Enoch Primordial (Chronicles of the Nephilim) (33 page)

I have no problem utilizing
lesser known
extraBiblical mythology or legends in
the Chronicles of the Nephilim
in order to bring a fresh perspective to the Biblical story. But I also have no problem dismantling other
well-known
extraBiblical mythology and legends in order to support that same goal of fresh perspective. The Satan legend as I described it above is one of those accepted myths that I decided to avoid because, well, it really isn’t in the Bible.

I am going to follow David Lowe’s strategy and “deconstruct Lucifer” in order to rediscover Satan in a new and more Biblical light.
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First, let me affirm that the New Testament does equate Satan with the Serpent in the Garden (2Cor. 11:3; Rev. 12:9; 20:2) so I have no quarrel with that notion. But let’s take a look at the rest of the Lucifer/Satan mythology to see if it really has Biblical merit.

The two passages that are most often used as source material for this myth are Isaiah 14:12-15 and Ezekiel 28:12-16. Let’s look first at the Isaiah passage:

Isa
iah 14:12–15

“How you are fallen from heaven,

O Day Star (Lucifer), son of Dawn!

How you are cut down to the ground,

you who laid the nations low!

You said in your heart,

‘I will ascend to heaven;

above the stars of God

I will set my throne on high;

I will sit on the mount of assembly

in the far reaches of the north;

I will ascend above the heights of the clouds;

I will make myself like the Most High.’

But you are brought down to Sheol,

to the far reaches of the pit.

The context of the entire passage of Isaiah 14 is that the prophet is making a prophesy of judgment upon the king of Babylon who existed in Isaiah’s own day during the Jewish Babylonian exile. Well-meaning Christians interpret this text as a mythopoeic allusion or analogy of pride between Satan, called Lucifer, and the Babylonian tyrant.

To start with, the name
Satan
is nowhere in the story, but
Lucifer
is. The problem with this name is that we have come to consider it a proper name of a demonic entity only by tradition. As author David Lowe points out, Lucifer was actually the Latin translation for the Hebrew words
Helel ben shahar
, which means “Morningstar,” known to the ancients as the planet Venus.
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In the ancient Near East, planets and stars were equated with deities and the heavenly host, so this is indeed a mythopoeic reference. But scholars have uncovered a very different narrative being referenced than the Garden of Eden. It is in fact a pagan Canaanite myth that Isaiah used to mock the pagan king of Babylon.

Scholar Michael S. Heiser definitively explains the linguistic and narrative referent of Helel ben Shahar as being the Ugaritic god Athtar from the epic Baal Cycle of myths at Ugarit. Heiser reveals that Athtar was equated with the planet Venus. Athtar sought to raise himself above “the stars of El,” a reference to the divine council or heavenly host that surrounded the high god of the Canaanite pantheon. He tried to do so by seeking to sit on the throne of Baal, referred to as “the Most High,” upon the “mount of assembly” in the north called Saphon. But Athtar was not powerful enough for the position of power and was cast to earth/Sheol.
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There are no versions of this Isaianic narrative applying to Satan anywhere in the Bible but there sure is one of Athtar in the Canaanite context in which ancient Jews like Isaiah lived and breathed. Isaiah was declaring judgment upon the Babylonian tyrant by using pagan myths against the pagan king as mockery.

As Norman Habel put it,

The presence of this archaic mythological imagery to describe the dwelling place of God does not imply that the Israelite writers thereby espoused the crass mythological view of reality current in the ancient Near Eastern world. Polemical and poetical considerations governed the Israelite writers’ use of imagery taken from their pagan environment.
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The second passage that well-intentioned Christians use to justify their belief in the Satan/Lucifer mythology is Ezekiel 28:12-15. I will focus in on the most important elements to keep this as short as possible. Similar to Isaiah, Ezekiel prophesied about the hubris and fall of the king of Tyre. Also like Isaiah, Ezekiel makes a
mythopoeic reference to some narrative. In this case, I would argue it
is
the Garden of Eden narrative being referenced. But the difference is that whereas many Christians assume Ezekiel is equating the fall of the king of Tyre with the fall of Satan, the truth is that the prophet is actually equating it with the fall of
Adam
!
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Ezekiel 28:12–
16

You were the signet of perfection…

You were in Eden, the garden of God…

You were an anointed guardian cherub
…

I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of God;

in the midst of the stones of fire you walked.

You were blameless in your ways

from the day you were created,

till unrighteousness was found in you
…

so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God,

and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub,

It was Adam who was in Eden and was blameless in his ways, not Satan. According to the Evangelical Satan legend, Satan already fell
before
the Garden. It was Adam who was created blameless and fell into sin and was cast out of Eden, not Satan. Satan’s name is nowhere to be found in this passage.
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One possible reason to presume the Satan connection here is the description of the character as an “anointed guardian cherub.” But there is a problem with this translation. Many commentators make the point that this is based upon the Masoretic text (MT) of the Bible. But the Septuagint (LXX), another authoritative Greek text of the Old Testament that is quoted by the New Testament authors and Jesus, renders those phrases “
From the day that thou wast created thou
wast
with
the cherub”
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and “the cherub has brought thee out of the midst of the stones.”
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Being “with the cherub” is a very different meaning than “being a cherub.” Though this is not unanimously conclusive, an increasing number of Bible scholars point to this ambiguity and likelihood of the Septuagint being the superior textual tradition here.
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Adam was not a cherub, he was
with
the cherubim.

