[Laughter]. Fr. Okay, perfect example; this is probably the classic example: Matthew 27:25, where the people say in response to Pilate, His blood be upon us and upon our children. Now, given everything we just said about the blood of the goat, and given everything you should know if youre a Christian about what the blood of Christ does, if his blood is upon you, thats actually good. [Laughter] So, yeah, thats the word itself. Copyright 2005-2023 Ancient Faith Ministries, Inc.All Rights Reserved. So, speaking of that ritual context, then, the rest of what were going to be talking about is the ritual of atonement, the Day of Atonement. Andrew: Yeah, with a goat-head and big, leathery wings. Stephen: Because of how its conjugated. Fr. Andrew: Yeah, what is it about that blood that actually has that purifying effect? Fr. Fr. Fr. Stephen: That would be like an inception; yeah, that might be good. Fr. Stephen: Maybe it was once used to cover something. Fr. Andrew: Its a response. Journal for The Study of The Pseudepigrapha, Online Heidelberg Journal of Religions on the Internet, Corrupting the Image 2: Hybrids, Hades, and the Mt Hermon Connection, Corrupting the Image vol 2: Hybrids, Hades, and the Mt Hermon Connection, Lamhfada: An Online Magazine of Myth and Story. Andrew: Yeah, I know. Well say what gets done with it first, then well talk a bit about Azazel. Matthew 8:14-17, just to summarize, this is where Christ heals the mother-in-law of Peter and then also, after that, lots of people are brought to him who are demon-possessed and sick people, and he heals them He drives out the spirits; it says he cast them out with a word. Also considered is the possibility that the Biblical Nimrod, a descendant of Ham, was the Sumerian king Gilgamesh, and that he also was genetically Nephilim. Fr. Yeah, thats not in the Greek. the notoriously difficult Gen. 6:1-4 (Stuckenbruck 355). The answer, according to Fr. Its really cool. Andrew: All right. How do we engage with it well? How does God see it working? The only time it happens is this, and that animal is not sacrificed. How the Devil Got His Hooves and Horns: The Origin of the Motif, "The Embarrassing and Alluring Biblical Giant," online at Bible and Interpretation (2 December 2015). Fr. They are not just a narrative; theyre narrative theology. Sorry, whats your question? Stephen: Yeah. Theres a lot of people standing around; this is the person whom were setting apart for this purpose. Andrew: Nothing to do with that. Stephen: In St. Matthews gospel in particular we see a lot of this connection to Christ as the scapegoat, and one of the places where we really see that isnow this requires you reading some outside the New Testament literaturebut the epistle of Barnabas gives a little bit more detailed description of how the Day of Atonement ritual was being performed, sort of in some of the small details that had accrued over time, in the first century AD. Fr. He is the pastor of Archangel Gabriel Orthodox Church (Antiochian) in Lafayette, Louisiana, and holds a PhD in Biblical Studies from Amridge University. Andrew: Okay, Matthew 8. Fr. And its interesting: I recently heard a certainhe identifies as a Protestant, but most Protestants would not identify him as a Protestantbiblical scholar talking about atonement, and who tried to read St. Athanasiuss On the Incarnation and just said, I cant tell what hes doing in terms of his In terms of trying to address it in terms of atonement theory. Andrew: Yeah, just list off the commandments. Fr. That mentions Azazel, doesnt it? Fr. They werent sitting there with the knife, and keep the fire going at the burnt-offering altar, because someone might show up with a pigeon. So, in fact, youll see someIm trying to remember if the King James does thisa lot of older English biblical translations, instead of saying, They will choose a goat for Azazel, says, Its one for Yahweh and one for a scapegoat. And this is what theyre doing; theyre translating it rather than taking it as a name. He purifies even them. Fr. Now the thing that has been done in part is now being done totally in full. Fr. Fr. One of the big questions that Fr. So that spacewe talked last time, when we were talking about the other offerings, that there are sort of concentric circles, and that the closer you get to where God is dwelling So God is dwelling in the holy of holies in the tabernacle, so that is the place where the threat of this corruption is most dire. Is it because its being offered to God? Stephen De Young is not only leading the charge for Orthodox apologetics in a world of secular biblical scholarship, but he is also doing us all a favor by reviving the cosmic frame of ancient Christians, giving hope to a jaded culture desperately looking for a re-enchanted world in which it can fully participate. A dissertation submitted to the faculty of the School of Graduate Studies, Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion (2009) . All right, well, the third half is going to be the shortest half. You take it back.. Fr. Fr. Stephen: Who get what St. Matthew is doing here, and not only do they get what St. Matthew is doing here, but they talk about this in terms of atonement. Fr. Thank