Giants, Gods, and Dragons (Part 1) (Part 2): Giants, Gods, and Dragons (Part 3):
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Subject: Giants, Gods, and Dragons (Part 1) (Part 2): Giants, Gods, and Dragons (Part 3): Thu Oct 22, 2020 5:58 am
Giants, Gods, and Dragons (Part 1): Order Out of Chaos
October 21, 2020 by Derek Gilbert
Modern replica of ancient Greek art depicting Zeus battling the chaos-god, Typhon.
Everything has a start. A plant, a person, an idea. Even the universe had a beginning. In Genesis, chapter 1, we’re told that God created the heavens and the earth. Then, only two verses in, we read something that may not make sense when we first read it, because something happened to the earth. Rather than being described as “good” and perfect, as we see in later verses regarding creation, our world is described as “void” and “without form.” Now, why would God create something that’s basically unfinished?
Simple answer: He didn’t.
It’s our belief that the Lord created everything in perfect condition, but that something catastrophic occurred between verses 1 and 2 that so scarred the original creation it rendered the earth “void” and “without form.” We believe that “something” was a cataclysmic rebellion, led by a primordial being we refer to as “Prisoner Zero.” Scholars have named this conflict the Chaoskampf: an ancient war that formed the pattern for what’s to come in our future. To understand the end times and the book of Revelation, we must understand the Chaoskampf, for it is the history of a long, spiritual war that will one day end with a new heaven and a new earth: A return to a pristine, former glory. The end from the beginning—the beginning from the end.
As God promises in Isaiah 46:11, “I have spoken,” says Yahweh. “I will bring it to pass. I have purposed it, and I will do it.” What does He mean by this? What is God vowing to accomplish? What ancient prophecy awaits final fulfillment? That question requires some time to unpack, for it’s one of those frequently “missed” prophecies that, as with Poe’s Purloined Letter, has been staring us in the face the entire time. But its form and shape emerge once we take the Bible as a whole and realize that Revelation cannot be understood without first discerning the implications of Genesis. The end from the beginning. A series of rebels and rebellions.
Prisoner Zero. The Chaos Dragon. The Nachash. The Watchers. The Nephilim. Babel. Satan. The Antichrist.
Most of you are familiar with the prophecy of Ezekiel 38, where we read that Gog leads a confederation against Israel. His objective will be Zion, the har môʿēd, God’s mount of assembly. Gog comes from the north, but “north” in this case is not so much a geographic direction as it is spiritual north, consistent with the Jewish tradition of evil always descending upon Israel from “the north.” Historically, the most fearsome enemies always attacked from that direction, mainly Assyria, Babylon or the Arameans. (Attacking from the east meant crossing the brutal Syrian desert, which was foolish, to say the least.)
Co-author Sharon K. Gilbert in northern Israel with Mount Hermon in the background.
Likewise, supernatural threats to Israel also came from the north: Bashan, the entrance to the Canaanite underworld; Mount Hermon, El’s mount of assembly and the site of the Watchers’ rebellion; and Mount Zaphon, the home of Baal’s palace, were all located to the north of Israel. This is the proper context for viewing the war of Gog and Magog depicted in Ezekiel 38 and 39, because the phrase in Ezekiel translated “uttermost north” (and “sides of the north” in Isaiah 14:13) is yarkete tsaphon. The prophets pointed to a place, not a direction.
Gog is the personal name of a Reubenite,[1] but it’s also the name of a spirit entity, that which animates Antichrist, the great supernatural end-times enemy of God and Israel.
Speculation linking the identity of Gog to any Russian leader is misguided. First, while there may be Russians in the coalition that comes to Jerusalem for the Battle of Armageddon, Russia as a nation is not part of Ezekiel’s prophecy. With all due respect to Bible teachers who hold the “Russia is Magog” view, identifying Rosh as Russia and Meshech as Moscow is folk etymology, making connections simply because the words sound the same. Language doesn’t always work like that. For example, “dear” and “deer” sound the same, but you won’t mistake your spouse for Bambi.
More importantly, the grisly sacrificial feasts of Ezekiel 39:17–20 and Revelation 19:17–21 confirm that the war of Gog ends at Armageddon. It’s the same conflict.
So, unless we create a plausible scenario that includes a Russian Antichrist, we have to let that theory go.
We can agree, however, that the Beast emerging from the sea in Revelation 13:1 is the Antichrist figure, but did you know this relates back to Prisoner Zero? The sea (Yam in Hebrew) is most properly understood as an entity. Yam is a proper name and represents Chaos, the very rebel that God subdued in the first two verses of the Bible.
