 You're listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, go to nakedbiblepodcast.com and click on the support link in the upper right-hand corner. If you're new to the podcast and Dr. Heiser's approach to the Bible, click on newstarthere at nakedbiblepodcast.com. Welcome to the Naked Bible Podcast, episode 94, The Sin of the Watchers in Galatians 3 and 4. I'm the layman, Trey Strickland, and he's the scholar, Dr. Michael Heiser. Hey Mike, how are you? Very good. How are you, Trey? I'm doing good now that I've got you riled up about software. Our pre-show conversation, yeah. So the show should be really good now that I got you fired up. Yeah, my blood pressure's a little elevated. Long story short, folks. He doesn't like computer systems that don't do what he says. No, no, no, no. Well, yeah. Now you're getting closer. I'll just summarize it by saying this, when it comes to software, I don't want a friend or a buddy and I don't want to be put on an adventure. I want a slave. It's that simple. Don't suggest anything to me. Don't try to make it fun or interesting. Just do what I said. What could be simpler? I hear you. I hear you. Yeah, well, okay. So I'm in the minority, I guess, with a lot of what's going on today, but that's where I'm at. So if I don't get an immediate response that follows what I said, I'll just fly into a rage, I guess. Silently in the corner preferred. Right. Okay. Well, I'm excited about this one because of the scent of the watchers and the nature of the topic. Oh, yeah. The watchers are always good for, I don't want to say entertainment, but sort of to draw interest and to make what maybe seemed like kind of a normal, dull sort of trip to the New Testament. Make it a little more interesting if we start thinking about them and the possibility that the New Testament writer was thinking about them, and that's really what we're going to do today. Now, this is going to be a lot different in terms of what I'm going to be asking you to think about or the way I'm going to be asking you to think. But I find the possibility here really fascinating. Now, I've mentioned, again, this topic before in other episodes sort of just in passing. This is really coming from something I blogged about two years ago, two years ago at the Society of Biblical Literature meeting. I went to hear a paper by a guy named Tyler Stewart, who at the time was a doctoral student at Marquette. I'm not sure if he's done or not, but he read this paper. The paper title was Fallen Angels, Bastard Spirits, and the Birth of God's Son, an Enochic etiology of evil in Galatians 3.19 through Galatians 4.11. Again, etiology refers to the origin of something. When I saw this in the program book, I thought, what in the world is this guy going to talk about? Because I had never even thought about the sin of the watchers because the term Bastard Spirits is a Second Temple Jewish term for the watchers. Both in terms of not only the sin there in Genesis 6.1 through 4, but the results, again, producing Nephilim who, again, would be killed, and then this is where the demons come from in Second Temple Jewish literature. That's why they're called Bastard Spirits. They're also called Watchers themselves because the immaterial part of whatever that was, whatever the Nephilim or the giant clans were. The spirit side, the immaterial side, again, gets referred to in Enochic literature as Watchers, Bastard Spirits, demons, and all this kind of stuff. When I saw the title, I thought, what is this going to be about? What does this have to do with Galatians 3 and 4 and the coming of the Son of God and the fullness of time, and all this stuff was going through my head. So I went to the paper and it was really, really fascinating. What I'm going to try to do here is summarize Stuart's thesis, his argument, and go into how it affects the way we read Galatians 3 and 4, at least in the passages that are the parameter of his paper topic. I'll just say up front, a lot of this is going to come right out of Stuart's paper, so we want to give him credit because this is his work. It's not something you're really going to find in any commentaries. I can tell you that right now. You will find it, though, in early church discussion, people like Irenaeus, for instance, you will find the idea that the sin of the Watchers is sort of lurking behind things like human depravity and the origin of the expansion of sin, the proliferation of evil, the proliferation of wickedness throughout the world. In the case of some Second Temple writers, they would even speak of what the Watchers did as the origin of sin. You say, well, what about what happened in the garden? Apparently, some Second Temple Jewish writers thought that Adam could kind of get a pass because he was kind of dumb, he got deceived, that sort of thing. Eve was deceived and then Adam sort of just didn't know what was going on. They'll try to give him a pass and then they'll put everything at the feet of the Watchers. In biblical theology, we're more consistent saying, yeah, here's when sin, rebellion, enters God's world in Genesis 3, and then we have this other thing happen in Genesis 6. I've made the comment before, and especially in Unseen Realm, that again, if you asked a Jew why is the world the way it is, why do we get depravity, why is humanity so messed up? If you asked a Jew that question, you'd get, oh, well, here's where it started back in Genesis 3 or it started in Genesis 6, you're going to get one or the other there. Then they're going to talk about Genesis 6, about how what the Watchers did to transmit forbidden knowledge to humans. Humans took that knowledge and basically perverted it and turned it against themselves. Things like lust and whatnot, all of this is going to be laid at the feet of the Watchers. That's going to be the entrance into the world and their interaction with people. That's going to be the real guts of why the world is in the awful condition it is. It's going to be the Watchers. Then, of course, thirdly, you have what happens at Babel. I've made the comment before that you're dealing with three episodes here, but in Christian theology, Christian tradition, what people grow up hearing in church, they're only going to be oriented to one, and that is the Genesis 3 incident of the fall. Because if you asked a Jew the same question, that is not the answer you'd get. The Old Testament, again, never references Genesis 3 as an explanation for the condition of the human heart or the condition of human wickedness. You don't get a passage that references. The closest you get is in the New Testament with Paul in Romans 5, and again, I have a different view of Romans 5, and I'm right in there with a few church fathers like Irenaeus, who was very cognizant of the Watchers story. We mentioned this on our earlier episode about the reception of the book of Enoch in the early church, but you have certain church fathers that say, look, this whole thing with the Watchers was a big deal in early Judaism, and they're familiar with the material to such a degree that a number of early church thinkers buy into what a Jew was thinking, like Paul, right here in the first century. The question really that we're going to tackle today is, well, when we talk about Paul, is Paul only thinking about the fall, or is Paul thinking about the sin of the Watchers as well in some of the stuff he says about the law and about human transgressions or just transgressions in general, about what the coming of the Messiah was supposed to fix? Is it all just Adam? Is it all just the fall? Or is what is in Paul's head inclusive of the transgression, the sin of the Watchers that we read about specifically in the book of Enoch, but in second temple material, more broadly speaking? And what Stuart is arguing in the paper is, you know what? He thinks that Paul does have the sin of the Watchers in mind when he's writing what he writes in Galatians 3 and 4 that he is not thinking about Adam in the garden and just sort of normal human transgression. And so that's what we're going to cover today. Now, it's going to take a little bit of doing to frame this whole idea, you know, frame the whole topic. So let's just start kind of in broad strokes here. When we're looking at Galatians 3 and 4, if you read through, you know, start at the beginning of Galatians 3, it's a very important chapter. Paul does very obviously subordinate the Mosaic law to the Gospel, to what happened on the cross, to Jesus. And he says things like, you know, hey, the law was here, but it was sort of provisional. It wasn't going to be the solution, you know, to the human dilemma. It was provisional in God's salvation history, God's plan. And, you know, for Paul, that means if you have heard about the Messiah now and you turn back to the law, you return to, again, looking at the law as the thing that God wants you to respond to or the thing that is somehow supposed to influence your eternal destiny. If you're doing that kind of stuff, even though the law was a good thing, you know, because it came from the hand of God, okay, if you're