you. There are also some folks who want to suggest that Azazel isnt a being. They werent like that. Well, okay, lets talk about St. Matthew. How does that begin? Andrew: Yeah. So some people will try to will want to translate Azazel, instead of seeing it as a name, as a proper name, will want to translate it as something like the goat who goes away. This is where scapegoat comes from, because scape- like escape. Escape is go away: the goat that goes away. What does it mean? This isnt just an intellectual maneuver; this is something we can experience and participate in in real time, and thats what Lent and Holy Week and Pascha are going to be all about. Stephen: Yeah, youre rubbing it into a bunch of people. Mahaksapatalika (Isaacs Jr.). Fr. I do I will say, I acknowledge the King James Bible has some errors in it, translation errorsand we just lost all of our KJV-only listeners the one. All right. I hear you. Fr. Fr. So sin brings the chaos in, or you could say it turns what has been made orderly and beautiful chaotic again. Stephen: Yeah, theyre going to cast lots, and ones going to go for one purpose and ones going to go for the other. All right, well, lets talk about St. Lukes gospel, and, of course, Acts; these two kind of form a single narrative together, with just the In the former treatise, O Theophilus, at the beginning. Acts, the book of Acts: youve got the coming of the Holy Spirit, filling the creation, on the day of Pentecost, and the day of Pentecost, its the feast of the giving of the Law, but isnt there also a consecration of the Temple associated with that as well, or am I mixing stuff up? The blood of that goat is used to purify the sanctuary, to purify sacred space. Andrew: Yeah. Dr. Stephen De Young is Pastor of Archangel Gabriel . Stephen: Well, he actuallyI think youre mixing him with Pompey, the Roman general, Fr. Andrew: Yeah, his single most popular and famous work. Well, weve looked at this one particular ritual, and now we know what it does, and it does the same thing in us, for us, around us, throughout the whole cosmos. Fr. You know, that makes total sense. Stephen: No, it has nothing to do with that. Fr. Fr. If you think about it, this has to be the case. So, Dan, are you there? And in a ritual, if something is not ritualized, when you have a detailed ritual, and it says, Before the ritual, wash your hands, for example, and it doesnt say, Heres the prayer when you wash your hands, that means the hand-washing isnt ritualized, and it means it doesnt mean anything. Its not a big mystery. Fr. Fr. Fr. This paper explores a possibility that may not have been previously considered that the wife of Ham (one of the sons of Noah), who was one of the individuals present on the ark, was born from Nephilim stock. Fr. Fr. Stephen has blogged about previously here as well. For when he received honor and glory from God the Father, and the voice was carried to him by the majestic glory, This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased,. Stephen De Young Easily the most important work in Pauline Studies, and likely in Biblical Studies as a whole, of the current decade is Matthew Thomas' published Oxford dissertation, Paul's "Works of the Law" in the Perspective of Second Century Reception. If it read that way, then youre asking the natural question, which is what mediates between? Stephen De Young, I felt I had finally come home. I did believe the doctrine of the Trinity was in the OT, but in a latent or implicit form. When Christ says hes sanctifying himself, its not as if he was unholy before and hes doing some action; that him sanctifying himself is talking about his incarnation, his earthly life, and his coming death, in which he has sanctified himself, his person, in order that his disciples in all ages would be sanctified, would be made holy. Ive got all these sheep. Pauls Works of the Law in the Perspective of Second Century Reception, by Matthew J. Thomas A Review, John the Presbyter: Eusebius Imaginary Friend. So we have again in Leviticus 16 a fair amount of detail describing exactly whats going on. And again, this is all about not dying. The first is that Orthodox Christianity had to interact with heresies, resulting in various doctrinal formulas such as Trinitarian doctrine. And then theres this weird And then at the end of Luke: They worshiped him, returned to Jerusalem with great joy, and were continually in the Temple, blessing and praising God. Disclaimers, Pauls Works of the Law in the Perspective of Second Century Reception, by Matthew J. Thomas A Review, John the Presbyter: Eusebius Imaginary Friend. Like, when God said, Dont worship the goat-spirits, hes not saying, Now dont do the ritual I just gave you to dothat thats not worshiping the goat-spirits. The ark of the covenant is like a footstool, so theres a throne involved there, and were thinking of atonement as at-one-ment and peace and mercy. So you come up with this mercy-seat thing. This goat, we dont know nothing. Fr. So, okay, Christ is both goats. Fr. He holds a PhD in Biblical Studies from Amridge University. Can you hear us? Yeah, its You know, the unity of it alland including also the teaching of the Church Fathers and whats in the divine