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In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was without form and void, and darkness was over the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the waters. (Genesis 1:1–2)
The Hebrew word translated as “deep” is tehom, which is a cognate—that is, the same word in a different language—to the Akkadian Têmtum, which, in turn, is a variant of Tiamat, the Sumerian chaos monster who was defeated by the warrior god, Marduk, to bring order to creation. Similar myths were common in the ancient Near East (ANE): Baal vs. Yamm, Teshub vs. Illuyanka, Zeus vs. Typhon.
The Bible describes Leviathan as a sea-dragon so monstrous that “the gods are afraid” (Job 41:25).
But the original version is Yahweh vs. Leviathan.
Now, the most obvious difference between the biblical account and the others is that the fight between God and Chaos, if there was a fight, was over by the end of the second verse in the Bible. We see references to it in later chapters (for example, Psalm 74:12–17), but there is no hint that God had any trouble bringing Chaos to heel. He merely placed His Spirit over the deep and it obeyed. “Down! Stay!” No weapons needed. Just His Word.
Not so with pagan versions of this epic moment in history. In every case, the warrior god required outside help, weapons, and multiple battles to subdue the sea monster representing Chaos. But Chaos, being a supernatural creature, is (for the present) only restrained, not dead.
Now, here’s where Typhon comes in.
Replica of ancient Greek art depicting Zeus battling the winged, serpentine chaos-god, Typhon.
According to the Greek poet Hesiod, Zeus threw the serpentine chaos-monster Typhon into Tartarus to share a cellblock with the infamous Titans.[2] We can be reasonably sure the Titans/Watchers are presently in Tartarus. Hesiod and Homer agreed on that point, and Peter confirmed it (see 2 Peter 2:4, and note that the Greek word translated “Hell” is tartaroo—Tartarus).
The Greeks believed the battle between Zeus and Typhon took place at Mount Kasios, which was their name for Baal’s holy mountain, Zaphon. Scholars have long noted that Typhon’s name resembles Zaphon so closely they are most likely etymologically linked.[3] This gives us a clear connection between Zaphon, the mountain where the Antichrist/Gog will marshal his forces, and the chaos-god Typhon. And while this entity is called a dragon (with a hundred heads no less!) by Hesiod,[4] Typhon is described elsewhere as “a hybrid between man and beast,”[5] with many wings, coils of vipers for legs, and a human head. That is, the Greek god of chaos was a human-animal chimera, similar to the way ancient Mesopotamians described the apkallu, who were—yep, you guessed it—the Watchers/Titans.
In other words, the Greeks remembered that a monstrous deity connected to Satan/Baal’s mount of assembly, Zaphon, was buried in Tartarus—the abyss, which is represented in the Bible by the sea. In Revelation, the Beast, which is described as a chimeric entity like the chaos-monster Typhon, emerges from the sea (Yam)—the abyss—to become the Antichrist (Gog) and lead the war against God’s holy mountain, Zion:
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Then the dragon became furious with the woman and went off to make war on the rest of her offspring, on those who keep the commandments of God and hold to the testimony of Jesus. And he stood on the sand of the sea.
And I saw a beast rising out of the sea, with ten horns and seven heads, with ten diadems on its horns and blasphemous names on its heads. (Revelation 12:17–13:1)
The verses above suggest that it is the dragon who stands on the shore when the Beast, the Antichrist/Gog, rises from the abyss. Please note that Satan/Baal’s mount of assembly, Zaphon, today called Jebel al-Aqra, sits on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea.
All that leads to the $64,000 question: Could the Antichrist actually be the spirit of Chaos, known also as Leviathan, Tiamat, Têmtu, and the Dragon? Yes.
Now, while the chaos-god Typhon wasn’t one of the original Titans, he was believed to be their half-brother and is sometimes referred to as a Titan. Interestingly, at least one of the early church fathers thought a Titan would return at the end of days. Irenaeus, a Christian theologian of the second century, offered these thoughts on John’s prophecy of the Antichrist:
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Although certain as to the number of the name of Antichrist, yet we should come to no rash conclusions as to the name itself, because this number [666] is capable of being fitted to many names.… Teitan too, (ΤΕΙΤΑΝ, the first syllable being written with the two Greek vowels ε and ι), among all the names which are found among us, is rather worthy of credit… Inasmuch, then, as this name “Titan” has so much to recommend it, there is a strong degree of probability, that from among the many [names suggested], we infer, that perchance he who is to come shall be called “Titan.”[6] (Emphasis added)
To his credit, Irenaeus declined to say absolutely that the Antichrist would be named Titan. He reasoned that if the precise name had been important, John would have revealed it instead of a number. Still, it’s intriguing, isn’t it? And consider this: Jesus demonstrated His mastery over Chaos to the disciples one night on the Sea of Galilee:
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On that day, when evening had come, he said to them, “Let us go across to the other side.” And leaving the crowd, they took him with them in the boat, just as he was. And other boats were with him. And a great windstorm arose, and the waves were breaking into the boat, so that the boat was already filling. But he was in the stern, asleep on the cushion. And they woke him and said to him, “Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?” And he awoke and rebuked the wind and said to the sea, “Peace! Be still!” And the wind ceased, and there was a great calm. He said to them, “Why are you so afraid? Have you still no faith?” And they were filled with great fear and said to one another, “Who then is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:35–41; emphasis added)
Puts that story in a whole different light, doesn’t it?
