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The Book of Enoch: Atlantis, Nephilim & Giants | The Rogue Archeologist Pt 1

Michael Knowles spends thirty minutes working over Genesis 6 with Timothy Alberino, the author and explorer his show bills as the Rogue Archaeologist, and this page rebuilds the whole exchange in order with both voices. Alberino's case is that the four verse snippet in Genesis is an allusion the writer never bothered to explain because his audience already knew the story, and that the full version is the Book of the Watchers in First Enoch: lust as the first cause, two hundred Watchers swearing an oath of mutual imprecations on the summit of Mount Hermon, the descent, the wives, and the giants. He then runs the same skeleton through Plato's Timaeus and Critias, where Poseidon takes Cleito and fathers the ten kings of Atlantis, and argues it is a one to one match. The payoff is a definition: an ancient Hebrew demon is not a fallen angel and not Satan, it is the disembodied spirit of a dead giant, hungry with no body to feed, which is why the spirits at Gadara scream that Jesus has come to judge them before the appointed time. Knowles pushes hard on Aquinas and the incorporeality of angels, and that objection never actually gets answered. A closing section separates what is documented from what is Alberino's own reading.

Published Apr 3, 2025 30:11 video 43 min read Added Jul 25, 2026 Open on YouTube →

At a glance

Michael Knowles sits down with Timothy Alberino, the author and explorer his show bills as "the Rogue Archaeologist," and for thirty minutes they work over one problem: what actually happened in Genesis 6, and why the writer of Genesis refuses to explain it. Alberino's answer runs through the Book of Enoch, specifically the Book of the Watchers, and it ends somewhere most viewers do not expect: with a definition of the word "demon" so narrow that Satan himself does not qualify.

The through line is a chain of causes. Two hundred angelic Watchers lust after human women, swear an oath to each other on the summit of Mount Hermon, descend, take wives, and father giants. The giants die in the flood. Their spirits, belonging to neither the angelic fathers nor the human mothers, are cursed to wander the earth bodiless and starving. Those spirits, Alberino argues, and only those, are what an ancient Hebrew meant by a demon, which is why the things Jesus meets on the shore at Gadara scream that he has come to judge them before the appointed time. They know the schedule because the schedule is in First Enoch.

On the way there Alberino takes a long detour through Plato, arguing that the part of the Atlantis story nobody quotes is the beginning of it, where the gods apportion the earth and Poseidon takes a human wife. Knowles does not take any of it on faith. He presses on Thomas Aquinas and the incorporeality of angels, on canon and its absence, and on whether the Greek and the Hebrew traditions can really be collapsed into one. What follows rebuilds the conversation in order, attributing each claim to whoever made it.

Chapters

The cold open: two hundred came down (0:00)

The clip opens mid sentence, in Alberino's voice, with the sentence the whole episode is built to earn: "They descended into the plains and they chose each one one woman that they desired to wed." Then the thesis. That story is elaborated in the Book of Enoch. In fact, he says, that is where the story comes from. The little reference in Genesis is an allusion. If you want to know the full story of what the author is alluding to, you read First Enoch, specifically the Book of the Watchers.

The Golden Age, and what every culture called it (0:28)

Before Genesis, Alberino sets the frame that the rest of the conversation runs inside. The antediluvian world, the world before the flood, was considered almost universally by the primary ancient cultures around the world as the Golden Age. That specific term comes from the Greeks, he notes, but every culture has its own name for the same thing. The ancient Egyptians called it Zep Tepi, "the First Time." Same thing, same idea.

So what is the Golden Age, what is the First Time? Alberino gives it in one line. It is the time when the gods descended from heaven and co-inhabited the earth with mankind, and furthermore copulated with human women and progenerated hybrid offspring.

Genesis 6, and where the church fathers split (0:57)

Knowles pulls it back to the text they had been discussing before the clip starts. Genesis 6 is a confusing passage, he says, and the church fathers are somewhat divided on it. The sons of God looked on the daughters of men, found them to be beautiful, and, in Knowles's phrasing, "went and did the thing that men and women do."

One reading of that is demons, or angels, mating with human beings. Knowles immediately names the problem with it: to make a human being in the ordinary course of things you need two people who have bodies, not an incorporeal being and a corporeal being. But he is honest that the reading has pedigree. He credits Justin Martyr in the Second Apology for holding that it is angels and humans, and between the two of them they add Tertullian and Origen to the list. "Really a number of church fathers," Alberino says.

Then Knowles lays out the alternatives. There is the Sethite view, where the sons of God are the descendants of Seth and the daughters of men are the descendants of Cain. And there is an even more metaphorical and symbolic view, that the passage is about virtuous men being seduced by not so virtuous women, which Knowles calls, drily, "an anthropological fact of history."

Reading of "sons of God"What it makes the NephilimNamed in the conversationWhere it leaves Genesis 6
Angelic, the Watcher readingLiteral hybrid offspring of angels and women, giantsAlberino's position; Knowles credits Justin Martyr, Tertullian and OrigenRequires an outside source to explain itself, and Alberino says that source is First Enoch
SethiteOrdinary humans, the mixed line of two familiesRaised by Knowles as a standing alternativeSelf contained, no angels needed, but the giants become a puzzle
Metaphorical or symbolicNothing supernatural, a moral patternRaised by Knowles, "an anthropological fact of history"Fully naturalized, and Alberino rejects it as not what the writer is doing
Figure 1. The three readings Knowles puts on the table before Alberino answers. Knowles's own objection to the first row is mechanical rather than theological: making a human being ordinarily takes two beings with bodies. Alberino's reply is not to solve that yet, but to change the question.

Alberino's answer: they are angels (2:27)

"You've covered the bases there," Alberino says. Then he plants his flag. The biblical view, and in his phrasing the only one that makes logical sense, is that the sons of God in Genesis 6 are an angelic faction. These are angels. These are not men. They saw the daughters of men, that they were comely, they decided to take wives from among them, they copulated with them, and the production of their union was giants, the Nephilim.

Why Genesis refuses to explain itself (2:54)

And then the observation that Alberino treats as the key to the whole passage. The writer of Genesis, when he writes about the sons of God and this affair, gives you a snippet. He does not elaborate. He does not enlarge on this strange digression in the narrative. He just mentions this bizarre thing and moves on.

Knowles knows the feeling from the inside and says so. He has wanted to read the whole Bible since he was a kid, would start Genesis, not finish, start again, so he has read the book of Genesis "like a billion times." And every time you get to that part you say wait, what, hold on. Back up. We need an elaboration here.

The writer assumed you already knew (4:17)

Alberino's explanation is that the silence is not a gap, it is an assumption. He is totally persuaded that the writer of Genesis does not elaborate because the story was already well known. He is assuming his audience already knows what he is talking about, because this was one of the most monumental events that has ever happened.

Knowles supplies the parallel from the other end of the canon. You see the same move in the New Testament, where a writer will name someone in passing, "so and so the daughter of so and so," or the son of so and so, who saw this happen, and then just a little bit, and anyway, we all know. "You all know Johnny, right." That is the register. The writer of Genesis assumes his audience is conversant with the larger narrative that expands on the mention of the sons of God. There was no need to go back into all the details.

