Blog Post #7 "Babylonian Devil Traps"

Babylonian Devil Traps

These were terracotta bowls inscribed with “magical texts” and charms, used by the ancient Hebrews in parts of Mesopotamia. The inverted bowls were buried under the four corners of the foundations of buildings, usually houses. Their magic provided protection against male and female demons, illnesses, curses and the ‘evil eye’. These Babylonian devil traps were used between the third and first centuries BCE until the sixth century CE. As a surviving pagan custom, the bowls were technically prohibited by the Hebrew religion, which proscribes magic in general. Probably to circumvent this religious law, the devil traps often also had inscriptions invoking the help of God, or quotations from Hebrew Scriptures. One bowl from the third century BCE proclaims a ‘bill of divorce’ from the devil, and all of his night monsters, commanding them to leave the community forthwith.       

Blog Post #6 - 'Beelzebub, Lord of The Flies'

Beelzebub, Lord of The Flies

It is Halloween, and for this reason I chose to write about Beelzebub (lord of the Flies). 

The name ‘Ba’al Zebub’ literarily means ‘Lord of the Flies’ and he was a Semitic deity worshipped by the Philistines in the city of Ekron, which is about twenty-five miles west of Jerusalem. Later in the Bible he is identified as one of the ‘Seven Princes of Hell’. The prophet Elijah condemned King Ahaziah of Israel to die by Yahweh’s words, because the king sent a messenger to Beelzebub to see if he would recover from injuries caused by a fall. The Pharisees accused Jesus of driving out demons by the power of ‘Beelzebub’, Prince of Demons. In the testament of Solomon, Beelzebub is a former leading angel of cherubim associated with Venus, the evening star, who is identified with Satan or Lucifer. In medieval times he becomes the chief lieutenant of Lucifer. Some place him as one of the three most prominent fallen angels, the others being Lucifer and Leviathan, and associate him with the sons of pride and gluttony.

Beelzebub was often accused of being the object of supplication in trials of witches, for example in the terrible Loudon ‘possessions’ of 1634 and the Salem Witch Trials. Lucifer, meaning ‘Light-Bearer, was a name originally applied to Jesus as well as Venus, but St. Jerome and others began identifying Lucifer with the fallen angel Satan, driven out of Haven for his pride. Thus Lucifer over time has been regarded both as Jesus and Satan. Satan, in Aramaic, which means adversary or enemy.         

Blog post #5, RELS 32

Lucky ‘Number 7’

Across many cultures, this is a ‘lucky’ number. The New Testament Book of the Apocalypse, or Revelation, refers frequently to the mystic sacredness of the number seven. In the book St. John addresses himself to seven churches in Asia, greeting them from the Lord and from the seven spirits, which are before his throne.  

John describes his vision on the island of Patmos, when he saw one like the son of Man, in the midst of seven golden candlesticks, and holding in his right hand seven stars. The golden candlesticks are explained as being the seven churches, and the seven stars as the angels of those churches. In following visions a throne is set in heaven, and in the right hand of Him that sat on it is a book sealed with seven seals.

Then a lamb with seven horns and seven eyes, which are the seven spirits of God sent forth into all the Earth, takes the book and opens the seven seals one after another. When the seventh seal is open, seven angels with seven trumpets appear, which they blow one after another.

Before the seventh angel sounds his trumpet, there are seven bursts of thunder. Afterwards there appears a dragon with seven heads and ten horns, but with ten crowns upon his horns. The seven angels, pour out one after another the seven vials of God’s wrath upon the Earth. Then there is seen a woman seated on a scarlet coloured beast which has seven heads, these being seven mountains on which the woman sits. It is added that there are seven kings, of whom five are fallen, and one is reigning, and one is yet to come. In the last vision, that of the heavenly Jerusalem, the prevailing number is not seven but 12, derived probably from 12 tribes of Israel.

However, with this exception seven is the prevailing number of the Book. Von Hammer-Purgstall, (an Austrian orientalist) observed that, there are two sevens in the Book’s greeting; seven churches and seven spirits. In the body of the Book there are found besides two seven candlesticks, stars, seals, horns, eyes, trumpets, and thunders; and second, seven angels, heads, crowns, plagues, vials, mountains and kings.        

RELS 32, Blog post #4 "The Lost Tribes of Israel"

The Lost Tribes of Israel

In the late 15^th century the voyages of Columbus brought news of humans not accounted for in the Bible. Europeans were puzzled where they had come from. The solution was that they were tribes of Israel, which had disappeared with the fall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah in the middle of the 1^st millennium BCE.

