Jesus Triumphant (Chronicles of the Nephilim Book 8) (40 page)

But whether Christ proclaims in his resurrected body or in his immaterial spirit, the next question arises, who are the spirits to which he proclaims and where are they?

Who are the Spirits in Prison?
The identity of the spirits has been debated extensively and falls into four possible categories: Human spirits, demons, Watchers, or a combination of the above.

John Elliott debunks the notion that “spirits” refers to human beings by looking at the Greek word for spirits (
pneuma
) in Biblical and Intertestamental texts. He concludes, “use of ‘spirits’ for human beings is very rare, and even then it is always qualified. In the Bible and related literature, when reference is made to deceased humans in Hades or the underworld, the term used is not
pneuma
but
psyche
.”
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But another commentator, Ramsey Michaels, shows that “spirits” (
pneuma
) is used of demons frequently in the New Testament for those supernatural beings that Jesus often confronted in his ministry.
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He points out that in 1 Enoch,
pneuma
is used of demons as the surviving part of the giants killed in the Flood.

1 Enoch 15:8-10

But now the giants who are born from the (union of) the spirits and the flesh
shall be called evil spirits
[
pneuma
] upon the earth, because their dwelling shall be upon the earth and inside the earth.
9 
Evil spirits
[
pneuma
] have come out of their bodies…They will become evil upon the earth and
shall be called evil spirits
[
pneuma
].
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In this view, the “spirits in prison” are therefore the demonic souls of the Nephilim that are restricted to the prison “holding cell” under the earth until the coming of Messiah. (See below for the definition of “prison” as a holding cell). As 1 Enoch 15:10 reasons, “The dwelling of the spiritual beings of heaven is heaven; but the dwelling of the spirits of the earth, which are born upon the earth, is in the earth.”
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But what of the angelic Watchers? Are they ever referred to as “spirits”? As the 1 Enoch 15 passage above shows, the spirits of the Nephilim hybrids comes from their angelic Watcher progenitors who are also called spirits. In verse 4 of that passage, Enoch condemns the Watchers for violating their heavenly being as spirits (
pneuma
) and defiling themselves with “the blood of the flesh begotten children.”
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The Intertestamental book of Jubilees that drew from 1 Enoch also concurs with the spirits being fallen angels:

Jubilees 15:31-32

over all of [the nations God] caused
spirits
to rule so that they might lead them astray from following him.
32
 But over Israel he did not cause any
angel or spirit
to rule because he alone is their ruler.
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The only New Testament Scriptures that speak of imprisonment of spirits are Jude 6 and 2 Peter 2:4,
the very passages that most scholarship has revealed are literarily dependent on the book of 1 Enoch
.
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Jude not only quotes Enoch outright in Jude 4, but throughout his entire letter, he follows the progression of ideas in 1 Enoch and references memes and motifs of the angelic Watchers’ sin and judgment in that ancient text.
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2 Peter 2 is considered a paraphrase of Jude with the addition of the word for
Tartarus
as the description of the location of punishment.

Tartarus was well known by the ancients as the lowest place of the underworld where the Titans were bound in pagan mythology. That underworld was referred to as Hades (Greek) or Sheol (Hebrew), and has obvious conceptual links to Jude and Peter’s location of punishment (more on Tartarus and Sheol later).
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It would make most sense that Peter’s second letter about angels bound in the prison of Tartarus would have continuity with the “spirits in prison” he is writing about in this first letter.

Some scholars have argued that the link of this passage to 1 Enoch is so strong that it can only make sense if there was a scribal error that mistook the Greek word for “Enoch” as the very similar Greek word for “in which.”
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So Peter had actually written that Christ was made alive in the spirit in the same way as “Enoch who went and proclaimed to the spirits in prison” in 1 Enoch.
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Even though there is no manuscript evidence for this scribal error theory, making it unlikely, the strong analogy to Enoch’s descent into Sheol is undeniable. So much so that Bo Reicke argued that Peter is casting Jesus as a typological Enoch.
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Dalton enumerates, “A survey of 1 Enoch reveals a striking and obvious parallel to 1 Pet 3:19–20. In this latter text we have 1. a journey of Christ, 2. a proclamation, 3. to the spirits, 4. in prison, 5. who rebelled, or disobeyed, 6. in the setting of the flood. Now it is precisely in 1 Enoch that we find all these elements bound together in the closest unity.”
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The spirits are specifically indicated as being those who were disobedient during “the days of Noah while the ark was being prepared.” That “days of Noah” is exactly the time period that 1 Enoch speaks of the fallen Watchers and their giant progeny receiving their comeuppance with a binding in Tartarus/Sheol at the Flood.
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Chad Pierce makes a convincing argument that the disobedient spirits are not just the Watcher angels, demons, or human spirits alone, but the sum total of all who defied God at that time because cosmic powers are often united with human powers in the ancient world.
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In the Bible, the angelic power over Persia animated the human kingdom of Persia (Dan. 10:13), The Roman human kingdom in Revelation is granted its power from the satan (Rev. 12-13), and both are destroyed together in the Lake of Fire (Rev. 19:20; 20:7-10).

