The Abyss of Fire

In the Book of Enoch, 10-13, the Most High of the Watchers said: "And in those days, they will lead them to the Abyss of Fire; in torment and in prison they will be shut up for all eternity." This is pretty rough stuff for some fallen angels who taught men how to read and write, but corrupted them at the same time. This is in addition to the deluge that would destroy the earth; Noah's flood, and kill off the offspring of the fallen angels and their human wives. Its a good thing that this is all metaphor. Unless the Most High of the Watchers caused the flood, the flood was likely caused by a rise in the sea level that arose from the end of the last ice age. Since we don't know what the corruption was that led to this result, we can only speculate that it was the usual moral indiscretions that were prominent in the cities and less prominent in the rural areas. One thinks of Sodom and Gomorrah. The definition of Abyss is a bottomless pit. This can only mean that an Abyss of Fire is a descent much like the descent into Hell. Today we discover that the secular world is being castigated by the fundamentalist religions in much the same way. We also hear that the scholars who preach evolution as if it were true will get their comeuppance in the last or end days which are due to arrive any moment now. It proves that this sort of threat has been around a long time. God is anxious according to people who think this way, much as did the Most High of the Watchers, to put the sinners who come before him in what we call in modern parlance, "A World of Hurt." A Lake of Fire awaited the fallen angels, and a Lake of Fire awaits the evolutionists. What is remarkable is that as the Greeks, Persians, and Egyptians who represented the best of their times were able to get past all of this apocalyptic language and posit a God (or gods) who wanted the best for all of mankind. It was in this milieu that Jesus brought to us in such a brilliant manner the idea that God was Love. As a Gnostic my aim is eliminate all of the apocalyptic nonsense and see God for what he really is; a God who loves all men and has infinite patience to await their redemption. If the Book of Enoch is the oldest Book of the Bible, we have a long way to go until we reach that point.

The Watchers

One of the features of the Book of Enoch is the description of the Watchers. These folks are the ones who supposedly were angels who came to earth and had sex with human females. In Genesis 6:4 it says: "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days--and also afterward--when the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown." They were reputed to be giants. In the Book of Enoch they are called the watchers. A rebel group determined to have sex with human females. They were led by a person called, Semyaza. There were two hundred of them. The women became pregnant and bore giants. There height was three thousand cubits. The conversion chart for ancient Hebrew cubits lists one cubit as 17.8 inches. Its hard to see how a normal size woman could give birth to a child that large unless cubits were much smaller in Enoch's time. Several of the Watchers taught humans arts and sciences that they did not know such as astrology and astronomy. They were also corrupt and the human condition degraded under their watch. It was from this corruption that God decided to cause the flood of Noah. Noah was a descendant of Enoch so the flood came after Enoch's time. Ultimately, a complaint was made to God about the Watchers and they were in trouble. In the next posting, I will describe how they selected Enoch to present their case.

To the Gnostic mind, none of this is literal. Some people think that it is. Erich von Daniken believes that the watchers existed and that they came from outer space. Andy McCracken points out that they were able to mate with humans so it is unlikely that they would have come from somewhere else. In the distant past there was a race of giants. Their skeletons have been found. However, they were not three thousand cubits in height. The most famous of these giants was Goliath of the Philistines who is known from the time of King David. There are stories of wise men who brought civilization to the humans of the time of early civilizations of Egypt, Mayan, Aztec, and South American. These men were called Gods, however, they easily could have come from the civilizations that were sunk under the sea when the ice melted and the sea level rose two hundred feet. The Legend of Atlantis fits into this time as well. It is entirely possible that the wisdom of ancient civilizations was passed on after the deluge. The flood happened. Many civilizations around the world have a memory of it, not just the Noah story. We have much wisdom that has been passed down to us. When Galileo was charged with heresy for saying the earth revolved around the sun, the church was obviously unaware that Plato had said the same thing more than a thousand years earlier. It is clear that we know very little about the time that coincided with the end of the last ice age. What we get from the ground is only part of the story, and not the complete one. Ancient men knew how to move blocks of stone up to 90 tons and fit them together like a jigsaw puzzle. How did they do that? Nobody knows. All of this leads to the fact that Enoch could well have been a real person, and he may very well have had contact with people who were far more advanced than he. Where did these people come from? Who knows, but if they mated with females and had children, I doubt that they were aliens. However, anything is possible. The real message here is that we should be careful to avoid reaching conclusions just because so-called experts tell us so. In time much more will be known about our ancient past. We are finding out more all of the time. What Enoch teaches us is that the search for God was going on long before Noah set sail in the Ark. Enoch was searching for God, and in the Book as we go along we will see how he fares in finding Him.

More in the next posting on the watchers and what happened to them.

Who is Enoch?

For several months I have been blogging on the Introduction to Gnostic Thought. Recently, I had the opportunity to review the Book of Enoch (Ethiopian Version). This Book goes back to the foundation of human civilization and is a very expressive metaphor for this event. For this reason, I have chosen to create a special blog for the purpose of reviewing this Book and making it available to Gnostic's to use for the purpose of finding God within. I know that I will enjoy the process, and I hope that you do as well.

The Book of Enoch that I plan to use is the translation provided by Andy McCracken on the Internet. He charged nothing for the download and I plan to charge nothing for my missives. Where I use Andy's notes, I will give him the credit. When I put my own notes down, I will identify them as such. I recommend that you google the "Book of Enoch" and download the Book for yourself. It is 160 pages in length and is one of the first entries in the google search.

I want to acknowledge Erich Von Daniken who alerted me to this important document in his book, "History is Wrong." My own preference would be to say that history is incomplete. We know much, but there are still mysteries out there that we do not know about. The Book of Enoch is a peek inside that curtain.