focused on the law and you're not focused on what happened on the cross, okay, you're not getting anywhere. You're not going to go to heaven. In fact, it puts you in danger of actually rejecting the Messiah and rejecting what happened on the cross if you put all this emphasis on the law. So again, these are ideas that are very familiar from Galatians, but it's this quote, unquote, negative view of the law that I want us to think about as we begin our episode here. This idea that Paul, a Jew, again, Pharisee, Pharisee of the Pharisees, you know, one of the elite, you know, kind of Jews here, this idea that he could look at the law and say that the law was lesser than something else to say that the law was less important or less effective or just a sort of precursor to God's plan. The idea that you would sort of take the law off its pedestal and put it at a lower status, just that idea is important, that a Jew could do that, because we tend to think, and again, the way we're taught about Judaism as Christians and most of us are Gentile Christians, we tend to look at, you know, the whole Jewish situation and think, well, the law was just everything to these people. Okay, you know, I kind of understand that, but we have to realize that the idea of subordinating the law, taking it down a peg or two, actually wasn't unique in Paul's day. And Paul's living in the first century, this is the heart, you know, real well, the last quarter or so of the Second Temple Jewish period. And the idea that the Mosaic law could be looked at by Jews as not the apex of God's revelation or the apex of God's plan, that actually wasn't new to Paul. And this is going to become an important trajectory. It's Stuart, in his paper, writes things like this. He says, subordination of the Mosaic law is not entirely unknown in Second Temple Judaism. In a rather unique parallel, the subordination of the Mosaic law also appears in 1st Enoch. There are a number of striking parallels between 1st Enoch, particularly the Book of the Watchers, which is the first 36 chapters of what we call 1st Enoch, the Book of Jubilees, and Paul's argument in Galatians 3 and 4. And so, again, what Stuart is saying here is that there's something going on in 1st Enoch and Galatians that make it very clear that the writer doesn't view the Torah, doesn't view the law as the pinnacle of God's revelation. Again, there's more of an emphasis on other things. And specifically, if we can't do it in the space of an episode here, but if we were to read 1st Enoch, if we were to read Jubilees, which has a lot of Enochian material in it, as we've commented in earlier episodes. And if we read Galatians, we would discern, if we read all three of them sort of back to back to back, that they're really much more cosmic in their outlook. In other words, they're concerned with God's plan of redemption, not just for the Jew, not just for Israel, but for the whole world, for all of the nations. They're much more grand and cosmic in their outlook. And there's a lot said in these books about angels and the role of angels as being participants with or part of God's unfolding plan of redemption for the cosmos, for all nations, for everything, not just the Jewish nation. So if your focus isn't on just the Jewish nation, if it includes Gentiles by default, that alone is going to sort of make you look differently at the Torah. Because the Torah, again, the Mosaic law was given to the nation of Israel. It wasn't part of the Abrahamic covenant. The Abrahamic covenant is the one that included the nations through you, all the nations of the world will be blessed, of the earth will be blessed. The law was given just specifically for the nation of Israel. And so that makes it sort of, it gives it kind of this tunnel vision effect, that it's part of something bigger, but the something bigger transcends the law. The law is just this little piece. It's this way station. It's this placeholder, that kind of thing. It puts the law again on a lower status compared to something else. And of course, it's the something else that is going to be part of our discussion here. I mean, I'm writing this book on the importance of Enoch to the New Testament right now. And it becomes very clear that this notion that, hey, you know, the things that are really theologically important are the most important, are the ones that include all peoples, all the nations, not just Israel. That is really an important theme in Enoch. And it actually, again, is a critical thought, a critical theme in the New Testament. And it's most pronounced in Paul, because even though Paul is this great Jew, this great Pharisee, and a tremendously learned man, again, in the Torah and all sorts of other things, his focus is just not on the Jews ethnically, on the Jews nationally. It's much bigger than that. And so scholars have noticed that, hey, you know, Paul's thinking is a lot more expansive than you would expect your sort of normal Palestinian Jew at this time to be. And they've noticed that, hey, there are other Jews that thought this way too, that it's sort of, again, put the law on this lower status, that it was just, again, kind of a second cousin to what was really coming, what was really big time, what was really important. And in the case of Enoch in literature, this is why you'll get Enoch referred to as the major thinker, the major force, that the revelation given to Enoch, remember Enoch walked with God. In the Book of Enoch, this is a big deal because Enoch alone is given secret divine knowledge that applies to all people and the cosmos. Enoch in the Book of Enoch gets this little tour of the cosmos. He's the only human to have this kind of knowledge, and that knowledge transcends what Moses gets. So in the Book of Enoch, it's very easy to see that Enoch is elevated above Moses in a number of ways. Enoch is actually called the Son of Man in the Book of Enoch, which is really interesting because, again, that's a title that gets applied to Jesus by virtue of Daniel 7. But again, it's the fact that he is the lone human one to receive this kind of revelation, this kind of divine knowledge, and he becomes the conduit through which others gain this divine knowledge. Of course, Son of Man concept in the New Testament is a little different than that with Jesus, and we don't want to go down that rabbit trail, but I'm using it to illustrate the fact that to a number of Jews, again, what we would call Enochic Judaism, Enoch was the guy because he had knowledge first, he got it before Moses, his knowledge was better, it was more cosmic than Moses, and his knowledge fixed something or was intended to fix something or apply to something that was bigger than the 12 tribes of Israel. This is why Enoch becomes the central focus in the mind of certain Jews. And so when there are things that pop up in the New Testament that sound the same way as, again, the earlier Enochian material, scholars have noticed this, and Stuart is one of them, and so he is going to bring this to Galatians 3 and 4 and ask, again, some really interesting questions about what's going on here, how does this matter, that Paul, again, is he perhaps thinking in the Enochian way as opposed to, and this is going to sound anachronistic, but I'm doing it deliberately, in opposed to the way that the Christian Church thinks about these things, put another way, is what is in Paul's head closer to Enochic Judaism than it is to Martin Luther or John Calvin or modern evangelicalism, because we as Christians have been trained to think only one way about what Paul says in Galatians 3 and 4 and a host of other New Testament passages. So along comes again Stuart in this paper that says, well, okay, I'm part of the Christian tradition too, and I get that, but I can't help wondering if Paul wasn't really thinking like we think when it comes to Galatians 3 and 4. I wonder if he was thinking like Enochian Judaism, Enochian Jews thought. I wonder if he's thinking along the lines of what the writer of the book of Enoch thought, how they thought about things and the human condition. And so this is what he's going to do in the paper. Now, if we apply this to Galatians, again, just to get started here, again, Paul, with respect to Galatians, we have, again, him downplaying the law. And if you look at how he does this and why he does this, it kind of makes sense along the same lines. Well, in Galatians, he downplays the law because it's not chronologically prior. There was revelation from God that came before the law. Obviously, the Abrahamic covenant, which is more universal than the law, came before the law. And again, that's going to matter to Paul because when Paul starts talking about salvation, he doesn't say, oh, well, you're saved by, well, look at this verse in Leviticus over here, or look at, you're saved by doing the law or this kind. He's going to deny that. And what is his paradigmatic touchpoint for salvation? It's Abraham. It's prior to the law. Abraham believed, again, and was justified before. There was even a lot of talk about. So you look at what Paul says, again, in some