Wink explains that the ancient mind of the Biblical writers was steeped in a macrocosm/microcosm of “what is above is also below.” “Angelic and demonic activity in heaven was reflected in events on earth…These Powers are both heavenly and earthly, divine and human, spiritual and political, invisible and structural.”
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Reicke adds that the “fallen Angels… the Powers, the demons in general, can in a certain way represent the whole world of fallen angels.”
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And Pierce concludes, “the distinction between cosmic and earthly sinners is so blurred they cannot be distinguished. It appears that the author of 1 Pet 3:18-22 has left the recipients of Christ’s message purposefully vague so as to include all forms of evil beings. The spirits in prison are thus all the forces of evil which have now been subjugated and defeated by Christ.”
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1 Peter 3:22 concludes that the context of the proclamation Christ made was the subjugation of “angels, authorities, and powers.” Heavenly “principalities, powers, and authorities” is a recurring concept in the New Testament (Col. 1:16, 2:13-15; Eph. 1:20-23). It is a concept that assumes earthly rulers and powers are animated and empowered by spiritual or cosmic rulers and power behind them.

Thus, Paul could encourage those Christians who were suffering from the earthly rulers and powers who persecuted them; “For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places” (Eph. 6:12-13). In other words, the real enemies of the persecuted Christians were the spiritual powers behind their earthly persecuting powers. This is not a denial of the human evil, but rather a drawing back of the curtain to see the ultimate enemy with more clarity.

These spiritual and earthly “powers, rulers, authorities, and thrones,” are the Seed of the Serpent that had been involved in the cosmic War of the Seed against Messiah. It is these rulers,
both heavenly and earthly
, who did not understand the mystery of the Gospel of redemption through Messiah’s suffering. They thought that killing the Chosen One, the Messiah, would bring them victory.

1 Corinthians 2:7–9

But we impart a secret and hidden wisdom of God, which God decreed before the ages for our glory. None of the rulers of this age understood this, for if they had, they would not have crucified the Lord of glory.

So the focus on “powers and authorities” stresses the nature of Christ’s cosmic mission against the heavenly powers. But the humans of Noah’s day were certainly united in the rebellion of the Watchers and were also marked out by Enoch as being imprisoned along with the angels.
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Where is the “Prison”?
One interpretation of the prison is that it is a metaphor for human beings on earth who are “imprisoned” in their sin. But the context of the passage mitigates against this view. When the New Testament refers to preaching the Gospel to people on earth, the Greek term for “soul,” is used (
psyche
). But this is not a term about a ghost in a machine, but rather an expression of the life of an individual human, their inner being, their “person,” or their “self.” Thus, Peter writes in 3:20 that “eight persons (
psyche
) were brought safely through the waters” in the ark during the Flood. When Peter preaches the Gospel in Acts 2, it says that “those who received his word were baptized, and there were added that day about three thousand souls [
psyche
]… and awe came upon every soul [
psyche
]” (Acts 2:42-43). “Soul” could be used synonymously with “individuals” or “persons.”

But in 1 Peter 3, the distinct Greek term for “spirit” (
pneuma
), not “soul” (
psyche
), is used in contrast to the physical flesh. And these “spirits” are those who were disobedient in the days of Noah (v. 20), so they could not be people on earth at the time of Christ. Christ was proclaiming to spirits. During the time of Christ, those who were around in the days of Noah could only be in one place according to the Old Testament: The underworld of Hades or Sheol.

Hades was well known in the Greco-Roman world as the holding cell of the spirits of the dead until the judgment. Sheol was the Hebrew equivalent for Hades so the two could be used interchangeably.
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Prisons in that time period were exactly that, holding cells for punishment. So when Peter refers to a prison for spirits, this view concludes that he is referring to Hades, just as he did in 2 Peter 2:4 when he said that the disobedient angels were cast into Tartarus, the lowest point in Hades.

There are orthodox traditions of Christian scholars who have supported this passage as referring to Christ’s proclamation as occurring at his physical ascension into heaven and others as referring to Christ’s spiritual descent into Hades. I take the position in
Jesus Triumphant
that Christ spiritually descended into Hades. So did early church fathers like Tertullian, Augustine, Jerome, Clement of Alexandria, Irenaeus, Cyril, and Origen, as well as Medieval scholastics like Robert Bellarmine, John Calvin, Thomas Aquinas, and modern scholars like Charles B. Cranfield, and Bo Reicke.
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But I also incorporate the post-resurrection interpretation when it comes to the angelic Sons of God (Watchers) reigning on earth.

William Dalton agrees with Reicke that Jesus is cast as a typological Enoch, but then argues that in 2 Enoch, Enoch visits the bound angels in the lower regions of heaven, not Hades.
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This is true of 2 Enoch, but unfortunately, the text is of such late origin (2nd century after Christ) that it cannot have been part of the original Enochian corpus used as a source in the Bible.
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In contrast, 1 Enoch, which seems to be the source of the Biblical text, does in fact depict Enoch as visiting the place of the condemned Watchers who were “
formerly
in heaven” (1 Enoch 16:2), and that place is described as a “deep pit,” in the bottom of a mountain, just like Tartarus of Hades (Sheol), “an empty place with neither heaven above nor an earth below” (1 Enoch 21:1-2).
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