Knowles pushes back: angels have no bodies (4:46)

Knowles will not let the mechanics go, and this is the best pressure he applies in the whole segment. He lays out the traditional Christian understanding of an angel, which he says he is persuaded by. An angel is incorporeal. One can go further: St Thomas Aquinas describes angels as being, in a way, unique species. There are choirs of angels, there is a hierarchy of angels, but they do not communicate by speaking, for instance, because they do not have vocal cords and mouths. Angels do interact with human beings in mystical and interesting ways, but angels in themselves do not have bodies.

Then he builds the ladder. Human beings have bodies and rational souls. We have intellect, we have flesh, we have will. Below us are the lower animals, which have bodies and instinct and appetite but no intellect and no will. So we are a middle ground, a meeting point. We have the reason, the intellect and the will, albeit greatly degraded, of an angel, and we have the body of an animal.

So, Knowles asks: how does an incorporeal being create a child with a corporeal being? Or do you have a different view of angels?

Knowles's ladder, from Aquinas Angel intellect · will · no body · no vocal cords each one arguably its own species Human intellect · will · flesh · rational soul the reason of an angel, greatly degraded Animal instinct · appetite · body no intellect, no will Genesis 6 how does the top tier father a child on the middle one? the meeting point sits above this line
Figure 2. Knowles's objection is structural, not squeamish. On the Thomistic account the angel is defined by what it lacks, a body, and reproduction is the one act that requires exactly the thing angels do not have. Alberino never answers the mechanism directly in this clip. He answers a prior question instead.

"Back up." The first cause is lust (5:41)

Alberino's move is to refuse the mechanism question and go upstream. "I think we need to back up a little bit," he says, "because we have to deal with what I call the first cause."

Assume for a moment that Genesis 6 is angels. They are looking down at the daughters of men. They are lusting after them, desiring to take them as wives and to copulate with them. What is the first cause here? Lust. That is the thing to explain first, and he will come back to it.

Enoch at Qumran, and quoted verbatim in Jude (6:10)

To explain why he is confident the Genesis audience knew the story, he turns to the text itself. The Book of Enoch was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. And the Book of Enoch is quoted verbatim in the New Testament, in the book of Jude.

Knowles handles the canon question cleanly and without defensiveness. It is considered an apocryphal book, a non canonical book. It is not included in any canon of the Bible that we are familiar with, certainly not in the history of the church making ecumenical council formal decrees. But it has been around.

Ethiopia kept the book (6:37)

Except in Ethiopia. Both of them say it at once. In Ethiopia, Alberino says, both the Beta Israel Jews, the ancient Jewish community, and the Tewahedo Orthodox Christians long ago incorporated and preserved the Book of Enoch in their canon.

Many mansions, and the other allusions (7:08)

Knowles asks how many New Testament references there are, and admits he did not know there were any. Alberino says there are many allusions. His example: when Jesus says in my father's house are many mansions, where does that come from? The Book of Enoch.

"I've never read the Book of Enoch," Knowles says.

There are many, many allusions, Alberino repeats, but in Jude it is verbatim. Jude says that Enoch, the seventh from Adam, prophesied saying, and then, in Alberino's words, "copy paste from First Enoch, paste into his epistle."

His conclusion from that is sweeping and he states it as such. The early church, the church fathers, the disciples of Christ, Christ himself, and all of the writers of the Bible were conversant with the Book of Enoch. There is no question. In fact, he says, if you were living in first century Jerusalem before it was destroyed by the Romans, and you walked into the temple during the time of Christ, into the synagogue, you would find in the scriptorium where all the sacred scrolls are kept a manuscript representative of what today we call First Enoch, Ethiopic Enoch.

Knowles's position: not canon, still useful (8:03)

Knowles states his own view carefully, and it is the most interesting thing he says about canon. As someone who is, in his words, totally innocent of the Book of Enoch, having never read it, he has no strong opinions about whether it was some huge mistake not to include it in the canon. He does not think there were mistakes in the canon.

Alberino cuts in that he is not arguing it was a mistake either.

Knowles finishes the thought with an analogy that gives Alberino everything he needs. The Protoevangelium of James, for instance, is an edifying work to read and can inform us. It is useful. Maybe it is not canon, but it is useful. And that, he says, seems to be the view Alberino is taking.

"That is my view," Alberino says.

There is not one Book of Enoch (8:31)

Before returning to the first cause, Alberino stops to make a distinction he clearly thinks most people skip. First Enoch is very complex, and it is not one book. There are three different books of Enoch, and only one of them, in portions, was written before Christ. That is the one he is interested in.

Within First Enoch, the oldest portions are the Book of the Watchers and the Book of Parables, and Alberino says both were most certainly written before Christ.

The Son of Man prophecies, and the dating question (9:30)

Why does the dating matter so much to him? Because some of the most extraordinary, astounding eschatological prophecies pertaining to the Son of Man, which is the title Jesus used most often when speaking of himself, are in the Parables in First Enoch. In his words, "absolutely stunningly accurate prophecies pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth, written before Christ."

Knowles, to his credit, asks the right follow up immediately: is there any dispute over the dating of the first book of Enoch?

Alberino's answer is that most scholars, in fact almost universally, date the earliest portions of Enoch to sometime around 300 BC. He grants that it is a complicated document because it is a compilation of texts written by various authors. He is most interested in the first two sections, the Book of the Watchers and the Parables, precisely because they are dated to before the birth of Christ.

The Book of the Watchers laid next to Genesis 6 (10:26)

Now he returns to the point he opened on. You have that snippet in Genesis. That story is elaborated in the Book of Enoch. In fact that is where the story comes from. If you want the full story of what the author is alluding to, you read First Enoch, specifically the Book of the Watchers, the first section, and it tells you what Alberino calls "the Enochian tale."

The sons of God, designated as Watchers in First Enoch, are looking down. They see the daughters of men. And here Alberino makes his textual argument concrete. It is basically copy paste into Genesis, he says, and intriguingly enough in R. H. Charles's translation it is the same verses as Genesis 6, one through four. In Genesis it reads "the sons of God." In the Book of Enoch it is "the angels." And, he adds, that is the way the Septuagint renders Genesis as well: the angels are looking down at the daughters of men, that they are fair, that they are beautiful, and they lust.

How does a bodiless being lust? (11:24)

"Okay, so that's why I told you to back up," Alberino says. He calls it the first cause of the angels' sin, in this particular case the Watchers' rebellion, and the first cause is lust. Then he throws Knowles's own question back in a sharper form: how do you explain lust for spiritual beings who do not have bodies? How do you explain incorporeal beings having sexual impulses?

Knowles interjects with a genuinely useful clarification before they go on. This would not be the first sin the angels committed, would it, given the rebellion of the angels and the rebellion of Satan. No, Alberino says. This particular incident was the catalyst for what they were about to do. And Knowles, enjoying himself, restates the question in mock diplomatic register: how does an incorporeal being become "too messianic," to use a diplomatic word, "for fair looking ladies on the ground."

Two hundred Watchers on the summit of Mount Hermon (12:24)

Here Alberino tells the sequence straight out of First Enoch, and it is the spine of everything that follows.