of these things, like in Galatians 3, let's just go jump into Galatians 3 here real briefly, and then we'll do something a little more systematic. Paul says, no, then, this is verse 7, actually, that it is those of faith who are the sons of Abraham. In other words, the real children of Abraham are not the ones who are born ethnically, born genealogically from the loins of Abraham. They're not ethnic Jews necessarily. It's the ones who are of faith who are the seeds of Abraham. And the scriptures, verse 8, foreseeing that God would justify the Gentiles by faith, preach the gospel beforehand to Abraham, saying, in you shall all the nations be blessed. He quotes the Abrahamic covenant in Genesis 12. And then in verse 9, so then those who are of faith are blessed along with Abraham, the man of faith. So Paul, again, assigning greater importance to revelation that isn't the law is the point I want to sort of fix in your head. And the Abrahamic covenant had universal implications, whereas the law did not. I mean, Paul does some other things. He points out in Galatians 3.17 that the law came 430 years after, again, the revelation to the patriarchs. And when it did come, Paul says very pointedly here in Galatians 3, when it did come, it didn't invalidate what had gone before. So he says here, this is what I mean. The law, which came 430 years afterward, does not annul a covenant previously ratified by God, so as to make the promise void. Therefore, if the inheritance comes by the law, it no longer comes by promise, but God gave it to Abraham by a promise. So again, Paul's saying, look, the law's a wonderful thing. Later in Romans 7, he's going to talk about he loves the law after his inward man and all that stuff. But here in Galatians, and Galatians is an earlier epistle than Romans, here in Galatians, he's saying, look, the law came, we all know this, but what really mattered, what was really, really significant for our salvation was the promise made to Abraham through faith. And it was not just a promise to Abraham, it was a promise to all nations. Again, so it's chronologically prior and it sort of supersedes, it transcends the law. So what Paul is kind of angling for here is that the law is not at the level of some of this other stuff. What appears to be more important is that you have a universal problem, okay, that the whole condition that the world is in, the whole, you know, what we would call depravity of humankind, that's the universal problem. So to fix that, you need a universal solution, okay, and that ain't the law. So now we come to Galatians 319 and this is really where Stuart's paper begins. Now he asks a very logical question. And for us, it's a logical question because of the ground we just covered in the last few minutes. Paul asks, well, why then the law? In other words, if the law doesn't fix this problem, this universal problem, what's the point? Why did God give it? So Galatians 319, why then the law? And the verse says, it was added because of transgressions, until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made. And it was put in place through angels by an intermediary. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. So we have this statement here that, you know, Paul, that raises the question, very logical. Why the law? Doesn't help here, why the law? What's the point? Because the Abrahamic stuff, the more cosmic stuff, the more universal stuff had come before. What's the point of the law? Now, when we look here at this verse, and we get his answer, the law was added, quote, I have the ESV here, was added because of transgressions. It's common to interpret Paul's statement here that the function of the law was to either cause or produce or provoke transgressions. The issue is this preposition, Karen, which in the ESV is translated because of. So let's think about it. You know, lots of translations take Karen and translate it because of, so the law was added because of transgressions. So how do Christians sort of reflexively think about this? Was the law added to make it clear to people who were doing stuff, which things offended God? In other words, was the law added to sort of produce a sense of sin, a sense of transgression? Again, you could see how people could reason that way. The law was added because of transgressions. Well, because without it, you wouldn't know what a transgression was. Is that what Paul is thinking about here? Well, if it is, then he's thinking of human transgressions. But then you run into a problem. Well, what about people who never even read or heard the law? How would they know what a transgression was then? And it doesn't help to appeal to Romans too and say, well, they were sort of observing the law or not because of the inward man, their inner sense, their conscience or natural law and all this kind of stuff. Well, that's great. But it still doesn't inform them. So if the purpose of the law was to inform people of which things God regarded as sin and which things he doesn't, even though they're sort of intuitively doing right things or intuitively or rebelling or whatever, you want to look at Romans too there, nevertheless, they're still not informed. So it's not really a great answer as to why, how to understand this phrase because of transgressions. Another option is that a lot of Christian theologians will say, well, because of transgressions, that's a reference to Adam and Eve. That's why the law was added because Adam and Eve sinned and now we all sin. Well, okay. I mean, you could certainly say that and you can argue this trajectory that again, because of what happens in the garden, human beings are now all sinners. And again, this isn't saying that they're all guilty like the way people usually understand Romans 512. And of course, I don't, but without rabbit trailing into that topic, you know, necessarily, let's just say that because of what happens in even everyone's sins, all right, everybody can agree on that point. Is that what Paul's talking about here? Well, why would, I mean, how would that work too? Because, you know, you could see that it that, you know, okay, Adam and Eve, you got two sins there, maybe that's why the plural is there. But, you know, we're only told, you know, about those individual sins. And frankly, you know, we have to sort of add Eve's in there because when Paul actually does specifically talk about Adam, which is not here in Galatians. Paul doesn't talk about, you know, Adam's sin here in Galatians. When he talks about it later in Romans, it might be 15, 20 years later in his epistles. Then he, you know, he's only focused on Adam. You know, Adam is the one that sort of brings the house down, you know, the house of cards here. It doesn't really, you know, factor in Eve at that point. So is this the best way to understand it? Well, you know, I don't know, you can make a reasonable argument for that or at least it sounds like a reasonable argument. Well, Stuart, his paper again, points out these little inconsistencies and, you know, these little sort of what ifs. Well, if, you know, if Paul was talking about Adam, why didn't he just say Adam? And he says Adam's somewhere else, you know, and why isn't he clear if this is how he wants us to read it? But what Stuart's actually going to angle for comes next. He says, look, it's possible to read Galatians 319, not as describing the law, giving people a sense of transgression, but rather the prior condition that prompted God to give the law. In other words, God gave the law not so that people would know what was a sin and what wasn't. And not because, oh, I need to give the law now because of what Adam and Eve did. Rather, Stuart is saying it's possible to look at this as meaning that God gave the law to sort of restrain transgression, to sort of, you know, stem the tide of wickedness, that God, you know, gave the law here, at least among his people, because he, this is his portion. We're back to Deuteronomy 32, 8, 9. Of all the nations in the world, you know, that there were in the world after the flood, God disinherited the nations at Babel. He starts over again. Again, he reissues the Edenic command again to Abraham's descendants. He makes a covenant with Abraham. He picks one people to start over again. They're referred to in Deuteronomy 32, 8, 9 that while the other nations are under the sons of God, Israel is Yahweh's portion. Jacob is his allotted heritage. And so for my people, I want to restrain the evil that is on the earth and within, you know, the human population and naturally because my people are human within them. And I'm going to give the law to restrain wickedness, to sort of be an impediment, to help, you know, because it's not going to cure anything, but to help. And in the meantime, their struggle with this law is going to reveal to them again a greater need of grace and salvation and again, someone who would eventually come to undo the effects of not just the curse of Genesis 3, but really reverse all of this bad stuff, all of this wickedness. And again, in the theology of the Hebrew Bible, that's Genesis 3, it's Genesis 