A Land of Giants

He will be a staff for the righteous, with which for them to stand and not to fall. And he will be the light of the nations and the hope of those whose hearts are troubled. All who dwell on the earth will fall down and worship him, and they will praise and bless and celebrate with song the Lord of Spirits. 1st denoc, chapter 48, verses 4-5. The modern world doesn't acknowledge but is nevertheless haunted by spirits, angels, demons, and saints. In our time, many year into break free of the prison of a flat, secular materialism, to see and to know reality as it truly is. What is this spiritual reality like? How do we engage with it well? How do we permeate everyday life with spiritual presence? Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew Stephen Damick, and Father Stephen De Young, host this live Colin show, focused on enchantment in creation. The union of the scene and unseen as made by God, and experienced by mankind throughout history. Welcome to the Lord of Spirits. Welcome back to the Lord of Spirits podcast. I'm Father Andrew Stephen Damick in Emmaus, Pennsylvania, and with me is my co-host, Father Stephen De Young, in Lafayette, Louisiana. Normally, our shows are live and we take phone calls, but this episode is pre-recorded. So, despite what you hear from the voice of Steve and the voiceovers in this one, if you try to call, you won't get anywhere. That said, we will be incorporating messages and emails that you sent us in anticipation of this episode. And wow, there were a lot. Tonight, we're, of course, talking about giants. What's also known as the Nephilim, and this may be among the most anticipated episodes of this podcast. So, what is it about giants? Well, we probably all remember the story of David and Goliath from Sunday School, but after you grew up, are you just supposed to take that seriously? And if you read deeper in the Bible, you start to see that Goliath is not the only giant in the Bible. And what's more, the existence of giants is a practical problem for people in the Bible, such as in Numbers, Chapter 30, where the Israelites spies who go into the land of Canaan see giants there, and they feel like they are grasshoppers by comparison, so they don't want to go in and fight them. And if you read the Bible even more deeply, you discover that the biblical origin of giants is truly, truly bizarre. Can modern people believe in giants? Can modern Christians believe in giants? Could there still be giants around today? Buckle up because this is the Giants episode. And parents, please note, there are some very adult themes in this episode. And while we won't be graphic, you will want to listen to this one before you decide whether to share it with your kids. So we're going to start our discussion with the origin of giants in Genesis, Chapter 6, since that's the earliest reference in the Bible. So here we go. Are you ready, Father Stephen? I am prepared. That's right. You were born ready. Yeah, I can pretty much talk about giants at a moment's notice. And then people get excited when I talk about them. There it is. There's the catchphrase. A fun time is had by all. Indeed. All right. Well, so let's start with that most enigmatic passage from Genesis, Chapter 6. And it starts with the verse 1. I'm going to read this one for us. When man began to multiply on the face of the earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters of man were attractive. And they took to themselves any they chose. Then the Lord said, my spirit shall not abide in man forever for he is flesh. His days shall be 120 years. The Nephilim were on the earth in those days and also afterward when the sons of God came into the daughters of man and they bore children to them. These were the mighty men who were of old, the men of renown. And there it is. And many conspiracy theories and careers were launched. Right. Indeed. There's a lot of crazy stuff out there about about these four verses. Yeah, it tried trying to do actual research on this topic, right? You can't just go and type Nephilim into Google. And get good and helpful and productive things on the first, say, 133 pages. Right. Yeah. I mean, just think about the problem, right? Of just trying to research it. Like if you were to type in some common, common, common word into the Google, you wouldn't get very far because there would just be so much about that thing. Like if you're just typing sports, you know, right? Or it would just be, it would just be too much. You know, if you were to start to say, you know, the Oakland Raiders in this decade, then you start, you would start to find a little bit more or whatever. But what's interesting is that this topic, even though it is about something that, you know, we think would be a really obscure, obscure bit of biblical research. It's actually super interesting to people. There's a lot of crack pot stuff out there. And I think this may be more than anything else is the topic where you and I get, have you read so and so? Have you read so and so? What about so and so? Right. We've had novel recommendations. Pop your theology. You know, weird science. Self published books. A various kind. Yeah. Yeah. And there's even, I mean, as we were just discussing in the prep time, you know, this even shows up in some Hollywood films. Yeah, we'll get to that, I guess a little bit later. But yeah, so we're going to attempt to, you know, make some, some clear, you know, some, some clear depictions of what this is based on what's in scripture based on research into the ancient world. You know, based on what's in some of the books that are sort of near scripture like, you know, and that kind of stuff. So, all right. So we start out with those four verses from Genesis and a kind of, you know, I don't know obvious reading of them is suggesting that there are these people call the sons of God who are having relations with human women. And, and that's why there are these giants. I mean, that's what it says. Nephilim is just the word for giants, right? And they're these mighty men of all the heroes. Right. So what do we do with that? Yeah. Well, we have to, we have to start with the word, just as a brief note, because there are some people who try really hard to get this to not mean giants. Oh, right. So. And they're, they're trying to use some check canary with Hebrew, because there is a Hebrew root na fall that means to fall. Okay, so you can say, oh, well, so they're going to try and get it to mean the fallen ones, which, you know, has certain residences. You think, oh, that, that sounds good. Yeah. Except that based on the form of the Hebrew word, it would be passive. So fallen upon. So it would mean the fallen upon, right. So there's some people who aren't deterred by that. And so they try to argue well, as we're going to see later in Joshua, the giant clans are going to be attacked in battles. They say, oh, it means falling upon in battle. Right. Yeah. Except there's no battle in Genesis 6. And the much, the much easier way to go about this is with Hebrew, the Hebrew scriptures are the only documents in biblical Hebrew that we have really. Okay. Almost everything else, even if you're talking about like second temple Jewish literature and that kind of thing, most of it's an aramaic or Greek or later, a later form of Hebrew. We don't have any other samples of Hebrew as old as the Torah other than the Torah, for example. Yeah. So what we have to do a lot in reading the Hebrew of the Bible is you have to look at what are called cognate languages, other Semitic languages, languages that are like cousins to to Hebrew. So it would be like if you didn't know what a Spanish word meant, but you found an Italian word and a French word that were similar, right. It had the same derivation from Latin, you could say, oh, well, the Spanish word probably means something like this. Yeah. And you do the same thing with Hebrew. There were words. There's a lot of weird readings in the Old Testament of the King James version, especially the original King James version. Yes, the real King James. And that's because there are literally dozens and dozens and dozens of words that only occur once in the Hebrew Bible. Yeah. And so there's no context clue as to what it means they literally didn't know. And we've only discovered what they mean through like the discovery of the eukeritic language in the middle of the 20th century. Yeah, and that's another Semitic language, right. Right. And so in this case, the place where we go to understand what Nephilim means is the word Nephilim and ends with an N instead of an M in Aramaic, which means giants. Right. It's very simple. And of course it's telling that when ancient Judeans, you know, and we're translating the Old Testament into Greek. The word that they chose to translate this word was Yggantes, which is literally the origin of the English word giant. Yeah, it's derived from it. They translated this giant. Yeah, exactly. As a note, and we'll come back to this in the third half of the show, I think, when they translated this passage originally, what we call what is properly called the Septuagin, right. And the scribe in Alexandria around 250 BC, when they translated this passage, they translated the sons of God as the angels of God. And they translated Nephilim as giants. Yeah, so those third century BC Jews, Judeans, that's probably another conversation for another podcast. They understood the Hebrew scriptures that they were reading as talking about angels and it's talking about giants because those are the words that they used to translate. And you know, Greek of that period is not anywhere near as mysterious as the Hebrew of Genesis, the biblical Hebrew. There's, like you said, you know, reading biblical Hebrew, it's the Bible is the only the only texts we have in that that period of that language, whereas with Greek, there's lots of texts, but you know, from, from piles and piles, from pretty early on. That's why, for instance, you know, New Testament scholarship, at least linguistically speaking is a lot easier because there's just so much more kind of context available. You can say, well, it may not be clear here in the Bible as to what this means, but look at the way that pretty much everyone else in this period used this word, right. So it's interesting, it's great that you bring up the Septuagint translators because it shows that this was their understanding of this passage that's talking about angels and that, and that the product of these unions is giants. Right. So you have angels and human women, and that's what's happening and in some way, right. Yeah, which we'll talk about that. And, right, and then they produce these progeny who are giants. So that's what it says. Right. Right. Now we have to get into what, what in the world that means. Right. Yes. That's the second question, right. So let's be determined what it says that it's what does it mean. Yep. And in terms of what it means, we actually have a lot of context in terms of grammar and vocabulary, but in terms of other stories from the ancient world parallel stories. Most people, I think know that the flood story in Genesis 6 through 9 is not sort of a unique story. Right. That's right. That that that pretty much almost every ancient culture has a flood story. Right. Has some story of a previous advanced civilization that was destroyed in a flood and there were some small group of survivors. Right. Who were, who were brought through it. So that's fairly well known that I mean everywhere in the world you find that and that the flood story in Genesis is not even the oldest version that we still have of the story. Right. The epic of Gilgamesh is from a good minimally 500 years earlier, maybe a thousand years early. In terms of just the copies we have. Yeah. Right. So people are aware of that. They're less aware of the fact that there are other parts of this historical story that are also just about universal. But you also find parallel than all of these ancient cultures. Yeah. And I think that one of the things that's really important to note, you know, like, you know, growing up as a Christian in Sunday school and you get the story of no in the flood. I think it can be easy not to think about what exactly that event means. Right. You know, certainly it's this sort of sense of okay, there's a lot of wickedness out there and God is wiping it out by sending this flood and he saves Noah and his family. But if you think about it, I mean, this is there is, you know, civilization all over the world. And it's just ended in one action from God and everything is wiped away. Right. And so, you know, we have this word, of course, anti-Deluvian, which means before the flood. And then later there's this, and we're going to talk about this. I know this fascination with the idea of, you know, lost wisdom that, you know, that didn't survive the flood. And how do you get these secrets? Right. That, you know, there's this massive sort of line in history that's drawn by the flood. And there's everything that happens before it and then everything that happens after it. I mean, now we have, of course, the notion of BC and AD, right before Christ and then Anodomani, the year of the Lord, you know, with the advent of Christ. And that is sort of for Christians is the massive demarcating line in history. But before this, the flood is kind of it and it's worldwide, you know, that there was this whole flourishing or, you know, from their point of view, human civilization. From God's point of view, it was not flourishing in the right way, right. Right. And then, and then it's gone. It's all gone. Right. So I think we have to take a second and just sort of realize sort of how cataclysmic this is. It's like the end of the world. But not quite, you know, the world is ended, but almost almost ended, but not quite group of people is saved. So I just kind of want to emphasize that because I like I said, it's, it's a cool story and everyone loves putting Noah's Ark on their kids walls and their bedrooms. But if you think about it, like that is, that is a huge dangerous story we're talking about. So that's kind of what we're all caught up in now with this discussion of giants. So yeah, so you said there was another aspect that's also universal in ancient culture's stories. But what, what, what also another product of that is that when, when ancient readers read the Torah and read the story of Noah and the flood, they weren't like receiving new information. Like, oh, really, there was this ancient civilization and it was wiped out by a flood, right. This is something they already knew about. And the biblical story is speaking into that. So to give a modern example, right, if I write a book about the civil American civil war, right, most of the people who see that book and pick it up are not going to think what America had a civil war in the 19th century. Right. Like, that's not new information to that. Right. Right. But I'm going to be writing it to say, well, I have some information about the civil war that you may not have yet, or I need to correct some misconceptions you have about the civil war. Right. And, and so that's why I'm writing this. Right. Not just to give you new information you don't already have. So the story in Genesis, including the flood and the other stories we're about to talk about. Not there. And that's why these like the mention here of the Nephilim is so brief and sort of in passing. Right. You say, well, why does it that why does it Genesis go into the detail that you and I are about to go into well, because Genesis didn't have to. Right. Right. It's commenting on things they already know things that they already conceive of as part of their history. It's commenting on them not laying them all out and explaining them. But so another another aspect of this has to do with that advanced civilization. Right. And to DeLuvian advanced civilization. And that part that it's an advanced civilization is another part of the story that sort of ubiquitous it's everywhere. And so the Babylonian form of this is what's called the story of the seven sages a lot of times in English translation. The word that's translated sages there is the Babylonian word up callu. And these up callu are sort of divine beings. The first one is sort of half fish half man. And the way you see a lot of divine beings in the ancient world being conceived of as sort of composites of human and animal forms. Yeah, especially like the Egyptian deities are almost always depicted as human bodies with some kind of animal head, although of course the sphinx is the notable opposite. Yeah, it's usually human bodies as the animal heads. And that was that was universal. That was true also in for example, when you look at the earliest phase of Greek religion. And later they were changed into sort of human forms and patterned after the image of of Greek kings who wanted, you know, make a statue of Zeus that looks like me, right, because I'm a lot like him. But before that so and you see little bits of that creeping out like in Homer, for example, where he talks about cow-eyed hara. Yeah, having eyes like a cow was usually not conceived of as a compliment, when trying to use that as a these take up line to any of the single guys who might be listening. You have eyes like a cow, right? No, that's not. Do I do I do I does is do I that would that that's that's that's the nice modern English way, although I think most people probably wouldn't even know that phrase. That's a little or cake. But but that goes back to a period when hara is sort of a fertility goddess was depicted as a half or. Was depicted as sort of this this California and the scriptures have that too, right, you look at the descriptions of cherubim and seraphim and angelic beings that a lot of times you've got these composites of sort of human and animal parts. Yeah, right, which we talked about that in our episode on ranks of angels, you know, the seraphim or kind of serpentine, the cherubim or like lions, I guess, a little bit sphinxie. Yeah, yeah, but you have the foreheads and that kind of the the ox and the eagle and the right. But so the first of the seven sages is described in that way he comes up out of the river, meaning the Euphrates, because we're talking about Babylonian story. But then what you find is these seven sages become advisors to the Babylonian kings, it's who Mary and kings before the before the flood. And this is laid out, for example, this Mary and Kings list, you have each of these, these Kings listed before the flood and the up call who was sort of their advisor and what he taught them, yeah, taught them the mysteries of astrology or magic or some kind of technology involving metallurgy, that kind of. And this kind of this pattern continues, right, long, long, long, long after the flood. So, for instance, you've got in Roman imperial religion, the genius of the emperor, right. And of course, genius, of a advisor, yeah, genius is this wonderfully is word that's wonderfully cognate with genie. Or, you know, Socrates talking about the Damon that speaks to him and gives him wisdom, this idea of a spirit that accompanies someone and gives them knowledge, right, like this, this, you know, or even like even in in late later western European folklore, you get witches who have a familiar spirit, which often interestingly is depicted as kind of like a small animal. And you know, you know, that that teaches them things and gives them knowledge