According to First Enoch, and this is the elaboration of the Genesis 6 reference, the angels do not merely lust after these women. They are determined to take them as their wives and procreate offspring with them. So lust is the first cause. Then two hundred Watchers descend to the earth on the summit of Mount Hermon.

On that summit they bind themselves by an oath of mutual imprecations. Alberino translates it: all for one, one for all, we are all in this together. They knew it was a great sin, but they were going to accept the consequences together, whatever befell. And that, he says, is why Mount Hermon has been known since time immemorial as the mountain of oath.

Then they descended into the plains, and they chose each one one woman, one maiden, that they desired to wed. The line the clip opened on.

Alberino's chain, from First Enoch FIRST CAUSE Lust bodiless beings, bodily desire MOUNT HERMON Oath of mutual imprecations "the mountain of oath" DESCENT 200 Watchers come down into the plains

MARRIAGE Each takes one wife one woman, one maiden OFFSPRING The Nephilim giants, demigods THE FLOOD The giants die the Golden Age ends

THE JUDGMENT Spirits cursed to wander neither of their angelic fathers nor of their human mothers THE GOSPELS Unclean spirits hungry, thirsty, no flesh, so they possess bodies THE CLOCK Until the end of the age "before the appointed time" Gadara, Mark 5

amber: what the Watchers did · blue: what it produced and what is still running Alberino's claim is that Genesis gives you only the top row, and only in outline. Everything below the first row comes from First Enoch, and the Gospels assume it.
Figure 3. The argument as a single chain. It is worth noticing what Alberino is actually doing here: he never answers Knowles's mechanism question about angelic bodies. Instead he shows that if you grant the chain, the last box explains a scene in Mark 5 that otherwise has no explanation. The payoff is at the end, not the beginning.

Giants born, and the Hebraic golden age (13:22)

They copulated with these women, the women conceived, and they gave birth to giants. Demigods, in Alberino's word, the offspring of God and man.

And this, he says, is the Hebraic cosmological paradigm of the antediluvian world. This is the Hebraic paradigm of the golden age, of Zep Tepi. Because the ancient Mesopotamians, the ancient Egyptians, the Greeks, the Romans and all the rest of them believed the very same thing occurred: the gods descended to the earth, and they copulated with human women.

Atlantis, and the part of Plato nobody quotes (13:50)

"I mean, look at Atlantis," Alberino says, and this is the section that gives the video its title.

Everybody knows about the city of Atlantis and the legend of Atlantis. But very few people, he argues, pay attention to what Plato actually writes in the Timaeus and Critias dialogues. Plato has Solon of Athens travel to Egypt, where he is informed by the priests of Sais about the extraordinary past of the Athenians that Solon himself is unaware of. Part of that past involves an epic conflict with Atlantis and the Atlanteans, and the priests tell him the whole story.

Knowles cannot resist the obvious bit. Atlantis was this advanced ancient city, sure. "It's a great resort in the Caribbean, right?" That as well, yes. It still exists today in a slightly degraded form. Perfectly pleasant.

Poseidon, Cleito, and the ten kings (15:13)

Then Alberino delivers the actual point. Everyone knows Atlantis was an advanced civilization destroyed in a day and a night of cataclysm. But Plato has the priest of Sais tell Solon the full story, and what is the beginning of the story of Atlantis?

The beginning is that the gods who descended to the earth are apportioning the earth among themselves. They are creating an empire and dividing up their kingdoms. Poseidon, for his lot, got the region that would become Atlantis. So what does he do? He builds Atlantis. He raises up an island out of the sea, which is ultimately going to be the home of the city.

But during or after this, he becomes enamored of a human woman named Cleito. He takes her as his wife, he copulates with her, and she gives birth to five sets of twin sons who become the ten kings of Atlantis. And these, Alberino says, are giants. Atlas, for example, is the chief among them.

"So what do we see here? Well, this is a one to one match with the Book of Enoch and with Genesis 6, is it not? It's the gods descending to the earth, taking human women as their wives, having intercourse with them, and progenerating."

The war with Athens, and a cataclysm on a clock (16:17)

Alberino calls this the testimony of our ancient ancestors, and keeps going with the Egyptian account. The Atlantean empire became expansionary. They became aggressive, they went on conquest, and they steamrolled everybody they encountered, until they encountered the Athenians, who were the only faction able to resist them. The two are locked into this epic war, the Atlanteans against the Athenians. And then, cataclysm.

The cataclysm destroys Atlantis and everyone else. Not just Atlantis. It is global. And the Egyptians kept record of it, and they told Solon that it was not the only one. There have been many cataclysms, because they believed the cataclysm was cyclic. And that, Alberino says, is why there is a celestial timepiece, the Zodiac, the primary function of which is to keep track of when the cataclysm is going to occur again.

The same story, four traditionsGenesis 6First Enoch, Book of the WatchersPlato's Atlantis
Who descendsThe sons of GodTwo hundred Watchers, named as angelsThe gods, apportioning the earth among themselves
WhereNot statedThe summit of Mount Hermon, then the plainsPoseidon's allotted region, an island raised from the sea
The womenThe daughters of menEach Watcher chooses one maiden to wedA human woman named Cleito
The offspringThe Nephilim, "mighty men of old"Giants, demigodsFive sets of twin sons, the ten kings, Atlas chief among them
Name for the eraThe world before the floodThe antediluvian worldThe Greek Golden Age; Egyptian Zep Tepi, "the First Time"
How it endsThe floodJudgment, and the floodDestroyed in a day and a night, one of many recurring global cataclysms
Alberino's verdictOne to one match, because all of them descend from a single original narrative carried out of the flood by Noah and his sons
Figure 4. The comparison Alberino builds across the middle of the interview, assembled from the details he actually cites. His argument is not that the Greeks copied the Hebrews or the reverse. It is that the details drift, the names change, the languages differ, and the skeleton stays.

Baalbek, and the claim Alberino refuses to make (17:15)

This is the most careful thing Alberino says in the whole thirty minutes, and it is worth quoting nearly whole. "I'm not saying, by the way, that that means that the pyramids were built by giants or anything like that. I don't want people to think that. I don't know who built the Great Pyramids."

What he does believe is that many of the extraordinary megalithic sites around the world, and he names Baalbek in Lebanon, were built in the age before the flood, and that it had something to do with the knowledge of the gods who descended to the earth. "That's what the ancients say. That's what they all say."

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Knowles adds the personal note. He is on the road a lot right now, and one of the biggest things he misses, other than his wife and kids, is the Good Ranchers at home.

"I basically think it's largely demons" (19:10)

Back from the break, Knowles contributes a story rather than an argument, and it turns the conversation toward its real subject. One of his most intelligent friends, he says, very well grounded, extraordinarily educated, very high IQ, a very serious person, has told him for years: when I think of these ancient structures and all these debates over how they were built, I basically think it is largely demons.

"He says it with a totally straight face. He means it. He's not joking around." And that, Knowles says, sounds kind of like what Alberino is saying.

A quarrel with the word demon (19:40)

"Well, I'm going to quarrel with the term demons a little bit here."

This is the hinge of the second half. We have a very Western perspective of angels and demons, Alberino says. We have a demonology that comes from Western tradition and that is not necessarily concordant with ancient Hebraic cosmology. If you asked an ancient Hebrew, or the writers of the Old Testament, what a demon was, they would give a very different answer than we would.