6, and it's, of course, Genesis 11, that this nation is going to be the conduit through which it's going to be the means by which that all of this stuff is reversed. Because I'm going to draw, I'm going to produce my Messiah, you know, through them. And he's going to be an incarnation of my presence, of my essence. He's going to be, he's going to be me in human form, in incarnate human form. So, you know, God's thinking, look, I need to help them. I need to restrain evil. And if they are holy, if they're a peculiar people, if their conduct, you know, can be restricted in terms of sin, and also I give them rules for how to approach me in sacred space and have a relationship. And also, if sin is restrained, they'll just enjoy life more, and they'll be this peculiar holy people. Again, our whole series on Leviticus, you know, is what I'm hoping is going through your head now. If we can do that, that will actually attract people back, you know, from the other nations, it'll attract attention, attract them back, so that they can come back into a right relationship with me. Now, before the Messiah, that means they have to join the community. They have to reject all other gods, and they have to align themselves in faith to the true God, the God of gods. And we've talked about all these things before in the podcast. So, what Stuart is wondering, he's not listening to the podcast, he's just wondering this alone, but it works really nicely with the ground we've covered thus far, is that maybe we should think of the law as this means of kind of at least stopping the proliferation of evil a little bit. Again, a hedge against the proliferation of evil. So, he talks about this in the paper, and then he asks a crucial question. When we read Galatians 319, why the law? It was added because of transgressions. Stuart asks, well, have we ever really stopped to think just whose transgressions we're talking about? Now, on the one hand, there's a human element that's fairly obvious to see. Again, it's assumed almost without even thinking that the transgressions are atoms, and then the humans that follow him. And that's not surprising, given the fact that most Christians, what they're taught about, how evil came into the world, and what they're taught about depravity, why every human is just thoroughly corrupt and wicked. In view of the way most Christians are taught about these things, they would say, okay, well, sure, it has to be the fall, it has to be us, and that's it. That's where we draw the line. The transgressions that Paul's talking about are only, here's the key idea, are only ours and only going back to Adam. But again, let's ask the question, what if Paul is working from a different mindset? What if Paul is factoring in and even oriented by what happens in Genesis 6-1-4? What if Paul has in mind what 95 or maybe better percent, I'll put it at 99, what if Paul is actually thinking in accord with 99% of Second Temple Judaism, that the reason wickedness so permeates the earth is not just an extension and is in large part not even linked to what happened with Adam and Eve, but the reason that people are always and universally thoroughly wicked is because of what the Watchers did. Everybody in Paul's circle, everybody in Second Temple Judaism with the exception of three passages, three inter-testamental references in inter-testamental literature, everything says that the reason for the proliferation of evil is the sin of the Watchers, everything. The lone exceptions, I'm going to give you a few of them. I'll give you all of them because there really aren't, you can count them on one hand. We have 4th Ezra, book called 4th Ezra, and this is chapter 3, 20-22. Again, this is a pseudoprographical book. It's part of the Second Temple Corpus. The writer says, you did not take away from them their evil heart so that your law might bring forth fruit in them. For the first Adam, burdened with an evil heart, transgressed and was overcome. And so also were all who were descended from him. Thus the disease became permanent. The law was in the people's heart along with the evil root, but what was good departed and the evil remained. Now you'll notice the passage does not says that everybody became guilty because of Adam. It says that because of what Adam did, everybody again turns out to be evil. Again, it's just part of the human condition now. Everyone sins now. Okay, so there's that. There's another one in 4th Ezra. This is going to be chapter 7 and right around verse 116. The other reference was 4th Ezra 3, 20-22. Now we're in 4th Ezra 7, 116 and following. This is my first and last word. It would have been better if the earth had not produced Adam or else when it had produced him had restrained him from sinning. For what good is it to all that they live in sorrow now and expect punishment after death? Oh, Adam, what have you done? For though it was you who sinned, the fall was not yours alone, but ours also, who are your descendants? For what good is it to us if an eternal age has been promised to us and we have done deeds that bring death? What good is it that an everlasting hope has been promised us but we have miserably failed? So on and so forth. Again, basically saying that the reason that the earth is under judgment is because of everybody, not just Adam. Again, it's not just that everybody became guilty because of what Adam did, but everybody participates. Everybody, there's plenty of blame to go around here. It's not just Adam. What Adam did, again, results in humanity's corruption and people will sin and bring forth judgment. So they're just as much a part of this as Adam is. Second Baruch 54. This is 13 through 22. Again, just to give you a little flavor of this, those who do not love your law are justly perishing. The torment of judgment will fall upon those who have not subjected themselves to your power. For although Adam sinned first and has brought death, and there's my reading of Romans 5-12 again, brought death upon all who were not in his own time, yet each of them who has been born from him has prepared for himself the coming torment. They're going to deserve it too because they sin too. And further, each of them has chosen for himself the coming glory for truly the one who believes will receive reward. But now turn yourselves to destruction, you unrighteous ones who are living now, for you will be visited suddenly since you have once rejected the understanding of the most high. For his works have not taught you, nor has the artful work of his creation, which has existed always persuaded you. Adam is therefore not the cause except only for himself, but each of us has become our own Adam. Again, this is very much in concert with my view of Romans 5-12. And again, we're not going to rabbit trail into that. But what I want you to get here is we have a whole slew of references. The last one is the life of Adam and Eve. It's actually sections 12 through 17. It's the same thing. So I'm not going to bother to read through that, except that's actually the pseudoprographical book where you get this passage about the serpent, the divine being who manifests as the serpent, actually became corrupt before he gets Adam and Eve to sin when his revenge is plotted, because he rebels initially according to this book, The Life of Adam and Eve, when Michael, the archangel, after humans are created, looks to the rest of the heavenly host, the rest of the members of the divine council and says, you need to bow down and worship. Humanity now, the thing that God has made, and Lucifer, the one who turns out to be the Satan figure, says, forget that. I'm not doing that. In other words, he rebels in his heart and won't do it. That's the book that actually goes into details like that. But what I want you to get here is that you hear you have four passages in the entirety of Second Temple Jewish Literature that link the reason for the great wickedness throughout the earth, link it to Adam, everything else, and it is mountains of material. There are whole books, whole dissertations written on this that collect all the information, all the passages, everything else says, nope, the reason why humanity is in the pickle it's in, the reason why the earth is so wicked and corrupt is because of what the watchers did. They corrupted humans. And so what Stuart is asking in the papers, is it possible that Paul is not just thinking of Genesis 3. He's not just thinking of Adam. He's also thinking about the watchers. Now, let's just think about this. And again, a lot of this is drawn from what Stuart writes. The key text, again, if this is the case would be Genesis 6-1-4. And if you think about the whole story, again, the way that Enoch expands on the sons of God, the daughters of men, and they produce Nephilim, it's very clear this is a transgression, again, in the Old Testament because of the way the New Testament uses it and refers back to it. But Enoch expands on this quite a bit. If you think about, if you know a little bit about what Enoch says about all this, I think this will help. So I'm going to try to summarize it again using