that they otherwise wouldn't have. So this is the earliest depiction of that kind of thing that we're aware of, right. Yeah, it's the it's the earliest, the earliest one we have, but there's there's obvious parallels right in Greece, the story of Prometheus who comes, it gives fire to man. And Pandora and her jar was a jar, not a box. I just ruined every man. I thought I thought it was an online music service, which I, you know, when Pandora first, with that service first came, came out online. I was like, well, that's an interesting thing to name your music service. Like, what are they? Well, the last thing that comes out is hope. So, right. But, but of course, her name, her name means all gifts. Right. So, so it's, you know, from the point of view of, and it's funny because it's depicted ironically in Greek myth. Right. So it's, it's all gifts, but what is, what is most of what comes out? And it's disease and war and all this kind of horrible stuff. And then, yeah. And then hope remains at the very end. So, so even in Greek myth, it's you've got this irony of, you know, here's this great gift from the gods, but ha ha we got you. Right. So, that's interesting because it's, it's begins this kind of critique of the gods, which, you know, gradually flowers more and more as time goes by. They're not just, not just depicted as being benevolent spirits, giving all these wonderful things to man like fire, you know. Right. Well, yeah, there's sort of an ambivalence about it because the, the figures who do this, that includes the upcalo. So the upcalo, the other gods get mad at them for revealing this stuff to humans and imprison them in the abyss, which is in the depths of the waters at the bottom of the rivers. In Babylonian thought. And Prometheus, of course, you know, gets gets is liver pecked out by a vulture or the rest of eternity. And these kind of things, right. So there's the other gods sort of punish them. So it's looked at as sort of the other gods look at it is bad. Yeah. Right. Look at it is bad. But humans looked at it as good. Right. And so what you find is later generations of kings claiming that they're the ones who have maintained this secret divine knowledge from before the flood. Right. As part of their claim to supremacy, probably the most well known group to do that were the marty who are the amurites in the Old Testament. The most famous one of them is probably homerabi. The Babylonian king around 2500 BC was one of the marty. The code guy. Yeah. Right. Yeah. A lot of people probably heard of homerabi's code as being kind of, you know, an example, the earliest example of written law. But he's also claiming to have anti-deluvian knowledge by means of spirits talking to him. And so we see this same thing, the same story in the genealogy of Cain in particular in Genesis 4, right. The end of Genesis 4 where Cain goes and and the first part of this is often is translated where they have him. And he's naming the first city after his son, Enoch, it's not that he names the city after Enoch's son, Erad. That's the city of Eradu, which ancient people, the Sumerian city that ancient people thought was the first city ever. And so Cain goes and founds the first city. We see his later descendants invent metallurgy. And music and all these cultural, they've sort of become the culture heroes of the world of this pre flood civilization. Wait, so maybe define that term culture hero because it actually has a specific meaning. Yeah, well, after, after the flood, the figures who are referred to as culture heroes are going to be the flood survivors who have this knowledge. Yeah, okay. Right, and they sort of become the institutors of culture as it rebuilds after the destruction after the collapse and after the fall. But so these figures it's scripture, right, and are not the good guys. Yeah, the mighty, so this line are not the good. Yeah, this is, this is the mighty men who are of old, the men of renown, right. Right. So they're there. So the Bible is saying, no, these are people bringing wickedness into the world. Right. And so the, the demonic powers, we would call demonic powers, the, the beings who are giving this knowledge to humanity are not doing it to help humanity or aid humanity. They're doing it to further mankind's destruction. Right. I'm going to give you the ability to forge weapons of war so that you could be more efficient at killing each other. Yeah, it's like, it's like giving a knife to a baby. You know, right. Like here you go. Here's the four go put it in the plug socket. Yeah, right. So yeah, so it's, it's giving this giving this knowledge that should be familiar from a chapter previous from Genesis three where what does the serpent, what does the devil do he says he comes to bring knowledge. Yeah, you eat this. You're going to become like God. You're going to know good and evil. Right. So there's this theme then that forbidden knowledge is being offered to mankind by, by spirits who have no business doing that. And of course, this raises this question, right. So, you know, Keynes line doesn't just come up with weapons of war. They also come up with, you know, music and architecture and, you know, it'd be, it's kind of easy to sort of say, well, yeah, weapons are bad. But, but what's wrong with music? What's wrong with architecture? What's wrong with agriculture? Right. And I think that that's not really agriculture. It's, it's, it's hurting. Yeah, yeah, right. Right. There's, yeah, it's hurting. Can't do agriculture. That's because of his curse. Right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. But, but yeah. So, you know, what's, what's sort of wrong with those things. And my, you know, my sense is, and curriculum, if I'm wrong, but my sense is, there's nothing sort of inherently wrong with them. It's just that mankind wasn't ready for them yet. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Man, mankind wasn't like my position to use it responsibly. Yeah. Like my three-year-old should not be handed a knife. But my 13-year-old is pretty responsible with it. You know, she cooks dinner. So, it could use it to do good. Yeah. Right. You can use it to do good things. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. And this is, this is, the same thing with the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. It wasn't evil in and of itself. Right. It's just there would have been a time when God allowed man to eat from it, but that time wasn't yet. Yeah. And so jump the gun. And so this is the same thing with the other gods. Right. And so the other gods, who were of the same kind of, brought about his, his destruction. But, uh, so notice how the pagan versions of the story have recast this. Yeah. Right. Who's the bad guy in the pagan versions, all of them. And so they're finished, Prometheus or the upkalu, right. They're the bad guy. They're the ones who don't want humans to have this knowledge. Right. And the good guys are these spirits who want to reveal the knowledge. Yep. Yep. Right. So that's why we may have said it on the show already that some of these pagan myths if you understand the biblical version of the story. Pro-Devil propaganda. Yeah. Yeah. Picking them as benevolent. Right. Right. Right. Right. Exactly. But it's unjustly persecuted. Yeah. And I mean, it's interesting. I mean, even the thing is, it's like so thinking about Prometheus, which is probably the story that's most familiar to our listeners. You know, he does, he's sneaky about it. So he, he has to defy the divine order in order to bring fire to man. And so that's interesting because even though like so like, you know, as especially like his Americans, we kind of love the underdog. We love the whistleblower. Right. You know, we love that kind of story like the guy. The rebel. Yeah. Right. Right. But, but, you know, in the ancient world, rebellion is, is, is super bad because the order that exists is a divine order. Right. So it's interesting that even in the story, there's still this, this element of truth that Prometheus is engaging in an act of rebellion. And of course, you know, from the context of our previous episodes, where we talk about that there is this angelic rebellion that occurs. You know, you read these stories from a biblical point of view. And you can say, oh, yes, well, the other gods who punish the, these knowledge giving gods are actually the Lord of hosts and his angels, you know, like the Archangel Michael, who, you know, drive out these evil spirits from the presence of the Lord and send them to the abyss, you know, that this is, this is, this is situated within this ongoing spiritual war. You know, that, that these, one of the ways that these spirits rebel, and we talked about this in the five falls, five is false of angels, one of the ways that these spirits fall in rebel is by giving forbidden knowledge to mankind specifically for the purpose of man destroying himself. And it's interesting, you know, I mean, man kind of, I think, I think humanity understands this on some level, but we were just so tempted, we're just so addicted to sort of knowing stuff that, like, for instance, when nuclear weapons were invented, I'm not saying that they were revealed by an opcala but who knows. But, but, you know, there's this, there's this concern and it's a valid concern, which is like if mankind knows how to do this, are we going to just wipe out everything on the planet. And that's been a question that's been being asked for the last several decades and, you know, not entirely an unreasonable outcome, you know, up and Heimer did quote the Bhagavad Gita. Yeah, I am become. Yeah, but the hero. So, but so, we find sort of a more full version of these traditions written down in, in sort of later literature, like first, the book of Enoch, the book of giants at Comron. Some of this other inocic and apocalyptic literature. Yeah, the reason we find it written down that late is you write things down when you're worried about losing them. Right. So, at the time, the Torah is composed. This is sort of stuff that everybody knew. Yeah, so I can sort of sketch it out. Right. So, by the time you get to the late Persian empire. Right. Some of this stuff is less secure. Right. And so that's when the sort of fuller forms of this tradition get put down in writing to make sure they get preserved. The, the, the ancient world, something being written down turned it into a kind of monument. Yeah. Right. And this is the subtext behind, does it always strike us when we read the Bible. But it is written. Yeah. That's why that carries so much weight. Right. That people didn't have Bibles in a concept of canon yet. Right. But it is written. This was written down. Oh, that means it's important. Yeah. Right. This is like a monument left for us by our fathers. Right. So, when we find the more full version of this written down, that's made more explicit, you know, what these secrets were. Right. That includes things from sort of means of seduction to things about being witchcrafted sorcery and divination. Different ritual things in addition to your sort of technological metallurgy and those kind of things. So you can see how these are all things that are going to help lead humans into deeper and deeper into sin. Yeah. And, and how, so how like we would draw a sharp distinction between a manual of metallurgy and a manual of potion making. Right. But would ancient people draw that distinction. Right. No, because they don't have the materialistic view of the world that we do. Right. So metallurgy is just a spiritual unactivity as making a love potion. Right. It's knowledge about how the cosmos works. Yeah. It's that's such a hard thing, I think, for us, like I'm like, I believe that, right. Like that, that these things are all inherently spiritual acts and so forth. But it's really hard to just wrap your mind around it, even if you consciously believe it. You know, I still like I think, you know, a manual in metallurgy to me is possibly one of the most dull things that could exist. I mean, I have friends who are who run material science are like, why are you saying that? But, but you know, like to me, it's a dull technical kind of thing. And even though I mentally can say to myself, no, no, this is about elemental forces of the universe, you know, still that looks different from a book of spells and yet for ancient people, they're the same thing. They're basically, and of course, if you understand this idea of this spiritual origin of technological knowledge, then it starts to make a lot more sense. Of course, you're going to call upon Hephaestus or Vulcan or whoever your metallurgy God is to assist you in this work because he's probably the one who gave you that knowledge to begin with, right. Right, right. And so in the ancient world, there's no difference between like chemistry and alchemy, or astronomy and astrology. Right. These are like separate things the way we've, I heard I've once heard it said, astronomy is just the bookkeeping of astrology. Yeah, basically, it away. Yeah. Because we've kind of severed off this stuff and decided it's superstition. Right. But so that sort of culminates in something, right. All of this forbidden knowledge, all of this ritual knowledge, this knowledge of wickedness culminates in sort of the two, the two great paradigmatic sins of the Israelite and Jewish and Christian traditions are idolatry and sexual immorality. So if you smash those two things together, there's your sort of apex of human sin. Yeah. And so that that culmination takes the form of sexual immorality in the context of idolatrous pagan ritual. And so the same way that in a literary sense, Genesis 6, 1 through 4 that we're talking about are sort of the culmination of the material in Genesis 4 and 5 and those genealogies. Right. This is sort of the the culmination point of that human sinfulness before the flood. Yeah. And that's being described by the generation of the Nephilim. Yeah. And that's a really important point because like we read we just read those verses kind of out of context. But there's a reason that they appear at the at that point in the in Genesis where they do and it has a lot to do with what came before it. As you said, it's this culmination point. It's not it's funny because I've heard people treat these verses like, oh, there's this weird little detour, you know, about giants and okay, now back to the main story. You know, right. Yeah. But that's not who wants to read who wants to read genealogies. Right. We're going to get back to your habit. But nobody reads genealogies. Yeah. And this is just proof for it. So and more men. Yeah. And more more. Yeah. Love gene. Yeah. Yeah. This is just proof for the one guy who wrote to us in our group saying that Lord of spirits and Amin's Sula really the same one podcast. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to just throw him a bone every so often. And we managed to get through the whole thing about the pre-flood civilization without mentioning new manure. Yeah. Right. You had to do it. You had there you go. The color that. So. But so we talked about this a little in the five ish falls episode. The idea that what's being described here is is sort of ritual that actually took place. We talked about Augs bed. Which now has its own meme as a life first. In our in our Lord of spirits group on Facebook. But that we there. The Augs bed. Aug is one of the giant kings and we're going to talk more about him. In a little bit. But his bed is described in sort of this random verse and doodarotomy. Right. Why do we care about his bed and how big it is. But the reason for that we now know archaeologically is we found a bed of exactly those dimensions and of the same metallic construction in the ziggurat of an Amananke, which is the great ziggurat of Babylon. Yeah. That was used for ritual purposes. Yeah. Yeah. So let's talk about the dimensions. Right. If I recall correctly. It would be a bed for someone that's about 15 feet tall. Right. Yeah. And you know, as we we talked about this in previous episodes. Yeah. So funny. And early episodes. So it's a lot of our comment commentary was like, okay, we're going to get to that in a future episode. And now we're kind of saying, well, in last time on Lord of spirits, you know. And show the clips. Yeah. Well, right. Because there were a lot of people that kind of wanted us to talk about the subjects right off because they're just really excited about it. But it really kind of does need a lot of this prior background. So if listener, if you haven't listened to our previous episodes yet, I'm not going to tell you that you must pause right here and go back and listen to all that stuff. But it will make more sense. So why is this bed 15 feet tall? Well, that particular measurement is the way that ancient people said they saw spiritual beings appearing to them. That when a God shows up that they're about 15 feet tall. Yeah, we're going to talk to the dog. I'm going to flip it. Yeah. We'll talk more about bodies and divine bodies in a future. There you go. But yes, what a one of the bodies that a God had in the ancient world was what's now called his liturgical body. And that's 15 feet tall. Right. Pretty much uniformly across all over the world. All over the world. So, but what if you're talking about what a video camera would see, right? If you if you had a Tartis and you went back and took a video camera right into Edamonankee, it stuck in and and videoed what was happening on the bed, right? On the bed is that as part of the festival cycle of these cultures, the king as the high priest of the religion would embot ritually embody the God who they were worshiping. And how so how does that happen? I mean, do they say prayers over him? Do they I mean, what do they do? Yes, how do you get sacrifices? Probably blood drinking and anointing likely the wearing of a mask. And then would would go in and and ritually have intercourse with a temple slave or a temple prostitute on this bed. And that would be part of bringing about fertility for the crops and fields, consummating the relationship between the God they were worshiping and the people, right? The demonic spirit they were worshiping and the people. So if a child was conceived to said king out of this ritual, that child would essentially have two fathers, right? The king who was regarded as divine himself, the God and then one human mother, the the temple slave who actually gave birth to him. And and doesn't just put a sort of weird Paul now on that that sitcom was that in the 90s called my two dads. Which probably was not about there's a very dark, so very inversion of that show. And so what you find in the Babylonian sources in particular is, for example, that same Sumerian Kings list we mentioned that lists the Epochaloo for each king before the flood. After the flood each of the kings is two thirds up, collo one third human. And you say, well, how could you be two thirds one third? Well, if you have three parents, right, then you can and Gilgamesh in the epoch of Gilgamesh is two thirds divine one third human, right? And sometimes in some cultures, by the way, just you know, this this was reversed, where it would actually be the temple prostitute or slave or priestess who would embody a goddess and the king would, right? In which case you would have sort of two mothers and one father. So you get that with Gilgamesh being an example of that. And so yeah, that that happened to it, but this is this is the