The Greek daimon, and eudaimonia (20:08)

Knowles gets there first from the Greek side, and Alberino tells him it is a very good point. Think of the word daimon, Knowles says, and even the phrase for happiness, eudaimonia. It is a kind of spirit.

Alberino picks it up and runs. The Greeks believed specifically that the daimon was a spirit, a disembodied spirit of a being who had lived in the world before the flood. That is what the daimon was. They died in the Golden Age, and their spirits persisted in the earth after the flood in the form of daimones.

"And guess what. That's the Hebraic view."

Athens and Jerusalem were never that far apart (21:04)

Knowles stops him to flag what has just happened, and this is the best editorial beat in the interview. He says he loves the point Alberino is making, which is more ambitious and audacious than many viewers are even noticing. There is an idea we all accept as a matter of course, that our civilization comes from the melding of Greece and Jerusalem, two totally different ways of viewing the world with totally different perspectives. But it is overly simplistic to suggest that the Greeks had no sense of the Hebraic view and the Hebrews had no sense of the Greek view. "Come on, guys, it's pretty close together." You see harmonies and echoes.

Alberino agrees and states the stronger version. There is a kind of unified cosmology. They are all inheriting the same tradition. That tradition becomes variegated, taking on the idiosyncrasies of these particular cultures as they develop, but there is a source.

One source, and his name is Noah (22:02)

There is a source to the narrative of the flood, one particular source, and Alberino says that source is Noah and his sons. That story is then taken up by the ancient Mesopotamians, the ancient Sumerians, who he thinks are the civilization that ultimately grew out of Noah and his sons. Then it changes. The names change, people speak different languages, the details get jumbled, and you get stories with similar elements. They have the foundational elements, the flood myths, and they have their own idiosyncrasies as well. That is precisely because all of these stories are founded in the same original narrative.

"So then what's the true story?" Knowles asks. "What have we gotten wrong about demons?"

What the West made the word demon mean (22:29)

The Western perspective, Alberino says, is that we call anything demonic a demon. Anything scary or grotesque, we would call a demon. Or a bad angel, or an angel that rebels. We lump all of that together under the one term. So in the Western mind a demon is basically a boogeyman. Anything that is evil and malevolent supernaturalism, that is all demon.

The Hebrew definition: the disembodied spirit of a giant (23:25)

In ancient Hebrew cosmology they were much more narrow in their definition. To them a demon was something very, very specific. A demon was the disembodied spirit of a giant, a giant that died in the antediluvian world before the flood.

And this, he stresses, derives from the Book of Enoch. It is a judgment. God judges them, because they are neither holy of their fathers, their angelic fathers, nor of their human mothers. So when they die they are cursed to wander the earth as bodyless vagabonds. They are going to be hungry. They are going to be thirsty. Presumably they are going to have all the desires of the flesh, but no bodies through which to fulfill those desires, no way to satiate them. That was the curse placed on them by God, according to the Book of Enoch, and according to ancient Hebrew cosmology this, and only this, is the origin of a demon and is what a demon is.

WESTERN, roughly medieval onward ANCIENT HEBRAIC, per Alberino "demon" a boogeyman category, everything evil goes in Fallen angels who rebelled Satan / Lucifer Anything grotesque or frightening Any malevolent supernaturalism The unclean spirits of the Gospels "demon" one category, and no others The disembodied spirit of a Nephilim giant who died before the flood OUTSIDE THE DEFINITION The insubordinate sons of God, expelled Satan himself The Watchers, the fathers of the giants

Alberino: "They're not distinct. They're not technically demons."

Figure 5. The narrowing that gives the second half of the interview its punch. On Alberino's reading the fallen angels are real and Satan is real, they are simply not what the word demon denotes. The demons are the orphaned half human dead, which is why they want bodies specifically.

Then what is Satan? (24:21)

Knowles asks the obvious question, and does it with a joke. What about when Lucifer rebels, Satan falls like lightning and leads all the bad angels who rebelled against God, and there is a great battle and they lose, "spoiler alert," and St Michael the Archangel wins. God wins. He always wins. What about them?

That is before, Alberino says. Those are the insubordinate sons of God, the defected sons of God. These were angelic beings who were loyal to the king at one time but rebelled, became disloyal, and were expelled. That is what they are. But they are not distinct, they are not technically demons. A demon is specifically the disembodied spirit of Nephilim.

Barbossa and the apple (25:17)

Alberino reaches for a pop culture illustration and it lands better than it has any right to. The judgment on the giants, the offspring of the Watchers, is very much like the plot of Pirates of the Caribbean, the first one. You had Barbossa and his crew, they had the cursed gold, which Alberino calls Mayan and the film calls Aztec, and the curse meant they were living forever, they were eternal, but they could not satisfy any of the desires of their flesh.

The illustration is Barbossa wanting to bite the apple. He bites it and the moon comes out and you see that he is just a skeleton. There is nowhere for the food to go. He has no tongue, he has no stomach. All he wants is to be able to satisfy his hunger, to be able to bite that apple. That, Alberino says, perfectly illustrates the nature of a demon according to ancient Hebrew cosmology.

So you have the disembodied spirits of the giants persisting in the world as vagabond wraiths. That is their curse. Wandering the earth hungry, thirsty, presumably with all the desires of the flesh but with no flesh through which to fulfill them. "That's a very torturous existence."

The curse has a clock on it (26:13)

Before moving to the New Testament, Alberino adds the detail that makes the ending work. Part of the curse is that God tells them they will be in this condition until the end of the age, when the age is wholly consummated and the great judge appears. At that time they will be judged with finality. But until that time, they are cursed to wander the earth in this miserable state.

Jesus and the unclean spirits (26:40)

Fast forward to the New Testament. Jesus is walking in Galilee, walking all over Judea. And what is he encountering? These things called unclean spirits.

Alberino ties the term back to the source. Part of the Enochian judgment is God saying: evil spirits, unclean spirits, you shall be called. Fast forward, and that is precisely the vocabulary the Gospels use.

And what are those spirits doing? Inhabiting the bodies of human beings. When they get inside the body of a human being it manifests as something like epilepsy. The person is rolling around, foaming at the mouth, throwing themselves into the fire, screaming at the top of their lungs. And Jesus would cast these demons out, and they were called unclean spirits.

The Gadarene demoniac (27:36)

There is a particular occasion when Jesus is walking on the shores of Gadara. This is the Gadarene, or Gerasene, demoniac. The man comes running up to Jesus, and he is full of a legion of demons. He is full of all kinds of demons.

Then the joke of the segment, which lands between them and gets a "modern analog, exactly, precisely right" in reply: "His pronouns were the plural pronouns. It was them."

"Why have you come before the appointed time?" (28:29)

The man sees Jesus coming and throws himself at his feet. And the demons cry out: what have we to do with you, O Son of God? We know who you are. You Son of God, why have you come to judge us before the appointed time?

"So what do we have here?" Alberino asks. "We have a confirmation of the Book of Enoch."