Stuart to do so. He says here that the watchers' transgressions in Enoch are set in sharp contrast to God's created design for the cosmos. In the opening theophany of the Book of First Enoch, God's created order is described as a place in which the, quote, luminaries of heaven will rise and set each one ordered in its appointed time, and they appear on their feasts and they do not transgress their own appointed order. That's First Enoch 2-1. In the Enoch narrative, though, the Enoch story, the watchers are referred to as the stars of heaven that transgressed the command of the Lord. In other words, and here's the New Testament language, they left their first estate. They left the task, they left the the thing they were appointed to do, and they came to earth, they cohabit with human women, and they corrupt the population en masse. That's what the Book of First Enoch describes. That's the sin of the watchers. This decision to leave their appointed place, their appointed order, and again Peter and Jude pick up on this language, they come down and thoroughly corrupt the human race. So Stuart continuing going back to him, he says, the watchers are held responsible for introducing wickedness to humanity in First Enoch 8-1. They thereby fundamentally alter the cosmos. They fundamentally uproot and ruin and destroy and put an upheaval, God's created order. Back to Stuart, similarly, in Jubilees, angels are portrayed as part of the fabric of the cosmos created on the first day. It's Jubilees 2-2. These angels associated with the ordering of the natural world are responsible for bringing transgression into the world. Again, this is me talking now. The point is that the Enochian material seems to consider Adam and Eve as sort of what happens to them is kind of a lesser crime because they were deceived. It's not as bad as humanity's willful deployment of the forbidden knowledge handed to them by the watchers. In Second Temple literature, that seems to be far worse. It has a far worse effect and it's worthy of more condemnation, again to most Jewish writers. Back to Stuart. We should not be surprised then to see this explanation. Again, you can blame the watchers for all of this. We should not be surprised then to see this explanation of the origin of evil in Paul as well. Why? Because Paul is a product of the Second Temple period. Stuart writes, indeed, a number of interpreters as far back as Tertullian have suggested that the watchers narrative is behind Paul's command in passages like 1 Corinthians 11-10 for women to cover their heads in worship, quote, because of the angels, unquote. I, this is Stuart now, I contend that it makes sense to read Paul's reference to transgressions in Galatians 3-19 in reference to the watchers. And so this becomes the thesis of his paper. So how do we read Galatians 3 and 4 in light of all this? Again, what, just to summarize, what Stuart is suggesting, what he's arguing for is that, look, when Paul says, hey, why was the law added? And then he answers his own question by saying, the law was added because of transgressions, and it was mediated through angels. And in fact, one, apparently, you know, one specific angel, we're going to get into that, this whole angelic mediation thing that I've written about in Unseen Realm. But Stuart's saying, when Paul writes this, is it possible he's, he's thinking about the sin of the watchers and not just Adam and Eve? Is that possible? And his argument is that, look, if we, if we just sort of assume that, let's just assume it for the sake of a thought experiment, how would we read Galatians 3 and 4 differently? Okay, so let's, let's, let's jump into that. So here's how you would read it differently. Just again, making a broad point here, what you would have as your backdrop to what Paul says in Galatians 3 and 4 about the law and about the coming of the Messiah, all this stuff, is that God in the Divine Council, give the law. Again, I'm throwing the Divine Council into this because it says that the law was mediated by angels, all right? God and the Divine Council give the law to restrain the wickedness of humanity brought on by the watchers. This law is dispensed in and by the Council. Galatians 319, let's just read it. Why then the law? It was added because of transgressions until the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made. Okay, now who's, who's the offspring should come to whom the promise had been made? Well, what's the promise? Well, the promise, again, is, is this being included in the family of God. Okay, Yahweh's portion is Israel. Yeah, this, this promise of, of being the people of God, but it also included the nations. Okay, so the law is, is going to be sort of something in effect, you know, during this whole period that is preparatory to and sort of setting the stage for this something, something's going to happen that will bring the Jew back into relationship to God, because of course the Jew is apostatized in the Old Testament, and also bring the Gentiles back into the family of God. So when that happens, the law is sort of going to have ended. It's going to have served its purpose. So it's this cosmic thing. It's not just the Jew, it's for the Jew and the Gentile. And again, God and the Divine Council know that, okay, before this plays out, we need something here that's going to stem the tide against wickedness, especially as it relates to carving out, to preserving a people here on earth through whom we can produce the Messiah. Okay, so that's why the law was given. It was put in place through angels by an intermediary. That's the rest of Galatians 319. Now an intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. Now why would Paul say that? Why would Paul say that the law was dispensed through angels by an intermediary? And the intermediary implies more than one, but God is one. Now again, I've commented on this in the Unseen Realm, and I'm going to read you an excerpt here in a moment. But typically, you know, people think that the intermediary is Moses. Well, if it's Moses, why would this Paul see the need to cite the Shema? God is one. Right after he says that, hey, Moses is not a rival or could never be perceived as a rival to the oneness, to the uniqueness of God. But you know what? There is a character in the Old Testament that could be perceived incorrectly as a rival to the uniqueness of God. And that was the angel, the angel of the Lord. Now here's what I wrote in Unseen Realm. Galatians 319 informs us that there was an intermediary between God, the angels, of course, the council, and Israel. Most scholars assume this is a reference to Moses. Other scholars have noted that in light of the very next verse, this is problematic, again, because of the reference to God as one. Why would Paul feel the need to clarify that God's uniqueness wasn't disturbed by this intermediary if it was just Moses? There's another solution, one that explains Paul's ensuing comment. The intermediary is also Yahweh in human form. It's the angel of the Lord. Deuteronomy 33 uses language requiring the appearance of Yahweh in human form. The verbs are that he appears in his right hand. There's a visible appearance of Yahweh. He has a right hand, a right side that can be discerned. In this light, again, this is anthropomorphic language, in this light Deuteronomy 9, 9, and 10 takes on new significance. Moses says, When I went up the mountain to receive the stone tablets, the tablets of the covenant that Yahweh made with you, and remained on the mountain 40 days and 40 nights, I did not eat food and I did not drink water. And Yahweh gave me the two tablets of stone written with the finger of God. And on them was writing according to all the words that Yahweh spoke with you at the mountain, from the midst of the fire on the day of assembly. Now that language should be by now familiar. This is still me writing an unseen realm. It's the language of human physicality, finger applied to Yahweh. This is the stock description of the second Yahweh, the angel. It shouldn't be a surprise that the New Testament speaks of angelic mediation for the law. It was written by the angel who is God in the presence of divine council members, the holy ones, and then dispensed to Israel through Moses. That's pages 166 and 167 of Unseen Realm. If you remember, there are other passages, Deuteronomy 33, we'll just go back to the first couple verses, about Yahweh being on Sinai, you know, with his heavenly host. So the picture is that Yahweh is there, the council is there, but when Moses goes up to receive the tablets, he receives the tablets from a visible Yahweh and they were written with the finger of God. Again, anthropomorphic language that it's essentially the angel of the Lord producing and giving the Ten Commandments to Moses and Moses taking them back to Israel. So if you go back to Galatians 3, that would make sense, you know, because when Paul says, look, the law was again added because of transgression and it was again just handed down and dispensed by angels. And not only by angels, but by an intermediary. And then when he brings