kind of ritual activity. So this is idolatry sexual immorality in the extreme. And so it's sort of saying, this is how bad. How bad it got right, right? Before the before the flood and right and then this is the ritual that produces giants. Right. And and you know, I think it's important to emphasize this because the passage from Genesis six doesn't give any of this kind of detail. And so that's why I think it's a kind of has this idea of angelic beings and human women and you know, and so then a lot of times people read that without the historical context and they say, well, how can a demon hybridized with a human being. Right, like they can't, you know, they can't. Right. But, but that is a misunderstanding of the way that the Nephilim ritual works. And I know we're going to talk a little bit more about that, but I think it's just important to underline that that what the whole thing with awg and his bed, who is just one example of this this ritual activity. It's happening all over the world. What that is is actually there are two human beings involved and one divine being, although ancient people sort of said that one of those human beings was effectively being divine during the during the activity, which is well, the king was divine all the time. Yeah, right, right. So doubly so when he's yeah, embodying, yeah, the reason that that Genesis doesn't have to go into detail on this, right, is because the original readers knew about this, right Abraham lived his well, most of his life, because he was quite old when he left in or where there was a ziggurat, right, that it just been rebuilt to enormous size during his lifetime. The great ziggurat of or was built literally while he was there and alive, where these kind of rituals were taking place continuously. Yeah. Yeah. And he had members of his own family were told in scripture and it's reiterated at the beginning of Joshua who were involved in that idolatrous worship. Yep. So this isn't something Abraham didn't know about. Right. Is it something that people do know about their versions of this, going out right the Pharaoh's divine in Egypt, right, he's married usually to his sister. Yeah. Right. So the same kind of thing is good. So they're aware of this. Yeah. So, but so so which ancient texts are describing this ritual like where are we getting this from exactly it's not in the Bible explicitly. Where is this being described? Well, it's I mean, it's it's all over the but you have to read a bunch of Egyptian ritual texts and eucharitic ritual texts from Canaan. And Sumerian ritual texts. But as I mentioned to you, and then you you repeated it a bunch of people doubted you. And so they did it until they looked into it, but this basically this ritual still goes on in Japan with the Japanese emperor. Right. At his accession. Yeah. And even to the present day though, though, since World War II, it has been largely de sexualized. Largely. And that's especially interesting because. That is not an Indo-European culture over there. So and I make that point because. And I say, OK, well, this particular ritual idea existed in this one culture and then it just spread as that culture, you know, spread itself across, you know, Europe and and Asia and so forth. But the thing is that we find this this ritual activity happening all over the world. And. And so we have seen still happening in places where Christianity never really took hold. And so, and let's say Mesoamerica, yeah, the Aztecs, the toll text. Right again, not connected, right? So, so, you know, there that kind of is a big problem for the hypothesis that just sort of spread with human culture. And if you believe in the things that we've been talking about all this time, then it's actually much more reasonable to conclude that the reason why this ritual exists all over the world is because demonic beings came to human beings and taught them how to do it. Just like they were teaching them all this other stuff. So, so before we go to break, then let's raise the question of why would a demon want to do this? What is the point? What is the goal of this? Other than just being perverse in general, right? Right. Exactly. Which I mean, that's kind of a goal that they have. Right. Why would they want to do that? What's what we have set up for us in scripture, we have to go back again to the beginning of Genesis. And we have to go back to the beginning of Genesis. But the concept in scripture is more of a verbal idea. Right. You image someone something. Right. You image God. Right. So Adam and Eve are called to fill the earth and subdue it. Right. To go and fill the earth with life and put it in order. And that's exactly what God did in creation leading up to his creation of them in the giving of that commandment. So they're created to go and do what God does. Yeah. Sub creation. Right. Basically to to to bring a talk to bring in term again. To to bring the works of God and the will of God into creation. Right. As his as his image as his icon right to serve in that way. And so this this goes all the way through the scriptures. I mean when when David is king of Israel, his duty as king is to bring about God's justice in his rule. Right. And and so that's the idea. And doing that is transformative to humanity. Right. Being that agent of God transforms humanity. This is why the fathers taught even though in the Hebrew, the words were image and likeness are basically synonyms. But the fathers use those words to describe how image is this capacity to do this and likeness is the fruit of doing it. We become more like God by being the means by which God acts in the world by participating in his will and in his works and in his actions in the world. We become like him. Right. Right. And this is this is of course the stuff of theosis that we talked about in terms of becoming sons of God. Exactly. Because this is what it means to be a son. Biblically. The son is the image of the father. Yep. Yep. Right. Adam had a son in his own image. Right. After his own like a chip off old block as it were. Right. And so we see that the devil as the fathers tell us fall through envy. The reason the devil wants to destroy Adam and Eve is because he's jealous. Yeah. Because he was not created for that destiny. Right. The eternal son of God was not going to become an angel. Right. He was going to become incarnate. Right. Right. To become man. To give man this destiny. Yeah. And out of jealousy, he decides to destroy humanity. Yeah. And so these demonic powers we see following in his footsteps to try to destroy man by revealing these secrets. And so in this culmination, they're trying to create their own image. They're trying to create human beings after their image and likeness who will bring their will and desires into the world and who will become like them. Yeah. And they can't create from the dust of the earth the way God did. All they can do is take the human beings who God has created and corrupt them and twist them and lure them into through evil becoming like themselves. So it's sort of an anti-feeosis. Wow. Where these people become like demons. And so the giants to be a giant is to be one of these sort of fully demonized people. It's like the opposite of a saint. Right. It's the opposite of someone who's achieved theosis and become like Christ. It's someone who's become like a demon. Yeah. With all of their lusts and fury and violence and destructive capacity and spite. Wow. Okay. Well, we are going to go to break. And when we come back, we're going to answer a couple of your questions. So we'll be right back. Father Andrew Stephen Daymak and father Stephen DeYoung will be back in a moment to take your calls on the next part of the Lord of Spirits. Give them a call at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF radio. 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We're back now with the Lord of Spirits, the Father Andrew Stephen Daymak and father Stephen DeYoung. If you have a question call now at 855-237-2346. That's 855-AF radio. And we're back. Oh, come back. As I said before, this is a pre-recorded episode of Lord of Spirits. So even though the voice of Steve just told you to call, if you call that number right now, you're not going to connect to us. We're not there. But anyway, we wanted to talk about some of the questions that you sent that are related to everything we just discussed. And so this first one is an email from Deborah. And Deborah wrote this. As I was listening to your most recent podcast when you talked about Augs' ritual bed and the pagan king coming to commit fornication with the Temple prostitute and thereby conceiving the next king. I thought about comparing and contrasting this with the conception of Christ. So she makes several contrasts. There's a temple prostitute versus the temple virgin. There's two fathers in the Nephilim ritual versus one father in Christ. The future king is conceived. That's a parallel on both the in the Nephilim ritual. The person is two thirds up, Collo and one third human. And then in the incarnation of Christ, he is 100% divine and 100% human. She goes on to say, I'm wondering if the way the gospel story is written would have been immediately recognizable as a sort of subversion, if you will, of the pagan practices of the day. And you know, my immediate reaction to that is I wouldn't say that the gospel story is a subversion, but actually it's kind of reveals that the Nephilim ritual is the subversion. You know, that these demons are engaging in the thing that they're not, they're not kind of authorized to do. And of course they fail, right. They succeeded in making demonized people, but they don't actually succeed in kind of having their own actual offspring in any real sense. Like demons cannot reproduce. Right. They're sort of common-deering human beings in order to make this thing happen. You have any comments on that father? Yeah, I mean, there's a definite, obviously, as you point out, there's a definite like direct contrast there. And, you know, I'll throw in another one, right, in our salvation and the incarnation, God saves and transforms us by becoming like us, by taking our humanity, right, upon himself. Whereas in all of pagan religion, in any ancient pagan would agree with this. The goal is by worshipping these beings and performing these rituals to become like them. They would have absolutely agreed with that. And that's the goal. And Caesar or someone, one of these kings who experiences apotheosis, that's it. When they die, they go and become like the gods they've been worshipping. Yeah. Yeah. And it kind of underlines too. Like, you know, the giants who we didn't really emphasize this yet. But I mean, they have what we might describe as sort of superhuman power influence. Maybe size, depending on how you read it. They, they are not from the biblical point of view. They are not nice, just good, virtuous people. They are domineering destructive conquerors who are able to control lots of people. And the thing is, is outside of the people of God in the ancient world, that was seen as positive. You know, if you had control over a lot of people and were able to dominate them, that was because you were in tight with the gods. And that was a good thing for you anyway, not for the peasants that you had under your boot. But, but it just shows again, like what a, what a difference Christ who comes in the humblest of circumstances. And he comes in peace, he comes in humility. He does not come with the sword. Right. His weapons are truth and meekness and righteousness. Right. And it just underlines again, the morality of the ancient world was so utterly different from ours, that, you know, if you could control other people and you had domination over other people, that was an indication that the gods smiled upon you and were one with you. You were, you had succeeded. You were it. You know, Julius Caesar was first celebrated as being Godlike because he had killed a million goals and enslaved a million more. Right. Right. That was his slogan. That's what they were celebrating. Right. Right. So, how great. So by contrast now in the 20th and 21st century, when we say someone that say someone is like Hitler, we mean exactly the opposite. But if Hitler had lived in the ancient world, he would have been regarded as a success as a big hero. He would have been kind of a trifler by ancient state. Yes, my comparison. A lot more, they killed a lot more people. Yeah. Right. The point stands, we look at him as we say, this is a demonic person. And that's because we've taken on board what the scriptures say about giants as opposed to how the ancient worldview, these giants. And the word giant itself, both in the in the Greek and the the air Mac, we should say, and this has been meamed to since apparently I've said it a couple too many times. But the word, they don't call someone a giant to tell you he's a big guy. Right. They tell you he's a big guy to indicate to you that he's a giant. And the word giant means more like tyrant or thug or bully. Yeah. And it's kind of the way we in the modern world. This is the part that got me used the word strong man when we're talking about a dictator. Right. So they'll talk about Panamanian strong man Manuel Noriega. They don't mean he had an awesome bench. Right. It was just ripped. They mean he's a tyrant. Right. He's a strong man. He's a bully. He's a thug. Right. That's the kind of administration. That's what the scriptures are saying about these, these people, these kings and these rulers and these leaders. Yep, that they're this demonically evil type of person. Yeah. Okay. So we also got a recorded message from Adam who had something relevant to ask as well. So I'm going to play that then for us. Hello Lord of spirits. My question is do we know of any literature that details how Noah built the arc. Meaning did Noah build the arc by himself or did Noah have help from angels or did Noah have help from giants. Thanks guys. Appreciate the show. So what this is where you said something about that Russell Crowe movie earlier we were talking right. So Darren Arnowski's Noah. Yes. Yeah. Which he adapted from his graphic novel actually. I have to admit I have not I have not seen it. Right. I highly recommend it, but not for historical accuracy. Right. So is Adam onto something here. I mean, you said he thinks you're pretty sure that Adam watch this movie. Yeah. Yeah. In the movie. The watchers of of Enic and I'm sure we'll do a future episode just talking about first. Enic, but the watchers are the the term that's used to refer to the angelic beings, the sinful rebellious angelic beings. They as their punishment get turned into these sort of giant rock guys. Right. I've heard of that. And they kind of repent and decide to help Noah and sort of help him build the arc and fight off the people who are trying to besiege the arc. Because yeah, it's sort of it's if you take all the Noah traditions from second temple literature and from the Bible and then you smash that together with gladiator. That's what this movie is. I have to see it now. Are you not a Russell Crowe? Are you clinging to this presence? But so I think that maybe what maybe not, but that maybe a generous question, but there are in those traditions, not that the rebellious angels help Noah, but there are sort of bits and pieces and scraps of Noah traditions in some of those things that yes, he was assisted by sort of angelic beings. And a lot of that is related to trying to present Noah as this prophet. He's presented sometimes as an almost supernatural being himself. Yeah. In a lot of these traditions. So he sort of knows angels and hangs out with them. Right. Because he has this sort of prophetic life and special capacity. Yeah. And so there are stories where he's interacting and they're helping him build things and isn't there this tradition that sort of thing that Noah himself was one of the Nephilim. There are, yeah, there are bits of that on both sides. There are some traditions that that he was. And then other traditions that seem very clear to try to indicate that he wasn't, which means it was something that was being discussed. Because you wouldn't make a protracted argument that he wasn't one unless somebody thought he was. So, but yeah, there are these stories that sort of when he was born, he sort of came out glowing and talking and all these other things to indicate his special status in Genesis 5 in another one of those genealogies, nobody reads Noah's father, a lot of lamb, actually makes this prophecy about him that frames the whole story of the flood. But so that's been sort of elaborated on that the reason Lambic makes this prophecy is that he's got this glowing baby, who talks. You guys are never going to read the story of knowing the art the same way ever again. But so that based on that there's this there are these whole stories where lambic sort of has these doubts like am I really Noah's father because he's glowing and talking and stuff or is he one of the Nephilim. And there's sort of and sometimes it's an angelic revelation to him. Sometimes it's enoc actually shows up he comes back from heaven and says listen, lambic, don't worry about it. It's really your kid. And of course, he is really important to all of this stuff because he's anti deluvian himself. And it's taken up into heaven and sort of joins the divine council. Right. Yeah, before hit. But the really interesting thing about those stories is that St Matthew draws on them a little bit. St Matthew's gospel actually has a lot of the in in nockic literature themes and language woven into it. But one place where he plays on that is he's when he tells the whole story of St Joseph the patrol, the doubting what's going on with the feo tocus, when she becomes pregnant, sort of being worried. Right. About what's going on and he gets the exact opposite message. Right. Lambic gets sort of reassured. No, this is your child. Right. Don't worry about it. He's just special. Right. Joseph gets told well, no, this isn't your child, but also doesn't have a human father. So St Matthew kind of inverts that that's it's we're talking about in biblical inversion. Yeah. And now you'll never read Matthew the same way ever again. Oh, flood related story. Yeah. All right. Well, we've got one more question before we continue on. And this one comes from father Stephen who is an Anglican military chaplain. So father Stephen writes this Genesis six teaches that the Nephilim are giants are the offspring of the sons of God entering the daughters of men. This unholy offspring should all have been destroyed in the flood. Yet we see giants appearing later in the scriptures. If the giants are the result of demons meeting with humans and they were destroyed in the flood, how did they come back? Did the demons mate with humans again after the flood? If so, could that happen again today? And to that, we will simply respond. Welcome to part two of this week's episode. So yeah, all right. Well, he makes the point that there's giants after the flood. Right. So the point of the flood is to rid the world of giant culture. Right. And yet there are giants after the flood. So let's start talking about giant giants after the flood. And even Genesis six one through four alludes to that, right? Because it says at this time and after the Nephilim were in the earth. Yeah. So so yes, even alludes to the fact that there are going to be some later. And since that's right before the flood, it