Now, let’s look at Revelation 9. When the fifth of the trumpet-blowing angels sounds his horn, a star falls from heaven to earth with a key to the abyss. We believe that this moment marks the return of the old gods:
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He opened the shaft of the bottomless pit, and from the shaft rose smoke like the smoke of a great furnace, and the sun and the air were darkened with the smoke from the shaft. Then from the smoke came locusts on the earth, and they were given power like the power of scorpions of the earth. They were told not to harm the grass of the earth or any green plant or any tree, but only those people who do not have the seal of God on their foreheads. They were allowed to torment them for five months, but not to kill them, and their torment was like the torment of a scorpion when it stings someone. And in those days people will seek death and will not find it. They will long to die, but death will flee from them.
In appearance the locusts were like horses prepared for battle: on their heads were what looked like crowns of gold; their faces were like human faces, their hair like women’s hair, and their teeth like lions’ teeth; they had breastplates like breastplates of iron, and the noise of their wings was like the noise of many chariots with horses rushing into battle. They have tails and stings like scorpions, and their power to hurt people for five months is in their tails. They have as king over them the angel of the bottomless pit. His name in Hebrew is Abaddon, and in Greek he is called Apollyon. (Revelation 9:2–11; emphasis added)
In the preceding verses, we see the entities that the world thousands of years ago called Titans, Watchers, Anunnaki, and even apkallu angrily roar out of the abyss.
That’s where they are now, but they’ll soon be given a short time to torment humanity. Five months. One hundred and fifty days—the same it took for their children, the Nephilim, to die in the Flood![7]
Thus, the Watchers will take revenge on God’s most prized creation—man—in return for the punishment of watching their own children, the Nephilim/Rephaim, destroyed in the Flood of Noah. Granted, the description of the things from the pit doesn’t exactly match the Mesopotamian images of apkallu or Greek sculptures of the Titans. Remember, though, that those entities were sent to the bottomless pit around the time of the Great Flood. Hundreds of years, and maybe a thousand or more, had passed by the time the Sumerians began to create images of apkallu on cylinder seals and clay tablets. Those descriptions captured handed-down, oral traditions of supernatural human-animal hybrids, however, which is basically what John describes for us in Revelation.
The Titans, the Watchers of the Bible, return when Apollyon opens the pit. And for humans without the protective seal of God on their foreheads, it will literally be hell on earth.
[1] 1 Chronicles 5:4.
[2] Hesiod. The Homeric Hymns and Homerica with an English Translation by Hugh G. Evelyn-White. Theogony(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1914).
[3] J. W. Van Henten. “Typhon,” in K. van der Toorn, B. Becking, & P. W. van der Horst (Eds.), Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible 2nd extensively rev. ed. (Leiden; Boston; Köln; Grand Rapids, MI; Cambridge: Brill; Eerdmans, 1999), p. 879.
[4] Hesiod. op. cit.
[5] Apollodorus. Library and Epitome (English). J. G. Frazer, Ed. (Medford, MA: Perseus Digital Library), p. 47.
[6] Irenaeus. Against Heresies, Book V, Chapter 30.
[7] See Genesis 7:24. 150 days on a calendar based on a 30-day lunar month is exactly five months.
Last edited by ColonelZ on Tue Oct 27, 2020 9:01 am; edited 2 times in total
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Subject: Giants, Gods, & Dragons -- Does The Bible Say They Were Real AND THAT THEY ARE COMING BACK!? Thu Oct 22, 2020 11:07 am
Giants, Gods, & Dragons -- Does The Bible Say They Were Real AND THAT THEY ARE COMING BACK!?