up the intermediary, he has to say, well, you know, don't get freaked out, God is one. Again, it just makes sense, this reconstruction that I'm offering here in Unseen Realm and here now verbally, that this is what's going on. Well, think about that. How would that impact, again, the law being something given to hold back the wickedness that humanity is suffering under, that is a direct result of not just what Adam did, but also what the watchers did, the sin of the watchers. How does that affect the way we think about the whole law episode and that specific episode? Well, the irony is, there's lots of ironies here. The irony is that the thing that will, at least for the people of God, keep them from going on this relentless pursuit of evil and being unusable as the conduit through which the Messiah would come, it's mediated by the loyal members of the Council in response to the effect of what had happened because of the disloyal ones. The good members of the Council, again, by mediating the law, the law, again, to make Israel a peculiar and a holy people, to draw the nations back. That's also a response to the nations who are under the dominion of other disloyal sons of God, other disloyal former Council members that are now holding the nations under dominion and that are ruling them corruptly according to what Psalm 82 says. This act of Sinai is kind of a reversal image. The good guys in the Council and, of course, the angel of the Lord, the second Yahweh and God himself, are acting to counteract what the disloyal, what the rebellious members of the Council have done to humanity on earth. It's a theme of reversal. It's a mirror imaging. There are lots of these kinds of things in both Testaments that have one side reacting against trying to fix what's going on with the other. Let's go back to Galatians 3, though, and pick up another one. Here's the second way that, again, this would affect our thinking. That is, the universal problem of depravity is not just a Jewish problem. It's a universal problem, and so it calls for a universal solution, one that includes the nations under dominion of the other hostile Council members. Here's Galatians 3, 21 through 29. So picking up, again, to the law and the intermediary and all that stuff. So we have the law given by angels, given by an intermediary. Oh, by the way, God is still one. So God is now acting with Council to rebut the wickedness that is gripping humankind because of what the disloyal Council members, the former Council members, the watchers have done, and the sons of God over the nations, what they're doing. Now we read what Paul says in Galatians 3 the rest of the way. Is the law then contrary to the promises of God? Certainly not. For if a law had been given that could give life, then righteousness would indeed be by the law. But the Scripture imprisoned everything under sin so that the promise by faith in Jesus Christ might be given to those who believe. Now, before faith came, we were held captive under the law, imprisoned until the coming faith would be revealed. So then the law was our guardian until Christ came in order that we might be justified by faith. But now that faith has come, we are no longer under a guardian. For in Christ Jesus, you are all sons of God through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ, there is neither June or Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female. For you are all one in Christ Jesus. And if you are Christ's, then you are Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise. That's the end of Galatians 3. So you look at this and it's like, okay, well the law, again, is given to us, it's not going to cure the problem. It impinges upon our behavior because, again, we want to rebel, we want to be wicked, but God is trying to carve out a people for his own. This is his portion. They're not going to be like the other nations. Okay, because God is not an evil deity that wants to destroy his people, rather he wants to preserve them. The gods of the other nations could give a rip about the people under their administration. Again, that wasn't the way it was supposed to be. God assigned the nations to those other gods, but they didn't do anything at all. Again, to steward that relationship, they become corrupt according to Psalm 82. They seduce, they try to seduce the Israelites into worshiping them. The whole Deuteronomy thing about idols and the host of heaven and all that kind of stuff. They basically do their best to get the Israelites to abandon their loyalty, abandon their believing loyalty in Yahweh of Israel. And one of the strategies, of course, would be to get them to go off into idolatry and to essentially live like the idolaters do, live like the pagans do. Because if you enjoin that lifestyle, you're going to be drawn into those cultures and you're going to be attracted to worship those other gods. And so God gives the law to set the record straight. This is how you maintain a posture of loyalty to me. This isn't going to solve your problem. You still have to believe that I am the God of all gods. You have to align yourself willingly with that belief statement. That is your belief statement. And the way you show that, the way you toe that line, the way you cultivate this relationship begun by your decision to reject all other gods is through the law. So we're trying to preserve a remnant on earth. That's what the law is trying to do. Preserve a remnant on earth because it is God's intention that this remnant produce the thing that will be the cure. This thing we call the Messiah, this person we call the Messiah. It's still an important part of the plan of salvation, but it is not the end game of the plan. The law is lesser. The law is not a universal solution. We have a universal problem. We need a universal solution. While we're working our way toward that, again, while the plan is playing out, you're an indispensable part of the plan. You, Israelites, and I will not have you go off and abandon me. I will not have you go off and be attracted by the way everybody else is living and the worship of other gods. Nevertheless, you're free well-being. So this is the line in the sand. The law is a line in the sand. It's going to, again, prevent you from being overtaken by wickedness, which is we're going to lay at the feet of not just Adam, but also the watchers who are behind a lot of the idolatry as well. We're going to put a line in the sand right here, and this is going to help God preserve a remnant so that the rest of the plan of salvation can be enacted and can come to pass. So this is the function of the law. Again, it's to shepherd us along. Of course, and then we're eventually going to get Christ, and Paul actually uses that language later or elsewhere. Third way, we continue on into Galatians 4. Paul describes humanity under the dominion of the Stoikeia in Galatians 4. Now that's usually translated as elementary principles of the world. It could be a reference, and again, this is all an unseen realm. It could be a reference to either the law or to evil unseen beings. And if you've read Unseen Realm, you know that there are two references to the Stoikeia in Galatians 4. And I think the first one, because Paul is speaking to Jews, refers to the law, the principles of the law, the elementary principles of the law. And the second one refers to, again, cosmic entities because the second one occurs when he's referring to Gentiles. Again, he's talking to Gentiles. He's writing to the Galatians. He's got a mix of Jew and Gentile in that place, as we know, from elsewhere in the epistle. And so that's what's going on. Again, I'm going to read you the passage, and then we'll go into what I wrote in Unseen Realm. So here's Galatians 4. Paul says, I mean that the heir, and his prior sentence, if you're Abraham, let's just read it, if you're Christ, then you're Abraham's offspring, heirs according to the promise, chapter 4. I mean that the heir, as long as he has a child, is no different from a slave, though he is the owner of everything. But he is under guardians and managers until the date set by his father. In the same way also, when we were children, we're enslaved to the stoikaia, to the elementary principles of the world. Okay, so again, I take it as a reference to the law. But when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons. It's kind of interesting there. Why would you need to be adopted if you're a Jew, if you're an Israelite? Well, the answer is because the salvation wasn't through the law. But anyway, verse 6, because you are sons, God has sent the spirit of his son into our hearts, crying, Abba, father, so you are no longer a slave but a son. And if a son, then an heir through God. Now he switches in verse 8 again to Gentiles. Again, this isn't just me, most commentators are going to say this. Formerly, when you did not know God, now he's talking to people who don't know the God of Israel. That would be a Gentile, they have different gods. Formerly, when you did not know God, you were enslaved by those that by nature are not gods. But now that you