doesn't mean before the flood. Right. That would be at this time. So what we see when the, we see the giants again, right, when we see the giants again later, starting in Genesis and then especially when we get into numbers and Deuteronomy and Joshua is it's not just sort of these isolated people, but there are whole sort of giant clans. Right. There are clans tribes, right. Sort of these, these social units that are described as being sort of made up of giants. Right. So it's not just, you know, there's a bunch of poor oppressed people who have this tyrant for their king, but they're sort of all engaging in something. Right. That they all get categorized this way. And so this is related to how sort of identity worked in the ancient world. Yeah. Right. And this is, this is something that we now has modern people understand DNA. Right. Right. We understand genetics. We have these ideas of ethnicity and race and these kind of things in our head. And we read those back into the scriptures and into other ancient texts. And it really sort of distorts what we're reading. Yeah. This really makes hash of we won't go into this today, but this really makes hash of everything. St. Paul has to say about Jews and Gentiles. If you think that's a racial or ethnic thing. Yeah. But when we go back into the ancient ancient world, right. You are a member of a social unit. Right. Right. Whether it be a tribe, a clan, a city. Right. There's some social unit that you belong to. It's the people you live and work and eat and worship with all of those. Right. It's all it's all encompasses. Yeah. Yeah. Right. And that is primarily manifested and made real by ritual in the ancient world. And it still is today to a large extent. There were less aware of it. And we have sort of secularized rituals. Right. And you know, I don't know if we go so far as to say this is what makes you an American, but there are definite American rituals. Right. Celebrating the Fourth of July voting. Right. And if you want to become an American, you have to go through a ritual. You have to go through naturalization, which not only includes like taking a test, which of course is one of our wonderful American rituals. But, but also like you have to take an oath. Right. You have to take an oath to become an American, which I mean, what is the point of that? I mean, does that do something? It's words that are understood to have a power over you. It's a very spiritual act, frankly. Right. And whatever you were before, however you identified before, now you're an American, because you've gone through that initiation. And now you're going to, you're going to celebrate the rituals. Right. We just went through this election and had people say, Oh, the vote is sacred. Right. The ballot box is sacred. Right. It's like, well, wait, what is that? Well, that's, that's this idea intruding despite secularism. Yeah. Yeah. Can't escape it. Yep. So in a case of ancient Israel, right. That was if you were, you were in Israelite. If you were circumcised or the wife or daughter of a circumcised male. And you ate the Passover. Right. That was sort of the, the basic. Yeah. And that was an important point because, and this is something I, I learned from reading stuff that you've written, you know, when Israel engages in the Exodus from Egypt, there are people who are not what we would regard as ethnically, you know, descendants of Abraham, you know, there are Egyptians, there are Canaanites that participate in the Passover, eat the Passover. And make the Exodus and some of them even become leaders of Israel, like there's so much part of Israel that they're, they're leading Israel, you know, and it's not an ethnic thing at all. It has nothing to do with DNA. It has to do with ritual participation, especially in the Passover, which, you know, is so important in that particular account and scripture that before the event happens, you get instructions on how to commemorate it. Right. So, fascinating, you know, that you become part of this people by engaging in these participatory acts. You know, it's, and, and, and two, two big examples are Caleb, who when he first shows up is a Kenezite, which is one of the Canaanite tribes, and ends up being an elder of the tribe of Judah. And Phineas, Aaron's grandson Phineas, who was ethnically a black African, who became the high priest of Israel. So, yeah, the ethnic ideas right out, they were Caleb and Phineas are no less a son of Abraham than anybody else. Yeah. And, and this is underlined in the church now, where you see all this language in the surgical texts about belonging to a new nation, belonging to this phrase is even used the race of Christians. Right. And what makes us all Christian together? It's that we've been initiated through baptism that we partake in the Eucharist together, that we live as have been commanded us by God through Christ, you know, in Christ. And through the apostles and prophets, it's what we do that makes us Christians. It's not, it's not genetic at all, you know, it's, it's this ritual participation that makes us Christians and ongoing ritual participation, which keeps us being Christians, right. And that's where, this is where an Orthodox canon law, right, the bare minimum to be in Israelite is your circumcised and you celebrate POSCA. If you look at Orthodox canon law, what makes you an Orthodox Christian is that you've been baptized and at least on POSCA you receive the Eucharist. And if you don't do that, you're lapsed, you're now outside the, the social unit, they have to be brought back in, uh, ritually. Yeah. But so the same thing was true for these, these giant clans and tribes. They were members of these giant clan and tribes because they just happened to be born into it ethnically. Yeah. Right. They went through initiation rituals and they participated in the ritual life of this clan. And the ritual life of this clan not only involved sort of the sexually immoral rituals we've already discussed, but we get some clues again in the sources. I won't read the full text of this, but if you anyone wants to look up first in at seven versus four through six and describing the wickedness and the lifestyle of the of the giants, it talks about not only sort of the mass slaying of animals in sacrifice, but cannibalism and human sacrifice. Sacrifices will do an episode on sacrifices eventually, I know people love when we do that. Yeah. Sacrifices are in the ancient world are not killing something. Sacrifices are meals. And so when we're talking about human sacrifice, in most cases, it's involving cannibalism. It's ultimately in the form of blood drinking sometimes worse. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so I don't know, maybe you know this off the top of your head. You know, when the Catholic conquistadores came to South America and they encountered the Aztecs who were doing human sacrifice. Was there cannibalism involved with that? Yes. Yep. Yep. Yeah. One of the motivations for this has to be wiped out. Wiped out. Right. This. And this is this is going to be important, right? When we get to talking about Joshua. Yes. Right. People today want to present as genocide. They say, Oh, well, this is, you know, going and murdering these people because of their race or ethnicity. And no, there's not a concept of race or ethnicity. Yeah. This is, I mean, this is not a popular thing in the modern world either, but this is the idea of wiping out these ritual and cultural practices. Right. And this is what has to stop. And it's not, it's not, you know, the way we tend to think of ritual and culture now. Again, we're talking about people who are in communion with demons and are engaging in demonic fornication rituals in order to produce demonized human beings who have supernatural abilities. That's what's going on. That's being wiped out. And mass and saving people, murdering those people, sacrificing them to these demons and eating them, drinking their blood and potentially more. Right. Right. These are, this is what the Old Testament is describing as abominations that need to be put an end to. Right. Right. So you can do that in a couple of ways. Right. If someone won't stop doing these things. Right. In the ancient world, the scripture is saying that person if they won't stop doing this has to be put to death. Right. If, but if someone is ritually brought into another tribe into another clan, abandons these things, they're no longer part of that clan. Right. So if everyone from a giant clan has is either dead or assimilated into another group that is not practicing those things, the clan has been eradicated. Yeah. And that's that's really. You can't underestimate the importance of that to understanding a lot of the Old Testament history. We're about to talk about. Talking about Gigantomaki and this war against the giants. This is really directed at these specific clans. And when Israel is sent to war against these specific clans, the, the commandments and the guidelines and the rules of warfare are different for these clans than they are for the other residents of the land. I think that's a really, really important detail because you know the book of Joshua, I think, can get kind of a bad rap in the modern world. And there are even Orthodox people who will say, well, you know, could God really have commanded people to go and wipe out whole civilizations, you know. I think that that reveals that that the detail that you just mentioned that the rule for engaging a giant clan is different than the rule for engaging in combat with, you know, sort of an ordinary pagan group that somewhere else there and can and can and because, you know, everybody there is some kind of pagan, except for the Israelites. So there's, there's a conquest going on, but it's not just, okay, God has decided to give you guys this land and go ahead, just wipe out everybody, right? It's way more complex than that. Right. And it's, it's, I mean, you see this in stark relief sort of in, in Deuteronomy chapter 20, where it's giving the commandments for warfare in general, you know, it talks about how basically they aren't allowed to engage in aggressive warfare. To take territory and spoils which that's super different in the ancient world. Yeah, nobody believes in that. And even even when they do go into war before they lay siege to a city, they were, they have to offer the city piece. It's only if they refuse all offers of peace that Israel is allowed to make war against the city. Does that count with giant clans as well? And then in the midst of all that in Deuteronomy 20, there's this except the invites the Jebysites, right? It lists the particular clans, the particular tribes and groups. Right. Which if you don't know that those are giant clans, it might just look like, okay, God decided to single out these people for what does it like them for some reason. But it's very explicit, right, that whenever those groups are all listed, Yahweh says, you know, number one, he says he's the one who's judging them. He's the one who's going to defeat them. He's the one who's going to destroy them. Israel is sort of the instrument for that. And he says that it's because of their idolatry and their abominations. It's because of these things we've been talking about. The rituals that make them who they are that constitute that tribe are rituals of enslavement, tyranny, human sacrifice, idolatry, sexual immorality. And so there's not a difference between those things stopping and the tribe, ceasing to exist as a tribe, because those are the things that constitute the tribe as a social unit. Yeah. And so, yeah, so they're sort of accepted from those general rules, which were amazing for the ancient world. As you mentioned, you know, drop out of nowhere. Yeah. Yeah. Why wouldn't why wouldn't you engage in wars of conquest as often as you possibly could manage it? That's, you know, now we have this idea, well, that's immoral. You shouldn't do that. But no one at that time had that idea except this one people that God had chosen for himself had made created this nation for himself. Right. And the total warfare that Israel is supposed to make against these tribes is the kind of warfare that all of Israel's neighbors waged against everyone all the time. Right. Right. So that's not the exceptional part. That's the more normal part. The accepting everyone else in the world from that is the is the strange part about the Torah. These are just to be treated the way you would normally treat enemies with one exception even there. And that's that to reinforce the fact that it wasn't them defeating them, that it was Yahweh their God defeating them. And that this was an act of his judgment, not just their military might and expansionist tendencies. They weren't allowed to take any of the spoils. Oh, that's interesting. Yeah. The physical objects, the gold, the silver, the livestock, all of the wealth of these tribes was considered to be tainted by what they had done. And so it was all dedicated and considered a curse and put under put under a ban. And had to be destroyed. Yeah. There was that incident about someone who took some gold. And I'm trying to remember who that was now. And yeah, yeah, they can in Joshua who tried to keep some of it and a curse came on the camp because of it. Yeah. So the word the Hebrew word herm there is it's actually this from the same route as as Haram and Mount Hermann that we talked about before. And curts sinful all those things, but the word is used both for things that are set apart because they're a cursed and things that are set apart because they're holy or are going to be offered as a sacrifice. So the idea is that it's sort of sometimes that we're dedicated. Yeah, right is used there to kind of try and cover both meetings. These things are dedicated for destruction. Right. Yeah, they're there. They belong to Yahweh as his spoils and he's destroying them. Right, which is which I think that that as you said kind of underlines also just from the point of view of people who think, OK, God is commanding genocide. If if that's just sort of the bear understanding of what it is of what's happening there, then why would God, you know, put these things off limits. It just underlines that the whole point is to blot out these practices from the face of the earth. And Israel is his instrument. If it was just OK, God is giving them permission to go and wipe out these certain people and take all their stuff, then that would be a different, different ballgame, but they're not allowed. They're not allowed. The point is that they're going in, you know, and and enacting God's justice, you know, which is to set things right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And really important, interesting detail, interesting detail. Yeah. And through these tribes of their practices, these demonic entities that stand behind them, right, who are the fathers of their chieftains, right, our subjecting the land, their neighboring peoples to this demonic tyranny and injustice. You know, they're enslaving their neighbors and sacrificing them to their gods, literally, right. So I mean, what about the problem up? So, you know, OK, Israel moves in. They take one of these cities, they kill everybody in it. I mean, what about, I mean, are there some innocence there? There's got to be kids, babies. What, you know, I, how do we, what do we do with that? If a one year old or a two year old, or right in one of these giant clans, parishes without having participated in these rituals, we look at that and say, oh, that's a horrible thing. That's the worst thing that could happen to him. This little two year old never got to live his life in this world, right. What would his life in this world have been like if God hadn't done anything about the horites? He would have grown up to be initiated into these things, at least it's right. So, so to be blunt, you know, we have to remember that the last judgment and eternal life and eternal condemnation exist when we're reading the Bible. I know that sounds bizarre, but right. So the perspective of scripture, like you read in the book of wisdom, right, that someone who lives a short time in innocence and then God takes them to himself, right. That's a blessed person. Right. So it's basically we should look at it as we would an infant who dies shortly, you know, in maybe before birth or shortly after birth, not by not by any, you know, human sin, but say, let's say they were born with some kind of birth defect and they die. So a lot of times people look at that and they'll say, why God, why, right, because it seems, I mean, it's such a difficult thing to endure, especially if it's your child. But from a Christian point of view, that person, their entire earthly existence was in innocence and they are in the hands of God. And from a, you know, from an earthly point of view, it's the worst thing ever, right. You know, here's someone who had their whole life snatched from them. And yet from a Christian point of view, what is this life, but preparation for the next. Right. The purpose of this life is repentance. Yeah. And it ends when that's either complete or when we've rejected repentance so many times and so thoroughly that our chances have run out and God's patience has run out. Yeah, I recall there was kind of a hard saying I remember reading and I think this was in the writings of St. Piusius, the relatively newly canonized saint, the elder from from Greece. He was talking to someone about children who die, people who die young and he essentially said, well, the reason why God took them is because he knew that if they continued in life that they would probably become very sinful. So he took them earlier out of mercy. And you know, I remember reading that and I thought to myself, okay, this does make sense to me, but I imagine that would be hard to hear like, oh, how dare you say that my kid was going to turn out bad. You know, but here's here's St. Pius who talks to angels who, you know, who has clairvoyant insight from God saying this. And while not every single thing every single saint says is should be, you know, is is right. So, you know, I remember all their opinions about everything, you know, based on what we've just been talking about, if you understand the providence of God, it does make sense. Like there's a sense that God protects people from sin sometimes by by making their lifetime shorter than we think it should be. Children in a Nephilim city who by the hand of God working through Israel are removed from this life early, it's actually a blessing because it's preventing them from becoming involved in idolatry. And being and they'll be judged, you know, much much much much more mercifully because they never were involved in that. Right. And in our orthodox funeral service over and over again, we refer to the person who's passed away as the one who God has chosen and taken. Right. There's a delusion. They haven't they haven't suffered a misadventure. They haven't lost a battle with an illness, right. They've won a battle against sin. Hopefully. They haven't, you know, not that's something bad has happened to them. Right. There's something to grieve there. I mean, something bad has happened to us in terms of our loss and that kind of thing. But the person from the perspective of the Christian faith has been chosen by God and taken to himself. You know, and that's that's not a bad thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard. I mean, it's a