The reasoning is tight, and it is the payoff of everything before it. The disembodied spirits of the Nephilim have no bodies of their own, so what do they want? Bodies. So they inhabit the bodies of human beings, and through the bodies of the people they possess they attempt to satiate desires that are otherwise insatiable. And then they see, walking on the shore at Gadara, the great judge. But wait a minute. It is not time yet. According to the Book of Enoch, it is not the end of the age yet. That is why they cry out, why have you come to judge us before the appointed time. The time had not yet come, and they knew it.

There, Alberino says, is a confirmation of the cosmology that comes from First Enoch, in an encounter that Jesus has with a human being possessed by disembodied spirits.

The Greeks, again, and the same tradition (29:29)

The clip closes where the definition started. That is the very narrow definition of what a demon is. And as he illustrated before, it is the same idea to the Greeks. They believed the daimones were the disembodied spirits of people who lived in the world before the flood, in the Golden Age.

"It's the same. It's basically the same tradition."

Who the Rogue Archaeologist is

The show never gives the guest a formal introduction inside this clip, so here it is. "The Rogue Archaeologist" is Timothy Alberino, an author, lecturer and explorer based in Bozeman, Montana, with his wife and five sons. At eighteen he moved to the Peruvian Amazon, living in Tarapoto and along the river, and he has spent the decades since investigating alternative history, megalithic sites, the legends of ancient giants, and the UFO phenomenon.

He is not a credentialed academic archaeologist, and neither he nor the show pretends otherwise. "Rogue" is doing real work in that title.

Where this sits in the series

This thirty minute video is Part 1 of a clipped series cut from a longer conversation, and the pieces are worth knowing about because the full argument is spread across them.

Knowles and Alberino have also done a separate exchange on abductions, Are Alien Abductions Real? Michael Knowles vs The Rogue Archaeologist, where Knowles is more openly the skeptic.

Best quotes

"That little reference in Genesis, if you want to know the full story of what the author is alluding to, you read First Enoch, specifically the Book of the Watchers." (0:00, Alberino)

"The writer of Genesis is assuming that his audience is conversant with the larger narrative." (4:17, Alberino)

"Every time you get to that you say, wait, what, hold on. Just what was that part about? Hold on. Back up. We need an elaboration." (3:22, Knowles)

"How do you explain lust for spiritual beings who don't have bodies? How do you explain incorporeal beings having sexual impulses?" (11:24, Alberino)

"They bind themselves by an oath of mutual imprecations. In other words, all for one, one for all, we're all in this together. They knew it was a great sin, but they were going to accept the consequences together." (12:51, Alberino)

"That's why Mount Hermon has been known since time immemorial as the mountain of oath." (12:51, Alberino)

"It's a great resort in the Caribbean, right? It still exists today in a slightly degraded form. Perfectly pleasant." (14:18, Knowles, on Atlantis)

"This is a one to one match with the Book of Enoch and with Genesis 6, is it not?" (15:40, Alberino)

"I'm not saying that means the pyramids were built by giants or anything like that. I don't want people to think that. I don't know who built the Great Pyramids." (17:15, Alberino)

"One of my most intelligent friends, very well grounded, extraordinarily educated, very high IQ, very serious person, has told me for years, when I think of these ancient structures, I basically think it's largely demons. He says it with a totally straight face. He means it." (19:10, Knowles)

"Come on, guys, it's pretty close together." (21:34, Knowles, on Athens and Jerusalem)

"There's a source to the narrative of the flood. There's one particular source, and I would say that source is Noah and his sons." (22:02, Alberino)

"A demon was the disembodied spirit of a giant, a giant that died in the antediluvian world before the flood." (23:25, Alberino)

"They're going to be hungry, they're going to be thirsty, presumably they're going to have all the desires of the flesh, but no bodies through which to fulfill those desires." (23:52, Alberino)

"They lose, spoiler alert, and St Michael the Archangel wins. God wins. He always wins." (24:21, Knowles)

"All he wants is to be able to satisfy his hunger, to be able to bite that apple. That perfectly illustrates the nature of a demon according to ancient Hebrew cosmology." (25:45, Alberino)

"What have we to do with you, O Son of God? We know who you are. Why have you come to judge us before the appointed time?" (28:03, Alberino, quoting the demons at Gadara)

"It's the same. It's basically the same tradition." (29:29, Alberino, closing line)

Where it stands

Everything above is the conversation as the two men had it. This section is separate on purpose: what in it is documented, what is a live scholarly argument, and what is Alberino's own reading.

Solidly documented. Jude 14 and 15 really does quote 1 Enoch 1:9 close to verbatim. Aramaic fragments of 1 Enoch really were found in the Qumran caves, so the text really was circulating in Judea before Christ. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church really does hold it as canon, and it survives complete only in Geʽez. The Mount Hermon oath, the two hundred Watchers, and the "mountain of oath" etymology are all in the Book of the Watchers as he tells them. Most importantly for his argument, the claim that demons are the spirits of the dead giants is not Alberino's invention. It is what 1 Enoch 15 actually says, and the Book of Jubilees agrees. He is reading the text correctly, not stretching it.

The Atlantis material is likewise really in Plato. The priests at Sais, the gods apportioning the earth by lot, Poseidon and Cleito, the five pairs of twin sons with Atlas as eldest, the war with ancient Athens, the destruction in a single day and night, and the speech about recurring catastrophes are all in the Timaeus and Critias. Anyone who has only met Atlantis through pop culture will genuinely learn something here.

Where scholars would push. Alberino says the earliest parts of 1 Enoch date to around 300 BC, and for the Book of the Watchers that matches the mainstream view. The Book of Parables is the harder case, and it is the section carrying the Son of Man prophecies he calls stunningly accurate. It is the one part of 1 Enoch with no fragments at Qumran. Since J. T. Milik's late dating was rejected, the consensus has settled on a Jewish work of roughly the turn of the era, probably before AD 70. That is defensible as pre Christian, but "most certainly written before Christ" is firmer than the evidence is.

His Septuagint point is half right in an interesting way. Some Greek manuscripts at Genesis 6:2, notably Codex Alexandrinus, do read "angels of God," but Codex Vaticanus reads "sons of God." The angelic reading is in the manuscript tradition, not uniformly across it.

On the church fathers, Alberino's reading is the older one and Knowles's framing is fair. Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Irenaeus and Clement of Alexandria all read Genesis 6 as angels. The Sethite reading rises later with Julius Africanus, John Chrysostom and Augustine in City of God book 15, and then dominates the West. So "the only one that makes logical sense" is a rhetorical overreach, but "the oldest attested one" would have been simply true, and it is the stronger claim anyway.

The many mansions attribution is the weakest link he offers. 1 Enoch 39 does describe dwelling places of the righteous, and the resonance is real, but a direct source relationship for John 14:2 is an argument rather than an established fact.

Where it is his own reading. Plato's ten kings of Atlantis are never called giants in the text. That is Alberino's gloss, imported from the Nephilim material. Whether Zep Tepi maps one to one onto the Greek Golden Age is an interpretive move, not a documented equivalence. And most classicists read the Atlantis story as a philosophical invention Plato built to dramatize his politics rather than as Egyptian temple history, which is the reading Alberino sets aside without arguing against it.

Interestingly, his best Greek argument is one he does not cite. The idea that the daimones are the spirits of the golden race of men who died is not a general impression, it is specifically Hesiod, Works and Days lines 109 to 126. Naming it would have made his parallel considerably harder to wave off.