Giants, Gods, and Dragons is a fresh look at the end of days, drawing on the worldview of the prophets and apostles, who understood that the spirit realm was far more real than we in the modern world believe. In these programs and the new book, you’ll discover: • The identities of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse • Connections between Babel, Babylon, and what’s in your wallet • Three dragons that will walk the earth in the last days • The name of the first spirit to rebel against God (hint: it wasn’t Satan) • Why the “wild beasts” with the deadly Rider on the Pale Horse may be disease-causing viruses • The link between the fallen angels of Genesis and the Titans of Greek mythology • Gog of Magog’s true identity (hint: he’s not Russian) • The historic Nimrod and the true location of Babel • The connection between the reptilian figurines of Sumer and the ancient practice of human head shaping • Why the Jews of Jesus’ day and the early Christian church connected fallen angels and the Antichrist to the giant, dangerous Titans of Greek myth • Historic and prophetic links between the Watchers, Mount Hermon, the prophet Daniel, Jack the Ripper, the destroying angel called Apollyon, and the locust-like things that swarm out of the abyss during the Great Tribulation!
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Subject: Giants, Gods, and Dragons (Part 2): Dragons in the Garden of God Sun Oct 25, 2020 6:37 am
Giants, Gods, and Dragons (Part 2): Dragons in the Garden of God
October 25, 2020 by Derek Gilbert
We’ve learned a bit about the original rebel: the entity called Chaos. And we’ve considered how this might also be connected to the Titans of old. Now, let’s dig a bit deeper into Prisoner Zero’s ultimate end.
For now, even as a prisoner, Chaos exerts an evil influence upon all creatures, both in our physical world and in the spirit realm. Prisoner Zero’s evil may have inspired the second rebellion, which occurred in a very special garden.
Did you know that Eden was the original holy mountain of God? Yes, Eden was a garden, but it was a garden set upon a mountain. We learn this from Ezekiel 28:
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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. In the abundance of your trade you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of God, and I destroyed you, O guardian cherub, from the midst of the stones of fire.” (Ezekiel 28:14–16)
Eden was more than just a garden. More than a paradise. It was the where the divine council met, the “seat of the gods” on “the mountain of God.” Adam and Eve were there, and they served alongside the “elder brothers”—or elohim—as members of the Lord’s divine council.
It was in Eden that the Enemy first employed a PSYOP (psychological operation). And these PSYOPs have formed a major component in the enemy’s arsenal ever since. In this case: “You will be as gods.”
Of course, that was a bald-faced lie. Instead of achieving godhood, Adam and Eve lost their immortality, died spiritually, got kicked out of their home (the garden), were expelled from the divine council, and were evicted from the holy mountain.
All because they listened and believed a serpent’s lie.
We’ve already discussed the first rebel, Chaos; but who is this second enemy? Who is the serpent in the garden?
The name “Satan” means “accuser,” and it’s written ha-shaitan in the Old Testament. It is not a personal name, but a job title—the satan. Ha-shaitan means “the accuser” or “the adversary.” Think of it as performing the office of prosecuting attorney—the one who accuses the defendant of a crime.
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Now the serpent was more crafty than any other beast of the field that the Lord God had made. (Genesis 3:1)
The word translated “serpent” in this verse is nachash. It’s based on an adjective that means “bright” or “brazen,” like shiny brass. The noun nachash can mean “snake,” but it can also mean “one who practices divination.” In Hebrew, it’s not uncommon for an adjective to be converted into a noun—the term is “substantivized.” If that’s the case here, nachash could mean “shining one,” which is consistent with other descriptions of the Satan figure in the Old Testament.
For example, in Isaiah 14, the character is called “Lucifer” in the King James translation, based on the Latin words chosen by Jerome (lux + ferous, meaning “light bringer”). But the original Hebrew text actually names him—not “Light Bringer”—but Helel ben Shachar, which means “shining one, son of the dawn.”
Now, consider this in Daniel 10:
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I lifted up my eyes and looked, and behold, a man clothed in linen, with a belt of fine gold from Uphaz around his waist. His body was like beryl, his face like the appearance of lightning, his eyes like flaming torches, his arms and legs like the gleam of burnished bronze, and the sound of his words like the sound of a multitude. (Daniel 10:5–6; emphasis added)
Obviously, “shining one” is an apt description of the angel who had to battle the prince of Persia (a supernatural being) to bring his message to Daniel.
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Does The Bible Say They Were Real AND ARE COMING BACK!?
Another example occurred about nine hundred years before Daniel, when the Israelites began to complain (and complain and complain) on their way out of Egypt. In response, God sent saraph nachash (“fiery serpents”) to torment them. Saraph is the root word of seraphim, which roughly means “burning ones.” The Hebrew words saraph and nachash are used interchangeably, so rather than “fiery serpents,” the actual translation should read “saraph serpents.”
Deuteronomy 8:15 praises Yahweh for bringing Israel through “the great and terrifying wilderness, with its fiery serpents,” reinforcing the interchangeability of saraph and nachash.