have come to know God, or rather to be known by God, how can you turn back again to the weak and worthless elementary principles of the world, who slaves you want to be once more? You observe days and months and seasons and years. I'm afraid that I may have labored over you in vain. Now I argued in the unseen realm, again, that you got two different orientations, two different uses here. Here's what I wrote. The use of Stoikeia in the New Testament, Hebrews 5, other passages is a clear reference to religious teachings, the law in passages like Hebrews and again others as well. 2 Peter 3, 10 and 12 refers more literally to the elements of the physical world. That's another option. There's no consensus among scholars on Paul's use of the term in a variety of passages, Galatians 4, Colossians 2. The question is whether Paul is using the term of spiritual entities or star deities in Galatians 4 and Colossians 2. Three of these four instances append the word two of the world, so the Stoikeia of the world, but this doesn't provide much clarity. Paul's discussion in Galatians 4 and Colossians 2 includes spiritual forces, angels, principalities, powers in the context which suggests Stoikeia may refer to divine beings. He is contrasting Stoikeia to salvation in Christ in some way. Since Paul is speaking to both Jews and Gentiles, he might also be using the term in different ways with respect to each audience. Stoikeia as law would make little sense to Gentiles, but it would strike a chord with Jews. My view is that in Galatians 4-3 Paul's use of Stoikeia likely refers to the law and religious teaching with a Jewish audience in view. The audience shifts to the Gentiles in verse 8, and so it seems coherent to see Stoikeia in Galatians 4-9 as referring to divine beings, probably astral deities, the fates as they were known in the classical world. Galatians 4-8 transitions to pagans since the Jews would have known about the true God. The reference to times and seasons and years would therefore point to astrological beliefs, not the Jewish calendar. Paul is therefore denying the idea that celestial objects, the sun, moon, and the stars, are in fact deities. That's what Paul's rejecting. They're not really gods, they're just the sun, moon, and stars. Things that dictate times and seasons and years. His Gentile readers would not be enslaved by the idea that these objects controlled their destiny. That's the end of the quote. The Gentile idea was that, again, the heavenly objects were divine beings, and the movement of these objects determined individual fate. This is why astrology was such an anathema when it was defined as these things floating around the sky dictate my destiny, individual destiny. Jews and Christians both rejected that. They didn't reject the idea that God could use the objects he had made to communicate certain things, and I've talked about that before as well. They just rejected the idea that these objects in the sky were deities, and that they controlled your individual destiny. Paul's saying, look, Gentiles, don't be enslaved to the stoikae. These objects that you see in the sky are not really gods. In Paul's mind, what are gods? They're spiritual entities down here that run the nations of the earth and all that kind of stuff. It's not an inconsistent theology with the other divine council stuff and whatnot. Again, it's all an unseen realm. You can go back and reference it. Let's take this back to Galatians 4 and the Son of the Watchers. Paul is speaking to Jews in Galatians 4 and 7, so the law was added to restrain wickedness brought into the world by the Watchers. Being under the law, again, sort of obviously says that we needed restraint, and the law, again, is given to help, again, keep the Jews sort of in line so that they don't go all abandoned Yahweh and all this sort of stuff. Again, preserve a remnant. Again, it's not going to produce salvation, but it can help to preserve a remnant. Now, the law therefore doesn't bring anyone closer to God in terms of salvation, but it makes people cognizant. Again, it makes them aware that, oh, if I do this thing, I'm offending God. I'm offending not just a God, but the God of gods. He is the God of gods, and I believe that, and he loves us and wants to be in a covenant relationship with us. I don't want to offend him. I'm going to not do this thing. That's how the way the law was intended to work. He had to preserve the remnant here, not to bring salvation, but to preserve the remnant. So, carrying this again a little further, when Christ comes, this sort of thing that helps the remnant survive isn't needed anymore, because now we have the Messiah present. We have what happens on the cross. We put our faith in this person, and again, the event of the cross. That is a universal solution to a universal problem. This one has come to us, part of us, come out of Israel, born of a woman, again, who was an Israelite, born under the law. In other words, he was a member of the Israelite nation. Yahweh has come to us as this baby, as this man, as this person, Jesus of Nazareth. Now, this is going to provide a solution for our eternal salvation, and not only ours, but everyone's, the Gentiles. Through God's providence, there are, again, going to be believers. They're going to be Jews who come to Pentecost. They believe, and they go back to the nations. God's going to start, again, subsuming the nations into the family through the Messiah. Paul is the key figure in that. We've talked many times about that. Paul, again, has the whole thing in mind, a universal solution for a universal problem. Now, let's talk about born of a woman. This is another thing that's sort of reoriented by the Inachian backdrop. Most interpreters, again, Stuart points out, consider the phrase, born of a woman, as a reference to Jesus' humanity only, and perhaps his pre-existence. Some would go there. None of these suggestions have shown how Jesus' birth from a woman suits the argument, though, of Galatians 4 and, again, against the backdrop of the Watchers. Paul's reference to Jesus' birth in Galatians 4-4 is illuminated by the Watchers' narrative. Jesus' divine mission is contrasted with the angelic rebellion. The sons of God in the Book of the Watchers rebel in heaven. It's 1st Enoch 6. And they enter human women on earth. That's 1st Enoch 7, and Genesis 6, obviously. In Galatians, though, when the fullness of time has come, God sends his son to be born from a woman. There's a reversal there, Galatians 4-5. Thus, Jesus' divinely ordained mission, accomplished birth from a woman, is contrasted with the rebellion of angels entering women. Both texts bring heaven and earth together through divine sons involved with human women, but obviously in quite reversed ways. The results of Jesus and the Watchers' actions are also contrasted. Initially, the transgressions of the Watchers produce illegitimate offspring that destroy the earth. It's 1st Enoch 7, 1st Enoch 10, okay, Jubilees 5. After the initial judgment of the flood, the disembodied spirits of their illegitimate sons enter humans to attack them, causing disease, blindness, and destruction. That's possession by demons right there. 1st Enoch 15, 1st Enoch 19, Jubilees 10. Again, Stuart has a bunch of references here. The Watchers' fall, quote unquote fall, is so severe that they must ask the human Enoch to serve as their intercessor. Again, if you know the story of Enoch, the way it's written in 1st Enoch, the Watchers, after the fact, go to Enoch and say, hey, can you intercede to God for us because we're sorry, right? They no longer have access to God in prayer. In parallel contrast, look how Jesus contrasts all these points, Jesus as the Son of God faithfully gives himself to rescue humanity from the, quote, present evil age. Galatians 4, Galatians 1, Galatians 2, also Romans 5, 10, so on and so forth. After his exaltation and resurrection, the spirit of God's Son, quote unquote, is sent into the hearts of believers so that they can share in his sonship. Galatians 4, 6, Romans 8, 9 through 11, this indwelling spirit gives believers legitimate sonship enacted through direct prayer. Galatians 4, 5, Romans 8, 14 and 15. In both narratives, the cosmos is altered and humanity affected. Just as Enoch was ironically glorified in the Watchers' descent, okay, the Watchers' descent, Enoch again is the one exalted to heaven and becomes their intercessor, believers are now glorified in Jesus' descent and ascent. These contrasting parallels show the birth of God's Son in Galatians offers legitimate sonship to humanity to counteract the transgression of the Watchers and their bastard sons who terrorize the earth. I'm going to read that sentence again because this again is how Stuart sort of winds up his argument here. These contrasting parallels, again the contrast of what Jesus does and how it affects people, how his spirit interacts with people, as opposed to the Watchers and what they did and how their spirits demonize and possess and terrorize people and how they brought the proliferation of evil, how Jesus brings salvation, again