On Baalbek, the stones are as extraordinary as he says. The trilithon blocks run to roughly 800 tons and the unfinished stones in the nearby quarry are larger still, over 1,000 tons. Mainstream archaeology dates the podium to Roman construction in the first century AD, and has demonstrated Roman capacity to move blocks at this scale. A pre flood date for the site is Alberino's claim, not a finding.

Finally, the format. This is thirty minutes cut out of a two hour seventeen minute conversation, so both men are compressing. Knowles is a genuinely engaged interlocutor here rather than a nodding host, and his angelology objection at 4:46 is the sharpest thing anyone says. It also goes unanswered. Alberino replaces the mechanism question with a motive question, "the first cause is lust," and the conversation moves on. If you want to know how a bodiless being fathers a child, this video does not tell you, and it is honest enough not to pretend it does.

Resources

The people

Alberino's own work

The rest of this series

Primary texts named in the conversation

People, places and terms

Sponsor read in the video

Full transcript
they descended into the Plains and they chose each one one woman that they desired to Wed that story is elaborated in The Book of Enoch in fact that's where the story comes from is the Book of Enoch that little reference in Genesis if you want to know the the full story of what the author is alluding to you read first Enoch specifically the book of the Watchers the anti-d deluvian world was considered again almost universally by the primary ancient cultures around the world as the Golden Age of course this is a term that comes from the Greeks and they all have their own terms for it for example the ancient Egyptians refer to it as zepe the first time it's the same thing it's the same idea so what is the Golden Age what is the first time this is the time when the gods descended from heaven and and co-inhabit the Earth with Mankind and furthermore copulated with human women and progenerate hybrid Offspring so I'm thinking now we were just talking about the Book of Genesis of Genesis 6 Genesis 6 a confusing passage where the the church fathers are somewhat divided on it you know one explanation of uh Genesis 6 the sons of God looked on the daughters of men and found them to be beautiful and were you know went and did the thing that men and women do uh that one reading of that is it's demons or something Angels or demons uh mating with human beings one issue with that of course is that to make a human being in the ordinary course of things you need two people that have bodies not not an incorporeal being and a COR corporeal being uh however this is I think Justin Martyr in the in the second apology says that it's angels and humans right uh though there is some tulan tulan yeah yeah really a number of of church fathers early Christi Orin yeah now but there is some disagreement one view is the sethite view that the sons of God refer to the descendants of Seth and the daughters of man refer to the descendants of Cain and then if you were to take an even more metaphorical and symbolic view it's this notion that virtuous men are seduced by not so virtuous women which is an anthropological fact of history but your view is no you've covered the basis there so I would say the biblical View and the only one that makes logical sense is that the sons of God in Genesis 6 are an Angelic faction these are angels these are not men the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were comely and they decided to take wives from among the daughters of men and they copulated with them and and the production of their Union was Giants the Nephilim see that that story that's found in Genesis 6 the the writer of Genesis when he's writing about the sons of God and and this this affair and it's it's just a little snippet yeah yeah he does not elaborate he doesn't enlarge on this this strange digression in the Genesis narrative it's just he just mentions this bizarre thing you know I I I've started to to read the Bible since I was a kid I got want to read the whole Bible and but I I wouldn't finish it often so I would start it again eventually I say okay I'm going to start again so I've read the book of Genesis like a billion times or something and you know every time you get to that you say wait what hold on just what was that part about hold on that's right back up we need an elaboration that well the thing is that the that I'm totally persuaded that the the writer of Genesis as he's writing about the sons of God this bizarre Affair he's not elaborating on it because the story is already well known huh he's just assuming that he's assuming that the audience already knows what he's talking about because this was one of the most Monumental events that's ever happened even you see this in the New Testament when uh specific people who were either a at the time of the writing or who had been alive within living memory they'll say yeah you know so and so the daughter of so and so or the son of so and so yeah he saw this happen here was just a little bit you know anyway we all know right you all know Johnny righta okay so you're saying that this is happening in the Book of Genesis like yeah of course we all know the writer of Genesis is assuming that the that his audience is conversant with the larger narrative that ex that expands on that on on the mention of the sons of God on on the writer of Genesis um illusion to that story the audience already knew the the whole story so he didn't have to repeat it there was no need to go back into all the details now two questions then one how does at least the traditional Christian understanding of what an angel is which I'm persuaded by is that an angel is incorporeal and one can go further you know St Thomas aquinus describes angels as as being in a way unique species that are uh we have choirs of Angels We Have hierarchy of angels but uh they don't they don't communicate by speaking for instance because they don't have vocal cords and mouths there now Angels do interact with human beings in mystical and interesting ways but angels in themselves don't have bodies human beings do have bodies and rational Souls we have intellect and we have flesh and we have will and then there are the lower animals who have bodies and they have Instinct and they have appetite but they don't have intellect and will so we're kind of this this Middle Ground we've got we've got the reason the intellect and the will albeit greatly degraded of an Angel but we got the body of an animal and we're kind of this meeting point so how does an incorporeal being create a child with a corporeal being or do you have a different view of angels I think we need to back up a little bit because we have to deal with what I call the first cause so let's assume for a moment that Genesis 6 is angels and they're looking down at the daughters of men and and they're lusting after them yeah they're Desiring to to take them as wives and to copulate with them to have intercourse with them yeah so what's the first cause here lust yeah in fact when I was talking about the elaboration of that story why the writer of Genesis didn't bother to elaborate on it is because it was well known to the to the ancient Hebrews yeah in The Book of Enoch which was found among the de the Dead Sea Scrolls The Book of Enoch is actually quoted verbatim in the New Testament the book of Jude verbatim right so it's considered an apocryphal book or non-canonical book it's not included in any Canon of the Bible that we're familiar with certainly not in the history of the church making you know ecumenical council formal decrees but it has been around except for in Ethiopia in Ethiopia in Ethiopia both the both the um the better Israel Jews the ancient Jewish community and the Taho Orthodox Christians long ago Incorporated and preserved The Book of Enoch in their Canon and you say there there are references it would seem in the New Testament so many what is I didn't know there are Illusions there are many Illusions to the Book of Enoch for example when Jesus says in my house in my father's house are many mansions well where do that come from The Book of Enoch I've never read The Book of Enoch there are many many Illusions but then as I said in Jude it's verbatim and Jude says that this that Enoch the seventh from Adam prophesied saying and then copy paste copy from first Enoch paste into the into his epistle so uh they were conversant the early church the church fathers the Disciples of Christ Christ himself and all of the writers of of the Bible all of them were conversant with the Book of Enoch there's no question in fact I believe that if you would have if you were living in in first century uh Jerusalem before it was destroyed by the Romans you and if you to walk into the temple during the time of Christ into the synagogue I think you would find in the scriptorium where all of the Sacred scrolls are held are kept you would find a manuscript that was reflective representative of what today we call First Enoch ethiopic Enoch I would even say uh as someone who is totally innocent of the Book of Enoch I've never read it I have no strong opinions of whether it was some huge mistake not to include it in the Canon uh I don't think there were mistakes in the the can and I'm not arguing that it was by exactly my is I think that the Proto evangelium of James for instance is an edifying work to read and can inform us it's useful it's maybe it's