Now, if the mental image of flaming snakes isn’t weird enough, the prophet Isaiah twice referred to flying serpents (saraph `uwph, in Isaiah 14:29 and 30:6). And in his famous throne-room vision, Isaiah saw:
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…the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted up; and the train of his robe filled the temple. Above him stood the seraphim. Each had six wings: with two he covered his face, and with two he covered his feet, and with two he flew. (Isaiah 6:1–2)
Reproduction of a gold collar depicting a winged serpent goddess found in King Tutankhamun’s tomb (1332-1323 BC).
Again, the root word of “seraphim” is saraph, the same word translated “serpent” in Numbers and Deuteronomy. In fact, aside from the Isaiah 6 passage above, every single mention of “seraphim” in the Old Testament refers to serpentine beings!
The bottom line is this: What Adam and Eve saw in the garden wasn’t a talking snake, but a nachash—a radiant, divine entity, very likely of serpentine appearance.
Now, you’re probably wondering how the rebel in Eden could be one of the seraphim and one of the cherubim. Good question.
Cherubim in the Bible are usually mentioned in descriptions of the mercy seat on top of the Ark of the Covenant and in reference to carved decorations in Solomon’s Temple. Two notable exceptions are the cherubim who guard the entrance to Eden and the four cherubim Ezekiel saw in his famous “wheel within a wheel” vision by the Chebar canal.
Contrary to the typical artist’s depiction as winged, often feminine angels (forget the chubby, winged babies of Renaissance paintings—those are right out), the cherubim were terrifying:
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…this was their appearance: they had a human likeness, but each had four faces, and each of them had four wings. Their legs were straight, and the soles of their feet were like the sole of a calf’s foot. And they sparkled like burnished bronze.
Under their wings on their four sides they had human hands. And the four had their faces and their wings thus: their wings touched one another. Each one of them went straight forward, without turning as they went.
As for the likeness of their faces, each had a human face.
The four had the face of a lion on the right side, the four had the face of an ox on the left side, and the four had the face of an eagle.
Such were their faces. And their wings were spread out above. Each creature had two wings, each of which touched the wing of another, while two covered their bodies. And each went straight forward. Wherever the spirit would go, they went, without turning as they went.
As for the likeness of the living creatures, their appearance was like burning coals of fire, like the appearance of torches moving to and fro among the living creatures. And the fire was bright, and out of the fire went forth lightning.
And the living creatures darted to and fro, like the appearance of a flash of lightning. (Ezekiel 1:5–14; emphasis added)
That’s consistent with the idea of “shining” or “burning” connected to the nachash and the seraphim. Now, compare Ezekiel 1 to Ezekiel 10:
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And every one had four faces: the first face was the face of the cherub, and the second face was a human face, and the third the face of a lion, and the fourth the face of an eagle. (Ezekiel 10:14)
Did you notice that the first face was a cherub instead of an ox? The human, lion, and eagle faces are the same. Why the change? Is there a connection between the cherub and the ox?
Actually, yes.
Co-author Derek Gilbert with an Assyrian lamassu at the British Museum. Note that the statue includes all four aspects of the cherubim: Human (face), ox (body), eagle (wings), and lion (feet).
The word “cherub” probably comes from the Akkadian karibu (the “ch” should be a hard “k” sound). It means “intercessor” or “one who prays.” The karibu were usually portrayed as winged bulls with human faces, and huge statues of the karibu were set up as divine guardians at the entrances of palaces and temples. This is the role of the cherubim “at the east of the garden of Eden…to guard the way to the tree of life.”
Cherubim were the gold standard for guarding royalty in the ancient Near East. In Assyria they were called lamassu, and the Akkadians called them shedu. They were sometimes depicted as winged lions rather than bulls, and they were often incorporated into the thrones of kings. So, the function of the biblical cherubim, guarding the tree of life and carrying the throne of God, was entirely consistent with what the neighbors of the Israelites believed about these beings.
Based on what archaeologists have found in the ancient Near East, the cherubim were more like winged sphinxes than humanoids with wings.
So, we’ve identified the nachash, one of the entities—gods, if you will (it’s the word God uses for them)—in the divine assembly on God’s holy mountain. But what about the other gods? Who else was in Eden with God, Adam, Eve, and the nachash? What do we know about them?
Actually, more than you’d think. We know that those gods were in the Garden, or Yahweh would not have inspired Ezekiel to call Eden “the seat of the gods.” And it’s possible they’re mentioned in Ezekiel 28, just not in the way we expect.