A Spanish priest, Bartolome de Las Casas, become a champion of the Native American cause protesting against the carnage carried out by the conquistadores in the West Indies, Peru and Guatemala. Las Casas believed that the Native Americans should be converted to Christianity, as he was convinced that they had originated in Ancient Israel.  He believed that the Bible contained the proof that they were members of the Lost Tribes of Israel. Eventually Pope Paul III declared that the Native Americans were ‘fully human’ in 1537.

A 1644 report (unfortunately fictional) by the Portuguese traveller, Antonio Montezinos, claimed that there was a Jewish tribe living beyond the mountain passes of the Andes, and that he saw them practicing Jews rituals. Thomas Thorowgood’s Jews in America of 1650 argued for the need to convert these lost tribes. Certain Christian traditions claimed that when the Ten Tribes of Israel were found and restored to the Holy Land, the return of Christ to reign suprime would be imminent. The ‘Ten Lost Tribes of Israel’ disappeared from the Biblical account after the kingdom of Israel was totally destroyed, its people enslaved and exiled by the Assyrians empire. There are various ethnic claimants to be these tribes, ex; The British/Welsh and the Pashtun. The Bene Ephriam (southern India) claim descent from the Tribe of Manasseh. Beta Israel is an ancient group of Ethiopian Jews who believe they are those who descended from the lost Tribe of Dan.  Persian Jews, especially the Bukharan Jews claim descent from the Tribe of Ephriam and Igbo Jews in Nigeria claim descent variously from the Tribes of Ephriam, Menasseh, Levi, Zebulun and Gad. The Lemba tribes (south Africa) claim to be descendants from a lost tribe of Jews, which fled from modern Yemen and journeyed south.    

RELS 32, Blog Post #3

Pejovic Ivan

                                           The Book of Enoch (The lost book of the bible)

For this blog I decided to write about a mythical text that was revered by Jews and Christians alike but fell into disfavor among early theologians, because of its controversial description of the nature and deeds of the fallen angels. Thus, The book of Enoch, along with others, such as the Book of Tobias, Esdras and other, were accepted into biblical canon. According to academic experts in religion and early mythology, most books were destroyed and the writings were lost forever, as they did not agree with current doctrines. The Book of Enoch was at one time considered to be among the biblical apocryphal writings by the early Church fathers. The word ‘apocryphal’ was derived from the Greek for ‘hidden’, or ‘secret’.  

It was a complementary term, and when applied to sacred book it meant that their contents were considered too exalted to be made available to the wider public. Gradually the idea was accepted that such books were only to be read by the ‘wise’, (the controllers of belief). However, the term ‘Apocrypha’ began taking on a negative meaning. Believers felt they were being denied the teachings of these books, which were only available to small circles of powerful and influential men. Even the orthodox clergy were not permitted to read the hidden books, because they were thought not to be sufficiently enlightened. Over the centuries the church banned apocryphal material, deeming it heretical, thus forbidding anyone reading from it.

The Book of Enoch was banned as heretical by later Church fathers, as the material infuriated some of them. As a result the book was conveniently lost for a thousands of years. However, eventually it reappeared. Rumors of a surviving copy sent the famous Scottish explorer James Bruce to Ethiopia in search of it. There he found that the Ethiopic church had preserved the book alongside other books of the bible. In this work the spiritual world is minutely described, as is the region of Sheol, the place of the wicked. The book also deals with the history of the fallen angels, their relations with the human race and the foundations of magic.

This is the little cut from The Book of Enoch:

“ ’that there were angels who consented to fall from haven that they might have intercourse with daughters of earth. For in those days the sons of men having multiplied, there were born to them daughters of great beauty. And when the angels, or sons of haven, beheld them, they were filled with desire; wherefore they said to one another: “Come let us choose wives from among the race of man, and let us beget children”.’”

The original text appears to have been written in a Semitic language, now thought to be Aramaic. Though it was once believed to be post-Christian in date, the similarities to Christian terminology and teaching are striking mainly because discoveries of copies of the book among the Dead Sea scroll found at Qumran prove that the book was in the existence before the time of Jesus Christ. Original date of writing is apparently unknown to us.

Many of the key concepts used by Jesus Christ himself seems directly connected to terms and ideas enunciated in the Book of Enoch, so it is thought likely that Jesus had studied the boo, and elaborated on its specific descriptions of the coming kingdom and its theme of inevitable judgment descending upon ‘the wicked’. Also, over a hundred phrases in the New Testament find precedents in the Book of Enoch.