not canon but it's useful and so that that seems to be kind of the view that you're taking well I will say this and I that is my view but I will say this I'll add that in the Book of Enoch see The Book of Enoch first Enoch is very complex and we're going to get back to what I called the first cause in a minute with Enoch but but the Book of Enoch is very complex first Enoch there are three different books of Enoch only one of them portions of it were written before Christ that's the one I'm interested in first Enoch there's second Enoch which is called the slavonic Enoch and third Enoch which is called the Hebrew Enoch first Enoch is known as the Ethiopian Enoch because the Ethiopians preserved it first Enoch the oldest portions of first Enoch namely the book of the Watchers and the Book of Parables were most certainly written before Christ why is this important because some of the most extraordinary astounding ological prophecies prophecies pertaining to the son of man which is the title that Jesus used most often when speaking of himself are in the parables in first Enoch I mean absolutely stunningly accurate prophecies pertaining to Jesus of Nazareth written before Christ is there is there any dispute over the dating of the First Book of Enoch most Scholars most Scholars will date in fact almost universally Scholars date the earliest portions of Enoch to sometime around 300 BC now there are it's a complicated document because it's it's it's a compilation of texts written by various authors I'm most interested in the in the first two sections of first Enoch which are the book of the Watchers and The Parables precisely because they're dated to before the birth of Christ and my whole point in bringing up Enoch was you have that snippet in Genesis yeah well that that that story is book of the Watchers the first section and it tells you this extraordinary narrative I mean it's it's what I call the anian tale uh and about the sons of God of the which are designated as Watchers in first Enoch that they that they that they're looking down they're seeing the daughters of men and it's basically almost copy paste into Genesis the the Genesis 6 reference and and intriguingly enough in RH Charles uh translation it's it's the same verses Genesis 6 uh one through whatever it is four I think the sons of God but in the Book of Enoch it's it's the angels and by the way that's the way the septu agent R renders it as well Genesis the angels are looking down at the daughters of men that they're fair that they're beautiful and they lust okay so that's why I told you to back up I call that the first cause of the Angel's sin in this particular case the Watchers Rebellion the first cause is lust how do you explain Lust For for Spiritual Beings who don't have bodies how do you explain incorporeal beings having having sexual impulses when you that is a very good question but just before we get to it you you you wouldn't say this is the first sin that the Angels committed because the the rebellion of the Angels the rebellion of Satan and no in particular this particular incident this was the Catalyst for what they were about to do yeah so how does an incorporeal being you know uh become too messent to use a diplomatic word for fairl looking ladies on the ground that's right and not only do these angels according to First Enoch again which is the which is the elaboration of the Genesis 6 reference not only do they lust after these women they are determined to take them as their wives and procreate Offspring with them so they lust that's the first cause yeah then they descend to the Earth according to First Enoch 200 Watchers descend to the Earth on the summit of Mount Hermon and mount hermon's very interesting in the Bible they descend to the summit of Mount Hermon they bind themselves by an oath of mutual imprecations in other words all for one one for all we're all in this together they knew it was a great sin but they were going to they were going to accept the consequences together what whatever Beall and then they that's why the by the way the Mount Hermon has been known since time immemorial as the mountain of oath and then they descended into the PLS and they chose each one one woman one Maiden that they desired to Wed that who they ultimately took to wife they copulated with these women these women conceived and gave birth to Giants demigods The Offspring of God and man okay this is the hebraic cosmological Paradigm of the anti-d deluvian world this is the hebraic Paradigm of the golden age of zepe because because the the ancient Mesopotamians and the the ancient Egyptians and the Greeks and the Romans and all the rest of them they believe that the very same thing occurred the gods descended to the Earth that they that they copulated with human women I mean look at Atlantis the story of Atlantis everybody knows about the city of Atlantis and and the legend of Atlantis but very few people pay attention to what Plato writes in the tus and crius dialogue where he talks about Atlantis he has he has Solen of Athens traveling to Egypt and he's being informed by the priest of sais about the extraordinary past of the Athenians that he's unaware of and and part of this past involves this conflict that they had this epic conflict with Atlantis and the atlantans and and they tell them the whole story right and everybody's familiar with Atlantis that Atlantis was this Advanced ancient city it's a great Resort in the Caribbean right that as well yes it still exists today in a slightly degraded form perfectly Pleasant it does so that Atlantis was this this Advanced civilization that was destroyed in a day and a night in cataclysm right but Plato has the priest of sais telling Solon in the dialogue the full story yeah and what's the beginning of the story of Atlantis the beginning of the story of Atlantis is that the gods who descended to the Earth are a portioning the Earth amongst themselves they're creating an Empire yeah and they're dividing up Their Kingdoms and Poseidon for his lot he got the area of Atlantis the region that would become Atlantis so what does he do he builds Atlantis he raises up an island out of the sea which is ultimately going to be the home of this city Atlantis but what does he do after this or during this he becomes enamored of a human woman named clay and he takes her as his wife and he copulates with her and she gives birth to five sets of twin sons who will become the 10 Kings of Atlantis and these are giants Atlas for example is he's the chief among them that's the backstory so what do we see here well this is a onetoone match with the Book of Enoch in the book in Genesis 6 is it not it's the gods descending to the Earth taking human women as their wives having intercourse with them and progenerative testimony of our ancient ancestors and in fact the Egyptians informed Solon it was in the midst of the conflict between because this atlantian Empire became expansionary be they became became aggressive and they were going on conquest and they were steamrolling everybody that they encountered until they encountered the Athenians who were the only faction that was able to resist them and they they're locked into this Epic War the atlantans vers the Athenians and then cataclysm cataclysm destroys Atlantis and everyone else not just Atlantis it's a global cataclysm and the and the Egyptians kept record of this and they told Solon that that wasn't the only cataclysm there have been many cataclysms because they believed it was cyclic right that the the cataclysm is cyclic that there's this there's this Celestial time piece the Zodiac that you can that the primary function of which is to keep track of when the cataclysm is going to occur again so this this is how the Ancients viewed so if you were to to and I'm not saying by the way that that that that means that the pyramids were built by Giants or anything like that I want people to think that I don't know who built the Great Pyramids but I do believe that many of these extraordinary megalithic sites around the world like Balck yeah were built in the age before the flood and it had something to do with the knowledge of the Gods who descended to the Earth that's what the Ancients say that's what they all say go to goodranchers.com use code nolles over 140,000 Family Farms Across America have shut down since 2017 why because grocery chains keep pushing cheap imported meat instead of supporting the folks who live and work right here in the USA when you 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lot right now so one of the biggest things I miss other other than my wife and kids it's the good ranchers at home make sure you get it goodranchers.com use code nesg goodranchers.com codee KO wle good ranchers American Meat delivered all I will contribute to that narrative is one of my most intelligent friends very well- grounded extraordinarily educated very very high IQ very serious person has told me for years now says yeah you know when I think of these ancient structures and there all these debates over how they were built and uh you know I I basically think it's largely demons he says with a totally straight face he means it he's not joking around and that s kind of sounds like what you're saying well I'm going to qualm with the term demons a little bit here so we have a very Western perspective of Angels and Demons we have a demonology that comes from Western tradition that is not necessarily concordant with ancient hebraic cosmology because if you