Scholars generally agree that Ezekiel 28 is linked to Isaiah 14, another account of the divine rebel being tossed out of Eden:
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How you are fallen from heaven, O Day Star, 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.” (Isaiah 14:12–13)
Ezekiel 28 and Isaiah 14 describe the same event, so we have confirmation of other divine beings in Eden. In the Ezekiel account, God describes how the “anointed guardian cherub” was cast out of Eden, where he’d once walked “in the midst of the stones of fire.” Compare that with what we discussed above about the brazen, glowing, or burning appearance of the beings encountered by Moses, Daniel, and Isaiah. And in Psalm 104:4, we read that God “makes his messengers winds, His ministers a flaming fire.”
In the Isaiah 14 passage above, we also see a reference to the “stars of God.” Scholars agree that “stars” in the Old Testament often refer to the bene ha’elohim (“sons of God”).
The book of 1 Enoch describes angels in the netherworld as burning mountains.
The divine rebel in Eden was cast out of the Garden for his pride and his desire to set his throne “above the stars of God”—the sons of God who appear as beings of fire and light. So, it’s likely that the “stones of fire” in Eden were the sons of God, angelic beings that the nachash wanted to rule from his own “mount of assembly.”
Apologists for the Bible often try to de-supernaturalize the puzzling references to fiery, flying serpents by offering naturalistic explanations. Some suggest that the fiery serpents of Numbers 21 were saw-scaled vipers, dangerous venomous snakes native to the Sinai Peninsula. Others claim that the verses are proof that dragons or pterodactyls were alive during the Exodus. Both suggestions miss the point. We need to keep our eyes on the supernatural.
Well, the consequences of the rebellion in Eden were immediate and harsh:
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The Lord God said to the serpent, “Because you have done this, cursed are you above all livestock and above all beasts of the field; on your belly you shall go, and dust you shall eat all the days of your life. (Genesis 3:14)
Well-meaning Christians often point to that verse as the moment snakes lost their legs. Again, that misses the point.
God didn’t remove the legs of snakes; He described the punishment of the nachash in figurative language. What happened was this: The nachash was cast down from the peak of the supernatural realm, “full of wisdom and perfect in beauty,” to become the lord of the dead.
For Adam and Eve, the banishment affected the two of them and all their descendants through the present day. Instead of living with God as members of His council, we humans have struggled for millennia to make sense of a world that often seems to make no sense. The memory of our brief time in the Garden of God has echoed down through the long and many centuries since, and it may be the source of our belief that mountains are somehow special: reserved for the gods. Eden was a lush, well-watered area “on the holy mountain of God,” where Yahweh presided over His divine council. The council included the first humans along with the loyal elohim.
The long war between Yahweh and the sons of God who rebelled is not just about control of the spirit realm, it’s also about whether humanity will be restored to its rightful place “in the seat of the gods”—among the divine council on the holy mountain of God. We see God’s battle plans and references to previous skirmishes in the Bible, but a day is coming when He will destroy all enemies.
At least some of which are serpentine. And remember — a good word to describe “flying, fiery serpents” is dragon.
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Subject: Giants, Gods, and Dragons (Part 3): East of Eden Tue Oct 27, 2020 9:01 am
Giants, Gods, and Dragons (Part 3): East of Eden
October 27, 2020 by SkyWatch Editor
Despite any prejudicial slants regarding God, most scholars agree that human civilization emerged in the Fertile Crescent, the land between the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, around 10,000 BC. (We’re using dates that are generally accepted by a consensus of scholars so we don’t get bogged down arguing about the timeline.) Agriculture, cities, writing, trade, science, and organized religion all developed in a broad arc that stretched from Egypt through the Levant and down into Mesopotamia.
Map of the extent of the Ubaid culture (click to enlarge). Curiously, the evidence uncovered thus far supports the idea that Adam and Eve, and later Cain, traveled east of Eden to begin their lives. (Note: We place the Garden of Eden in the vicinity of Jerusalem.) As such, the first evidence of civilization appears at Sumer, today’s southeastern Iraq, where it seems to have emerged fully formed with no preliminary steps.
A few scholars speculate that earlier attempts to organize what we call “civilization” lie at the bottom of the Persian Gulf. The theory goes that Eden, from which all humans came, stood in the “Gulf Oasis,” a lush valley watered by the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, as well as the Karun River from Iran and the Wadi Batin from Saudi Arabia. The Persian Gulf rose rapidly between 6000 and 5000 BC, during the Neolithic Wet Phase, and as the Gulf moved northward, people moved ahead of it, leaving the evidence of their earlier settlements hidden beneath the gulf’s waves.
