Michael Heiser Serpent, Son’s of God, Nephilim, Watchers and Genesis

Faith & Science Conversation
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@Reggie_O_Donoghue

In my view, your key section was this:

"I’ve discussed Amar Annus’ excellent 2010 article on the origin of the Enochian Watchers (the Sons of God in Genesis 6) before, and here I shall discuss again. In summary, Annus (bad name I know) established strong parallels between the Watchers of 1 Enoch and the Apkallu from Mesopotamian texts, who delievered arts and civilisation to Antediluvian man.

These parallels go as far as Akkadian inscriptions which outright call the Apkallu ‘Masarre‘, or ‘Watchers’. It seems then, that there seems to be an early precedent to equate the Apkallu and Sons of God."

For future reference, to the extent that Biblicists want to equate “Watchers” with “Angels”…

… these are the Sumerian beings that would equate to such “Watchers” - - behold the Fish-Men angels of Sumeria!

[The larger figure on the left is Ea/Enki… with four streams of
** sweet water emerging from his back .]**
image

There were 7 apkallu… Adapa being the most famous of them; there is a key difference between the Apkallu and the common perception of the Watchers… Adapa and the other 6 fish-men were considered mortal… with an entire myth dedicated to why at least one of them never achieved immortality.

There is another set of 7 apkallu-like creatures … the distinction being lost to me at this time.

“Adapa, the first of the Mesopotamian seven sages (apkallu[a]), was a mythical figure who unknowingly refused the gift of immortality. The story is first attested in the Kassite period (14th century BC), in fragmentary tablets from Tell el-Amarna, and from Assur, of the late second millennium BC. Mesopotamian myth tells of seven antediluvian sages, who were sent by Ea, the wise god of Eridu, to bring the arts of civilisation to humankind. The first of these, Adapa, also known as Uan, the name given as Oannes by Berossus, introduced the practice of the correct rites of religious observance as priest of the E’Apsu temple, at Eridu. The sages are described in Mesopotamian literature as 'pure parādu-fish, probably carp, whose bones are found associated with the earliest shrine, and still kept as a holy duty in the precincts of Near Eastern mosques and monasteries. Adapa as a fisherman was iconographically portrayed as a fish-man composite.”

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Ah, so even they were not divine.

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Am I right in thinking that the Apkallu were literally ‘fish’?

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@Reggie_O_Donoghue

No… apkallu were literally mortal creatures, made with 2 heads, an external appearance of a large (but not super-large) body of a fish, with human legs sticking out beneath their tail fins.

But I think this is a legend that became “fleshed out” (< see what I did there?) when some enterprising fellow, in the deep history of Sumeria, contrived just such a costume… no doubt using the skins and head of the largest fish he could find (perhaps a kind of carp?).

It might have been just a one time “show” … but the appearance of the apkallu seem to be intentionally designed to be re-created by a costumed human! Is that because someone saw it and remembered it? Or was it intentionally illustrated like that so it could be re-enacted with perfect precision sometime down the road?

If the legend of St. Nicholas had involved him flying with angel wings and not with reindeer, think how challenging Santa portrayal would be at all those malls each Christmas season! If you are going to spend eternity working with an image … best to make an image that can be achieved… even if it is putting a big fish-head on top of your own !!!

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Ok let’s start here. I am sure you have seen this. How did they know about the ring around what I think may be Saturn.

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And how did they know the moon travels in a boat?

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We shouldn’t read into ancient texts using our modern worldview. Just because it looks like Saturn ‘to us’, doesn’t mean it was Saturn.

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I further doubt that the Sumerians, who believed the heavens were three crystalline discs, would have known about any non-phenomenological astronomical phenomena.

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The Sumerian symbol for Saturn was a star and crescent, not a ringed orb:

image
image1600×1200 741 KB

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My current view of Eden is that a Divine Serpentine being was cursed to ‘become’ a normal snake for the rest of his days. According to Micah 7:17, serpents lick dust.

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No doubt! An unidentified flying boat! Just the same it’s still a ring around the planet. They may have had knowledge about the precession of the equinoxes that required thousands of years of tracking.

