt mēseri text continues the series of named apkallu with four more, all “of human descent”. But the last of these is described as two-thirds apkallu, which suggests that there was progressive inter-breeding between apkallu and humans; later sages are fully human and are designated as ummanu. The second and third post-Flood sages act in ways that anger the gods. Their hybrid pedigree and the divine displeasure triggered by their behaviour invite comparison with the nephilim; tellingly, the pre-Flood apkallu are often described in Mesopotamian texts as “watchers.” Like the fallen angels, who were condemned to imprisonment “beyond the abyss” until the Day of Judgement (1 En 18:10-19:3), the errant apkallu were banished forever to the apzu. Greek theogony also shares some motifs with the Watcher story. In Greek myths from the eighth century BCE, the mating of sky-god (Uranus) with earth-goddess (Gaea) produced the Titans, the Cyclops, and the hundred-handed Giants. Like the fallen Watchers, the Cyclops and Giants were imprisoned within the earth; later, this became the fate of the Titans who had fought with Cronos against Zeus and Prometheus. The latter was subsequently punished by Zeus for bestowing a number of favours, including fire, on mankind. Man was punished, too: the first mortal woman (Pandora) was created so beautiful that – despite being warned – Prometheus’ brother allowed her to stay on Earth. Pandora subsequently unleashed evil into the world. A Related Theme There are many myths about Lilith, who in Judaeo-Christian tradition is credited as an alternative (or additional) source of the world’s demons. The name, which means “wind-spirit”, first appears in a prologue to the Epic of Gilgamesh and recurs as part of a triad of female furies invoked in Babylonian spells. When Lilith was co-opted into Judaic lore during the Babylonian captivity (i.e., after 586 BCE), an etymological confusion resulted in her being identified as a night-spirit. Later, Talmudic and Kabbalistic speculation identified her (sometime during the third to tenth centuries CE) as a female who was co-created with Adam (Gen 1:27) and before Eve (Gen 2:22). In this elaboration, she refused to submit to Adam and left Eden. Lilith was reunited with Adam after his and Eve’s expulsion from Eden, and bore him demonic offspring. When Adam and Eve were later reconciled, Lilith lived in a cave near the Red Sea where she copulated with lascivious demons and gave birth daily to hundreds more. In additional (or alternative) stories, Lilith and three other female spirits (Naamah, Igrat, and Mahaath) are seen as consorts to demons, seducers of men, killers of unprotected infants, and as vampires. Lilith is often paired with Samael, the King of Demons, who in some versions has been castrated; there are hints that these two were once an androgynous pair. In her various guises, Lilith is at once a human-like creature who had intercourse with Adam to 5

become the mother of demons, a human mate for demons who begat more of their kind at a prodigious rate, and a demonic succubus who takes unused human semen to impregnate herself or her daughters to create more demons. No doubt many of these attributes are a legacy of Lilith’s Babylonian origin. The Lilith themes have obvious overlaps with the Watcher story, and some may well have been borrowed directly from this source. In the Kabbala, the two legends intersect in a passage on Lilith: “For 130 years Adam had intercourse with female spirits, until Naamah came. Because of her beauty the sons of God went astray after her, ‘Ussa and ‘Azel, and she bore from them, and from her spread evil spirits and demons in the world” (Zohar 1:19b). A Search for Meaning To recapitulate: the earliest explanation of evil in the JudaeoChristian tradition involves an original sin of lust on the part of angelic beings called Watchers, which led to a transfer of forbidden skills and knowledge to mankind, but which also led to the birth of monsters who ravaged the Earth, and whose malevolence persists on Earth in the form of demons. Compared with orthodox rationalisations of the Fall, the Watchers’ original sin engenders both more empathy (as a lapse of judgement in the face of overwhelming temptation) and more abhorrence (in its breach of sexual taboo). It is safe to say that traditional alternatives such as Lucifer’s pride (Isa 14:12-15), Satan's reluctance to pay homage to Adam (The Life of Adam and Eve and the Qur’an), or Eve’s curiosity about the forbidden fruit (Gen 3:6) pale in comparison. Oddly enough, the Watchers’ position – pure spirits craving the pleasures of the flesh – would later find its complete antithesis in certain Gnostic sects of the first few centuries CE, whose devotees despised flesh as a prison of the spirit. In contrast, people today are more likely to feel compassion for the angels who succumbed to the lure of physical pleasure. Shorn of its lurid details, the mythic content of the Watcher story is a strong and perhaps surprising statement of the relationship between illicit desire, hidden knowledge, and evil. Above all, though, the Watchers’ crime constitutes disobedience to God. To those who regard the creator-God as a tyrannical Demiurge, such defiance constitutes a laudable act of self-determination. The Watcher myth has sometimes been presented in this light by Satanists, who point out that the forbidden knowledge imparted by the Watchers to mankind serves as the basis for the arts and sciences on which our current civilization is founded. Their Covenant of Samyaza says that the legacy of the gibborim, known to the fearful as evil spirits or demons, are also known to the wise as “guardian geniuses of the great of Earth, who shall inspire the best among Man to great heights, to beautiful works of art, and to further discoveries of Earth and cosmos.” While this stance may comfort those who are unable to view the rise of human civilization as anything other than a virtue, it comes at the considerable cost of burdening us with an evil Creator. One does, however, have to wonder about the divinity of a God who feels threatened by the art of writing: “for men were not created for such a purpose, to give confirmation to their good faith with pen and ink ... but through this their knowledge they are perishing, and through this power it [death] is consuming me” (1 En 69:10-12). There is in fact a fundamental tension in the myth between the works of man (as encouraged by the Watchers) and the works of God, an opposition that is not alleviated by reversing the moral polarity of the original account, as the Satanists have done. It is noteworthy that one of the versions in the Book of Jubilees (Jub 10:10-14; see above) has been revised to defuse this tension. In the sanitized account, useful arts such as medicine were imparted 6