Scholars refer to this Mesopotamian civilization as the Ubaid culture. Of course, that’s not what the people who lived in it called themselves; we don’t know their proper name because they never invented writing. The Ubaid civilization gets its name from Tell al-`Ubaid, a small settlement mound in southeast Iraq where two well-known archaeologists, Henry Hall and Sir Leonard Woolley, first dug up bits of Ubaid pottery between 1919 and 1924.
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Archaeologists who study the Ubaid culture agree that its influence spread from Eridu in southeast Iraq, eventually going as far as what is today northwest Iran, northern Syria, southern Turkey, and the Levant (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel).
Temple of the god Enki at Eridu, the E-abzu (“House of the Abyss”). Click to enlarge.
What is most interesting about Eridu is that, besides being the oldest city in Sumer, it was the home of the oldest and largest ziggurat (step pyramid) in Mesopotamia—and, we believe, the actual Tower of Babel (see chapter 3 of Derek’s book The Great Inception or chapter 18 of our previous book Veneration for the evidence). This was the temple of one of the most important gods of the ancient Near East, called Enki by the Sumerians and Ea by the later Akkadians and Babylonians. Enki was the god of the sweet waters, those needed for life. To illustrate this, he was depicted with two streams of water flowing from his shoulders to represent the Tigris and Euphrates rivers, the main sources of fresh water in Mesopotamia.
Enki was the god of magic, craftsmanship, and wisdom.
Although Enlil was king of the gods (before the rise of Babylon in the time of Abraham and Isaac, when Enlil was replaced at the top of the pantheon by Marduk), Enki was the keeper of the mes (sounds like “mezz”). The mes were decrees of the gods that formed the fundamental concepts and gifts of civilization—everything from religious practices to social interaction to music.
The Babylonian creation myth, the Enuma Elish, describes how everything on earth came into being after Marduk defeated chaos in the form of the monstrous she-dragon, Tiamat. (Yes, this is another lie from the Fallen Realm.)
Marduk, the chief god of Babylon, was the son of Enki.
However, the older Sumerian story credits Enki with giving life to all things, including mankind, and names Enlil the slayer of Tiamat.
Apparently, the fallen realm squabbles over who gets credit for stealing God’s ideas.
There’s one more aspect of life in the ancient Near East we’d like to call to your attention. It’s something we only hear about from fringe pseudo-scholars who blame the phenomenon on extraterrestrials. (Think big hair.) Scholars, that is, archaeologists and sociologists, have known at least since the late 1940s that before the people of Mesopotamia learned how to write, they’d begun turning their children into coneheads.
Skull found at Chogha Sefid in norrhwestern Iran dated to about 7000 BC.
Based on human remains dated to between about 10,000 BC and 3500 BC, it appears that cranial deformation was widespread in the Ubaid culture, and at Eridu, the world’s first city. If Cain or his son established Eridu (Cain’s grandson was named Irad,[1] etymologically similar to Eridu), then we can place them at ground zero for the worldwide phenomenon of head-shaping.
An archaeological dig at Eridu just after World War II revealed about a thousand bodies that had been buried during the Ubaid period. Of the 206 sets of remains the archaeologists exhumed, “all of the crania had been deformed in one fashion or another.”[2]
Deformed skull from tomb at Tol-e Chega Sofla in northwest Iran (c. 4000 BC).
Got that? 206 out of 206. Not a few, and not just the elites, but every person from every stratum of the Eridu culture had a deformed skull.
Evidence of head-shaping has been found at sites all over Iraq, southwestern Iran, eastern Turkey, the valleys of the Zagros mountains, and the western shores of the Persian Gulf, dated from 7500 BC to about 4000 BC. After that, the practice seems to disappear.[3]
Here’s another bit of data to chew on: At Eridu and nearby sites in pre-Flood southern Sumer, and only there, archaeologists have found about 120 terracotta figurines that scholars call ophidian, meaning “snake-like.” These figurines are slender bipeds, adorned with button-like protuberances, more often female than male, and often in poses that are exclusively mammalian; for example, a female lizard-like figure suckling an infant.
Now, ancient astronaut evangelists on cable TV shows claim that these reptilian mothers were our space ancestors, the Anunnaki who came from the stars to create humanity by tinkering with ape DNA.
They’re thinking along the right lines, but by ignoring the supernatural, they miss the most likely answer.
Ubaid culture ophidian figurines (click to enlarge).
We’ll never know for certain why this happened, but we can speculate. Perhaps, the people who formed the earliest human civilizations copied a look that someone, somewhere, had seen and decided was the physical ideal. We still do this. Modern-day teens copy hairstyles and fashion from magazines and television, and men emulate the latest Marvel hunk, right? Except that the ophidian style head-shaping fashion statement didn’t change with the seasons; it appears to have been worn by nearly everybody in the ancient Near East for more than six thousand years!