universal problem, universal solution. These contrasting parallels, Stuart writes, show that the birth of God's Son in Galatians offers legitimate sonship to humans, to humanity, to counteract the transgression of the Watchers and their bastard sons who terrorize the earth. It is a complete reversal. It is a reversal of all the elements. Everything that you would read in the Enoch story and this is why it's hard for us to understand because most of us haven't read the Enoch story. Stuart's arguing Paul read it, he knew it pretty well. Just like Peter and Jude read it and knew it pretty well too and used it in their writings. Stuart's saying, look, Paul understood what was going on with the Watchers. It's the key thing that makes humanity so bad, that messes up humanity the most. It's the Watchers, the universal problem. They go down, they transgress, they produce illegitimate offspring. Jesus is going to be the one that does the most good for humanity. It's the one who reverses the proliferation of evil, who reverses the estrangement from God. When Jesus does what he's going to do, it doesn't produce illegitimate offspring that destroy the earth, it produces legitimate sons of God. By the way, this is Unseen Realm now. By the way, we'll replace the Watchers in Council. If you've read Unseen Realm, I spent a couple of chapters talking about how believers are the reconstituted Divine Council. We take their place. Again, when the Watchers, the Watchers who sin in their imprisonment, when their offspring get killed and then their spirits go out and they become the demons of Second Temple, literature, the demons of the New Testament, they go out and possess people and terrorize the world. Look at what happens with Jesus. Okay, His Spirit now indwells people. Again, voluntarily it's by faith. It indwells people. The Spirit of God indwells people, making them legitimate sons, and they don't go out and terrorize the earth. They go out and liberate those who are not yet saved. They become the agents of reversal. Just as Jesus was the primary agent of reversal, believers become His agents to assist in the reversal. Again, just to wrap up, what Stuart is trying to get us to consider, all I'm trying to do as well is to get you to consider the idea that if you have the Enoch story in your head, and you know the elements pretty well, if you have all that information in your head, if you have that backdrop in your head and you read Galatians 3 and 4, when you read it, you're thinking, okay, you know, the promise to undo this universal problem was Abraham. He was the key, and why was he the key? Well, he not only, this is where the remnant on earth is going to start, and it has to start with him, because God also had to disinherit the nations of the world, because we thought that the remnant would be the sons of Noah and their offspring, and that's why we repeated the Edenic command of them. We're just trying to kickstart Eden again, restore the family of God, this whole idea, have heaven come back to earth, but they don't obey, and so God has to disinherit them, and so when the kickstarting of Eden really begins, it's through this, the call of Abraham, and Abraham, Israel, the Israelites come from him, that is Yahweh's portion on earth, it's His elect heritage, and again, they become on earth the remnant. They are the remnant of humanity, but they're still under the effects of not only what happened with Adam, but even worse, what the Watchers did in corrupting humanity so thoroughly, which again is why we had to have the flood. Well, again, apparently it doesn't take care of the problem. Humans are still in rebellion, so what do we do now? Well, God says, I'm going to call Abraham, I'm going to start anew, I'm going to have a remnant here, these are going to be my people, and to sort of forestall them from abandoning me, to help keep them in relationship to me, I'm going to do mighty acts, I'm going to deliver them from Egypt, I'm going to show them who is the God of gods, and then they need to believe that. My people need to believe that I am the true God of all gods, and I brought you out of Egypt, and I brought you to this mountain, and I'm going to give you this law. And the law is not so that you can work your way to heaven. The law is so that when you read it, when you know it, when you live it, and you're confronted by the impulse to do wickedness, again, because of the way the world is, again, that's because of the Watchers, a lot of that. When you look at the law, the law is going to jar in your mind, okay, I don't want to do this act, this thing that Yahweh forbids, because he's the God of gods, and he loves me, and he made a covenant with us, again, to choose us from all of the other nations to, again, restart this whole Edenic plan. I don't want to transgress. This is going to help me, again, sort of hold myself in check, help me be that remnant. And if Israel is this peculiar people, they will begin to attract the attention of the nations positively, and so on and so forth. All these big theological concepts, again, that are all familiar to us, but, again, to get us to consider that all these concepts sort of fit in the framework that includes the sin of the Watchers. This is all we're trying to do in this episode. And so the law, again, prepares us for the coming of the Messiah, who is the universal antidote, not just to what Adam did, but he's the universal antidote to what the Watchers did. And he's specifically the antidote to what the Watchers did as we read Galatians 3 and 4. This idea is telegraphed in specific ways. Again, references to sonship, references to adoption, references to being born of a woman, something coming out of a woman that's the mirror opposite of something else that came out of, you know, of women back in Genesis 6. These are mirror image opposites to communicate this theological idea that what happened in Genesis 6 one through four is a big deal. And it's on the mind of the New Testament writers. And they're writing things to make their readers recognize and see and remember that what happened in Genesis 6 was a big deal that needs to be dealt with. It is a major reason why we are in the mess we're in and why the world is the way it is. Christianity, as we have been taught it, as we have grown up in it, as the Bible has been filtered to us, just wipes all of that off the table. And so what Stuart's trying to do in the paper, what I'm trying to do in the episode is say, hey, let's bring that back in and just kind of see how it helps us read. How it helps us read these passages, how it helps us think theologically. So I hope again in, you know, this is a longer episode and it's, I'm asking you to think unfamiliar thoughts, but I'm hoping that you get the point that again, what happened back here is a big deal. And it's preserved a lot of it in this book that we call Enoch. And that mattered for New Testament writers. Didn't have to believe it was canon, but it was useful and helpful for them to articulate theology they wanted us to have. Dang, Mike, I got you fired up for the show and look what happens. We get a hour and a half show. Well, that's my bad. No, that's good. That's a good. We can have an anomaly every time. It is important how the New Testament connects with the Old Testament. I mean, it's a good example of it. And people, you know, that'll be a familiar thought. But again, the Old Testament that takes again, what happens in Genesis 6, 4 seriously, instead of putting it on the shelf and making it go away. Absolutely. Well, all right, Mike, I'm going to switch gears here. We probably don't have much more to talk about. But next week, we've got a scheduled interview. Yep. Yep. David Burnett's going to be back and he has something very specific to talk about in relationship to 1 Corinthians 15. I will preface it by saying this. It's not going to be a repeat of the spiritual body and all that kind of stuff. I mean, invariably, we'll tread on that a little bit. But David has just recently gotten a paper accepted at the upcoming SBL conference in November. Oh, that's good. Where he's arguing that 1 Corinthians 15 uses certain ideas and concepts from, believe it or not, all roads seem to go there. Deuteronomy 32. So 1 Corinthians 15, how it again repurposes Deuteronomy 32 stuff, I think it'll be real interesting. Well, that'll be good. I guess since I will be there, maybe I can go listen to him. Yeah. I mean, when he does the actual paper, yeah, in November, you know, we can be in the peanut gallery there. We could be hecklers like this. That would be good. Well, awesome. Well, I'll look forward to that next week, Mike. You said on the Naked Bible Podcast. Yeah, that's right. All right, Mike, you have anything else to add to this? No, I think that's it. All right. Well, we appreciate it. All right. Thanks everybody for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. God bless. Thanks for listening to the Naked Bible Podcast. To support this podcast, visit www.nakedbibleblog.com. To learn more about Dr. Heizer's other websites and blogs, go to www.ermsh.com.