services and so forthits so impossibly unified; its so impossibly one. Andrew: Okay, well, so related to that, actually, we have a caller. Andrew: Yeah, which we talked about before, a few episodes back. When the book of Enoch lists what the different rebellious angelic beings taught to humans, what Azazel is listed as having taught are the same things that Tubal-cain in Genesis 4:2 because if theres anything people love more than Slavonic pseudepigrapha, its genealogies. Stephen De Young, goes back to what I explained earlier: our understanding of the Judaism of Jesus' day has been tinctured by Rabbinic Judaism, which we anachronistically assume reflects the tradition of the Pharisees. But the one that everyone agreed on, out of all of the general epistles or catholic epistles, was 1 John. Fr. Fr. I love it when the fundamental unity between the old and new covenants is shown. Hes coming; we have to get ready. This is just in Hebrew, especially, the word that means what it says; it means cover. And the Greek word thats being used is being used to pick up that meaning within a ritual context. Just read the I mean, yes, sometimes some passages are very difficult, require a lot of interpretation, but when the question is, What is ritually done with a goat? you could just open up Leviticus and read it. So it does end up being germane to our topic this evening. We just walked through the Day of Atonement ritual, the goat for Yahweh, the goat for Azazel, and what those things mean. Hes clarifying; hes making it abundantly clear: This is not a sacrifice to Azazel. The A-Team. Basically, you extract its blood. Fr. Stephen: And its not just sort of chaos in the sense of disorder. Richard B. Sorensen notes, "Nephilim were said to be a race or a group of people that had distinct physical characteristics of large size and great strength" and that "the psychological characteristics of the Nephilim are not specifically described in the Bible, they are generally pictured as being very proud, belligerent, sexually aggressive, and prone to conflictThe Nephilim are portrayed as men who were tall, strong, and belligerentphysically intimidatingNephilic characteristics of height, musculature, and psychopathology." Fr. So the correct translation is not only for our sins, but for the whole world. The words, those of, do not occur. But the basic idea is that, as Leviticus says elsewhere, that blood is life, the blood of an animal is its life, so sin, this taint of sin and corruption, is death. For those of us in the Byzantine rite of the Orthodox Church, which is most Orthodox Christians, this last Sunday was the Sunday of the Last Judgment, in which we heard Matthew 25, where we heard that sheep go to heaven and goats go to hell. But Im not sure that the body of the book establishes this. Its a word thats core to our understanding of Christianity, and yet there are about as many theories of atonement as there are Christian groups. The Place of Man in the Ontological and Cosmological Dualism of the Diablo, Darksiders and Devil May Cry Game Series, Satan the Great Dragon Enlil, Ushumgallu and Bashmu. So then what does the actual ritual itself look like? Andrew: [Scoff] Yeah! They have to be the best goats, both of them are the best goats. But is this like the one time you can touch it, when this ritual being performed, or is it sort of sprinkled from afar? Andrew: [Dramatic groan] Brutal! People have atonement theories. And I think this is really important to notice this because we say that Christ is the fulfillment of all things in the Old Testament, and here you have this Second Temple Jewish literature, a lot of it preceding, some of it being at the same time as the New Testament, essentially pointing to this: theres this big eschatological version of this thats going to be happening. They are teaching you and giving you the proclamation of Christ. Rather, the doctrine of God being multiple hypostases was already widely accepted even before the incarnation. 9781944967550. by Stephen De Young. Fr. Fr. Stephen: 1 Maccabees talks about the Battle of Emmaus. Andrew: Yeah, so this is really cool, and its a really I mean, this is a major kind of transitional thing happening here, where, as youve mentioned a number of times, that the sacrificial system of the Old Testament is basically kind of a management system, managing sin, managing corruption, managing taint and death, and so that what we get in the Second Temple literature is, as you said, once and for all, that theres going to be a Great Day of Atonement, to end them all, so to speak: the ultimate, the fulfillment of all of them. The poor goat. Its amazing. Fr. I mean, the nature of this podcast is notthe purpose of it, I should sayis not to be apologetical; were not here to say, This is why Catholics and Protestants and various other kinds of religious people are wrong! But in this particular case, even though this episode is not primarily apologetical, as the whole podcast is not, there is a disconnect that happens for people when they read the Scriptures and, as weve seen, bring a lot of assumptions into the Scriptures. although not Pennsylvania, but the Emmaus that my Emmaus is named after. But I was misguided. Okay, so