hard saying, but that's because we're materialist minded. Because we function as though this life as all there is. That's why it's hard. And and or we don't believe that God is really using the Israelites here. Yeah. You know, we we demathologize the text. We say what's really going on is just one tribe is killing its neighboring tribes and calling them demons to justify it. Yeah. Right. But that's not what the text says. Right. I mean, you could just simply say, well, I don't believe the text. But that of course, like, well, then why why be Christian, right? You know, really, like if you're not as important. Yeah. Why is it all about Jnansen? Right. Why take the Bible seriously if you're not going to take it seriously? You know, like what? Yeah. They said, why is this book important? If we're not actually going to take it seriously. And I think that that's one of the most valuable things about what we're trying to do with this show is to say, okay, look, there is some hard, weird, difficult stuff in there. And we could either say, well, you know, people in the ancient world thought all kinds of things. You know, or we can say, well, this is in the text. They were all taking it seriously at the time. If I can stop assuming for a second that I'm just smarter and better informed than everyone who lived before me for thousands of years, then then maybe there's something there that we can come away with. And of course, I mean, this episode is this sort of the par excellence of dealing with the weird and the difficult in the Bible. So yeah, yeah, I appreciate the conversation about that difficult thing because it is hard. It is hard, you know, yet nevertheless, I think that if we're going to work on purging materialist thinking from our thoughts, then we need to really be willing to go all the way in terms of trusting in the providence of God and trusting that what he says that he intends and he's going to do is true. You know, that when he takes, for instance, a child to himself, that that actually is good for that child. And not just say, well, he's pulling a fast one, you know, so all right. So let's talk about some of these very specific groups then. The book of Joshua and all of these texts and numbers and Deuteronomy that present this kind of jagano, jaganto, macky and even laid some of the later historical books. Neal Testament are presenting this picture of spiritual warfare. That's not an allegorization of what they're presenting. That's what they're presenting spirit. In this war of Yahweh, the God of Israel against these demonic forces who are enacting the world through these specific groups. And so when we look at these specific groups, we see that kind of reinforced with each group. Right. So we talked about already a little bit the amourites as they're called in the Old Testament, who are the, the martou in most other ancient texts as this group. Martou literally means westerners interesting that's because they came from the from the west to take over a hot and a summer. But yeah, they aren't west from our. Yeah. And that's the bunch that hammer abbey us from. Yeah, Habir Abbi is the most famous one of them. And they of course claim to have access to this wisdom from before the flood that had come through these spiritual beings. And that's what made them powerful. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, you've said the word jaganto macky several times. And I'm not sure you actually defined it. I mean, if you know a little bit of Greek, you know basically means war against giants. That's what it is. It's war against giants. So just wanted to kind of put that out there. Right. So the most famous, homerabi would be the most famous amourite outside the Bible, probably the most well known one inside the Bible. If any of them are well known would be sahann king of the amourites. Right. Who along with the guy we're about to talk about, Israel makes war against him in the transjord under Moses before entering into the land of Canaan. Right. That brings us to the second guy, awg. Awg. King of patience. Yeah. And awg and awg and sion. Cian. I'm not sure I pronounce it are are both those defeats are both commemorated in the Psalms that we use in the poli alios that we sing like this morning. We're recording this on November 25th, which is the piece of St. Catherine on our calendar. This morning I sang the poli alios and you know in that is this. You know, we've defeated awg and cian. You know, it's it's sung. It's such an important. Victory that it gets sung about in the Psalms. Right. It gets mentioned again and again and again in the Old Testament, not just in the those two Psalms, but it gets mentioned again and again in Joshua again and again and I mean in second Kings. There's stuff right and sort of well, why why is this such a major event? Yeah, right. We already talked about awg's bed because these are these giant kings. These are these tyrant kings, these demonically powerful kings who were unstoppable and this image of spiritual and worldly evil. Right. And this rag tank group that just wandered around in the desert for years, we sort of makeshift farming implements turned into weapons, defeated them through the power of Yahweh their God. And so that victory is symbolic of so much. Right. That's why it's repeated again and again and again and again. So an awg is the last of the refaim, which the refaim are mentioned several times in this context. We're going to see their mentioned in terms of being giants who were removed from the land in another place. There also, however, mentioned going forward in the book of Isaiah, when it's talking about the underworld, the spirits of these dead kings, the shades of these dead kings. This is hidden a lot of times in English translations where they translate it as shades or just the dead. Yeah, well the dead arise and praise the right. That's in the six Psalms. Yeah, it's all 88 or 87 in the Greek number and verse 10. That's what the are the refaim going to praise got well, obviously not. Right. So refaim are, I mean, does that term refer to them only after they're dead or was it used for Nephilim as their, you know, still on earth? It's used for them still on earth. So when they come to Bishan or Baytan, awg is the last of the refaim. The other ones have already been killed, but he's still a refaim while he's alive who are sort of these fully demonized kings are sort of exhibit a nice. And so they become these sort of ones, even once they die, they become these sort of demonic spirits in the underworld. So does the word refaim and the word Nephilim are those essentially synonyms or is there a distinction and other used. No, they're not. The refaim is a particular group of kings. Okay. All right. A particular group of giant kings. And the term isn't original to the Bible. Oh, the term is what they were called by everybody. Oh, interesting. So when you look at you, you, you, you got it was a city in what's now Lebanon. Yeah. That's rush. And their dot particular dialect of old cana night is called eukarytic. And so the bail cycle and other things are in eukarytic. We have ritual texts eukarytic ritual texts that for example, when their king would die, who they viewed as a god, there were a whole series of sacrifices and rights that were performed to try to appease the spirits of the dead refaim of these ancient, these ancient kings because they were going to meet the now departed king on his way to show all. And to try to appease them so they'd let him pass and not tear it. They were sort of these, these princes of the underworld. Now that they were dead. And their, their tombs are these stone tombs called dolman that are in what was bishan what's now the golden heights. You can go there and see them. Ah, the, the, the remains of these, these tombs of these dead kings. And that's part of why bishan that whole area there in the north was considered herum, herum, right. It's right next to Mount Hermann. This was sort of a center of this sort of evil evil and corruption. And so, yeah, these, these parts show up there. And Isaiah sort of uses refers to that same idea that we see in the eukarytic ritual text. He's actually talking in Isaiah 14 about the devil being cast down into the underworld. And it talks about the refaim rising up to, to meet him and, and, and greet him. So these are, yeah, August the last one's still alive. Right. That, that is really to deal with. But that again is why he's such, such a major figure. And in, in the Greek Old Testament tradition. A lot of the places where the Hebrew text has Gog is in like Gog and May Gogg, right. Which, which so excited like how Lindsay, right, his late great planet earth back in the 70s, 80s, if I remember correctly. The kings of the, the Greek, the Greek actually has awg. It's talking about like the spirit of awg, the modic spirit of awg as a dead refaim, like coming back as a leader of the forces of evil. Yikes. So yeah, awg's a bed, dude. And that's why his defeat is such a major, a major thing. You know, it's like in, it's like in, in Lurtherings defeating Sauron, you know, we just defeated a, basically a demon guy. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's a major historical event. Yeah. So, and, but this, this is an isolate, right. These are these two kings who Israel beats on the way into the land. Before that, they'd already had their run in with the Amalakites. Yeah, right. And, and if I remember correctly, the Amalakites aren't the ones that attack them while they're at Sinai, is that right? Yes. Yeah. To attempt to obliterate Israel sort of before Israel could even fully be formed and come of, come of age. Right. And so, you know, at Sinai, their offering sacrifices to Yahweh, Moses is meeting God face to face. And being given the law and this giant clan comes up and interferes with this. Right. And attacks, attacks Israel and in the tax, the way it's described is that they lay siege to the mountain, which had become the mountain of God. Right. So it's war on heaven. Right. It refers to them trying to lay a hand on the throne of Yahweh, right? Like they're trying to God saying they're attacking me. Right. And it should do you. So again, there's this spiritual warfare element. Right. Well, so why do we say that the, the Amalakites are a giant clan? Well, it's because Amalak, if you want to figure who is very clearly a giant, Amalak is your guy. Right. Right. His, his, his, now again, for some reason, people don't spend a lot of time studying the genealogies of Issa. I don't know why, but Genesis 36 verse 12, which is part of that genealogy of Issa. It talks about Issa's grandson, who has wives and has children. And then it also says he has this son, Amalak. And it says that he has this son, Amalak, with a concubine, right, a sexual slave named Timna, who's a horite. The horite, all right, the horites are identified as Nephilim in Deuteronomy. So this is someone from a giant clan who is a concubine who is in a kind of ritual sexual slavery. And who is described as being literally the sister of Leviathan. Yikes. Okay. So where is that that she describes as the sister of the vietan? Right there at Genesis 36 verse 12. Oh, man. She's identified as the sisters of Lothan. That's how it's rendered in English, but Lothan in English, Lothan is a literal rendering of what we otherwise translate as Leviathan. And then it being Leviathan in the early English translations for the same reason we got Jehovah. They kind of plugged in consonants around the Hebrew, or they plugged in vowels around the Hebrew consonants. Yeah. So the idea that I'm just looking in Genesis 36 now, and the identification of Timna as Lothan's sister is verse 22. Yeah. These parts that no one reads, right? Yeah. You know. So, but yeah, but it's a little bit earlier. Yeah, and it's verse 12 where it says that she's the one who becomes the concubine of Esau's son, Ella Faz. Or, well, the original text doesn't say it's his concubine. It just says she's a concubine. A concubine. Oh, oh, oh. Right. So this is the beginning potentially new King James here. Right. Maybe potentially a temple prostitute. Pan. Yeah. Right. Who's a who's asleep with who's a who's a who's a horite who's a horite who's a member of one of these giant plants. So that and we're going to see that giant clan was destroyed by Esau's descendants, the horites. That was part of their that was their part of the Gigantomaki of the work. It's a giants was defeating the horites. But Esau's grandson went over and participated with the enemy. Yeah. And Amalek was produced out of that. Right. I mean, is there any indication that he that this union was. And again, parents, this is why we gave it the warning of the. Is there any indication that this union was. And he just, he just, he just, he just, he just met some girl and they, you know, or is there any indication that he actually went over and participated in some kind of ritual act when he fornicated with her. Right. Well, it doesn't describe it in detail. Right. But we've got these two pieces. She's a horite. Right. Yeah. But right. She's a horite concubine and the sister of. Low ten of Leviathan. Now there was. Now there's a place where a low tan is listed as one of the chiefs of the horites. But it's unclear if that's saying they worshiped. Low tan. Hmm. If there was a giant chieftain among the horites named low tan after. Right. And then there was a lot of life in this chaos monster. But you get the idea either way of what the text is indicates. Right. That she's bound up with demonic ritual sexual activity. She's from a people who do that. She's one of the people engaged in that. And this guy goes and lies with her. And his other children, his legitimate children are all edomites. They're the line of the edomites. Right. Amalak is this other thing who starts this other tribe in this other clan. Yeah. Thanks. Man, it does get weird when you get down deep. Read those genealogies. Yeah. I've read the whole Bible several times. I've read this passage. There was never any point. Never any point in the past when I read it. And I thought, oh, he's. You know, he's he's he's he's. He's fornicating with this demon person. You know, it's just you have to have you have to have some. You know, that's what's going on here. But of course, you know, ancient people reading this, you know, hearing this largely for the first time. They would know all this context. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Which we did. And when we're reading it in English, too, not only do the genealogies a bunch of names. I can't pronounce, right? Right. But also all of theseites. The Old Testament. Yeah. Start to just all blur together. Like remembering that, oh, the Horites are a giant clan. And so, you know, I think it's a lot of people. Okay. You know, and connecting a genealogy and Genesis to a passage we're about to talk about in Deuteronomy. Yeah. Right. Which you. If you get to Deuteronomy, if you don't bail out of reading through the Bible somewhere in Leviticus or numbers. Right. Which a lot of people do. You've probably forgotten Esau's genealogy by the time you get to Deuteronomy. Right. Like that's not the piece you've held onto. Yeah. Okay. So I remember that. So the Amalakites. Right. So his tribe eventually does get finally defeated by Israel. Right. And by David. Oh, by David and. Okay. Okay. But there was. Oh, that's the final defeat. But there was an earlier victory. There's an earlier victory with Joshua at Refidine. Right. Right. That's what Moses holds up his hands. That's when they attacked Israel at Sinai. Okay. That was self defense, not to get wiped out by the Amalakites. Gotcha. Gotcha. Right. But that because they had declared war on Yahweh and his people, that's where after that battle. After Israel was that battle, that's where Yahweh vows. This is this is it for them. Yep. Right. They've declared war. I mean, so there aren't going to be Amalakites. And Saul's big sin that loses him the throne of Israel is not obeying God about the Amalakites. God tells him to go and wipe out the Amalakites as a giant clan. And instead, he takes a bunch of their livestock and their treasures for his own treasure. You don't do that. He takes their king, takes their king captive to parade him around and pray about how Saul defeated him. Don't do it. There's this there's this amazing moment where where Yahweh says, says the prophet Samuel to confront Saul about it. Right. And he sort of says, Oh, did you do what God said with the Amalakites? It's also like, Oh, yeah, yeah. And Samuel says, you know, I'm hearing a lot of sheep and goats bleeding off of the distance. You know, could it be that's. Man. Yeah. And which salt was which I mean, that's really this. That's really interesting because again, right, if you have a kind of a Sunday school level knowledge of the whole Saul and David story and all this, you just kind of get this idea that that Samuel picks Saul, you know, at God's command and then God sort of changes his mind. It decides the David is the guy. But it's really about. That his failure to engage in gigantumaki. You know, his failure to do the thing that he was supposed to do. Yeah, I mean, I mean, it's just mind blowing when you realize that major parts of the Old Testament story are about making war on giants. Yeah. Like major parts of the same thing. Samuel. I mean, you know, like this is. Yeah. Yeah. Welcome everybody. Yeah. You just taken your first step into a larger world. And this is described in sort of larger terms or a pro-grammatic terms in in Deuteronomy chapter two. Okay. Because the whole book of Deuteronomy really almost all of the book of Deuteronomy parts of it are historical. But but most of it is about as Israel is now coming to prepare to enter the the land of Canaan. And so it's sort of his parting, his farewell address, right? His last sermon. And that's why there's so much recapitulation of things from the rest of the Torah, right? Where he's reminding them and and putting these things together and theologically tying these things together. And so part of this is as they're approaching. They're traveling through not just lands that belong to these like. And so I have a lot of them. He's doing exorcisms, he's sending them into the abyss. - The same beings. - Yeah, okay, so let's, I mean, this is a super deep dive episode. So, yeah. So when we were doing Prepp, we talked about, for instance, the exorcism of Legion, where the spirits are sent from Legion into the pigs and they go down the embankment and are drowned in the water. But they're requests. They get requests to go into the pigs. - Rather than the abyss. - Yeah. - The band up at the abyss anyway. - Right, yeah, kind of Jesus sort of pulls a fast one on them because, you know, drowning in the water is understood as a dissented the abyss. Yeah, so I remember, so we talked about this and I realized that I was unclear on exactly what was happening. So, my, the way that I understood, which now I understand is incorrect. The way that I understood the Nephilim ritual and then these spirits that go into the pigs is that you get this demonized person who comes as the fruit of the Nephilim ritual and they've got a demon hanging around in them with them and then they die and then eventually some of those demons end up in Legion and then get sent into the pigs. But that's a little bit wrong, right? - Right, that's not how people, at the time of Christ understood it. - Okay, so, all right, so let's take the deep dive and talk about exactly what we're looking at with those spirits. - This is an extension of what we were talking about in terms of that anti-phiosis, right? This is that come to fruition. - Deep and demonosis. - Right, I don't know if there's a good word for this, but that's the word I've picked. - We have one of these Nephilim, one of these giants, one of these leaders chiefs, members of this giant clan who's participating in these rituals. That means they have this relationship of fatherhood and sonship with this demonic spirit who is a fallen angelic being. - Yeah, so that. - Imaging their father. - They're imaging them, they're bringing their works, you know, St. John uses this language in 1st John, it talks about not just the sonship starting with Cain in his line in 1st John, but also the idea that Christ came to destroy the works of the devil. These works are brought into the world through these people in this relationship with these beings. But just as in theosis, when we become sons of God, that means our transformation to become like God, right? We talk about that as being divinized, right? We become by grace what Christ is by nature. The same thing happens to such an unrepentant person who has this kind of relationship with the demonic where they become demonized. So the understanding was that like the Refaim who we were talking about, these other Nephilim, they through their actions and their ritual practices and their worship are changed and transformed and become like the demons in every way. - Yeah, although there's one exception as to the way they become like them, right? Which is that they don't have demon bodies. - Right, right. So when their soul or spirit is separated from their human body, they are an evil spirit. They are a demonic spirit. And so the way it was understood in the first century AD, and for at least a few centuries before that, minimally a few centuries before that, is that these unclean spirits, the spirits we see in the synoptic gospels who are the subject of Christ's exorcism are the spirits of these dead Nephilim. So who have become demonic and demonized. 