were to ask an ancient Hebrew or the writers of the Old Testament what a demon was they would have a very different answer than us well if you asked an ancient Greek what you know Dion like like even the phrase happiness right udonia it's kind of like Spirit that's a very good point because the because the Greeks believe specifically that the Dion was a spirit a disembodied Spirit of a being who had lived in the world before the flood that's what the diamond was that they died in the golden age and that their Spirits persisted in the earth After the flood in the form of diamond well guess what that's the hebraic view that's the view of the of the that's the that's concordant with ancient HEB Hebrew cosmology so in the cosmology of the of of the Jews the demons are very specific things so let's address first how we view demons in western civilization and this is I would say primarily the product of of medieval Christianity i' I'd love to by the way before before you get into this explanation I I love this point you're making which is more ambitious and audacious probably than many viewers are even noticing because there's this idea that we all just accept as a matter of course that our civilization comes from the melding of Greece and uh Jerusalem and so and there are these totally different ways of viewing the world with these totally different perspectives and but really uh I I think it's overly simplistic to suggest that the Greeks had no sense of uh the Hebrew hebraic View and that the Hebrews had no sense of the the the Greek View and you know come on guys it's pretty close together and you see you see uh harmonies and Echo yeah and and that's what you're you're saying no actually there is a kind of unified cosmology they're all inheriting the same tradition now that tradition is becoming variegated it's taking on the idiosyncrasies of these particular cultures as it as they develop but there's a source the answer is it's because there's a source of a narrative there's a there's a source to the narrative yeah of the flood there's one particular source and I would say that source is Noah and his sons and then that story gets taken by the ancient mes Mesopotamians the ancient Sumerians who I think are the are the civilization that grew out ultimately of of of Noah and his sons and then it's changed the names are changed people speak different languages the details get jumbled and you get these stories that have similar elements right they have they have these foundational elements the flood myths but then they have their their idiosyncrasies as well and that's precis it because all of these all of these stories are founded in the same original narrative so then what the true story right what have we gotten wrong about demons okay so going back to that so the Western perspective of demons is basically we will view demon as anything that is demonic anything that is um scary or grotesque um we would call a demon that's or even basic like an angel that Rebels a bad angel or or an angel that Rebels we we lump all of that together in this term demon so in the western mind a demon is like it's like a boogeyman basically it's like anything that's evil and malevolent supernaturalism that's all demon that's a demon but the in in the ancient Hebrew cosmology they were much more they were much more narrow in their defining of the word demon to them a demon was something very very specific a demon was the disembodied Spirit of a giant a giant that died in the anti- Delian World Before the Flood their Spirit as this is in the Book of Enoch by the way this is it derives from The Book of Enoch that their spirit this is Judgment God judges them that because they're neither holy of their fathers their Angelic fathers or of their human mothers that they're going to be cursed when they die to wander the Earth as bodyless vagabonds as disembodied vagabonds they're going to be hungry they're going to be thirsty presumably they're going to have all the desires of the flesh but no bodies through which to fulfill those desires to satiate those desires that was a curse that was placed on them by God according to the Book of Enoch according to ancient Hebrew cosmology this is this and only this is is the origin of a demon and is what a demon is and so what what about like uh when Lucifer Rebels you know Satan falls like lightning and leads all the bad Angels who rebelled against God and there's a great battle and the they lose spoiler alert and you know St Michael the Archangel wins God God wins he always wins and uh what about them that's that's before those are the insubordinate sons of God those th this is a these are the defected sons of God right these were the Angelic beings who were loyal to the king at one time yeah but who rebelled and became disloyal yeah and were expelled and that's that's what they are but that that they're not distinct they're not technically demons so the demon is again specifically According to Hebrew cosmology a demon is specifically the disembodied Spirit of Nephilim now when God in The Book of Enoch again this is a judgment on the Giants on The Offspring of the Watchers they're they're sentenced to this this terrible curse you know it's very much like the the plot line of the Pirates of the Caribbean the first one right you had Barbosa and his crew they had the Mayan gold the cursed Mayan gold and they had this curse where they were living forever they were like Eternal but they couldn't satisfy any of the desires of their flesh and this is represented this is Illustrated with Barbosa who wants to bite the Apple yeah yeah and and but he can't when he bites it you know the moon comes out or something and you see that he's just a skeleton and the there's nowhere for the food to go he has no tongue he has no stomach he wants is to be able to to to satisfy his hunger to be able to bite that Apple well that perfectly illustrates the nature of a demon according to ancient Hebrew cosmology so you have the disembodied spirits of the of the giants that are going to persist in the world as Vagabond wraiths that's their curse much like the Barbosa and his crw curse they're going to they're going to wander the Earth hungry thirsty presumably all of the desires of the flesh but with no flesh through which to to fulfill those desires to satiate those desires that's a very torturous existence so fast forward to the New Testament I should say before I go there and a part of this curse God tells them that this they'll be in this condition until the end of the age when the age is wholly consummated and the great judge appears and at that time they will be judged with finality right but until that time they're going to be cursed to wander the Earth in this miserable state so fast forward to the New Testament Jesus Jesus is walking in Galilee Jesus is walking all over Judea yeah and what is he encountering he's encountering these things called unclean spirits and and going back to the to the anian reference part of the Judgment was God says evil spirits or unclean spirits you shall be called fast forward to the New Testament Jesus is encountering unclean spirits and what are these Spirits doing they're inhabiting the bodies of human beings and when they get inside the body of a human being that human that it's it manifests something like epilepsy that the person is is is rolling around foaming from the mouth throwing themselves into the fire screaming at the top of their lungs and Jesus would cast these demons out and they were called unclean spirits and there's a particular occasion when Jesus is walking on the shores of gadara and this is these this is the gine demoniac encounter where the gine demoniac comes running up to Jesus and he's full of a legion of demons he he's full of all kinds of demons right he had his his pronouns were the plural pronouns it was them modern analog yeah exactly precisely right he was they them and he he throws himself at the feet of Jesus he sees him coming and he throws himself at the feet of je Jesus and the demons cry out what have we to do with you oh son of God we know who you are you son of God why have you come to judge us before the appointed time right so what do we have here we have a confirmation of the Book of Enoch because the disembodied spirits of the Nephilim they have no bodies of their own so what do they want they want bodies so they're inhabiting the bodies of human beings and through the bodies of the of of the people that they possess they're attempting to satiate these desires that they have which are otherwise insatiable yeah and they see who walking on the shore of gadara the great judge but wait a minute it's not time yet according to the Book of Enoch it's not the end of the age yet that's why they cry out what have we to do with you why have you come before to judge us before the appointed time the time had not yet come and they knew it yeah so there's a confirmation of that cosmology that comes from first Enoch in this encounter that Jesus has with the garine demoniac who is a human being being possessed by disembodied Spirits so that's the very narrow definition of what a what a demon is and as I Illustrated before it's the same idea to the Greeks as I said they believe that the diamons the diones or however you pronounce it in Greek were our disembodied Spirits from people who lived in the world before the flood in the Golden Age it's the samea it's it's basically the same tradition [Music]
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