to mankind not by the Watchers but by God’s loyal angels, in an attempt to afford us protection against the demons. The End of the World Perhaps the tension inherent in the authentic Watcher legend is felt most keenly today in the conflict between environmental conservation (preservation of the divine creation) and urban-industrial development (promotion of human progress). Although initiated by lust, the Watchers’ actions led also to great human advancement, just as today the selfish ambitions of those with ability (or in authority) underpin so many of the material advances that benefit our species. However, it is important to remember that the actions of the Watchers led not only to expanded human capabilities but also to uncontrollable consequences that ultimately laid waste to the Earth. In this interpretation, the ancient myth sounds a clear warning about the potentially cataclysmic consequences of using our genius to interfere with nature, a warning that is more valid now than ever before. Perhaps it is to us that Enoch refers in the opening words of his book, when he writes: “from [the heavenly angels] I heard everything, and from them I understood as I saw, but not for this generation, but for a remote one which is to come” (1 En 1:2-3). The Watcher myth provides an origin for evil in the world. It may also warn of the ultimate and final evil: can we imagine a greater sin than the needless and self-inflicted ruin of our entire planet? © Lloyd D. Graham, 1999. v.08_11.05.19 First published in the online in Mythos Journal No. 8: Millennial Dreams – Myths of the End Time (Winter 1999). Republished in Lamhfada: An Online Magazine of Myth and Story, Vol. III, Issue 2, Summer 2002. Hosted at http://lloydg.deviantart.com/art/The-Origin-of-Evil-31179580 from Apr 2006 with a PDF version hosted by Scribd, https://www.pdfcoke.com/doc/15717047/The-Origin-of-Evil-and-the-End-of-the-World. A short version of this essay appeared in Fickle Muses – An Online Journal of Myth and Legend, vol. 2, on 6 Jan 2008: http://ficklemuses.sarikrosinsky.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/nonfiction/originofevil.html. Full-text (with minor revisions) uploaded to Academia on 11 May, 2019, online at https://www.academia.edu/440497/The_Origin_of_Evil_and_the_End_of_the_World. POST-PUBLICATION UPDATES (to 2011) For the scholarly, a detailed textual analysis of the key biblical passage (Gen 6:1-4) can be found in Jacques T.A.G.M. Ruiten (2000) Primaeval History Interpreted: The Rewriting of Genesis 1-11 in the Book of Jubilees, Brill, pp. 183-190. ISBN 9789004116580. See also Archie T. Wright (2005) The Origin of Evil Spirits: The Reception of Genesis 6.1-4 in Early Jewish Literature, Mohr Siebeck, pp. 220-223. ISBN 9783161486562. Update, August 2011: I have just learned that two academic books on the main topic of this essay are in the pipeline. One is Dark Mirrors: Azazel and Satanael in Early Jewish Demonology by Andrei A. Orlov, due Dec 2011 [ http://www.sunypress.edu/p-5288-dark-mirrors.aspx ]. The other is Sefer ‘Uzza wa-‘Aza(z)el: Exploring Early Jewish Mythologies of Evil by John C. Reeves; there’s a great outline of the book here [ http://religiousstudies.uncc.edu/people/jcreeves/sefer_uzza_waazazel.htm ]. For general readers: A short but interesting book on the Watchers is Joseph B. Lumpkin (2006) Fallen Angels, the Watchers, and the Origins of Evil, Fifth Estate, Alabama. It makes a valiant attempt to harmonize passages on evil from a variety of sources (canonical scriptures, Enoch, Jubilees, the Qumran War Scroll and the Book of Jasher) into a single overarching narrative revolving around the Watcher story.

7