90% of them are in the abyss according to the book of Jubilee's, the other 10% are still roaming around. That's why they're unclean spirits because they're a mixture. So we could call them demons, but that's actually only relatively true about them because they're not fallen angels. These are fallen humans. But they've become so fallen, they are essentially demons. And it's interesting, like we sometimes in the Orthodox Church talk about monastics living the angelic life. And boy, doesn't that sort of throw all this into stark relief when you think about exactly what that means? They functionally become angels. They don't become angels in kind of a terms of species change. Ontologically, right. Yeah. So it's just changing species. As we were talking about with the saints. Right. Right. Right. At theosis. This is the flip side. This is the dark side of theosis. This is demonization as opposed to demonization. Okay. Yeah. And so the same way that the saints in heaven are like the angels and fulfilling this angelic role, right. And functioning in the role that the angelic powers had functioned in, right. And have functioned in these demonic spirits of these fully demonized people are like the demons and are functioning in this demonic role. Right. Okay. So before we go to break, we had a question that came over the speak pipe. But before we talk about that, I just wanted to underline that this notion of gigantomaki is not just an ancient near Eastern thing, right. There are other cultures that talk about wars with giants. Pretty much all of them. Yeah. Again, just like the flood is everywhere. Everybody's got wars with the ones that I think of off right off top of my head is Ragnarok, the Norse story, you know, where you've got gods versus giants. And now mind you, obviously, it gets kind of mixed up when you start trying to, you know, make it into an allegory of the real, the real war. It's not an allegory. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like that Odin and Thor, for instance, on the kind of the, the Quononko good side of that Norse war are actually angelic beings, you know, fighting against giants because, you know, as you said, it's a kind of pagan propaganda. Like, yeah, we defeated the giants. I actually know you were on their side. You know, but yeah, so what other, I mean, what other cultures have this kind of giant story, this giant war story? Well, in Celtic stories, you've got the Fomorians, okay, who are sort of these mischapen giants because they're part human part fairy. Yep. Yep. It had part human parts fairy. Yep. And they're, they're tyrants. They're cannibalistic. Right. They had to be defeated, right, in order to take possession of the area. And you know, possibly the most famous, I mean, if you look up Gigantomaki. Right. Right on the internet. You're probably going to find the Greek form of the story, which Gaia, who is the mother of the Titans, we already talked about how the Titans in a lot of ways are parallel to these rebellious angels who were responsible for the Nephilim in the first place, who get imprisoned in Tardarus, right? In fact, St. Peter, in second Peter, talks about the angels who send in the time in the past, having been confined to Tardarus, he uses the word Tardarus to make that parallel. So Gaia's mad that the Titans have been imprisoned, right? And so to get revenge for the Titans, she sends the giants out of the earth to go and sort of counterattack. Right. So these figures play out a lot in the visions of Daniel and then the visions of Revelation through that. The giants Typhon, who's another sort of monstrous creature that Gaia sends to get revenge for the Titans. A lot of the depictions about the Antichrist that you find in Daniel and Revelation are based on that, are based on this story. It's this figure who's coming to get, quote unquote, revenge for the Titans for these angels who produced the Nephilim and were imprisoned. And that continues into the Patristic period. St. Irenaeus, one of his proposed readings for what 666 represents is the name Titan. Oh, wow. Man. So. Yeah. So these stories are sort of, it's not just that these are versions of the same story in different cultures. It's that the ancient Israelites, the people of the second temple period and the early Christians saw a connection between those Greek and Roman stories. And as they played out of the actual ritual religion and worship of the Greeks and the Romans. And the truth which they saw is preserved in their scriptures. Wow. Okay. All right. So we got a question from Christopher who left us a message and I'm going to play that now and we're going to try to answer briefly before we go to break. So here's what Christopher had for us. Good morning. This is Christopher from Tesson. And I was wondering if the depictions of St. Christopher as a giant in the West or as a dog headed person in the East had any connection with the giants in the Bible. Thank you so much and have a very good day. Okay. So father Stephen and I talked about this before we were when we were preparing for the show. And both of us kind of concluded we didn't really have much to say about this. But I thought it would be kind of cool to still put it out on this episode just to kind of get it out there. And the one thing and I don't know whether I mean I can't comment on how accurate it it is. But I just recommend that you check out there's an article by Jonathan Peugeot called understanding the dog headed icon of St Christopher. And he actually does talk about the fact that St Christopher is depicted in Western iconography as a giant. And he relates that to stuff that's in in the scripture about giants. It's a really interesting article. I don't like I said I can't comment on its accuracy or whatever. I do like a lot of the stuff that Jonathan Peugeot does. So I just recommend you check that. Did you want to add anything to that father Stephen? No that punts suffices for me. All right. Well let's go to break. It's 855-AF Radio. What a year this has been for all of us. 2020 has dealt some difficult blows. But in God's grace and providence it's also reaped many blessings. One of the blessings is a large matching grant from the Renaissance fund. Up to $50,000 to be exact and it's not a soft match. Meaning if we don't reach our part of the 50,000 they will give it anyway. Nope. It's what we call a true match. If we fall short of the goal even by a mile we'll only get that same amount matched. So it could be 50,000 plus 50,000 for 100,000 or it could be 5,000 plus 5,000 for 10,000. Would it be a shame to leave that much money on the table? Think of what AFR could do with this additional windfall. Can we count on you to be as generous as you can this week? We only have until December 2nd to meet the entire goal. We need you and ask that you consider being a part of making this work. Go to ancientfaith.com now and look for the large banner for the Giving Tuesday Matching Gift campaign. Thank you so much. We're back now with the Lord of Spirits, the Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen De Young. That's 855-AF Radio. Alright well welcome back for the third half of our show and just as a reminder this is a pre-recorded episode. So even though the soothing voice of Steve just suggests as you should call in, please don't call. There will be anybody to take your call. But this is a pre-recorded episode and we did take some of your questions and comments and stuff. We're incorporating them into this particular episode. Alright. Well, now we're going to talk about the way that these biblical texts and traditions and understandings of what's going on in those biblical texts were received in the church, in especially the early years and then look at some of the later stuff as well. And this is probably some of the points where we're going to have a, there's a little bit of controversy that we're going to actually highlight I think a little bit. But it doesn't have to be controversial I think. And honestly I believe that the way that we've read it makes sense of the biblical text and as you're about to discover actually this is the way that almost all of the earliest church fathers read it as well. Isn't that right? Absolutely. And we're also going to talk about why those later fathers who didn't, didn't. Yeah. So we're going to underline the fact that there is a discrepancy between the way that the earlier church fathers read these texts and the way that some later church fathers read these texts. And you know, just as to kind of help frame that, we should say that the fact that some fathers read it one way and other fathers read it another way does not mean that the patristic tradition is bunk. It doesn't mean that. It means that this is one of those areas where they actually do disagree. And so, and it's a real disagreement. You know, you can't, you can't kind of hold both positions at the same time. And it's, it's okay to disagree with some fathers about certain things. Not about everything. And when they disagree with each other, you kind of have to. Right. I mean, yeah, what else can you do? Right. So I'll just also say that, you know, even if you've listened all to this point in this episode and you're like, I do not agree with the way those do priests just read all that stuff. It's that's not what's happening, whatever. You know, fine. I mean, we're, that's okay. But at the same time, you know, there's, there is space within the church to have these conversations and not to unathmetize each other because we're reading giants differently. I think that the reading that we've taken makes the most sense of the book of text and, and that the other one kind of does it. So, well, so anyways, let's look at, let's look at kind of a sampling of what's going on in the church fathers. Well, there's just a set out even before we do that. Okay. There's a, there's a methodological thing here. How do we approach, how do we approach an issue like this where? There's disagreement in the church fathers and there's different traditions, right? And there's different, there's different understandings. How do we, how do we interact with that? Because one very negative thing I've seen, this may be especially prominent in internet orthodoxy. Inter-doxy. Yeah. Which I was about to say, is it really orthodoxy? But that's not, that's not totally fair. Is this idea that, well, okay, if one father says one thing and another father says another thing, or it looks like that, then I just pick the one I like better. Yeah, right. We're not saying that. Right. If I could find a father who says something I want to believe, I, I, I'm okay to hold that as an orthodox Christian because some father did, right? I think or I have a proof text, right? I wouldn't have to keep that, right? So the methodology that we're about to use that I think is correct and, and the way to approach this is with an issue like this, we've got the witness of the old testament. We've got the witness of the new testament. We've got the witness of the fathers. So if you're going to take a position on an issue like the any issue that's like this where there's disagreement. You need to present how your position takes into account all of the Old Testament data, all of the New Testament data, the, the, the, the, Patricia data that agrees with you and explains the Patricia data that doesn't agree with you. Okay. Right. Meaning that explains these fathers who know Christ better than I do. Right. Which at whatever position you take on this one for example. You're going to have to say that some fathers who, who know Christ far better than I do, know the scriptures far better than I do are more spiritual and more holy than I am somehow got it wrong. Right. And so if your view can't explain that, then your view doesn't work. Right. So if you take the view, some view and some obscure writing of one church father and say, okay, well, this is the one I agree with. You've got to be explained to me how every other church father got it wrong. Right. Right. For 2000 years. That's why that's not a good approach. So in terms of church fathers who talk about what we were just talking, well, it's before we get to the church fathers, let's talk about the New Testament. Yeah. Yeah. Which we haven't read. Right. Talked much about the New Testament. And I already mentioned the fact that even before the New Testament in the, the Septuagint proper, the translation by the Sevedi of the Torah, they translated in Genesis 6 1 through 4. This is being angels of God, human women, right? And, and giants. Right. So there's that before we even get to. And this is, of course, this is the primary way in which not necessarily all of the apostles were reading the scriptures. Because St. Paul was certainly plenty fluent in Hebrew. Right. But it's the way they interact because the New Testament's in Greek, that's the text that they're quoting and that they're interacting with in the New Testament text. Right. So our first witness, our first, you know, sort of canonical, if we want to put it that way, witness to interpreting the Hebrew Old Testament. Reasonably we could say is the Septuagint, right? That's right. Because it's a translation, but it's in it interprets that passage from Genesis 6. As we said that when we first started this as talking about angels, having relations in some way and, and giants being produced as a result of that. Those are the words that are actually used in in the Septuagint Greek. Yep. Yep. Okay. So when we get into the New Testament, in particular, we find the stories we've just been talking about, about the angels who revealed things to humanity and then rebelled and were imprisoned and produced the giant quote unquote offspring as their sons is referred to several times in what are called the general epistles, first and second Peter and Jude. So the one in first Peter, a lot of people take in a different way. I don't want to, we could spend two hours just talking about this. But I'll put it to you this way. Restrain yourself, I'll just leave it. Yeah. First Peter 3 versus 19 to 20 talks about Christ's proclamation in his descent into Hades to the spirits who were imprisoned there who sinned in the days of Noah. Right. Okay. So that reference to in the days of Noah is kind of clear and unavoidable. Yeah. And if you want really solid evidence of that, St. Augustine, who was one of the first church fathers to take a view different from the one we're talking about of who the giants were and whether there were fallen angels involved. And he comes to this text and myths, he doesn't know what it means. He says, I don't know why it says in the days of Noah. Right. Right. Because he wants to read the text is talking about Christ preaching the gospel in terms of giving certain people in Hades a second chance at repentance. Yeah. And then he's like, well, I don't know why Noah, why them? Why not anybody else? So he's basically admitting that he doesn't have this frame of reference. Right. He doesn't know what to do because he's rejected, consciously rejected what we've been explaining. He doesn't know what to do with that reference to spirits that sinned in the days of Noah. Yeah. It just, you can't fit it in. So second Peter, two verses four through nine talks about angels who sinned and who are imprisoned in chains of gloomy darkness. That chains of gloomy darkness phrase is essentially a quote from first enich talking about the imprisonment of the angels who created the Nephilim. And I would also add, I would also add that if you want to say this isn't talking about that, that this isn't talking about Genesis six, you're going to have to show me somewhere else in the Old Testament where angels are said to have sinned. Angels plural. Yeah. And it's also kind of interesting. I'm looking at some of the translation notes for second Peter two four, you know, the translation I'm reading it says, if God did not spare the angels who sinned, but through them into hell, lock them up in chains under darkness. Which interesting is that the phrase that gets translated as through them into hell, sometimes is translated as casting them into tartarists. But it's actually a verb, tarar, tarar, roo, which I would translate it as sort of tartarized became tartarized. Which doesn't mean they had tartar sauce. Yeah. But yeah, they became tartarized. So that's this reference to imprisoning these spirits in this place where you put titans. And so it's very clear what St. Peter's talking about. You could try to argue, he's using it as an analogy or something, but there's no clear other thing that he could be speaking about. Yeah. And in verse five, he mentioned specifically Noah. There it is. And, you know, and then the flood. Right. And you see the same thing. The text of St. Peter, the text of St. Jude's epistle are very close. And again, I'm not going to spend hours going into the different ideas of the relationship between the two, but you find the same kind of thing in Jude verses six and seven. We're also also referring to this event. And just to hammer on it one more time, these speak about angels plural sinning. I know there are some folks who disagree with us about what we presented about they're not having been this sort of fall of the devil in a whole bunch of angels before the world was created. I won't go