The overall Mesopatamian peoples knowledge of the heavens, cosmology and what we call astrology was quite remarkable for the worlds first civilization. Preceding civilizations such as the Greeks utilized much of this knowledge. The Sumerians always attributed this knowledge to coming from the Apkallu and not self derived.

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It’s not a ring around the planet.

They may have had flying cars and nuclear fusion.

It was horrible. Like the Chinese, they made many observations which were quite remarkable, but their knowledge of what those observations actually meant was virtually non-existent. They had no understanding of what they were seeing, and no way of discovering it.

I think you mean succeeding. The Greeks at least tried to make some sense of cosmology, but they wasted most of their time doing what the Babylonians had done; making very accurate observations without understanding what they meant. Philosophers such as Aristotle caused Greek science to stall permanently, to the extent that it was basically moribund two centuries before Christ. It took people like John Philoponus in the sixth century to break through the deadlock of Greek ignorance.

If I had a stupidly wrong idea of the cosmos, I would prefer to attribute it to someone else as well.

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Don’t forget that this is a modern drawing … an “impression” on a modern artist.

If you mean the 2-piece object down around the sitting person’s knee… that could be a comet tail and a planet…

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@Skoshland

Oh… you mean the crescent moon ? That is certainly not a ring. That is a crescent moon.

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George,

Here a picture from the British Museum of Apkallu that are bird like or angel like. I think we should be careful when referring to the Sumerian beliefs. As Heiser talks about that the Mesopotamians had diverse beliefs of various home town deities that changed over time with the hierarchy of deities reversing in rank. There are a number of cultures spread over thousands of years. They seemed to change the story to suit their needs at the time.

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This is the picture with planet with a ring that I am referring. This is an ink print from an actual tablet not an artist rendition. They must have had pretty good eyes!

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Which is the planet with a ring? What evidence are you using to interpret it as a planet with a ring? What is the circle with the crescent underneath it?

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@Skoshland,

Actually, I do think that is an artist rendition. This looks like many of the artist renditions I have reviewed… and not at all like the actual results of the rolling seal. If you will recall, these seals were designed to be impressed in clay … not as an ink-driven image maker.

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@Skoshland:

I am familiar with this type of Apkallu… I’m not sure what your point is. When the Bird-like Apkallu gained in ascendancy, the Fish-men of Apkallu didn’t disappear. The Bird-like ones were added to the pantheon.

This is no less and no more than what we find in all religions around the world.

The Greeks had their Zeus … and the Romans turned the great deity into Zeu-Pater, or Jupiter.

The Sumerians had their Enki, and the Akkadians brought with them some sense of their Ea, and merged Ea with Enki. I am ready and willing to consider each change as they occur.

But in this post it sounds like you don’t have any proposal to make… you just wanted to say something.

Read the following text … and you will have something to talk about:

“These seven were each advisers for seven different kings and therefore result in two different lists, one of kings and one of Apkallu. Neither the sages nor the kings in these lists were genealogically related however.[12] Apkallu and human beings were presumably capable of conjugal relationships since after the flood, the myth states that four Apkallu appeared”

“These were part human and part Apkallu, and included Nungalpirriggaldim, Pirriggalnungal, Pirriggalabsu, and Lu-nana who was only two-thirds Apkallu. These Apkallus are said to have committed various transgressions which angered the gods. These seeming negative deeds of the later Apkallu and their roles as wise councillors has led some scholars to equate them with the nephilim of Genesis 6:4.”

“After these four post-diluvian Apkallus came the first completely human advisers, who were called ummanu. Gilgamesh, the mythical king of Uruk, is said to be the first king to have had an entirely human adviser. In recent times, scholars have also suggested the Apkallu are the Raphaim and are the model for the biblical world human beings and flood survivors such as Enoch, the ancestor of Noah.”

“Apkallu reliefs appear prominently in Assyrian palaces as guardians against evil spirits, particularly during the Neo-Assyrian Empire (911-605 BC). They are one of the more prominent supernatural creatures that appear in the art of Ashurnasirpal II of the 9th century BC. They appear in one of three forms, bird-headed, human-headed or dressed in fish-skin cloaks.”

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I’ve just realised what it is, it’s a winged sun disk, nothing else.