For it to last that long, it must have conveyed some advantage to those who practiced it. Think back to what we discussed about the serpentine nachash and seraphim, and remember that at least one of them rebelled against Yahweh. Is it possible that the citizens of the prehistoric Near East were trying to curry favor with a god?
Ubaid figurine showing reptilian female suckling a child (click to enlarge).
As mentioned earlier, Eridu is considered to be the center of the Ubaid culture. The Ubaid period is defined as the civilization in the ancient Near East just before the time of Nimrod and the Tower of Babel, roughly between 6500 BC and 3800 BC. It would have begun not long after Adam and Eve got kicked out of the Garden.
Now, remember that God wanted humanity to “have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth”?[4] He did not direct mankind to form into stratified groups, with one person atop the social pyramid. We weren’t to take dominion over each other. As Jesus told His disciples thousands of years later, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you.”[5]
Adam and Eve were created to work the land. God designed humans to be self-sufficient—growing our own food, tending our own flocks, and helping each other whenever and however we’re needed. When you live that kind of life, you’re too busy to dominate your neighbors. And since you don’t depend on handouts for your family’s daily bread, government cannot dictate to you. It makes sense that Israel was led by judges in times of trouble during its early years, but a king wasn’t part of the original plan—even though God, who knows the end from the beginning, surely saw what was coming and let the Hebrews make Saul king anyway.
Female ophidian figurines found at site of ancient city of Ur in southeast Iraq, now on display at Penn Museum in Philadelphia (click to enlarge).
Now, archaeologists and sociologists have noticed two other aspects of civilization that commenced during the Ubaid period: first, the transition from a rural to an urban society, and second, their society becoming increasingly stratified. The evidence (primarily grave goods) indicates that, as people moved from the country to the city, the rich got richer and the poor got poorer. Just like today.
The Ubaid period also saw the construction of the first temples in Mesopotamia. Each of their cities worshiped a “city god” for whom the locals built a temple. And each of these temples had a granary for collecting the offerings of the commoners. Of course, this required somebody to oversee offerings and storage of the commodities, but also the recording of who provided the offering and how much was given—a ledger of sorts, requiring a new skill: writing.
Archaeologists and sociologists believe this led to an elite class of hereditary leaders and priests who determined which folks deserved to receive grain from these granaries during times of famine. Substitute “income tax” and “social security withholding” for grain offerings, and it’s clear that things haven’t changed all that much in the last eight thousand years.
We can only speculate how such a system emerged. Logically, it’s a pretty good guess that the rebel entities who’d rose up against Yahweh at this early stage had set themselves up as these city gods. It’s also conceivable, based on what we know about angels from the Bible, that one or more of them appeared to the pre-Sumerians (possibly even Cain) and explained that, as gods, 1) they each needed a house or temple, and 2) each temple required a priest-king to oversee the offerings and ensure that all the city gods were pleased. The result? The upper class—kings, priests, and scribes—increasingly lived in luxury, while the peasants worked the land to support them. There was no middle class.
From the point of view of the Fallen Realm, destroying the world was much easier when you only had to manipulate a handful of useful idiots who then convinced the rest of the people to do things your way. As evidence, archaeologists have concluded that the Ubaid period was a time of increasing disparity between the classes,[6] but they miss the hidden truth because they fail to examine the evidence through a spiritual lens. Instead, they dissect more tangible data, such as climate, technology, and artistic expression(i.e., those ophidian figurines). They blindly miss the possibility that the unseen realm may have guided these cultural changes—one might say they gave mankind secret knowledge. And it was done to corrupt humanity and render it unfit for God’s purposes.
The long war lies at the heart of all history. But if Christians remain blind and don’t admit to these truths, then we can bet secular historians, archaeologists, and anthropologists won’t bother to put on those “spiritual eyeglasses.”
[1] Genesis 4:18.
[2] C. S. Coon. “The Eridu Crania: A Preliminary Report,” Sumer 5, 1949, p. 103.
[3] Kirsi O. Lorentz. “Ubaid Headshaping: Negotiations of Identity Through Physical Appearance?” in Beyond the Ubaid: Transformation and Integration in the Late Prehistoric Societies of the Middle East, Robert A. Carter and Graham Philip eds. (Chicago: University of Chicago Oriental Institute, 2010), pp. 141–142.
[4] Genesis 1:28.
[5] Matthew 20:25–26a.
[6] Gil Stein. “Economy, Ritual, and Power in Ubaid Mesopotamia,” in Chiefdoms and Early States in the Near East: The Organizational Dynamics of Complexity, Gil Stein and Mitchell Rothman eds. (Madison, WI: Prehistory Press, 1994), pp. 35–46.
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