how is that related to what weve been talking about? Oh, man, whats happening here? [Laughter] I just need to read this word. With the Day of Atonement ritual, theres two goats, a goat for Yahweh and a goat thats sent off to Azazel, but I thought in Matthew 25 it said that goats go to hell. So thats what were going to do now. Okay, but before we get to the actual New Testament, theres some stuffsurprise, surprise, Lord of Spirits listeners!theres other literature that surrounds the New Testament that informs whats going on in the New Testament. Fr. Fr. Theres not enough books in the world. So theyre choosing how to describe things and what details to include in order to convey this. The modern world does not acknowledge but is nevertheless haunted by spirits - angels, demons and saints. Stephen: Weve talked about that theres kind of an anti-theosis that happens. Fr. Andrew: I suspectyeah, thats right. And so, when the tabernacle is first consecrated, all of those objects are built. They see this as a kind or type of atonement. Journal of Biblical Literature 106 (1987), pp. Richard Rohlin? But the problemand we already talked about this a bit with Fr. Stephen: Yeah, and St. Johns going to say this has happened. [Laughter] Dont the daily offerings cover it? Stephen De Young's Bible Studies, thank you for your patience. Immediately after they are mentioned, Genesis goes on to discuss how the heart and minds of people became continually evil, and Gods flood judgement in response. Stephen: and now Im going to take away your KJV., Fr. Fr. Andrew: I mean, I love that word. This kind of thing is fun, and it can be very easy, when exposed to theology, especially theology of this kind, thats trying to explain how everything works and how everything fits together and see things from Gods perspective, to approach our Christian life from that perspective, that its about me figuring things out; its about me piecing things together: its about this intellectual construct that I want to form in my mind, where I have the perfect theology and I understand everything. Fr. But firstand this is where the English language nerd in me comes leaping outlets talk about this English word, atonement. Okay, so, Fr. Stephen: Right. The Centar za Racionalnu Teologiju/Center for Rational Theology has produced some information regarding Giants in the Bible including that Everybody knows about GoliathAnd the enigmatic Nephilim and that, additionally, there are quite a few more giants and giant races mentioned in the Bible. They also elucidate The name Nephilim etymologically. Stephen: the altar, the ark of the covenant, the other fixtures of the tabernacle in order to purify them, in order to remove that taint thats been left there, thats gathered there because of the sins of the people, because of the sins of the community over the course of the year, to purify it again. I dont say, I got up this morning and wrapped my clothes around me.. The Bible only specifies the heights of two people. Because obviously, if you interpret it purely as related to sins and the forgiveness of sins, then not everyone in the world has their sins forgiven, but And so you have to And thats where Peter Lombard in the eleventh century comes up with the idea of sufficiency and efficiency, that Christs sacrifice is sufficient for the world but not efficient for the world, and on and on and on. And whats interesting there is people may know that these angelic names that end in -elEl is Godso Gabriel is Gibor-el, the mighty man of God; Michael is Micha-el: who is like God. Fr. Are these just religious-sounding synonyms for good things or bad things? According to the transliterations of the ancient literary corpus of the Near Eastern and Western Civilizations, evil has been extant since the beginning of time: it arguably reared its head in the first book of the Old Testament (Gen. 3.1, 4.8, 6.1-4); Mesopotamian literature, antedating the Pentateuch by at least several centuries, describes wars, the wraths of the gods, and a tyrannical king; and, originating millennia earlier, Sumerian poems depict spiritual anguish in the afterworld and tribal warfare. Stephen: Yes, involving metallurgy for weapons of war and those kind of things. Sorry. Andrew: Like a lid, yeah, or the top. If you didnt get a chance to call in during the live broadcast, wed love to hear from you either via email at lordofspirits@ancientfaith.com, or you can message us at our Lord of Spirits podcast Facebook page. He is also the host of the Whole Counsel of God podcast from Ancient Faith and author of the Whole Counsel Blog, as well as co-host of the Lord of Spirits podcast. Andrew: Yeah, back to where it belongs. [Laughter] Go back where you came from. Stephen: So hes seen in 1 Enoch, or the book of Enoch, when Azazel appears, Azazel is sort of the leader of the bad guys, the leader of the rebellious watchers, who are responsible for corrupting the line of Cain and leading them to destruction that results in the flood. Can you hear me? Fr. So the first covering that happens, the reason this is done on this day, as weve mentioned in previous episodes, is that this is the day that Yahweh chose to appear visibly in the holy of holies.