Lastly, in Revelation 12, we see the origin of the notion that one third of the angels fell to earth with Satan at his fall. The only problem is that this event did not occur before the garden of Eden in a cosmic rebellion,
it happened at the birth of Jesus Christ
! Revelation 12:1-6 describes an apocalyptic parable of the cosmic war of the Seed of the Serpent (a dragon of chaos) and the Seed of the Woman (Israel/the Church).
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It describes one third of the angelic stars (Watchers?) joining Satan with the swipe of his serpentine tail. The dragon and his minions seek to devour the male seed (offspring) of the woman, but they fail and the child becomes king. And then the passage tells of a heavenly war:

Revelation 12:7–10

7
Now war arose in heaven, Michael and his angels fighting against the dragon. And the dragon and his angels fought back,
8
but he was defeated, and there was no longer any place for them in heaven.
9
And the great dragon was thrown down, that ancient serpent, who is called the devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world—he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
10
And I heard a loud voice in heaven, saying, “Now the salvation and the power and the kingdom of our God and the authority of his Christ have come, for the accuser of our brothers has been thrown down, who accuses them day and night before our God.

Most Christians believe this is a reference to Satan’s fall before the Garden of Eden incident, where he takes one third of the angels in heaven with him. But a closer look at the context reveals that this is not the case at all, but rather the opposite. The war in heaven
does not
happen before the Garden, it happens at the time of the incarnation of Messiah on earth! The woman (Israel) gives birth to a male child (Messiah, v. 5), who the dragon (Satan) seeks to devour (from Herod’s slaughter of the innocents all the way to the Cross). That Messiah ascends to the throne in authority after his resurrection (v. 5; Eph 1:20-22), during which time that woman (Israel) flees to the wilderness (time of tribulation under the Roman Empire).

The war in heaven we see cannot be before the Garden because it says that the throwing down of Satan occurs with the coming of the kingdom of Christ! (v. 10). He is thrown down to earth and then seeks to kill the Christ (v. 13). Satan then seeks to make war with the rest of her offspring (God’s people) which we see in history.

Revelation 12 is an apocalyptic parable that is describing the incarnation of Messiah, his ascension to the throne of authority over all principalities and powers, and his suppression of Satan’s power as the Gospel goes forth into the world.

But our problems with Satan do not end there. In
Enoch Primordial
, I do not call Satan, Satan, but
the satan
, lowercase. Why? Because the Hebrew word is not an individual’s name, but a
legal role
meaning “accuser” or “adversary.” The satan depicted in Job 1 and 2 and 1Kings 22 is one of the divine council of heavenly host who engages in legal accusations against God and his people and sometimes carries out God’s intentions. In short, he is a kind of manipulative prosecutor whose purpose is to challenge God and his perfect law.

In Hebrew,
satan
is prefixed by the definite article
ha
which makes it translate more accurately as
the satan
, or
the accuser
. In the New Testament Greek, Satan is prefixed by the definite article
ho
, carrying the same result of
the satan
as the adversary (Rev. 12:9) or the accuser (Rev. 12:10).

So the most we can know of the satan’s work in the Old Testament is that he was the Serpent in the Garden, and he
may have been
a prosecuting attorney-like accuser of God’s heavenly court. I say
may have been
because the satan was more a role or state of being than an individual. The avenging angel who was going to strike down Balaam was described as
the satan
in Numbers 22:22 and verse 32 (“adversary” and “oppose”); the political opponents of king David were defined as
the satan
to him (2Sam. 19:22); David himself was described as a potential
satan
to the Philistines (1Sam. 29:4); Hadad the Edomite and Reznon, son of Eliada are both described as
satans
to Israel (1Kings 11:14, 23); and even God himself is described as
the satan
(adversary) when he incites David to take a census (1Chron. 21:1; 2 Sam. 24:1). In the Old Testament,
the satan
was not always the same individual, but more likely the legal office of prosecutor.

This short excursion into deconstructing Satan is the foundation for why I portrayed him as I did in
Enoch Primordial
, as the prosecutorial Seraph, the Serpent of the Garden, whose purpose became accusing God’s people and bringing lawsuits to God’s throne to try to foil his plans.

Covenant Lawsuit

In
Enoch Primordial
, the satan prosecutes a “covenant lawsuit” against Yahweh Elohim in order to buy time for the Watchers to accomplish their nefarious plans of world domination. The satan and most of the Watchers “present themselves” before the heavenly court, along with “ten thousand times ten thousand of God’s holy ones,” the divine council. God is seated on his chariot throne above the Cherubim and beneath the Seraphim, and the satan engages in his arguments against God with Enoch, the translated holy man, as defense attorney.

At first blush this may seem to the modern “enlightened” religious mind like an artificial modern construct imposed upon the ancient story. But in fact, it is organically derived from the Bible itself, which drew from the ancient suzerain vassal treaties of the ancient Near East (most likely Hittite in origin).

Whenever “the satan” is named in the Bible (meaning “the accuser,” a legal term), it is usually in the legal context of a heavenly lawsuit. In the
Noah Primeval
appendices, I examined the divine council in the Scriptures in detail. In passages such as Job 1 and 2, and 1Kings 22 we are told that “the sons of God came to present themselves before Yahweh,”
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“all the host of heaven standing beside him on his right and on his left.”
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God then asks counsel and recommendation from this multitude on what to do regarding a specific situation.
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The heavenly beings give their opinions, God renders his verdict, and directs some of the host to carry out the sentence.
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