into that again. But even if you hypothesize that that's the case. That's not talked about anywhere in the Old Testament. Yeah. So then you're saying, well, okay, St. Peter and St. Jude are referring to something that's not in the Old Testament. And so then I'll say, okay, show me that in Jewish literature from the second temple period. And it's not there. The only thing that's there in terms of an angelic rebellion where the rebels are imprisoned is this tradition that you see recorded in the book of Enoch that you see alluded to in Genesis chapters four and six, right? And the origin of the giants. So we've already got a, we've at least shown that the view we're talking about, we went through the Old Testament in some detail. We've now talked about the New Testament. So when you get to, for example, St. Irenaeus in the, is on the apostolic preaching. So on the apostolic preaching, St. Irenaeus is summarizing the preaching of the apostles. Okay. What they taught. Yes. And we've got a quote here from, this is from chapter 18 of on the apostolic preaching, St. Irenaeus. And for a very long while wickedness extended and spread and reached and laid hold upon the whole race of mankind until a very small seed of righteousness remained among them. And illicit unions took place upon the earth since angels were united with the daughters of the race of mankind. And they bore to them sons who for their exceeding greatness were called giants. And the angels brought us presents to their wives teachings of wickedness and that they brought them the virtues of roots and herbs, dying in colors and cosmetics. The discovery of rare substances, love potions, aversions, a mores, cacupacence, constraints of love, spells of bewitchment and all sorcery and idolatry hateful to God by the entry of which things into the world evil extended and spread while righteousness was diminished and and feeble. So pretty clearly St. Irenaeus taking exactly the view that we just described. Yeah. And he's not just saying he personally holds this view. Yeah. He's saying this is what the apostles taught. And he is the spiritual grandson of St. John the Evangelist. Right. Yeah, because his teacher, as he says, was polycarp and polycarp was the disciple of John. So he was at a position to know, at least to know better than me. And this is what mid second century, early second century mid mid second century. So he's within 60 years of the death of the last apostle. And this isn't isolated. St. Justin Martyr in the second century, same thing. Even into the third century, we see the same thing. The third century we're primarily talking about origin, intertullian, yes, who aren't saints. And so that's why I'm not quoting them at length about it. And the Italian actually thought the book of Enic was canonical. Origin did at the beginning of his career and then said, well, things are kind of swinging against it. This interesting thing happened in early church history where in the second and first half of the third centuries, a lot of people weren't sure if St. Jude's epistle was canonical. And people may know St. Jude's epistle actually quotes the book of Enic as prophecy. Says that Eden is a prophet and said this. And so people actually argued from the book of Enic for the canonicity of St. Jude's epistle. And then about halfway through the second century, and origin talks about this because it was happening during his lifetime. That flipped and by that time almost everyone had accepted St. Jude's epistle. And so from there on, people start arguing for the book of Enic based on St. Jude having quoted it. That's cool. Yeah. And just so people can look up where this is, this is in verse 14 of Jude is where this is. That equals. You begin quoting Enic. Yep. Yeah. And these things are referenced at the place. Obviously, the book, the book of Enic does not end up being part of the canon unless you're Ethiopian, right? And the reason for that is that Ethiopian Christianity at its earliest stage, they didn't, sometimes when I mentioned the Ethiopian canon, people will say, well, they're non-Calsadonians so they don't count, right? But they didn't change the contents of their Bible after the Council of Calcy. Yeah. Right? This is what they all said because the Ethiopian Jews considered it authoritative. Their Old Testament canon is the canon of Ethiopian Jews. Right. Right. That they adopted. So they had this continuous line of it. And so that continues though in the church all the way up until in the ninth century, you have George St. Kellos. So we're in the Byzantine period. And he describes first Enic, the book of, what we call first Enic, the book of Enic as being an apostolic apocryphan, meaning a, apocryphan meaning hidden, it's hidden in that we don't read it publicly in the church. Yeah, not hidden in the sense of we keep this locked away and evolved because no one's supposed to read this. Right. Right. We don't read it publicly. It's a book to be read in the home, not in the churches. But apostolic because he believed it preserves part of the apostolic preaching as St. Kellos, the book of Enic, and it's apostolic connection. So we're about to talk about the view that sort of comes to predominance among the church fathers. But I wanted to make it clear that the view we've been describing that's the universal view of the first three centuries, almost four centuries of the church, doesn't just go away. It isn't that everyone rejects it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and so what do we do with this idea that some people have would say, well, you know, like there were, there were killiasts in the early church, but eventually the church kind of ruled against that and now we fully, you know, we don't believe in kiliasum. Right. So could we say that the church has rejected the depiction of giants and so forth that's given in the inachic literature that we've been given, we've been talking about? Has the church rejected it and settled on something else? Right. And that's why it's so important to point out that this view still stays around. Yeah. Right. Yeah. So there's there is a consular rejection of kiliasum, right? By virtue of the way that the creeds are written and so forth. There is no consular rejection of this reading of the giant story, right? Right. Yeah. The idea that there's a that, you know, the orthodox church has very few dogmas. The idea that one of them is a particular interpretation of Genesis 6, 1 through 4 is kind of silly on the face. Yeah. Honestly, I mean, you know, every posca, every posca, there's that canon that's that song, it's actually the canon of holy Saturday, but it gets then repeated during the the midnight office or the nocturnes of posca, in which, you know, it talks about the Passover and the Exodus. And it describes Pharaoh as being this persecuting giant of old, right? So it's interesting that this language is in our liturgical texts. You know, it's it's there, right? Yeah. I've said references to watchers and yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Now, I have seen I did see a I did see a translation that text, which actually refers to the persecuting Pharaoh of old, which I get why they use that, but it actually the word is giant. The word is giant. That's that's what's in there. You know, there are some there are some recentions of it that say, "I'm not a tyrant, but as we were saying, that's a synonym." Right. Yeah. Yeah. So the other view that comes to predominance is actually the rabbinic Jewish view. Yep. That's where it originates. It originates in rabbinic Judaism because, and I know we've mentioned this on the show before, but there's this huge problem in Western theology caused by the assumption that the quote unquote Jews of any given period of history are identical to the rabbinic Jews in your local synagogue. Right. Right. Right. And that's that's just not the rabbinic Judaism is something that really comes into existence between the second and fifth centuries and is only codified in the fifth and sixth centuries with the Talmud. Right. And it's a reaction, the Talmud, any Talmudic scholar go ask an orthodox Jew Jewish Talmudic scholar, they'll tell you that a lot of the Talmud is a reaction to the Christian tradition that had emerged. Right. Right. So the particular rabbinic interpretation of this that we're going to talk about briefly now is that the so-called "Sons of God" in Genesis 6 are not angels, are not angelic beings, contrary to what the Septuagint says about them, contrary to all these other stuff that we've just been mentioning, but are actually the descendants of Seth, Seth the son of Adam and Eve. And so then the notion of him being a son of God is more metaphorical than angelic reference. And then that's what happens is that there's this intermarrying between descendants of Seth and descendants of Cain and then that's what this is about. So it's not about. And often it's put, this interpretation is put for because there's this idea like, well, how could demons, you know, interbreed with human beings? And that essentially just shows ignorance of what the Nephilim ritual actually involved, which is that there's, you know, from a material point of view, like if you were to sort of videotape the thing, and again, this is why we give this trigger warning for parents at the beginning, if you were to videotape the ritual, you would see two human beings engaging in fortification. You know, you wouldn't necessarily visibly see a demon involved in this. But you know, saying, well, you know, demons can't hybridize with human beings is a misunderstanding of what that ritual actually involves, because it just suggests that there's two beings involved, a human woman and, you know, a fallen angel. And that's because of a reading of Genesis 6 where these other details, which are not mentioned there, are not taken into account. But as we've mentioned, there is all kinds of evidence that this is what was going on. You know, again, that these, they're regarded as being two thirds divine, right? That means that there's three beings involved in their conception. So all right, well, let's talk about that a little bit. Yeah. So the non-Christian Jewish communities, right, ended up rejecting all of the anachic literature, all of the literature from their own tradition that recorded this part of the tradition. And they did this in the second and third centuries and we have second and third century church fathers who talk about how the Jews had rejected, for example, the book of Enic because it was two Christian. That's literally how they phrase it. So this is based in a repeat, this is how Christians were taking it pretty much universally as we just said. And so the Jewish community said repudiated that and came up with what's called the Seth ite hypothesis sometimes in the literature that it's the line of Seth and the line of of Cain. This gets adopted by church, but the first, very first sort of church, I mean, Julius Afrocanos is not famous. We'll put it that way. I think he's a church father, but he's the first Christian to sort of adopt this. And then we see it, we see it show up in St. Ephraim the Syrian in the east and then St. Augustine in the west. So we're talking about like the very late, very end of the fourth century, very beginning of the fifth century, where this first appears in Christian writings. Right. Right. And just to help people date, so sex, this Julius Afrocanos, not to be confused with Julius Afrocanos, who is an earlier person. Yeah. So this is a Christian, right? The earlier one was not a Christian. He was born the year 160 and dies in 240. So he's writing relatively late second century, early third century. Right. Yeah. The earliest data point we have for this view. He's a Libyan. He's a Libyan. Right. And so when it starts, when you get prominent people, St. Ephraim and St. Augustine, St. Ephraim's at the end of the fourth. And St. Augustine is writing at the beginning of the fifth. And that's when the view kind of goes mainstream. Right. Because, yeah, because of their influence. Right. And it comes to become the predominant view among the church fathers. Now that said, St. Augustine, as we already mentioned, has certain problems. Like he doesn't know what to do with that reference to the days of Noah. He also has this weird ambivalent discussion of the book of Enic because he says, well, okay, St. Jude says Enic is a prophet and he wrote this and it's a quote from the book of Enic. So Enic wrote something. Right. And at least some of what's in the book of Enic must be that. And so he tries to argue that, well, you know, the book of Enic then is so old that comes from before the flood. And you get people like Saint Jerome who say, Augustine's contemporary giving protracted arguments about how the book of Enic would have survived the flood. Like well, Noah must have had a copy. Yeah. And on the arc, which is copy from there, right? Which to us seems like extreme special pleading, but for the fathers, this was, you know, so say Augustine's saying this must represent this text we have now must represent Enic's work. Like that makes it so old. You know, we can't verify what in this text we have now actually comes from Enic and what doesn't. And then he makes this circular argument where he says, you know, you can't, you can't trust this story about the watchers about these sinful angels in the book of Enic, right? Because not everything in the book of Enic is true and goes back to Enic. And so you say to him, well, what's an example of something that's not true and doesn't go back to Enic? And he says, well, the watcher's story. Yeah. Right. It's untrustworthy because it has stuff like this story in it. So you can't believe this story, right? It's a circular argument. So he has some, he has some problems even getting this view for it. But there are more basic problems with this view. For example, it doesn't make sense of the Old Testament data because, okay, before the flood, the line of Seth and the line of Cain, intermingle, somehow that makes giants. Yeah, right. Who are who are impressive enough in some way that when the people of Israel show up to Canaan, that the spy, yeah, right? Before the flood still. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, right. Exactly. Before the flood. Yeah. But I mean, the point is is that when people see giants in the Old Testament, they're freaked out by them. Right. Right. That has some kind of impressive element, right? I don't know why marrying your sort of distant cousin from a different child of Adam would do anything like that, right? Yeah. Right. Then you also have the rose. You have the problem after the flood of, okay, so did the line of Cain and the line of Seth survive the flood independently somehow and then mingle again. So you get more giants to make the Nephilim after the flood? Yeah. And I think that's why, well, then how does that work? Right. Right. So Old Testament wise, it doesn't make a lot of sense. Yeah. Now, I remember reading that there is some passage that, and I think we should spend a moment or two on this because I know you did some research about this. There is some passage in St. John Chrysostom where he takes the Sethite view. Is he actually, is that actually his view? Yeah. Well, there's, it's hard to know for sure. Okay. So why is it hard to know that if he does take that view, right? He's taking that view around 412, 413. So relatively late. So compared to this is after this post St. Ephraim post St. Augustine. Right. So it's reasonable. It's reasonable that he would have taken that view. Then he would have taken that view, right? The place where he really takes that view and spells it out is in a set of homilies where there are a lot of theories because he's got two sets of homilies on Genesis essentially. And scholars disagree about how those relate to each other. There are a lot of people argue that he gave both and tried to make one the earlier set and one the later set. So it's sort of a revision or they'll say one represents notes taken by a different person on the same homilies. The dating in the early fifth century is secure, but there are also a significant number of people and these people include St. Fodius the Great. There's notes on the library at Constantinople who think that what are now considered to be the later homilies weren't St. John Chrysostom. Or at least reflect another hand that someone else came and revised them. So it's very possible St. John Chrysostom held this view. I'm not arguing that he didn't. It's also very possible that we don't know what view he held and this was sort of expanded upon by a later editor of his homilies. Certainly you go later in the fifth century, sixth century, there are plenty of people who held the Sathide hypothesis who could have done that. So it's not a slam dunk to you. So the point being that it's not a slam dunk to use this text from Chrysostom and say, well that's what Chrysostom's view was on this. That's it. And therefore that's right. Absolutely. Yeah. Against all the other, all the other. That's a methodological problem on top of everything else. So in addition to this view not working with the Old Testament, view doesn't work with the New Testament. Right. Those passages we just read in first and second Peter and Jude as we already talked about a little, who are these angels then? Yeah. Why were they after strange flesh? Right. It just kind of creates these sort of dangling bits that then aren't integrated into the rest of the Old Testament narrative that has then commented on in the New Testament. Right. And so then the last piece as we talked about is, okay, well, so then either side has to explain why the other group of fathers got it wrong. Right. And then there was all the yeah, like why? Okay. If they did get it wrong, then at least let's understand how they could have possibly gotten it wrong because you can't just sort of leave it, leave it there, you know? Right. Right. We're not going to say any of the fathers didn't know what they were talking about. We're not going to say that any of the fathers were dumb. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Right. Right. Yeah. So I will leave it to someone who holds to this F.I. hypothesis to explain to me how all of the earliest church fathers most closely connected to the apostles got it wrong. That's up to them. I don't know how you would do that. But I won't, I won't straw man them by making an argument and defeating it. I'll let them put that forward. But I will put forward that it's very clear how the later fathers beginning at the end of the fourth and beginning of the fifth century and onward would have not understood what was going on because what we find, first of all, is the the fathers who start moving to the Sethide hypothesis are all approaching the other view as being an angel appears to a human woman has intercourse with her. She gets pregnant and has a baby that's half angel half human. Right. And they're saying that's not possible because angels don't have bodies that could reproduce with human bodies that could reproduce. So in other words, the thing that they're rejecting is not even what the ancient tradition is. Right. Right. They're right. They're rejecting that. They miss someone to propose that. Yeah. Right. Right. And we did the child warning. So I'll go ahead and say it. Their issue was not about the sexuality. Their issue was about the reproduction because St. Augustine, for example, demonstrably believed in incubi and succubi. And so that was at the part they thought was impossible. It was the reproduction part. But so that's that's not what the tradition was claiming. So first of all, they're rejecting that. But why wouldn't they know what the tradition was actually claiming? St. John Cachean, who's one of the people in the fifth century who takes the Sethod hypothesis, gives us a really good clue. St. John Cachean, who's a, who's a, he's saying who's very important to me and who I respect a great deal. But disagree with about this. When he's talking about how you know the Sethod hypothesis is right and the other isn't. Because he's writing in the early fifth century, there's this right there. The the the predominant view is the one he's not taking at the time he's writing. He says, well, if this is what happened, why isn't it still happening now? Right, right. That's his question. And we've gotten a lot of questions. A lot of what when we talk about this about what could this happen now? Right. Right. So, so he's asking the same question. He's saying, look, this doesn't seem to be happening now. If that's what happened before, why isn't it? And and the answer to St. John is, well, yeah, it wasn't happening in the province where he lived, right? It wasn't happening in Marseille where his monastery of St. Victor was. It was happening in Mesoamerica and in in China and Japan and so so. So, so mayor empire. He didn't see it happening. So that yeah, so he he was looking at a fundamentally different set of data than what the earliest church fathers were. And because they're living in different times. And John Cassian lives in a time in which Christianity has conquered a lot of the world. Whereas the earliest fathers are living in times like for instance, Justin Martyr writes these apologies to the emperor to try to explain Christianity, at least partly to try to convince the emperor not to kill so many Christians. Yeah. Because that's his word. He's living in a pagan world in which Christianity is a little minority. So he's surrounded by pagans doing pagan things, including probably the Nephilim ritual. Right. These rituals, mystery cults, they're offering sacrifices to the emperor as a god king. Right. Right. This is all this is this is very real to him. He sees this all happening. Right. And so he has it under saying what this is talking about. St. John Cassian had never seen an animal sacrifice. Take place. Right. And so that that that changes your perspective paganism. Paganism really started dying at the beginning of the second century AD or the beginning of the third century. I'm sorry, the beginning of the third century, bringing the 200 AD. And that was for two reasons. Number one Christianity was just clearly ascendant. Right. In the Roman Empire. And pagan the old pagan rights weren't fulfilling. And so what you see is paganism start trying to Christianize itself to compete. So you see this in neoplatonism. Right. Is just trying to Christianize Platonism. Yeah. Or or Julian the apostate wishing that pagans were basically moral in the way the Christians are moral. Yeah, in the fourth century. He's the last gasp of trying to turn the clock back. Yeah. But you see this in in all these gnostic sex that arise are just attempts to Christianize mystery religions and different cultic ritual aspects of pagan religion. Sort of put a Christian premiere on them to try to get that audience. Someone in our our Facebook group posted some quotes from Hermes tribal justice from the Hermetic literature from the third century from the same period, which is very clearly adopting all of this Christian language and Christian ideas to this kind of quasi-nostic framework. They're trying to compete. And part of that was by the middle of about the third century, animal sacrifice starts dropping off. Yeah. So state Constantine, apparently, even before converting to Christianity was not a big fan of animal sacrifice. He just thought it was kind of gross and repugnant. Interesting. And sort of sort of sub moral. And so when he became Christian, he instantly sort of did away with it in terms of the military and the imperial part of the religion so that he wouldn't have to do it anymore. And we should emphasize that it's these rituals that are what make paganism go. Like this is the engine that drives it. And not just in the sense of like, you know, this is social bonds or whatever, although it's that too. But, but when people stop interacting with demons in the way that is the most effective than it weakens the demons influence over them. Right. Yep. Right. They're not worshiping them anymore. Now they're sort of opining or trying to draw moral lessons that are moral along the line of Christian morality than pagan morality from Homer, for example, which is a fundamentally different thing than classical, classical paganism. And so in the fourth century, you know, paganism is fighting its last gasps. You know, St. John Crisostum's rhetoric teacher was one of the last, was literally a member of the last generation, last pagan generation in the Roman Empire. And they basically, they basically give it up hope. They were just kind of sticking to their guns and being contrarians about not wanting to embrace Christianity. Yeah. So there's this parallel development on the one hand, you have the death of paganism going on. And on, and, you know, pretty much in parallel with that, then this rise of misunderstanding where Nephilim come from and therefore rejecting that misunderstanding that we see reflected in some of the church fathers. Right. And they're trying to address it at a metaphysical level of like, how could you have interspecies reproduction? Right. Rather than in this ritual and religious context. Yeah. All right. So we just wanted to, before we finish, and I know this has been a Mondo long episode, but you love it. All of you listeners. Super sigh. This is been the one you've been waiting for. I know. But before we close, I just wanted to take a couple of questions that were sent to us. So this first one is a message that was left for us by Father Fautius. So I'm going to go ahead and play this one now. Hi. This is Father Fautius of Ant from St. Sava, Orthodox Church in Allen, Texas. And I have a few questions. Are giants recognizable only by their size or is it more by their violent and terrible deeds? Also, are giants by virtue of their demonic parentage and/or intimate influence beyond the scope of redemption? And finally, are there giants amongst today? And if so, how do we deal with them? Okay. Well, we've kind of addressed most of what Father Fautius says. But the two maybe that are kind of left dangling a little bit are, can giants repent? And then also, are they potentially around today? What do we do about that? So, all right. So let's take them into that. Or can giants repent? Is that possible? Well, we talked about how, you know, if you leave the giant clan, you're no longer a member of the giant clan. Yeah. Right. So, the kind of citizenship almost? If you're, if you're ritually admitted to another community that's constituted by another ritual, right? So, so the sort of answer is yes. If there's a giant clan somewhere right now that's doing these rituals, right? Someone who's a person of that is not like irredeemable, right? They're still alive and they're still human no matter how far gone, how far down that road they may be. They could be baptized into Christ. They could come and receive the Eucharist. They can be a Christian and experience theosis, right? In terms of are there, are there giants today and how should we deal with them? So if we take that seriously in terms of what we've been talking about, we'd be talking about a human being who's not just like they're demonically possessed. But a human being who has become demonic, who has become demonized like fully, right? And so we'd be talking about, I don't want to be graphic. I've met someone like this in a prison setting. Someone who is not even really human anymore, who's committed acts, the kind of things we're talking about, involving the killing of children, the torture of cannibalism, right? So if we're talking about someone like this, and this is a person who has no interest in anything related to the gospel, right? Then as controversial as what I'm about to say may be, this is why civilizations still have the death penalty. And when someone like that receives the death penalty, right? I mean, when the Orthodox Church talks about the death penalty, if you read, for example, the social statement of the Russian Church, it is a good thing to not make use of the death penalty in that it can sometimes give a longer opportunity for repentance to someone. So that makes that element a good thing. But the Orthodox Church has never declared the death penalty as such unjust. Right, right, right. Because to allow that kind of person to continue with that kind of evil is unjust in and of itself, yeah, to produce more victims and bring more horror into the world. Okay. So we got a question over email from Ian in Charleston, West Virginia. And Ian wrote this, "Presupposing the existence of giants based on the literary evidence in the Holy Scriptures, is there likewise physical evidence to further prove their existence beyond the Scriptures?" I remember in a previous episode that you mentioned the archaeological find of a large metal bed used in pagan rituals that was used by a giant king. Do fossil records or even more interestingly DNA evidence exist? Furthermore, do giants constitute a different species from mankind or from a very materialistic point of view are still human but are the result of a variant allele to a gene like in the case of a congeal plaziam, I have to look it up, through the interaction of demons. I think Ian works in the medical field, if I remember correctly. Yeah, and we actually got a number of questions that are like this. And I recall that there was in one of our earliest episodes, we actually had someone call in that unfortunately did not get through who wanted to ask about, you know, gigantic fossils being found. So this is kind of related to that as well. Now, I mean, we talked about how giants are not necessarily large, physically large human beings. So that kind of answers some of this. Are they, I mean, do they have a different DNA? Well, let me first say before I answer that briefly, I want to heartily endorse Ian from Charleston, West Virginia. Very good. He is a great guy. So shout out to Ian. There you go. Yeah, and, you know, Father Stephen and I both served at that church there in Charleston, West Virginia, although, although Ian, I think you were still a kid when I was there, but it's been a long time since I left. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, the answer, we wouldn't expect to see a DNA difference. Right. Necessarily. Because it's two human beings involved. Right. Right. Now, I mean, if we're talking about giant clans and, you know, with any social unit of people who are primarily marrying and reproducing with each other, right, there would be common genetic factors, but those genetic factors, as we've said, aren't the basis for who's in and who's out of the clan. Right. Right. It's just something that would naturally happen over time. Right. So to give that as full an answer as possible. So if you're looking for fossils, that's kind of looking in the wrong place. Yeah. You're digging in the wrong place. Literally. Yeah. So, yeah, I would say I don't have an explanation for giant fossils. So then maybe they had like Marfan syndrome or I don't know, something like that. We don't really have fossilized remains from the period we're talking to. Human skeletal remains don't last that long. Yeah. So there we go. So I hope that helps Ian. And everyone, thank you very much, everyone who sent in questions and comments, whether you emailed it to us or sent it in via our SpeakPip recording service. I hope that this has been a interesting, I know it's definitely been interesting for me discussion. So let's just, let's give some, some closing remarks. And I think I'll, I'll go first. You know, I entered into this discussion of giants. I mean, not today necessarily, but you know, when I first started trying to understand it, you know, kind of along the lines when father Steven says people get excited when I talk about giants, because it is kind of exciting. It's really just a fascinating element in scripture, especially when you decide to actually take it seriously, right? And, but on the other hand, I think that the, the, like the personal journey that I went through and trying to understand this subject, I went from starting out thinking, okay, here's a really weird obscure thing. Let's figure out what it means. You know, so at least I can make an account for it. To, you know, understanding gradually that we're actually talking about a major overarching theme of the scriptures that actually have to do with, you know, David and the Lord Jesus Christ. And, you know, it's, it's huge. It's just, it's a, it's a, it's a big, big arc within scripture. And, and that alone should make it something that we tried to understand. The other thing that's been very valuable for me was dealing with the fact that church fathers didn't have the same views on this. And understanding what that means and how to account for that and what, what to do about it, which just as kind of a meta issue, you know, helps us to understand the way to read the church fathers. You know, we can't treat them as a kind of set of proof texts or a closed canon kind of in and of themselves. And, and, and I find that to be very valuable as well because there are sometimes some Orthodox people who treat the church fathers the way that a solo script or a Protestant treat the Bible. And that's not the correct way to read the church fathers. So I just wanted to, to say that for me personally that, you know, this, this discussion, you know, not just in this episode, but the discussion that I've been having, you know, now for a few years trying to understand this has been a really valuable one for me of personal growth and understanding the Holy Scriptures and in understanding the rest of Orthodox tradition. And I'm just very, very grateful for it on, on a personal level. Father Steven. Yeah, I think, you know, uh, nerdery aside and, uh, I clearly am one because I consider reading, you know, eukarytic ritual texts and picking through Esau's genealogy to be fun and exciting ways to spend an afternoon. Um, but beyond that nerdery, why is this important at all? Right? Why is this important to the Orthodox faith or theology other than just, hey, it's interesting and fun and neat. Uh, I think this actually goes to the core what we've been talking about today. Goes to the core of what salvation is. And here's how I think that is. My father used to tell me about my grandfather that at one point, my father was watching the Nuremberg trials on television, which were the trials of Nazi war criminals. So sort of the most demonically evil humans, you know, of our, of our era. And my father asked my grandfather what he thought about, what had happened and, and these trials. And my grandfather's response was there, but for the grace of God, go, I. And usually when we say that, we say that about some misfortune, someone has suffered, someone has ended up homeless, someone has ended up bankrupt. Someone has died at a young age and we say, oh, there for the grace of God, go, I, it's God's grace that I have the things I have. And that's not untrue. But my grandfather was saying that about becoming a Nazi war criminal. He was saying that about becoming this sort of immoral monster who would murder other people and mass and do these other things. And this is how the scriptures present the demonic and our sin as participation in the demonic. After Adam and Eve have disobeyed, God says it's not good that man should live forever. Because if we had, if we'd live forever in that state, we would have been just like the demons. Immortal and immoral. Immortal and evil. And so God gives us this life in this world and our mortality and our repentance to prevent us from suffering that fate. A lot of times our Western Christian friends present salvation as, well, God has these laws. He's broken those laws so he's angry at us or he's compelled by his attribute of justice. He has to punish those violations of the law. And so Christ comes to save us from that. So God has to save us from himself or save us from one of his attributes. Save us from his own justice. Well, that's not what the scriptures say. The scriptures say that Christ came to save us from our sins because our sins are destroying us. Our sins are turning us into these demonic monsters if we keep going down that path. So the truth we have here when we look at these giants who are the far end of where that road leads, who represent someone not become like God but become like the demons, dehumanized and inhuman. We see where the path of sin leads and it shows us that in reality Christ came to save us from ourselves. And it gives us a clarity of exactly what that means. So I think this is important beyond all the history and the tying things together in the Old Testament and understanding some of the hymns of the church. That's the core. Despite our sin and wickedness which is deliberate, despite our throwing in our lot with these demonic spirits who rebel against and hate God. Christ still loved us enough to come and die and rescue us, redeem us and buy us back so that we could become sons of God as we've talked about in previous episodes. This shows us the other side. We talked about past episodes, what we're saved to, what we're saved for. This is what we're saved from. Amen. Well, that is our show for tonight. Thank you for listening. If you didn't get a chance to call in during one of our live broadcasts, we'd still love to hear from you either via email at Lord of Spirits at ancient faith.com or you can message us at our Lord of Spirits podcast, Facebook page or you can leave a message for us at our SpeakPipe page. We read everything, listen to everything, but can't respond to everything. I'm sorry about that. But we do save what you send for possible use in future episodes. And join us for our live broadcasts on the second and fourth Thursdays of the month at 7 p.m. Eastern 4 p.m. Pacific. And don't forget to like our Lord of Spirits podcast, Facebook page while you're at it. Join our Facebook discussion group, leave a recommendation and invite all your friends. If you leave a review on Apple podcasts, Facebook or wherever you get your podcasts, then that raises the visibility of this show and gets more people connected. Finally, be sure to go to ancientfaith.com/support and help make sure we and lots of other AFR podcasters stay on the air. Thank you very much and God bless. You've been listening to the Lord of Spirits with Orthodox Christian priests, Father Andrew Stephen Damick and Father Stephen DeYoung, a listener-supported presentation of ancient faith radio. And I beheld and I heard the voice of many angels round about the throne and the beasts and the elders. And the number of them was 10,000 times 10,000 than thousands of thousands, saying with a loud voice, worthy is the land that was slain to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honor and glory and blessing. Revelation chapter 5 verses 11 through 12.